《焚书》、《续焚书》两书成于明代晚期，彼时社会动荡不安，农民起义此起彼伏，阶级矛盾日益尖锐。李贽最痛恨维护封建礼教的假道学和那些满口仁义道德的卫道士、伪君子，批评他们“阳为道学，阴为富贵，被服儒雅，行若狗彘”（《续焚书·三教归儒说》）；同时，对统治阶级所极力推崇的孔孟之学也大加鞭挞，认为“耕稼陶渔之人即无不可取，则千圣万贤之善，独不可取乎？又何必专门学孔子而后为正脉也”（《焚书·答耿司寇》）；希望统治阶级上层能够出现“一个半个怜才者”，使“大力大贤 ”的有才之士“得以效用，彼必杀身图报，不肯忘恩”（《焚书·寒灯小话》）。对此有书评者如是论道：“这说明李贽并非要推翻封建统治，而是要维护它，表明了他的政治思想没有超出地主阶级思想与时代的限制，也不可能违背地主阶级的根本利益。”
湛若水和王阳明是相互欣赏的朋友也是论敌，但湛若水对中国哲学史的影响远不及王阳明，主要原因恐怕是两人走的哲学道路不同。
王阳明以他的“心外无物”、“格物致知”等理论将中国传统哲学中主观唯心主义哲学推向最高峰，因而在中国哲学史上占有重要地位。湛若水的哲学走集大成为道路，要就重大成果自然比专攻一家困难许多。湛若水企图调和各家之言，以他经常引用《中庸》的语句就可见一斑。湛若水的主要理论“随处体认天理”组合了前人的“随处”、“体认”、“天理”之说，亦是在调和基础上再创造。因此，在思想魅力方面，“随处体认天理”低于“心外无物”、“格物致知”。湛若水的哲学一方面取百家所长，另一方面因为难于贯通众多理论而显得庞杂。
无可否认“随处体认天理”的意义，但它远不能使湛若水成为哲学的集大成者。所谓哲学上的集大成者，都是一些承前启后、创造新概念为哲学发展开辟道路的伟大思想家，如以“绝对精神”集德国古典唯心主义大成的黑格尔，以“辩证唯物主义”集唯物主义与辩证法大成的马克思等。哲学的集大成者的出现必须有经济或科技重要发展、社会或时代有深刻变革的客观环境为条件。有这种环境，个人才会在思想上有大创造。事实上，“随处体认天理”就表达了人对“天理”的认识受“处” ——客观环境限制的观点。湛若水生活在封建社会走向衰落的后期，显然缺乏哲学集大成的环境。
集大成的哲学道路虽然没有使湛若水没能在中国哲学史留下厚重的一笔，但湛若水在某程度上总结了宋、明理学，为后人的研究提供了借鉴。正因为不偏不倚的集大成道路，他提出“自得”之说，批判当时人云亦云的风气同时启发了后人。结合了宋、明理学的某些精华，加上“中庸”的态度使他的哲学具有长经久不息的合理性。
王阳明以他的“心外无物”、“格物致知”等理论将中国传统哲学中主观唯心主义哲学推向最高峰，因而在中国哲学史上占有重要地位。湛若水的哲学走集大成为道路，要就重大成果自然比专攻一家困难许多。湛若水企图调和各家之言，以他经常引用《中庸》的语句就可见一斑。湛若水的主要理论“随处体认天理”组合了前人的“随处”、“体认”、“天理”之说，亦是在调和基础上再创造。因此，在思想魅力方面，“随处体认天理”低于“心外无物”、“格物致知”。湛若水的哲学一方面取百家所长，另一方面因为难于贯通众多理论而显得庞杂。
无可否认“随处体认天理”的意义，但它远不能使湛若水成为哲学的集大成者。所谓哲学上的集大成者，都是一些承前启后、创造新概念为哲学发展开辟道路的伟大思想家，如以“绝对精神”集德国古典唯心主义大成的黑格尔，以“辩证唯物主义”集唯物主义与辩证法大成的马克思等。哲学的集大成者的出现必须有经济或科技重要发展、社会或时代有深刻变革的客观环境为条件。有这种环境，个人才会在思想上有大创造。事实上，“随处体认天理”就表达了人对“天理”的认识受“处” ——客观环境限制的观点。湛若水生活在封建社会走向衰落的后期，显然缺乏哲学集大成的环境。
集大成的哲学道路虽然没有使湛若水没能在中国哲学史留下厚重的一笔，但湛若水在某程度上总结了宋、明理学，为后人的研究提供了借鉴。正因为不偏不倚的集大成道路，他提出“自得”之说，批判当时人云亦云的风气同时启发了后人。结合了宋、明理学的某些精华，加上“中庸”的态度使他的哲学具有长经久不息的合理性。
本书收录了赵林教授近年来关于西方文化的几篇学术讲座。这些讲座内容广阔、气势磅礴，从全球范围的文明冲突与文化融合历程，到旨趣迥异的中西文化比较，再到源远流长的西方文化演进，展现了讲演者高屋建瓴的研究视域、博大恢弘的历史情怀和深邃睿智的哲学反思。
本书堪称“波普教皇”安迪•沃霍尔的非正式自传。沃霍尔在此书中回顾了自己病态的少年晨夕，孤寂的青年时代，在纽约闯荡的岁月，初创“工厂”的奢华时光，以及他遭受枪击的创痛。英文版刊行于1975年，此后事迹自然无法呈现，但沃霍尔的人生精华已然浓缩于此。同时，这又一部拼贴而成的波普语录。爱，性，工作，艺术，名气，头衔，时间，死亡，美，成功……举凡时尚都市生活的各式困惑，此书都备有现成的骇世箴言任君挑选——中译本甚至做足工夫，将凡具警策潜力的句子都以加重的字体予以强调，并配上英文，免去摘引者核对原文的劳顿。三十余年过去，安迪•沃霍尔的波普呓语读来依旧新鲜时尚，或许，沃霍尔就是时尚本身。
尼采以透视主义认识论为主要武器，对西方传统形而上学展开了全面批判，并在此基础上提出了他对世界的新解释。本书是周国平当年的博士论文，是他花费巨大心血做了系统研究的成果，本书是他真正深入到尼采的问题思路之中，对他在本体论和认识论方面的思想给出了相当清晰的分析，证明他不只是一位关心人生问题的诗性哲人，那么在周国平的世界里，尼采究竟是如何的严格意义上的大哲学家呢？尼采究竟关心了什么……
在西方哲学史上，尼采向来是一个有争议的人物。尼采究竟是什么样的人？他在哲学上提出了一些什么新问题？他和现时代有什么关系....周国平在认真研究了尼采的生平和著作，经过自己独立的思考，提出了一些与过去习惯的说法颇为不同的见解。 周国平说：“尼采需要的不是辩护，而是理解。只有弱者才需要辩护，而尼采却不是弱者...” 尼采在世纪的转折点上是不是真的成为古老的传说？
本书是周国平首部“出行哲思录”，极其真实详尽地记录了每一次远离国民的日子中的所见所闻所思所忆，现了作者执著而超脱的灵魂之旅。无论花季还是老年，都能从他的文采和哲思中读取智慧和超然。
本书中周国平老师对平常生活的所思所感进行了记录，他把自己立于命运之外，淡淡地冷眼旁观着世间百态，却依然掩饰不住对生命的挚爱之情。通过对人生的哲学式感悟，对人、自然、孤独、情欲、爱情、婚姻的精辟见解，将他的睿智和诗性的哲学再次奉献给世人。周国平老师的作品，“绚烂之极归于平淡”。其实文章作平淡不难，不过，平淡而要有味，就很难了。平淡不但是一种文字的境界，更是一种胸怀，一种人生的境界。要达到这种境界实非易事。
有钱又有闲当然幸运，倘不能，退而求其次，我宁做有闲的穷人，不做有钱的忙人。我爱闲适胜于爱金钱。金钱终究是身外之物，闲适却使我感到自己是生命的主人。有人说：“有钱可以买时间。”这话当然不错。但是，如果大前提是“时间就是金钱”，买得的时间又追加为获取更多金钱的资本，则一生劳碌便永无终时。所以，应当改变大前提：时间不仅是金钱，更是生命，而生命的价值是金钱无法衡量的。
人是唯一能追问自身存在之意义的动物。这是人的伟大之处，也是人的悲壮之处。“人是万物的尺度。”人把自己当作尺度去衡量万物，寻求万物的意义。可是，当他寻找自身的意义时，用什么作尺度呢？仍然用人吗?尺度与对象同一，无法衡量。用人之外的事物吗?人又岂肯屈从他物，这本身就贬低了人的存在的意义。意义的寻求使人陷入二律背反。
《沉思录》原为古罗马皇帝奥勒留自我对话的记录，行文质朴，不尚雕琢，然而由于发诸内心，灵性内蕴，故充塞着一股浩然之气，令人高山仰止，有一种深沉的崇高之美。正因为它出诸内心，不加掩饰，所以我们方能窥见作者如何在忙碌的人生路上，以自己的经验为材料，沉思人生大义，领悟宇宙迷题，从中升华自己的智慧和心灵。哲学原来并非如后世的哲学教科书那般呆板枯燥，如一堆殿堂上的木偶，而是一潭活水，流泻在人生的小道之上、山水之间，由涉足其间的沉思者随手掬来，涤荡心胸。所以读《沉思录》，固然可以正襟危坐，条剖理析；也可以于闲暇之时，憩息之余，捡起来随意翻读。
这是一部理想的传统文化教育和思想道德教育普及读物，不仅适用于个人阅读，同时也可以作为企事业单位、社区等团体举办培训课程的教材，尤其适用于作为学校相关课程的辅助材料。寓言是生活与人性的提炼，本书则将寓言故事还原为人生哲学。寓言是一座智慧的矿藏。在各种旧的新的故事中，智慧的人，往往能解读出一些智慧的思考，并体会思考参与的快乐。
生命是一团欲望，欲望不能满足便痛苦，满足便无聊，人生就在痛苦和无聊之间摇摆。本书作者以现代最流行的穿越时空的写作手法走进了大师们的真实生活，与大师漫步人生。书中选取了哲学界具有代表性的人物的思想进行了阐述，如柏拉图的真善美的追求理念、孔子的“克已复礼”、孟子的“人性善”、尼采的“禽兽与超人之间”、萨特的“宿命和责任”等。大师们的思想不仅是他们那个时代的前导，而且在今天仍然深刻地影响着我们的人生选择。
思乃生命的游丝或触须，在风中试探，试试看能抓住什么。思乃对生命的执着和对死亡的抗拒。活着，就意味着思考。进一步，也可以说，思考的人是有尊严的人，人在思考时最能表现出他的特性。《若有所思》里的随感，大部分是从何怀宏教授过去十年的日记和一些笔记中选录出来的，按作者自己的说法，本书是他个人内心生活经历的某种供状。《若有所思》是一本为自己写的书，其中的大部分，在写的时候并没有想到发表。它也是何怀宏教授酝酿最久的书，时间跨度包括了从“十五有志于学”到“三十而立”之年，是其思想“原始的悸动”，也是青春悸动的产物，包含着对道德和社会的思考，爱情和婚姻的追问，读书与写作的乐趣，哲学与真理的追求，生与死的追问，等等。
作为一个年近七旬的写过点文字也见过点世面的正在老去的人，我能给你们一点忠告、一点经验、一点建议吗？
本书是国外毛泽东研究译丛之一。作者试图回答的问题是：“一位旷世伟人究竟靠什么思想予以滋养？”
什么是人文？什么是人文精神？有很多人拥有自己的看法，但是结出的硕果却并不是很多，真正有独立的哲学思考，有生动的东西也并不是很多，但无疑周国平算是一位代表人文精神的学者，这位学者既是一位哲学家，也是一位诗人，他用散文的笔调写他的哲学思考，用哲学思考来贯穿他的文学写作。这本自选集将引领我们用更多的时间去阅读、思考。
《疯颠与文明》一书，时间跨度有六百年。话题是从"疯人"在历史舞台上的出现谈起，即中世纪末随着麻风病的消退，疯人开始取代麻风病患者，成为社会排斥和隔离的新对象。然后是历述这种排斥/隔离机制的各种变形：文艺复兴时期（十四--十六世纪）是用"愚人船"放逐他们（就像舜投凶顽于四裔）；古典时期（十七世纪）是把他们当"社会垃圾"和罪犯，盲流一起关进收容所，叫"大禁闭"；启蒙时期（十八世纪）是他们当"瘟疫"来隔离，叫"大恐惧"；终点是十九世纪，即把疯人与罪犯分开，当病人看待，与"正常人"隔离，实行"治病救人"的"人道主义"。这样才形成现代的精神病院。
Foucault begins his history in the Middle Ages, noting the social and physical exclusion of lepers. He argues that with the gradual disappearance of leprosy, madness came to occupy this excluded position. The ship of fools in the 15th century is a literary version of one such exclusionary practice, the practice of sending mad people away in ships. However, during the Renaissance, madness was regarded as an all-abundant phenomenon because humans could not come close to the Reason of God. As Cervantes' Don Quixote, all humans are weak to desires and dissimulation. Therefore, the insane, understood as those who had come too close to God's Reason, were accepted in the middle of society. It is not before the 17th century, in a movement which Foucault famously describes as the Great Confinement, that "unreasonable" members of the population systematically were locked away and institutionalized. In the 18th century, madness came to be seen as the obverse of Reason, that is, as having lost what made them human and become animal-like and therefore treated as such. It is not before 19th century that madness was regarded as a mental illness that should be cured, e.g. Philippe Pinel, Freud. A few professional historians have argued that the large increase in confinement did not happen in 17th but in the 19th century. Critics argue that this undermines the central argument of Foucault, notably the link between the Age of Enlightenment and the suppression of the insane.
However, Foucault scholars have shown that Foucault was not talking about medical institutions designed specifically for the insane but about the creation of houses of confinement for social outsiders, including not only the insane but also vagrants, unemployed, impoverished, and orphaned, and what effect those general houses of confinement had on the insane and perceptions of Madness in western society. Furthermore, Foucault goes to great lengths to demonstrate that while this "confinement" of social outcasts was a generally European phenomenon, it had a unique development in France and distinct developments in the other countries that the confinement took place in, such as Germany and England, disproving complaints that Foucault takes French events to generalize the history of madness in the West. A few of the historians critical of its historiography, such as Roy Porter, also began to concur with these refutations and discarded their own past criticisms to acknowledge the revolutionary nature of Foucault's book.
