Scholars have argued that "the worst possible way to understand Zarathustra is as a teacher of doctrines".[13] Nonetheless Thus Spoke Zarathustra "has contributed most to the public perception of Nietzsche as philosopher – namely, as the teacher of the 'doctrines' of the will to power, the overman and the eternal return".[14]
Will to power
Nietzsche's thinking was significantly influenced by the thinking of Arthur Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer emphasised will, and particularly will to live. Nietzsche emphasised Wille zur Macht, or will to power.
Nietzsche was not a systematic philosopher and left much of what he wrote open to interpretation. Receptive fascists are said to have misinterpreted the will to power, having overlooked Nietzsche's distinction between Kraft ("force" or "strength") and Macht ("power" or "might").[15]
Scholars have often had recourse to Nietzsche's notebooks, where will to power is described in ways such as "willing-to-become-stronger [Stärker-werden-wollen], willing growth".[16]
Übermensch
It is allegedly "well-known that as a term, Nietzsche’s Übermensch derives from Lucian of Samosata's hyperanthropos".[17] This hyperanthropos, or overhuman, appears in Lucian's Menippean satire Κατάπλους ἢ Τύραννος, usually translated Downward Journey or The Tyrant. This hyperanthropos is "imagined to be superior to others of 'lesser' station in this-worldly life and the same tyrant after his (comically unwilling) transport into the underworld".[17] Nietzsche celebrated Goethe as an actualisation of the Übermensch.[7]
Eternal recurrence
Nietzsche in the care of his sister in 1899Nietzsche included some brief writings on eternal recurrence in his earlier book The Gay Science. Zarathustra also appeared in that book. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the eternal recurrence is, according to Nietzsche, the "fundamental idea of the work".[18]
Interpretations of the eternal recurrence have mostly revolved around cosmological and attitudinal and normative principles.[19]
As a cosmological principle, it has been supposed to mean that time is circular, that all things recur eternally.[19] A weak attempt at proof has been noted in Nietzsche's notebooks, and it is not clear to what extent, if at all, Nietzsche believed in the truth of it.[19] Critics have mostly dealt with the cosmological principle as a puzzle of why Nietzsche might have touted the idea.
As an attitudinal principle it has often been dealt with as a thought experiment, to see how one would react, or as a sort of ultimate expression of life-affirmation, as if one should desire eternal recurrence.[19]
As a normative principle, it has been thought of as a measure or standard, akin to a "moral rule".[19]
Criticism of religion
Nietzsche studied extensively and was very familiar with Schopenhauer and Christianity and Buddhism, each of which he considered nihilistic and "enemies to a healthy culture". Thus Spoke Zarathustra can be understood as a "polemic" against these influences.[20]
Though Nietzsche "probably learned Sanskrit while at Leipzig from 1865 to 1868", and "was probably one of the best read and most solidly grounded in Buddhism for his time among Europeans", Nietzsche was writing when Eastern thought was only beginning to be acknowledged in the West, and Eastern thought was easily misconstrued. Nietzsche's interpretations of Buddhism were coloured by his study of Schopenhauer, and it is "clear that Nietzsche, as well as Schopenhauer, entertained inaccurate views of Buddhism". An egregious example has been the idea of śūnyatā as "nothingness" rather than "emptiness". "Perhaps the most serious misreading we find in Nietzsche's account of Buddhism was his inability to recognize that the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness was an initiatory stage leading to a reawakening". Nietzsche dismissed Schopenhauer and Christianity and Buddhism as pessimistic and nihilistic, but, according to Benjamin A. Elman, "[w]hen understood on its own terms, Buddhism cannot be dismissed as pessimistic or nihilistic". Moreover, answers which Nietzsche assembled to the questions he was asking, not only generally but also in Zarathustra, put him "very close to some basic doctrines found in Buddhism". An example is when Zarathustra says that "the soul is only a word for something about the body".[20]
Nihilism
It has been often repeated in some way that Nietzsche takes with one hand what he gives with the other. Accordingly, interpreting what he wrote has been notoriously slippery. One of the most vexed points in discussions of Nietzsche has been whether or not he was a nihilist.[20] Though arguments have been made for either side, what is clear is that Nietzsche was at least interested in nihilism.
As far as nihilism touched other people, at least, metaphysical understandings of the world were progressively undermined until people could contend that "God is dead".[7] Without God, humanity was greatly devalued.[7] Without metaphysical or supernatural lenses, humans could be seen as animals with primitive drives which were or could be sublimated.[7] According to Hollingdale, this led to Nietzsche's ideas about the will to power.[7] Likewise, "Sublimated will to power was now the Ariadne's thread tracing the way out of the labyrinth of nihilism".[7]
