Love-Hate and War: Perfectionism and Self-Overcoming in Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Abstract

Abstract This essay investigates the thought of self-overcoming (Selbst-Überwindung, sich überwinden) in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and its relation to Nietzsche’s Emersonian perfectionism in Schopenhauer as Educator. It is a conceptual study focused on key passages on self-overcoming in Zarathustra and related problems – most notably how to combine the demand for boundless affirmation with the demand for total critique in Nietzsche’s project of critical transvaluation. The main thesis is that Zarathustra’s response depends on his addressees: with regard to the mob, the rabble or Gesindel, he advocates a limit in negation under the sign of mildness (Milde); with regard to others engaged in self-overcoming, he advocates a limited negation in the form of love-hate. Connections with the perfectionism of Schopenhauer as Educator are made throughout the essay, which then draws them together in a comparative analysis of self-overcoming in Zarathustra and Nietzsche’s untimely perfectionism. The essay closes with some methodological reflections on the risks and benefits of its “prismatic” approach, focused on key passages in relation to other works in abstraction from the overall composition and narrative of the book.