Foucault begins his history in the Middle Ages, noting the social and physical exclusion of lepers. He argues that with the gradual disappearance of leprosy, madness came to occupy this excluded position. The ship of fools in the 15th century is a literary version of one such exclusionary practice, the practice of sending mad people away in ships. However, during the Renaissance, madness was regarded as an all-abundant phenomenon because humans could not come close to the Reason of God. As Cervantes' Don Quixote, all humans are weak to desires and dissimulation. Therefore, the insane, understood as those who had come too close to God's Reason, were accepted in the middle of society. It is not before the 17th century, in a movement which Foucault famously describes as the Great Confinement, that "unreasonable" members of the population systematically were locked away and institutionalized. In the 18th century, madness came to be seen as the obverse of Reason, that is, as having lost what made them human and become animal-like and therefore treated as such. It is not before 19th century that madness was regarded as a mental illness that should be cured, e.g. Philippe Pinel, Freud. A few professional historians have argued that the large increase in confinement did not happen in 17th but in the 19th century. Critics argue that this undermines the central argument of Foucault, notably the link between the Age of Enlightenment and the suppression of the insane.
However, Foucault scholars have shown that Foucault was not talking about medical institutions designed specifically for the insane but about the creation of houses of confinement for social outsiders, including not only the insane but also vagrants, unemployed, impoverished, and orphaned, and what effect those general houses of confinement had on the insane and perceptions of Madness in western society. Furthermore, Foucault goes to great lengths to demonstrate that while this "confinement" of social outcasts was a generally European phenomenon, it had a unique development in France and distinct developments in the other countries that the confinement took place in, such as Germany and England, disproving complaints that Foucault takes French events to generalize the history of madness in the West. A few of the historians critical of its historiography, such as Roy Porter, also began to concur with these refutations and discarded their own past criticisms to acknowledge the revolutionary nature of Foucault's book.
这大概是福柯写过的最接近"完美"的著作，冷峻的描写与热烈的"抒情核心"，细致的分析与透辟的理论反省以充满张力的方式冶于一炉。对比最初台湾版的翻译，译者又做了精心的修改，使现在这个译本无论准确性还是流畅性，都堪称佳译。当然翻译的质量是建立在作者对福柯思想的全面研究的基础上的，这一点恰恰是现在许多翻译所缺乏的。不过，将discipline译为"规训"，仍有"造字"之嫌，而现有的"纪律"一词却似乎更贴切。毕竟在尼采和韦伯那里，这个词都译做"纪律"（所以这个概念也并非如译者所言，是福柯的"独创"）。
Foucault challenges the commonly accepted idea that the prison became the consistent form of punishment due to humanitarian concerns of reformists, although he does not deny those. He does so by meticulously tracing out the shifts in culture that led to the prison's dominance, focusing on the body and questions of power. Prison is a form used by the "disciplines", a new technological power, which can also be found, according to Foucault, in schools, hospitals, military barracks, etc. The main ideas of Discipline and Punish can be grouped according to its four parts: torture, punishment, discipline and prison.
Torture
Foucault begins the book by contrasting two forms of penalty: the violent and chaotic public torture of Robert-François Damiens who was convicted of attempted regicide in the late 18th century, and the highly regimented daily schedule for inmates from an early 19th century prison. These examples provide a picture of just how profound the change in western penal systems were after less than a century. Foucault wants the reader to consider what led to these changes. How did western culture shift so radically?
To answer this question, he begins by examining public torture itself. He argues that the public spectacle of torture was a theatrical forum that served several intended and unintended purposes for society. The intended purposes were:
* Reflecting the violence of the original crime onto the convict's body for all to see.
* Enacting the revenge upon the convict's body, which the sovereign seeks for having been injured by the crime. Foucault argues that the law was considered an extension of the sovereign's body, and so the revenge must take the form of harming the convict's body.
Some unintended consequences were:
* Providing a forum for the convict's body to become a focus of sympathy and admiration.
* Creating a site of conflict between the masses and the sovereign at the convict's body. Foucault notes that public executions often led to riots in support of the prisoner.
Thus, he argues, the public execution was ultimately an ineffective use of the body, qualified as non-economical. As well, it was applied non-uniformly and haphazardly. Hence, its political cost was too high. It was the antithesis of the more modern concerns of the state: order and generalization.
Punishment
The switch to prison was not immediate. There was a more graded change, though it ran its course rapidly. Prison was preceded by a different form of public spectacle. The theater of public torture gave way to public chain gangs. Punishment became "gentle", though not for humanitarian reasons, Foucault suggests. He argues that reformists were unhappy with the unpredictable, unevenly distributed nature of the violence the sovereign would inflict on the convict. The sovereign's right to punish was so disproportionate that it was ineffective and uncontrolled. Reformists felt the power to punish and judge should become more evenly distributed, the state's power must be a form of public power. This, according to Foucault, was of more concern to reformists than humanitarian arguments.
Out of this movement towards generalized punishment, a thousand "mini-theatres" of punishment would have been created wherein the convicts' bodies would have been put on display in a more ubiquitous, controlled, and effective spectacle. Prisoners would have been forced to do work that reflected their crime, thus repaying society for their infractions. This would have allowed the public to see the convicts' bodies enacting their punishment, and thus to reflect on the crime. But these experiments lasted less than twenty years.
Foucault argues that this theory of "gentle" punishment represented the first step away from the excessive force of the sovereign, and towards more generalized and controlled means of punishment. But he suggests that the shift towards prison that followed was the result of a new "technology" and ontology for the body being developed in the 18th century, the "technology" of discipline, and the ontology of "man as machine."
Discipline
The emergence of prison as the form of punishment for every crime grew out of the development of discipline in the 18th and 19th centuries, according to Foucault. He looks at the development of highly refined forms of discipline, of discipline concerned with the smallest and most precise aspects of a person's body. Discipline, he suggests, developed a new economy and politics for bodies. Modern institutions required that bodies must be individuated according to their tasks, as well as for training, observation, and control. Therefore, he argues, discipline created a whole new form of individuality for bodies, which enabled them to perform their duty within the new forms of economic, political, and military organizations emerging in the modern age and continuing to today.
