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Of the Chairs of Virtue
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Rethinking Morality
The Superman and the Will to Power
Death of God and Christianity
Eternal Recurrence
Summary
Analysis
Like those who believe in an afterlife, Zarathustra once imagined something existing beyond humankind. The world appeared to him like the work of a suffering God: a suffering person finds joy in looking away from himself, so maybe God is the same way. Zarathustra realized that this “God,” like all gods, was his own creation—it didn’t come from somewhere beyond humanity. Knowing this, Zarathustra “overcame” himself. Now, it would be a torment for him to believe in afterworlds.
Zarathustra’s implication is that, much as his imagined God looked away from himself to create the world, humanity finds solace in looking away from its sufferings and instead creating the idea of gods as a way of finding meaning to justify the suffering that’s inherent to life. When Zarathustra came to believe that there was no God beyond his imagination, he experienced a liberation that he couldn’t return from.
Themes
Zarathustra says that the Ego is the “measure and value of things.” Even when the Ego makes up fables and tries to exist as its own separate entity, it is still attached to the body. Zarathustra tells humanity to lift their head instead of burying it in “heavenly” sand. He teaches them a “new will,” to desire the path that the “sick and dying” have avoided. The sick and dying, who despised the body and the physical realm, invented heaven and spiritual redemption—but even these inventions are earthly.
Zarathustra says that the self, or Ego, is inescapably linked to the body, no matter what tales it tells itself about an eternal soul. Only the “sick and dying”—those who lack the will to face life otherwise—cling to the belief in redemption from Earth and life beyond it. The irony is that these beliefs are invented by human beings who are, of course, earthly creatures.
Themes
Zarathustra isn’t hard on those who remain “sick” in this way, desiring that they, like him, will turn into “overcomers.” Some of these sickly people, however, hate the enlightened and their honesty. Zarathustra appeals to people to listen to purer and healthier preachers to learn the meaning of life.
The “sickly” aren’t inherently bad people—rather, Zarathustra teaches in the hope that they will someday embrace his views. Some of them, however, actively despise and persecute their opponents.
Themes
