Reply #51: Thus spake Zarathustra [View All]

[existentialist]

First of all, Nietzsche considered Thus Spake Zarathustra to be, what it essentially was, a poem, and elsewhere Nietzsche wrote:

"Poetry is useful
It can tell
Te truth by means of parable
To those who are not so bright."

I too have read it, but it cannot be taken to clearly state Nietzsche's position on anything because it's a poem.

And he also states, in Ecce Homo, that one should read Thus Spake Zarathustra because it states the same thing as Beyond Good and Evil, "but differently." Beyond Good and Evil is, therefore, a more authoritative work to cite for Nietzsche's central points, but even there it's like reading the Uniform Commercial Code because everything is cross linked to every thing else, except that unlike the Uniform Commercial Code, Nietzsche provides no footnotes with direct references.

A direct quote from Nietzsche with regard to Christianity in particular inspiring modern science is:

"Only on such a solid foundation of ignorance could knowledge rise so high."

But to understand that, and why, one has to understand that coming out of the (self-named) middle ages, thinkers in Christian Europe were desperately looking for ways to prove the existence of God, and this lead to the development of rigorous scientific method, and indirectly to the results thereof.

The easiest way to trace this is through Descartes' essay which is famous for the statement, "I think therefore I am." This is far from impressive philosophy. (It was nicely ridiculed in the Monty Python skit as "I drink therefore I am.") But, (1) it was influential in the development of Western thought, and (2) it was not produced by a dummy, but by a very intelligent mind (the same one that gave us Cartesian coordinates) that had the felt need to go through such mental gymnastics to produce a proof of God.

Merry Christmas to you too.