The individuality that discipline constructs (for the bodies it controls) has four characteristics, namely it makes individuality which is:
* Cellular—determining the spatial distribution of the bodies
* Organic—ensuring that the activities required of the bodies are "natural" for them
* Genetic—controlling the evolution over time of the activities of the bodies
* Combinatory—allowing for the combination of the force of many bodies into a single massive force
Foucault suggests this individuality can be implemented in systems that are officially egalitarian, but use discipline to construct non-egalitarian power relations:
Historically, the process by which the bourgeoisie became in the course of the eighteenth century the politically dominant class was masked by the establishment of an explicit, coded and formally egalitarian juridical framework, made possible by the organization of a parliamentary, representative regime. But the development and generalization of disciplinary mechanisms constituted the other, dark side of these processes. The general juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in principle was supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical that we call the disciplines. (222)
Foucault's argument is that discipline creates "docile bodies", ideal for the new economics, politics and warfare of the modern industrial age—bodies that function in factories, ordered military regiments, and school classrooms. But, to construct docile bodies the disciplinary institutions must be able to a) constantly observe and record the bodies they control, b) ensure the internalization of the disciplinary individuality within the bodies being controlled. That is, discipline must come about without excessive force through careful observation, and molding of the bodies into the correct form through this observation. This requires a particular form of institution, which Foucault argues, was exemplified by Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, which was never actually built.
The Panopticon was the ultimate realization of a modern disciplinary institution. It allowed for constant observation characterized by an "unequal gaze"; the constant possibility of observation. Perhaps the most important feature of the panopticon was that it was specifically designed so that the prisoner could never be sure whether s/he was being observed. The unequal gaze caused the internalization of disciplinary individuality, and the docile body required of its inmates. This means one is less likely to break rules or laws if they believe they are being watched, even if they are not. Thus, prison, and specifically those that follow the model of the Panopticon, provide the ideal form of modern punishment. Foucault argues that this is why the generalized, "gentle" punishment of public work gangs gave way to the prison. It was the ideal modernization of punishment, so its eventual dominance was natural.
Having laid out the emergence of the prison as the dominant form of punishment, Foucault devotes the rest of the book to examining its precise form and function in our society, to lay bare the reasons for its continued use, and question the assumed results of its use.
Prison
In examining the construction of the prison as the central means of criminal punishment, Foucault builds a case for the idea that prison became part of a larger “carceral system” that has become an all-encompassing sovereign institution in modern society. Prison is one part of a vast network, including schools, military institutions, hospitals, and factories, which build a panoptic society for its members. This system creates “disciplinary careers” (Discipline and Punish, 300) for those locked within its corridors. It is operated under the scientific authority of medicine, psychology, and criminology. Moreover, it operates according to principles that ensure that it “cannot fail to produce delinquents.” (Discipline and Punish, 266). Delinquency, indeed, is produced when social petty crime (such as taking wood in the lord's lands) is no longer tolerated, creating a class of specialized "delinquents" acting as the police's proxy in surveillance of society.
The structures Foucault chooses to use as his starting positions help highlight his conclusions. In particular, his choice as a perfect prison of the penal institution at Mettray helps personify the carceral system. Within it is included the Prison, the School, the Church, and the work-house (industry)—all of which feature heavily in his argument. The prisons at Neufchatel, Mettray, and Mettray Netherlands were perfect examples for Foucault, because they, even in their original state, began to show the traits Foucault was searching for. They showed the body of knowledge being developed about the prisoners, the creation of the 'delinquent' class, and the disciplinary careers emerging.
Foucault challenges the commonly accepted idea that the prison became the consistent form of punishment due to humanitarian concerns of reformists, although he does not deny those. He does so by meticulously tracing out the shifts in culture that led to the prison's dominance, focusing on the body and questions of power. Prison is a form used by the "disciplines", a new technological power, which can also be found, according to Foucault, in schools, hospitals, military barracks, etc. The main ideas of Discipline and Punish can be grouped according to its four parts: torture, punishment, discipline and prison.
Torture
Foucault begins the book by contrasting two forms of penalty: the violent and chaotic public torture of Robert-François Damiens who was convicted of attempted regicide in the late 18th century, and the highly regimented daily schedule for inmates from an early 19th century prison. These examples provide a picture of just how profound the change in western penal systems were after less than a century. Foucault wants the reader to consider what led to these changes. How did western culture shift so radically?
To answer this question, he begins by examining public torture itself. He argues that the public spectacle of torture was a theatrical forum that served several intended and unintended purposes for society. The intended purposes were:
* Reflecting the violence of the original crime onto the convict's body for all to see.
* Enacting the revenge upon the convict's body, which the sovereign seeks for having been injured by the crime. Foucault argues that the law was considered an extension of the sovereign's body, and so the revenge must take the form of harming the convict's body.
Some unintended consequences were:
* Providing a forum for the convict's body to become a focus of sympathy and admiration.
* Creating a site of conflict between the masses and the sovereign at the convict's body. Foucault notes that public executions often led to riots in support of the prisoner.
Thus, he argues, the public execution was ultimately an ineffective use of the body, qualified as non-economical. As well, it was applied non-uniformly and haphazardly. Hence, its political cost was too high. It was the antithesis of the more modern concerns of the state: order and generalization.
Punishment
The switch to prison was not immediate. There was a more graded change, though it ran its course rapidly. Prison was preceded by a different form of public spectacle. The theater of public torture gave way to public chain gangs. Punishment became "gentle", though not for humanitarian reasons, Foucault suggests. He argues that reformists were unhappy with the unpredictable, unevenly distributed nature of the violence the sovereign would inflict on the convict. The sovereign's right to punish was so disproportionate that it was ineffective and uncontrolled. Reformists felt the power to punish and judge should become more evenly distributed, the state's power must be a form of public power. This, according to Foucault, was of more concern to reformists than humanitarian arguments.
Out of this movement towards generalized punishment, a thousand "mini-theatres" of punishment would have been created wherein the convicts' bodies would have been put on display in a more ubiquitous, controlled, and effective spectacle. Prisoners would have been forced to do work that reflected their crime, thus repaying society for their infractions. This would have allowed the public to see the convicts' bodies enacting their punishment, and thus to reflect on the crime. But these experiments lasted less than twenty years.
Foucault argues that this theory of "gentle" punishment represented the first step away from the excessive force of the sovereign, and towards more generalized and controlled means of punishment. But he suggests that the shift towards prison that followed was the result of a new "technology" and ontology for the body being developed in the 18th century, the "technology" of discipline, and the ontology of "man as machine."
Discipline
The emergence of prison as the form of punishment for every crime grew out of the development of discipline in the 18th and 19th centuries, according to Foucault. He looks at the development of highly refined forms of discipline, of discipline concerned with the smallest and most precise aspects of a person's body. Discipline, he suggests, developed a new economy and politics for bodies. Modern institutions required that bodies must be individuated according to their tasks, as well as for training, observation, and control. Therefore, he argues, discipline created a whole new form of individuality for bodies, which enabled them to perform their duty within the new forms of economic, political, and military organizations emerging in the modern age and continuing to today.
The individuality that discipline constructs (for the bodies it controls) has four characteristics, namely it makes individuality which is:
* Cellular—determining the spatial distribution of the bodies
* Organic—ensuring that the activities required of the bodies are "natural" for them
* Genetic—controlling the evolution over time of the activities of the bodies
* Combinatory—allowing for the combination of the force of many bodies into a single massive force
Foucault suggests this individuality can be implemented in systems that are officially egalitarian, but use discipline to construct non-egalitarian power relations:
Historically, the process by which the bourgeoisie became in the course of the eighteenth century the politically dominant class was masked by the establishment of an explicit, coded and formally egalitarian juridical framework, made possible by the organization of a parliamentary, representative regime. But the development and generalization of disciplinary mechanisms constituted the other, dark side of these processes. The general juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in principle was supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical that we call the disciplines. (222)
Foucault's argument is that discipline creates "docile bodies", ideal for the new economics, politics and warfare of the modern industrial age—bodies that function in factories, ordered military regiments, and school classrooms. But, to construct docile bodies the disciplinary institutions must be able to a) constantly observe and record the bodies they control, b) ensure the internalization of the disciplinary individuality within the bodies being controlled. That is, discipline must come about without excessive force through careful observation, and molding of the bodies into the correct form through this observation. This requires a particular form of institution, which Foucault argues, was exemplified by Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, which was never actually built.
The Panopticon was the ultimate realization of a modern disciplinary institution. It allowed for constant observation characterized by an "unequal gaze"; the constant possibility of observation. Perhaps the most important feature of the panopticon was that it was specifically designed so that the prisoner could never be sure whether s/he was being observed. The unequal gaze caused the internalization of disciplinary individuality, and the docile body required of its inmates. This means one is less likely to break rules or laws if they believe they are being watched, even if they are not. Thus, prison, and specifically those that follow the model of the Panopticon, provide the ideal form of modern punishment. Foucault argues that this is why the generalized, "gentle" punishment of public work gangs gave way to the prison. It was the ideal modernization of punishment, so its eventual dominance was natural.
Having laid out the emergence of the prison as the dominant form of punishment, Foucault devotes the rest of the book to examining its precise form and function in our society, to lay bare the reasons for its continued use, and question the assumed results of its use.
Prison
In examining the construction of the prison as the central means of criminal punishment, Foucault builds a case for the idea that prison became part of a larger “carceral system” that has become an all-encompassing sovereign institution in modern society. Prison is one part of a vast network, including schools, military institutions, hospitals, and factories, which build a panoptic society for its members. This system creates “disciplinary careers” (Discipline and Punish, 300) for those locked within its corridors. It is operated under the scientific authority of medicine, psychology, and criminology. Moreover, it operates according to principles that ensure that it “cannot fail to produce delinquents.” (Discipline and Punish, 266). Delinquency, indeed, is produced when social petty crime (such as taking wood in the lord's lands) is no longer tolerated, creating a class of specialized "delinquents" acting as the police's proxy in surveillance of society.
The structures Foucault chooses to use as his starting positions help highlight his conclusions. In particular, his choice as a perfect prison of the penal institution at Mettray helps personify the carceral system. Within it is included the Prison, the School, the Church, and the work-house (industry)—all of which feature heavily in his argument. The prisons at Neufchatel, Mettray, and Mettray Netherlands were perfect examples for Foucault, because they, even in their original state, began to show the traits Foucault was searching for. They showed the body of knowledge being developed about the prisoners, the creation of the 'delinquent' class, and the disciplinary careers emerging.
《查拉图斯特拉如是说》是尼采的里程碑式的作品，几乎包括了尼采的全部思想。全书以汪洋恣肆的诗体写成，熔酒神的狂醉与日神的清醒于一炉，通过“超人”查拉图斯特拉之口宣讲未来世界的启示，在世界哲学史和诗歌史上均占有独特的不朽的地位。
这本以散文诗体写就的杰作，以振聋发聩的奇异灼见和横空出世的警世智慧宣讲“超人哲学”和“权力意志”，横扫了基督教教条造威的精神奴性的方方面面，谱写了一曲自由主义的人性壮歌。在本书中，“上帝死了”， “超人”诞生了，于是近代人类思想的天空有了一道光耀千年的奇异彩虹。令尼采饱受非难的言论“去女人那里吗？别忘了你的鞭子”，便是出自此书。只有深入理解了尼采的精神实质，才能真正理解这样的怪论。
面对一座万仞高山，我们往往说不出多少话来，感到赞辞是多余的。面对弗里德里希·威廉·尼采 (1844—1900)，这位德国近代大诗人、大哲学家，我们也有同样的感觉。
这个尼采，他宣告：“上帝死了!”曾经使整个西方世界震撼。这个尼采，他的“超人哲学”只有极少数人能够真正理解。深受他影响的思想文化巨人有：里尔克、弗洛伊德、加缪、萨持、海德格尔、萧伯纳、梁启超、鲁迅，等等。
尼采一生饱受漂泊和病痛之苦，最后是在精神错乱中了却残生，更为不幸的是，他的学说常常受到误解和歪曲。德国纳粹分子曾把他的学说肆意曲解为法西斯的理论支柱。希特勒曾亲自去拜谒尼采之墓，并把《尼采全集》作为寿礼送给墨索里尼。
《查拉图斯特拉如是说》-作者简介
弗里德里希·威廉·尼采（1844—1900），德国近代诗人、哲学家。他宣告：“帝死了！”彻底动摇了西方思想体系的基石，他高蹈的“超人哲学”与酒神精神产生了巨大影响。他的主要著作有《悲剧的诞生》、《查拉图斯特拉如是说善恶之彼岸》、《论道德的谱系》、《快乐的科学》、《曙光》、《权力意志》等。尼采既有哲学家的深遂洞见，又有诗人的澎湃激情。深受他影响的思想文化巨人，有里尔克、萧伯纳、弗洛伊德、加缪、萨特、海德格尔，粱启超、鲁迅等。
尼采和马克思，牛顿、爱因斯坦、达尔文等同时荣获“千年十大思想家”的盛誉。
《查拉图斯特拉如是说》-《查拉图斯特拉如是说》中的历史观
尼采在他的代表作《查拉图斯特拉如是说》中站在一元论的立场上向世人展示了一种发展的辩证的历史观，下面我想从四个方面来谈谈这个问题。
(一)发展的思维方式
查拉图斯特拉在山上度过了十年节制生活之后，在人类面前发表了第一次演讲，陈述了从植物到超人的过程：植物→虫子→猴子→人类→超人。“你们经历了从虫子到人的道路，在你们身上多少有点像虫子。你们以前是猴子，在现在人也比任何一只猴子更象猴子。”1尼采认为在生物界中始终存在一种更高的发展，目前的阶段绝非最终阶段。人这个阶段也是发展中的过渡阶段，还会超过人这个阶段，向下一个阶段——超人的阶段发展。查拉图斯特拉断言：“到目前为止，所有生物都创造了一些超过自己的东西。”2“创造”这个概念表明，查拉图斯特拉并不将生物进化理解为一种机械的因果过程，而认为这些生物自身就是发展动力，他(它)们自身创造超出自己的事物并因此而超越自己。遗憾的是存在一种错误观点，这种观点根深蒂固地左右着人类的思维：人类自以为自己就是宇宙发展的最高阶段，人类判定自己是进化结束的最终成果。由于没有什么可再发展了，于是乎人类停止不前甚至退回到已经超越的阶段。为此查拉图斯特拉提醒道：“你们想要成为汹涌潮水中的落潮同时宁可返回到动物也不愿超越人类吗?”3要知道人类是生物中唯一不靠本能在进化潮流中进行创造活动的，而且可以按照自己的意志对抗或顺应进化潮流。但是按照查拉图斯特拉的观点，即便是人类为了使自己保持为人也必须在极端的对立面之间来回跑。换句话说为了当落潮必须先当涨潮，只有体验了落潮的失落才能享受涨潮的喜悦。假若人类停滞不前就会退到早已被超过了的阶段——动物预备阶段。“对于人来说，猴子是什么?一种大笑或者是一种痛苦的羞辱。而人类对于超人来说正是如此：一种嘲笑或者是一种痛苦的羞辱。”4当人类回顾自己的历史时，他看到了成为人之前的全部发展阶段。一方面他发现自己在一定程度上已经在猴子中显现同时猴子又颇具人性，这时他会哈哈大笑；另一方面当他想起自己的祖先曾是猴子时，又会面红耳赤。有朝一日超人也会产生这样两方面的感觉。对此赫拉克立特也有同感：“最漂亮的猴子与人相比也是丑陋的。最聪明的人在上帝身边看起来如同一只猴子，这涉及到智慧，美丽和其它的一切。”5
查拉图斯特拉在爱听耸人听闻消息的观众面前做了他的第一次演讲，但是他的听众不理解他的演说，因为这些人甚至还未达到人的阶段“你们之中最聪明的人也只是植物和魔鬼的一种矛盾的混种。但是我教你们成为魔鬼或植物了吗?/你们看哪，我教你们什么是超人：/超人是大地的意义。你们的意志说：超人是大地的意义!”6在尼采笔下的查拉图斯特拉看来，由于人类还算不上一个完整出色的整体，只是两个相互矛盾的部分的组合，这两部分之间密不可分的关系还未被认识到，所以在从猴子到人的过渡期间就出现了物质和精神的分离。
很显然，尼采不想在进化论的狭隘的意义中去展示人类的生物进化史而想从生物遗传学方面来演示植物→虫子→猴子→从→超人的整个发展史。在此清楚地显示了尼采的历史观（１）是发展的而不是停止的，（２）既不是简单的机械的因果过程也不同于达尔文的进化论。尼采始终认为达尔文的观点是片面的，达尔文在生存斗争中忽略了精神，没有黑格尔就没有达尔文，因此尼采强烈反对把他当作达尔主义者，“受过训练的有角动物使我对达尔文主义产生了怀疑”。7
下面让我们再看看尼采笔下的精神的三个发展阶段。查拉图斯特拉对众人说：“我告诉你们精神的三种变形：精神是如何变成骆驼，骆驼是如何变成狮子，最后狮子如何变成小孩。”8这精神的历史经历了“物质化”的三个阶段。第一个阶段即骆驼的阶段，刻画了西方传统观念中自我悟性的特征。在第二阶段即狮子的阶段，查拉图斯特拉扮演了传统价值的批判者的角色。在第三阶段即小孩阶段指明超人还没有诞生。乍一看起来似乎精神的三种变形与黑格尔的三段论：正题、反题、综合很相似。但这仅仅是在一定条件下。在第一阶段，精神以骆驼的外形出现，扮演了屈服顺从的角色，一个外在的、来世的、永远固定的超精神强加于它。在第二阶段，它认识到了骆驼是一种自鄙的形式，因而彻底否认了骆驼的行为，它自己宣告了自己的死亡，并为自己的新生做好了准备，这是一次凤凰涅盘，于是精神发展到了第三阶段：小孩阶段。“小孩是天真与遗忘的”9表明精神通过产生自己的第二个起点而忘记了以前的失败和过失。精神在超越了狮子阶段以后就把自己的往事忘得一干二净，因为在当年它不是自觉自愿，而是被外来力量强制的物化的魔鬼精神，只有在小孩阶段才恢复了自我，才有了创造性“一个自转的轮”。“是的，为了创造的游戏，我的弟兄们，一个神圣的肯定是必要的：精神现在要有它的意志力，失去世界者赢得了他的世界。”10总之，在精神发展的第三阶段，只有在这个阶段，世界做为精神活动的真正产物才诞生了。顺便说一句，尼采在此对精神系列的三种变化的描绘与基督教教义中上帝从虚无中创造了世界的情形很相似。看来坚决反对基督教神学的尼采也无法摆脱时代与环境对他的潜移默化的影响。
从以上我们可以看出，尼采认为精神和物质在极端对立中相互依存，并因此形成了一个又一个超越自己又回归自己的向高级发展的运动。
(二)辩证的一元论观点
尼采用查拉图斯特拉的名义从植物和魔鬼的情形入手来研究肉体和灵魂这个古老的问题。按照查拉图斯特拉的观点，尽管传统哲学将人类视为肉体——灵魂、物质 ——精神所组成的整体，但在事实上已经将精神物化了，精神变成了可以脱离物质单独存在的实体。因此就有了查拉图斯特拉的反问：“我教人们成为魔鬼和植物吗?”11唯心主义和唯物主义同样都是人类自我悟性的片面形式，在这其中或者是人的肉体的那一面或者是人的精神的那一面被否定了。在查拉图斯特拉一开始演讲时我们就听到了人类应该是被超越的。现在当人类被分裂成肉体与灵魂两部分时我们再次听到他的声音：“你们看哪，我教人们什么是超人!”12当我们思考超越人——这个前进中的质的飞跃时，让我们再回忆一下人类已经超越的那些阶段，以便更好地理解从猴子到人的过程中如何出现了灵魂和肉体的分离。首先要回忆的是从植物→虫子→猴子→人的发展过程中被描绘为在两个平面上发生的过程。其一是空间的平面：活动半径由植物到人递增，因而活动余地和生活空间变大了变广了。为了适应扩展了的生活空间带来的多样性，就必须在思想这第二个非空间的平面上加工出新的东西来。生活空间愈是色彩斑斓，思想活动就愈是抽象枯燥。这思想活动不得不把各种秩序、条理带入生存所必须的繁杂的多样性中，并以这种方式形成了与生活空间相关联的意识。这样一来在猴子阶段就逐渐现出了猴子和世界的二元不同性的绉形，尽管还没有达到人类所特有的反省、抽象那样高级的程度。人类不仅在与世界的联系中而且在自身中也发现了我与非我的二元性。这样一来人类将自身也作为客体对立起来，并用这种方式与自己拉开了距离，于是乎意识的我与肉体的我撕裂了，势不两立地对立了。人类出现的这个错误已被尼采在《真实的世界究竟是如何成为寓言的》这篇文章中讨论过。人类的这个错误在于：意识到了自身却忘记了出身，忘记了从植物一直到人类的整个发展史，所以才使精神和物质相脱离。假如人类从生物发展史的起源阶段就正确理解自身意识，那么人类就会自然而然地在自身中找到自己超越过的每一个阶段，发展成人类的这个生物进程就会被描绘成肉体和精神辩证关系的自然延续。而西方人在很长时间里却不是这样。他们使灵魂和肉体相互脱节，他们为精神杜撰了一个完全不同的、更高级的起源并因此发明了一个非感官所能感觉到的、超自然的世界。物质和精神的彻底分裂在肉体和灵魂这个问题上清清楚楚地表现出来了。当人类由如此相相互对立的、老死不相往来的两部分组成时又该如何想象作为一种自身统一的生物的人呢?灵魂和肉体之间的脱节问题在这个疑问中得到了最高体现。这些僵化的规则希望将关于两个世界的二元论以及物质和精神的鸿沟最终地永久地固定下来，而尼采笔下的查拉图斯特拉却用具有大地意义的超人的理念来与之相对抗。尽管这是用一种唯心主义来对抗另一种唯心主义，但查拉图斯特拉的对抗显然技高一筹，这对抗产生了新事物，因为它使两个对立面之间有了即使是瞬间统一的可能性，正如在彩虹中可以看出它是光与水等等元素共同作用的结果一样，从物质与精神、肉体与灵魂的相对抗中就产生了超人。总而言之，尼采笔下的查拉图斯特拉把传统的灵魂和肉体对立分裂的二元论思想理解为人类一种自我误解的结果，这正是尼采的高明过人之处。一旦人类消除了这种误解，那么灵魂和肉体相互撕裂的问题就解决了，这就意味着人类阶段被超越了，那么随之而来的就是超人阶段。无论如何对于人类来说有一点是可以肯定的，即大地的意义和生活的意义不存在于一个静止的、物化了的精神产物中，不存在于魔鬼、上帝、理念式的理性中，而只存在于对立面的对立统一的辩证关系之中。
从以上分析人们不难看出，尼采用一元论克服了二元论，尽管尼采的出发点仍是唯心主义，但是他用发展的辩证的唯心主义来取代僵化的静止的唯物主义，这无疑是一种进步。
在《查拉图斯特拉如是说》中，尼采还拟人化地讽刺揭露了当时灵魂和肉体之间的错误关系：“从前灵魂蔑视肉体，这种蔑视在当时被认为是最高尚的事：——灵魂要肉体枯瘦、丑陋并且饿死。它以为这样便可以逃避肉体，同时也逃避了大地。/啊，这灵魂自己还是枯瘦、丑陋、饿死的，残忍就是它的淫乐!”13对于查拉图斯特拉来说，肉体在传统的形而上学和基督教那儿所受到的贬低是一种谬论。这种谬论认为，人应该抛弃一切感官的感受，抛弃人类的以往的动物的历程而只通过关注精神就能向更高阶段发展。这种谬论只承认精神的积极因素和肉体的消极因素。查拉图斯特拉的看法正相反，如果灵魂能够作为肉体的灵魂而存在，那么它试图从肉体中独立出来的每一次尝试都是胡闹；如果灵魂贬低肉体，那无异于贬低灵魂自己，灵魂和肉体永远相辅相成不可分离。查拉图斯特拉还认为，灵魂对肉体的评价恰恰等于肉体对灵魂的判断：“你们的肉体是怎样说明你们的灵魂呢?你们的灵魂难道不是贫乏、污秽与可怜的自满吗?”14灵魂为自己创造了一个虚幻的世界，它臆想着战胜肉体的辉煌胜利，但这只是可怜又可笑的精神胜利法。只有与肉体同时存在，灵魂才能越来越丰富；只有当精神和物质相互终结并产生于对方之中时才会出现“贫乏、污秽与可怜的自满”的反面。查拉图斯特拉的结束语是：“不是你们的罪恶，而是你们的节制向天呼喊!/那道用舌头舔你们的闪电何在?那个应当向你们注射的疯狂何在?/现在我教你们什么是超人：他就是这闪电，他就是这疯狂!”15查拉图斯特拉在这儿抨击的正是被基督教深恶痛绝的“罪恶意识”：如果人们满足了肉体的欲望就意味着背叛精神，就意味着有罪。查拉图斯特拉公然与基督教教义背道而驰，他认为原罪不存在于违背精神的罪恶中而存在于违背肉体的罪恶中，当人类真的因为有罪过要受到惩罚时，肉体首当其冲在劫难逃。为了彻底摧毁基督教教义，需要电闪雷鸣，以便让二元论人物及其观点彻底暴露，以便让千百年来僵化凝固的教条都活动运转起来。
与此同时，尼采以圣者来反衬突出查拉图斯特拉的发展、运动的一元论观点。圣者追求尽善尽美。他将自己对人类的爱当作这个世界上最完美的事情，可惜，这个爱永远不可能从理想变为现实。因为人类存在的有限性从原则上禁止他们去达到那位圣者所要求的完美。持有这种看法的圣者让自己孤立于人类之外而转向唯一能满足这个要求的生物：上帝。谁要是象这位圣者一样在对上帝的爱中找到了自己的满足，那他就实在无法理解为什么查拉图斯特拉背离完美的事物而去寻找不完美的事物。
圣者的这种观点是由他的以宗教为基础的生活方式决定的。圣者崇尚完美，并因此而完全脱离并不完美的人类世界。他独居在森林中每天赞美上帝。圣者所理解的完美是自身封闭的、不变的、无法超越的，因此可以说圣者为自己选择的生活方式是静止不变的，这一点，从尼采的笔下可以清楚地看出。查拉图斯特拉跳舞，圣者唱歌、谱曲、作词。他的歌声表达了他对尽善尽美的执着的追求。通过歌唱他不断地接近完美并与之越来越相似。前面已经谈到当查拉图斯特拉跳舞时，圣者唱歌。他伴着歌声在原地动，可以说他始终停留在圆周的中心点上，所有的半径从此开始，所有的直径通过此处，圣者围绕自身绝对旋转。他的生活方式凝固成油画般的静态的完美，在其内部所有的运动都消失贻尽。
上帝之死的想法对于圣者来说是不堪设想的。因为死亡意味着一种由活转变为死的变化过程。圣者之所以爱上帝是因为上帝是至高无尚的完美无瑕的化身的体现，是一成不变的无比至尊的代表的体现，也就是说排除了任何运动变化的可能性，上帝绝不可能变成别的什么，也绝不可能死去，上帝必须永远是上帝，永远是尽善尽美、完美无瑕的化身。对于圣者来说这个永远的存在象征性地固定在他停留的那个中心点，使他也成为完美与永恒。对于查拉图斯特拉来说，在现实世界中不存在永恒不变的事物，在现实世界中万事万物都在诞生、变化和终结，而绝不可能超时空而存在。如果在我们这个唯一的真实世界里谈论上帝，那么上帝就必须被认为和其它的万事万物一样是发展变化的，而不是凝固不变的，那么上帝也会和其它的万事万物一样存在着产生和终结，对于已经终结的上帝，人们可以如此这般地说，上帝死了!圣者是个典型的二元论者，象其他的二元论者一样在他那里真实的世界与想象的世界被相互颠倒，真实的世界被歪曲成了表象的世界，而想象的世界却被称之为真实的世界，所以尼采才针锋相对地写了那篇教育戏剧《真实的世界究竟是如何变成寓言的》。我们可以举个通俗的例子，在想象中人们总是把现实世界描绘为一汪静止不动的清泉，这汪清泉总是被描绘成无比纯、无比净、无比透明。但事实上真实的世界是一个肮脏的池沼。柏拉图认为真实的世界代表了昏暗的洞穴，而这昏暗的洞穴又被看作人类肉体的象征。而对于苏格拉底来说最艰难的就是从上面的大地回到下面的洞穴中，即从明亮的精神那里返回污秽的肉体中。这一上一下、一个天堂一个地狱活生生地将一个完整的生物的人撕裂成两部分。总而言之尼采通过塑造这个追求尽善尽美的二元论者——圣者，反衬了查拉图斯特拉辩证、发展的一元论观点。
(三)超人模式
查拉图斯特拉说：“人类是一根系在动物和超人之间的绳索，一根悬在深谷上的绳索。/往彼端去是危险的，停在半途是危险的，向后望也是危险的，战栗或者不前进，都是危险的。”16查拉图斯特拉的意思是说，人类刚好处在猴子阶段和超人阶段的过渡中。如果他回首自己的历史，那他就面临遵循早已无效的规则的危险；如果他踌躇不前，他就会发现自己的脚下是万丈深渊，这样他就会因惧怕跌落而战甚至坠落。与回首、前瞻和停止相联系的这三种危险给人的印象是，查拉图斯特拉将人类与一个走绳者相比较，后者随着他在绳上迈出的每一步都会陷入一种死亡的危险之中，而人类却是绳索和走绳者的合二而一。这就是说并不存在一条现成的路 (绳索)和某个在这条路上行走的人(走绳者)，而是如果没有走路的人，也就不存在这条路。路是由于有了那个在路上行走的人才产生的。此人知道自己曾经是谁，也知道他将会是谁，但是不肯定自己能否够成为他将是的人。超越自己要冒很大的风险，因为人们为此必须将习惯的、久经考验的、安全的事物抛开，以便朝着一个未知的目标前进。绝没有现成的道路通往这个目标，人们要在奔向目标的过程中自己创造出路来。路途中的每次怀疑和犹豫都会产生灾难性的后果，因为只要人们一停止前进，脚下的路和远处的目标就消失了；行者脚下若踩空同样也就跌入了未知和虚无的深渊。人类只有永无止境地向前走，才会脚踏实地，即脚踩绳索。换句话说，人类通过行走自己创造出支撑自己走路的支架，最终目的也不再会同路脱离开，因为目的不是别的，正是走路本身。随着每一步的迈出，就意味着不断的离开和到达。这条直直的绳索，从固定的一端伸展到另一端，可以理解成绕圆周行走的辩证法。这行走代表了生命，代表了超越自己的强烈追求。在走这条路时，人类产生出了作为绳索的超人。人类走在这根绳索上，与此同时，人类就是这根绳索。
查拉图斯特拉继续说：“人类的伟大之处，在于他是一座桥梁而不是一个目的。人类的可爱之处，在于他是一个过程和一个终结。”17桥梁以及前面提到的绳索都可以理解为走过去，朝着人类还不曾是的情形前进。而人类本身也正因为是一座承前启后的桥梁而不是一个目标才变得伟大。如果人类是目的，那他就不能自己设定目的，他就无法将自己设计为他将要成为的情形，而会受到他的内在的目的性的限制，那么人类所做的一切努力最终不外乎仅仅是去实现他无需去做就已经存在的目的了。被视为目的的人类显然不能通过自我超越而向更高层次发展，因为他就是他自己的最高层次。但是，假如人类将自己视为一个通向最高层次的阶段，通过一次次的自我超越，建立起连接现在的他和将来的他的桥梁，那么人类的这个事业就比人类将自己本身当作目标的事业要伟大得多。只有当人类走出现在的自我以后才决定自己要成为谁和要干什么时，那么在最初的意义中人类就是自由的。这时，只有在这时，人类的目标才不再是人类，而是超越了人类的超人。因此查拉图斯特拉才说，人类的伟大和可爱之处在于，他是一个过程和终结。过程表示超越作为人的自我运动；终结表示通过这个运动人类阶段消失了，超人阶段来临了，如同涓涓细流汇入奔腾咆哮的无边大海。
对于人类之后的超人阶段，查拉图斯特拉用散文诗的形式抒发了自己对其的热爱“我爱那些只知道为终结而生活的人。因为他们是跨过桥者。”18谁作为人类而终结，谁就跨过了桥，就迈向了超人。“我爱那些伟大的轻蔑者，因为他们是伟大的崇拜者，是射向彼岸的渴望之箭。”19渴望之箭意味着渴望超越自己的努力，这种努力鄙视人间的一切目的，唯独想要到达彼岸世界。“我爱那些人，他们不先到星星后面寻找某种理由去终结、去牺牲，他们为大地牺牲，使大地有朝一日能属于超人。”20任何一个能正常思维的人都不会为一个虚无飘渺的来世作出牺牲。地球，我们生活的大地，有足够的理由让人类为它做出超越自我的牺牲。
人类向超人超越的过程是一个极其艰难曲折危机四伏的过程，随时可能付出生活的代价。走绳者无疑代表人类，他想建立一座由动物通向超人的桥梁。走绳者是查拉图斯特拉所喜爱的人们中的一个。这些人蔑视末人的理想社会，敢于进行危险的超越，勇敢地向着超人的理想前进。超人的事业是前所未有的事业，必将受到旧势力的疯狂攻击，走绳者的坠落就标志着基督教教义的胜利，这教义抨击所有违背基督教教义的事为原罪并对触犯原罪的人处以死刑。走绳者在其过去(顺从的羔羊)和未来(独立的个体)之间被拉来扯去，最终过去获胜了，未来被放弃了，魔鬼战胜了超人。但是这一结局并不是最终结局，每个作为走绳者的个体都必须在从动物到超人的过渡中经受多次这样的死亡(“原罪”)，直到有一天他成功地在自身内超越人类这个阶段。我们在前面已经谈到绳索和走绳者是不可分的，绳索这条路的存在正是由于人们在它上面行走，随着迈出的每一步超越自己的行为都重新进行，这种行为的总和就是超人。换句话说超人是走绳者、绳索和目标交织在一起向前进的一个整体。遗憾的是走绳者没有能够将这个统一体坚持到底，他在行进中失去了冷静和平衡，摔了下去。在某种程度上人们可以说走绳者掉进了肉体和灵魂的二元论中，坠进了他想超越的物质和灵魂之间的鸿沟中。这坠落使由走绳者、绳索、目标三方面组成的统一体破裂了，解体了。如果一个人让宗教或形而上学的偏见主宰着自己，那他就会被它(们)所超越，走绳者的悲惨结局就是一个最好的例子。查拉图斯特拉试图让走绳者在临死前明白，他(走绳者)本来已经超越了基督教关于魔鬼和地狱的教义，只是他还未来得及做出不存在灵魂不死的结论。要知道肉体和灵魂始终相依相存；肉体是经济基础，灵魂是上层建筑，肉体终结了，灵魂也就不存在了。走绳者虽然没有走到绳索的那一端，但他用自己宝贵的生命向世人展示他是一位勇敢者、创新者，是一位向着超人理想奋勇直前者。从这个意义上说，他是一位大无畏的先驱。
查拉图斯特拉在其演讲的结尾谈到了自己所扮演的角色——超人的宣告者。“我爱所有那些人，他们象沉重的雨点，一滴一滴地从人们头顶上的乌云中落下；它们预告着闪电的到来，并作为预告者而终结。/看吧，我是一道闪电的预告者，一滴自云中落下的重雨点：但是这道闪电便是超人。——”21查拉图斯特拉不是超人，也不是超人的代表，而是超人的宣告者。他要将人们的注意力吸引到预示着超人的闪电事件中。这闪电将旧世界突然间照亮，撕掉了它的全部伪装，展露出狰狞的本来面目，并宣告了它的末日。这闪电表明了旧的思维方式和旧的历史观的终结，这闪电预示了新的质的飞跃的来临。随着这闪电的到来，作为宣告者的查拉图斯特拉就终结了。因为闪电、雷鸣、暴风雨过后，人类就成功地过渡到了超人，作为超人的宣告者就成为多余的人了。人类自身超越了传统的人物形象，并把这个新形象放到恰当的位置上。一旦超人的理念直接进入到人类的意识中，查拉图斯特拉的使命就完成了，那时他将同其他人一样，把所有的力量集中在更新自己，全力以赴地创造一座由动物向超人过渡的桥梁。
非常遗憾，查拉图斯特拉的演讲超出了人类理解水平的地平线。所以，当查拉图斯特拉结束演讲时，听众大声轰笑、怪叫、咂舌头。人们嘲笑他，就象当年苏格拉底向洞穴人解释他的理念时受到的嘲笑一样。即便在那儿，洞穴人也向苏格拉底嚎叫：让我们看看你的理念吧!接着他们指向每一堵有阴影的墙，在这些洞穴人看来，这些阴影就是真理的化身。苏格拉底无法向他们展示什么是理念，并不仅仅因为他从阳光普照的世界回到昏暗的洞穴中感到头晕目眩，还因为而且首先是因为理念表达的方式和墙上阴影表达的方式截然不同，理念是无论如何无法以阴影的形式出现的。查拉图斯特拉和苏格拉底的遭遇如此相似，听众想看见他宣扬的超人，但人们没有搞明白，超人是无法看见的，只能做出来。遗憾的是，按照人类的传统悟性，人类只能理解物化了的、客观上触摸得到的形体，而恰恰在这种意义上既不存在超人，也不存在理念。超人就不是人，更不是那种超级人。超人不是个体，而是个体一项活动的总称。这项活动的特点是既超越出去又在更高的程度上回归自己。所以，只有当我们去做这件事时，只有当我们去超越人类自身时才会有超人。由于世人的不理解，查拉图斯特拉下山后的第一次演讲失败了。人们用旧的思维方式来理解查拉图斯特拉的超人学说，似乎他要宣布一个新的救世主的降临。按照传统观念这个新的救世主是特定的个体的人，他以说教者的身份来此地教训人类，人们想看的就是这种人。回顾人类的思想史，人类对于超出了自己理解力的改革者通常都采取从肉体上消灭的解决办法。到目前为止查拉图斯特拉是第一个幸免于难的人，这也许得益于人类的误解。在世人看来，查拉图斯特拉是个难得的白痴，一个令人捧腹大笑的丑角，但恰恰是这个丑角向旧世界的尊贵无比的人物形象和至高无上的理性观念宣战。
(四)对立统一体的圆周运动
尼采在《查拉图斯特拉如是说》中塑造了查拉图斯特拉的两个动物形象：鹰与蛇。这两只动物象征着一个对立同一体。在这个统一体中对立面既相互对立又相依相存。鹰这个高傲的动物盘旋在高空，它代表了理智与精神。蛇这个聪明狡猾的动物生活在地面，它代表了肉体与物质。尽管这两种动物向前运动的方式不同，但是其共同点是都做圆周运动：鹰在空中画圈，蛇在地上圈曲前进。蛇缠绕在飞翔的雄鹰的颈上的情影直观地表现了对立面的统一。鹰与蛇，精神与物质是如此的不同，只有圆周运动才将二者联系在一起。对于尼采来说超越自我的行为就是向高层次发展的原则，它既超越自己，又在超越后回归自我，只不过是在更高的层次上。鹰与蛇尽管相互对立，截然不同，可它们二者之间没有敌意，它们在友好的合作中完成圆周运动。同样的，精神和物质不是相互抵毁，而是相互依存、相互补充，精神通过物质来实现，物质通过精神来提高。蛇在与鹰的共同飞翔中离开了它在地上的居留地升跃到了它依靠自己的力量无法达到的层次，同样的物质作为精神的实现者进入了它通过自己的努力无法涉足的领域。精神中有物质，物质中有精神，不论物质还是精神都存在向更高层次发展的要求。这种要求作为权力意志的原则在共同的又存在差异的圆周运动中表现出来。
人类好比鹰与蛇的统一体。因此查拉图斯特拉乞求高傲(鹰)永远伴随他的智慧(蛇)，因为只有这样才能保证人类永远以圆周运动的方式前进。在这圆周运动中人类存在的对立面辩证地统一在一起，相互斗争，相互依存，就象查拉图斯特拉的鹰与蛇一样。它们各是不同种的生物，但是缠绕在一起共同做圆周运动。在现实世界中精神(灵魂)既要紧跟物质(内体)，以便不与物质脱节并随时汲取生活的活力，同时精神还要反作用于物质，发挥其独特的能动作用。
最后，让我们分析一下查拉图斯特拉的终结。从表面意义上看，这首先是指查拉图斯特拉本人。他在十年前走了自下而上之路——复活，现在走的是自上而下之路 ——终结。从一个非表面的意义上看，查拉图斯特拉在进行这两种相反的运动中执行的是权力意志的原则，这一点在形成过程中表现得非常直观。传统的二元论观点把对立面不是看作既矛盾又统一的，而是看成极端相反、水火不相容的。恰好在这一点上尼采与传统的二元论者分道扬镳。西方哲学界的普遍错误在于他们把对立面作为誓不两立的二元论固定、延袭下来了，其实质问题为如何看待对立面之间的关系。在真实世界(即西方传统观念中所说的表象的世界)中立面之间的关系是对立统一的辩证关系，二者既极端对立又相互依存，并在一定条件下相互转化，尼采一针见血地指出了这一点。在《查拉图斯特拉如是说》中，尼采表达了清晰明确的一元论思想。二元论的思想渊源流长，无论是在人类早期哲学的璀璨明珠希腊哲学中还是在人类宗教史上历史最长分布最广影响最大的基督教教义中同样存在着两个世界的学说——真实的世界和表象的世界。这两个世界之间的关系被绝对化了。形象地说，好比人们设定了圆周的直径，却忘记了圆周本身。这样一来势必给人造成一种错误印象：这是一对无法调节、无法统一的对立面，人们只能或者选择这一面或者那一面；或者向上到精神，踏上通往所谓的真实的、美妙的世界之路，或者是向下到物质，坠入所谓的表象的邪恶的世界之中，二者之间是一道无法逾越的鸿沟。尼采力图超越二者之间的鸿沟，他用形象的比喻和散文诗的语言生动地表述了二者之间的对立统一关系以及圆周式的前进方式。超人的思想是尼采超现实的想象，超人的理论无疑应归入唯心主义的体系。但是这里面所包含的一元论的思想和辩证发展的历史观是无论如何应该肯定的。另外尼采的唯心主义体系里所包含的异常生动的辩证法思想，此起当时在欧洲大陆广为流行的庸俗唯物主义机械唯物主义和拜物教不知要高明多少倍。马克思主义以前的唯物论，由于其机械的、形而上学的性质，没有在强调思维依赖于存在，精神依赖于物质的前提下，充分估价意识、精神、主观的巨大能动作用，人类这方面的正确认识首先是在唯心主义哲学范畴中被体现出来了。尼采在《查拉图斯特如是说》中所提出的超人理论和永恒轮回的思想就是出类拔萃的例证。
《查拉图斯特拉如是说》-目录
代总序尼采，一位应该被超越的伟人
译者前言尼采最具轰动效应的扛鼎之作
第一卷
查拉图斯特拉前言
查拉图斯特拉的演说
论三种变形
论道德讲坛
论信仰彼岸世界的人
论蔑视肉体者
论快乐和激情
论苍白的罪犯
论阅读和写作
论山旁之树
论死之说教者
论战争和战士
论新偶像
论市场的苍蝇
论贞洁
论朋友
论一千零一个目标
论爱邻人
论创造者的道路
论老妪和少妇
论毒蛇的咬啮
论孩子和婚姻
论自由之死
论馈赠的道德
第二卷
持镜的小孩
在幸福岛上
论同情者
论牧师
论道德家
论流氓无赖
论毒蜘蛛
论著名的智者
夜歌
舞蹈之歌
坟墓之歌
论超越自我
论高尚者
论教化的国度
论纯洁的知识
论学者
论诗人
论伟大事件
预言家
论解救
论人的智慧
最寂静的时刻
第三卷
漫游者
论相貌和谜
论违背意志的幸福
日出之前
论逐渐变小的道德
橄榄山上
离弃
背叛者
归家
论三件恶事
论沉重的思想
论新旧招牌
痊愈者
论伟大的渴望
另一支舞曲
七个印章
第四卷
蜂蜜祭品
痛苦的呼号
与两位国王的谈话
水蛭
魔术家
逊位
最丑陋的人
自愿行乞者
影子
正午
欢迎
晚餐
更高级的人
忧郁之歌
论科学
在沙漠的女儿们中间
觉醒
驴节
沉醉之歌
征兆
Described by Nietzsche himself as "the deepest ever written," the book is a dense and esoteric treatise on philosophy and morality, featuring as protagonist a fictionalized prophet descending from his recluse to mankind, Zarathustra. A central irony of the text is that Nietzsche mimics the style of the Bible in order to present ideas which fundamentally oppose Christian and Jewish morality and tradition.
Genesis
Thus Spoke Zarathustra was conceived while Nietzsche was writing The Gay Science; he made a small note, reading "6,000 feet beyond man and time," as evidence of this. More specifically, this note related to the concept of the Eternal Recurrence, which is, by Nietzsche's admission, the central idea of Zarathustra; this idea occurred to him by a "pyramidal block of stone" on the shores of Lake Silvaplana in the Upper Engadine, a high alpine region whose valley floor is at 6,000 ft. Nietzsche planned to write the book in three parts over several years. He wrote that the ideas for Zarathustra first came to him while walking on two roads surrounding Rapallo, according to Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche in the introduction of Thomas Common's early translation of the book.
While developing the general outlook of the book, he subsequently decided to write an additional three parts; ultimately, however, he composed only the fourth part, which is viewed to constitute an intermezzo.
Nietzsche commented in Ecce Homo that for the completion of each part: "Ten days sufficed; in no case, neither for the first nor for the third and last, did I require more" (trans. Kaufmann). The first three parts were first published separately, and were subsequently published in a single volume in 1887. The fourth part remained private after Nietzsche wrote it in 1885; a scant forty copies were all that were printed, apart from seven others that were distributed to Nietzsche's close friends. In March 1892, the four parts were finally reprinted as a single volume. Since then, the version most commonly produced has included all four parts.
The original text contains a great deal of word-play. An example of this exists in the use of the words "over" or "super" and the words "down" or "abyss/abysmal"; some examples include "superman" or "overman", "overgoing", "downgoing" and "self-overcoming".
Synopsis
The book chronicles the fictitious travels and pedagogy of Zarathustra. The name of this character is taken from the ancient prophet usually known in English as Zoroaster (Avestan: Zaraθuštra), the Persian founder of Zoroastrianism. Nietzsche is clearly portraying a "new" or "different" Zarathustra, one who turns traditional morality on its head. He goes on to characterize "what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth, the mouth of the first immoralist:"
[F]or what constitutes the tremendous historical uniqueness of that Persian is just the opposite of this. Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things: the transposition of morality into the metaphysical realm, as a force, cause, and end in itself, is his work. […] Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it. […] His doctrine, and his alone, posits truthfulness as the highest virtue; this means the opposite of the cowardice of the "idealist” who flees from reality […]—Am I understood?—The self-overcoming of morality, out of truthfulness; the self-overcoming of the moralist, into his opposite—into me—that is what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth.
– Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, "Why I Am a Destiny", §3, trans. Walter Kaufmann
Zarathustra has a simple characterisation and plot, narrated sporadically throughout the text. It possesses a unique experimental style, one that is, for instance, evident in newly invented "dithyrambs" narrated or sung by Zarathustra. Likewise, the separate Dithyrambs of Dionysus was written in autumn 1888, and printed with the full volume in 1892, as the corollaries of Zarathustra's "abundance".
Some speculate that Nietzsche intended to write about final acts of creation and destruction brought about by Zarathustra. However, the book lacks a finale to match that description; its actual ending focuses more on Zarathustra recognizing that his legacy is beginning to perpetuate, and consequently choosing to leave the higher men to their own devices in carrying his legacy forth.
Zarathustra also contains the famous dictum "God is dead", which had appeared earlier in The Gay Science. In his autobiographical work Ecce Homo, Nietzsche states that the book's underlying concept is discussed within "the penultimate section of the fourth book" of The Gay Science (Ecce Homo, Kaufmann). It is the Eternal recurrence of the same events.
This concept first occurred to Nietzsche while he was walking in Switzerland through the woods along the lake of Silvaplana (close to Surlei); he was inspired by the sight of a gigantic, towering, pyramidal rock. Before Zarathustra, Nietzsche had mentioned the concept in the fourth book of The Gay Science (e.g., sect. 341); this was the first public proclamation of the notion by him. Apart from its salient presence in Zarathustra, it is also echoed throughout Nietzsche's work. At any rate, it is by Zarathustra's transfiguration that he embraces eternity, that he at last ascertains "the supreme will to power". This inspiration finds its expression with Zarathustra's Roundelay, featured twice in the book, once near the story's close:
“ O man, take care!
What does the deep midnight declare?
"I was asleep—
From a deep dream I woke and swear:—
The world is deep,
Deeper than day had been aware.
Deep is its woe—
Joy—deeper yet than agony:
Woe implores: Go!
But all joy wants eternity—
Wants deep, wants deep eternity." ”
Another singular feature of Zarathustra, first presented in the prologue, is the designation of human beings as a transition between apes and the "Übermensch" (in English, either the "overman" or "superman"; or, superhuman or overhuman. English translators Thomas Common and R. J. Hollingdale use superman, while Kaufmann uses overman, and Parkes uses overhuman). The Übermensch is one of the many interconnecting, interdependent themes of the story, and is represented through several different metaphors. Examples include: the lightning that is portended by the silence and raindrops of a travelling storm cloud; or the sun's rise and culmination at its midday zenith; or a man traversing a rope stationed above an abyss, moving away from his uncultivated animality and towards the Übermensch.
The symbol of the Übermensch also alludes to Nietzsche's notions of "self-mastery", "self-cultivation", "self-direction", and "self-overcoming". Expostulating these concepts, Zarathustra declares:
"I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?
"All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape.
"Whoever is the wisest among you is also a mere conflict and cross between plant and ghost. But do I bid you become ghosts or plants?
"Behold, I teach you the overman! The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go!"
– Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, §3, trans. Walter Kaufmann
The book embodies a number of innovative poetical and rhetorical methods of expression. It serves as a parallel and supplement to the various philosophical ideas present in Nietzsche's body of work. He has, however, said that "among my writings my Zarathustra stands to my mind by itself" (Ecce Homo, Preface, sec. 4, Kaufmann). Emphasizing its centrality and its status as his magnum opus, it is stated by Nietzsche that:
With [Thus Spoke Zarathustra] I have given mankind the greatest present that has ever been made to it so far. This book, with a voice bridging centuries, is not only the highest book there is, the book that is truly characterized by the air of the heights—the whole fact of man lies beneath it at a tremendous distance—it is also the deepest, born out of the innermost wealth of truth, an inexhaustible well to which no pail descends without coming up again filled with gold and goodness.
– Ecce Homo, Preface, §4, trans. Walter Kaufmann
Since, as stated, many of the book's ideas are also present in his other works, Zarathustra is seen to have served as a precursor to his later philosophical thought. With the book, Nietzsche embraced a distinct aesthetic assiduity. He later reformulated many of his ideas, in his book Beyond Good and Evil and various other writings that he composed thereafter. He continued to emphasize his philosophical concerns; generally, his intention was to show an alternative to repressive moral codes and to avert "nihilism" in all of its varied forms.
Other aspects of Thus Spoke Zarathustra relate to Nietzsche's proposed "Transvaluation of All Values". This incomplete project began with The Antichrist.
Themes
Nietzsche injects myriad ideas into the book, but there are a few recurring themes. The overman (Übermensch), a self-mastered individual who has achieved his full power, is an almost omnipresent idea in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Man as a race is merely a bridge between animals and the overman. Nietzsche also makes a point that the overman is not an end result for a person, but more the journey toward self-mastery.
The eternal recurrence, found elsewhere in Nietzsche's writing, is also mentioned. The eternal recurrence is the idea that all events that have happened will happen again, infinitely many times. Such a reality can serve as the litmus test for an overman. Faced with the knowledge that he would repeat every action that he has taken, an overman would be elated as he has no regrets and loves life.
The will to power is the fundamental component of human nature. Everything we do is an expression of the will to power. The will to power is a psychological analysis of all human action and is accentuated by self-overcoming and self-enhancement. Contrasted with living for procreation, pleasure, or happiness, the will to power is the summary of all man's struggle against his surrounding environment as well as his reason for living in it.
Copious criticisms of Christianity can be found in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in particular Christian values of good and evil and its belief in an afterlife. Nietzsche sees the complacency of Christian values as fetters to the achievement of overman as well as on the human spirit.
Style
Harold Bloom calls Thus Spoke Zarathustra a "gorgeous disaster", adding that its rhapsodic fiction is "now unreadable".
Noteworthy for its format, the book comprises a philosophical work of fiction whose style often lightheartedly imitates that of the New Testament and of the Platonic dialogues, at times resembling pre-Socratic works in tone and in its use of natural phenomena as rhetorical and explanatory devices. It also features frequent references to the Western literary and philosophical traditions, implicitly offering an interpretation of these traditions and of their problems. Nietzsche achieves all of this through the character of Zarathustra (referring to the traditional prophet of Zoroastrianism), who makes speeches on philosophic topics as he moves along a loose plotline marking his development and the reception of his ideas. One can view this characteristic (following the genre of the bildungsroman) as an inline commentary on Zarathustra's (and Nietzsche's) philosophy. All this, along with the book's ambiguity and paradoxical nature, has helped its eventual enthusiastic reception by the reading public, but has frustrated academic attempts at analysis (as Nietzsche may have intended). Thus Spoke Zarathustra remained unpopular as a topic for scholars (especially those in the Anglo-American analytic tradition) until the second half of the twentieth century brought widespread interest in Nietzsche and his unconventional style that does not distinguish between philosophy and literature. It offers formulations of eternal recurrence, and Nietzsche for the first time speaks of the Übermensch: themes that would dominate his books from this point onwards.
A vulnerability of Nietzsche's style is that his nuances and shades of meaning are very easily lost — and all too easily gained — in translation. The Übermensch is particularly problematic: the equivalent "Superman" found in dictionaries and in the translations by Thomas Common and R.J. Hollingdale may create an unfortunate association with the heroic comic-character "Superman", while simultaneously detracting from Nietzsche's repeated play on "über" as well as losing the gender-neutrality of the German.
The "Übermensch" is the being that overcomes the "great nausea" associated with nihilism; that overcomes that most "abysmal" realization of the eternal return. He is the being that "sails over morality", and that dances over gravity (the "spirit of gravity" is Zarathustra's devil and archenemy). He is a "harvester" and a "celebrant" who endlessly affirms his existence, thereby becoming the transfigurer of his consciousness and life, aesthetically. He is initially a destructive force, excising and annihilating the insidious "truths" of the herd, and consequently reclaiming the chaos from which pure creativity is born. It is this creative force exemplified by the Übermensch that justifies suffering without displacing it in some "afterworld".
Translations
The English translations of Zarathustra differ according to the sentiments of the translators. The Thomas Common translation favors a classic English approach, in the style of Shakespeare or the King James Version of the Bible. Common's poetic interpretation of the text, which renders the title Thus Spake Zarathustra, received wide acclaim for its lambent portrayal. Common reasoned that because the original German was written in a pseudo-Luther-Biblical style, a pseudo-King-James-Biblical style would be fitting in the English translation.
The Common translation, which improved on Alexander Tille's earlier attempt, remained widely accepted until the more critical translations, titled Thus Spoke Zarathustra, separately by R.J. Hollingdale and Walter Kaufmann, which are considered to convey more accurately the German text than the Common version. Kaufmann's introduction to his own translation included a blistering critique of Common's version; he notes that in one instance, Common has taken the German "most evil" and rendered it "baddest", a particularly unfortunate error not merely for his having coined the term "baddest", but also because Nietzsche dedicated a third of The Genealogy of Morals to the difference between "bad" and "evil". This and other errors led Kaufmann to wondering if Common "had little German and less English". The translations of Kaufmann and Hollingdale render the text in a far more familiar, less archaic, style of language, than that of Common.
Clancy Martin's 2005 translation opens with criticism and praise for these three seminal translators, Common, Hollingdale, and Kaufmann. He notes that the German text available to Common was considerably flawed, and that the German text from which Hollingdale and Kaufmann worked was itself untrue to Nietzsche's own work in some ways. Martin criticizes Kaufmann for changing punctuation, altering literal and philosophical meanings, and dampening some of Nietzsche's more controversial metaphors. Kaufmann's version, which has become the most widely available, features a translator's note suggesting that Nietzsche's text would have benefited from an editor; Martin suggests that Kaufmann "took it upon himself to become his editor".
Graham Parkes describes his own 2005 translation as trying "above all to convey the musicality of the text (which was not a priority for Walter Kaufmann or R.J. Hollingdale, authors of the best English translations so far)."
Musical adaptation
The book inspired Richard Strauss to compose the tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra, which he designated "freely based on Friedrich Nietzsche." Zarathustra's Roundelay is set as part of Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony (1895-6), originally under the title What Man Tells Me, or alternatively What the Night tells me (of Man). Frederick Delius based his major choral-orchestral work A Mass of Life (1904-5) on texts from Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The work ends with a setting of Zarathustra's Roundelay which Delius had composed earlier, in 1898, as a separate work. Carl Orff also composed a three-movement setting of part of Nietzsche's text as a teenager, but this work remains unpublished.
Editions of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
* 1st - 1909 - (limited to 2,000)
* 2nd - 1911 - (limited to 1,500)
* 3rd - 1914 - (limited to 2,000)
* 4th - 1916 - (limited to 2,000) of Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None translated by Thomas Common, published by the MacMillan Company in 1916, printed in Great Britain by The Darwien Press of Edinburgh.
* Also sprach Zarathustra, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (study edition of the standard German Nietzsche edition)
* Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by Walter Kaufmann, New York: Random House; reprinted in The Portable Nietzsche, New York: The Viking Press, 1954 and Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976
* Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by R. J. Hollingdale, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961
* Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by Graham Parkes, Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 2005
* Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by Adrian del Caro and edited by Robert Pippin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006
Commentaries on Thus Spoke Zarathustra
* Gustav Naumann 1899-1901 Zarathustra-Commentar, 4 volumes. Leipzig : Haessel
* Higgins, Kathleen. 1990. Nietzsche's Zarathustra. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
* Lampert, Laurence. 1989. Nietzsche's Teaching: An Interpretation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. New Haven: Yale University Press.
* Rosen, Stanley. 2004. The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche's Zarathustra. New Haven: Yale University Press.
* Seung, T. K. 2005. Nietzsche's Epic of the Soul: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Introduction to Thus Spoke Zarathustra
* Rüdiger Schmidt Nietzsche für Anfänger: Also sprach Zarathustra - Eine Lese-Einführung (introduction in German to the work)
Essay collections on Thus Spoke Zarathustra
* Essays on Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Before Sunrise, edited by James Luchte, London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2008. ISBN 1847062210
这本以散文诗体写就的杰作，以振聋发聩的奇异灼见和横空出世的警世智慧宣讲“超人哲学”和“权力意志”，横扫了基督教教条造威的精神奴性的方方面面，谱写了一曲自由主义的人性壮歌。在本书中，“上帝死了”， “超人”诞生了，于是近代人类思想的天空有了一道光耀千年的奇异彩虹。令尼采饱受非难的言论“去女人那里吗？别忘了你的鞭子”，便是出自此书。只有深入理解了尼采的精神实质，才能真正理解这样的怪论。
面对一座万仞高山，我们往往说不出多少话来，感到赞辞是多余的。面对弗里德里希·威廉·尼采 (1844—1900)，这位德国近代大诗人、大哲学家，我们也有同样的感觉。
这个尼采，他宣告：“上帝死了!”曾经使整个西方世界震撼。这个尼采，他的“超人哲学”只有极少数人能够真正理解。深受他影响的思想文化巨人有：里尔克、弗洛伊德、加缪、萨持、海德格尔、萧伯纳、梁启超、鲁迅，等等。
尼采一生饱受漂泊和病痛之苦，最后是在精神错乱中了却残生，更为不幸的是，他的学说常常受到误解和歪曲。德国纳粹分子曾把他的学说肆意曲解为法西斯的理论支柱。希特勒曾亲自去拜谒尼采之墓，并把《尼采全集》作为寿礼送给墨索里尼。
《查拉图斯特拉如是说》-作者简介
弗里德里希·威廉·尼采（1844—1900），德国近代诗人、哲学家。他宣告：“帝死了！”彻底动摇了西方思想体系的基石，他高蹈的“超人哲学”与酒神精神产生了巨大影响。他的主要著作有《悲剧的诞生》、《查拉图斯特拉如是说善恶之彼岸》、《论道德的谱系》、《快乐的科学》、《曙光》、《权力意志》等。尼采既有哲学家的深遂洞见，又有诗人的澎湃激情。深受他影响的思想文化巨人，有里尔克、萧伯纳、弗洛伊德、加缪、萨特、海德格尔，粱启超、鲁迅等。
尼采和马克思，牛顿、爱因斯坦、达尔文等同时荣获“千年十大思想家”的盛誉。
《查拉图斯特拉如是说》-《查拉图斯特拉如是说》中的历史观
尼采在他的代表作《查拉图斯特拉如是说》中站在一元论的立场上向世人展示了一种发展的辩证的历史观，下面我想从四个方面来谈谈这个问题。
(一)发展的思维方式
查拉图斯特拉在山上度过了十年节制生活之后，在人类面前发表了第一次演讲，陈述了从植物到超人的过程：植物→虫子→猴子→人类→超人。“你们经历了从虫子到人的道路，在你们身上多少有点像虫子。你们以前是猴子，在现在人也比任何一只猴子更象猴子。”1尼采认为在生物界中始终存在一种更高的发展，目前的阶段绝非最终阶段。人这个阶段也是发展中的过渡阶段，还会超过人这个阶段，向下一个阶段——超人的阶段发展。查拉图斯特拉断言：“到目前为止，所有生物都创造了一些超过自己的东西。”2“创造”这个概念表明，查拉图斯特拉并不将生物进化理解为一种机械的因果过程，而认为这些生物自身就是发展动力，他(它)们自身创造超出自己的事物并因此而超越自己。遗憾的是存在一种错误观点，这种观点根深蒂固地左右着人类的思维：人类自以为自己就是宇宙发展的最高阶段，人类判定自己是进化结束的最终成果。由于没有什么可再发展了，于是乎人类停止不前甚至退回到已经超越的阶段。为此查拉图斯特拉提醒道：“你们想要成为汹涌潮水中的落潮同时宁可返回到动物也不愿超越人类吗?”3要知道人类是生物中唯一不靠本能在进化潮流中进行创造活动的，而且可以按照自己的意志对抗或顺应进化潮流。但是按照查拉图斯特拉的观点，即便是人类为了使自己保持为人也必须在极端的对立面之间来回跑。换句话说为了当落潮必须先当涨潮，只有体验了落潮的失落才能享受涨潮的喜悦。假若人类停滞不前就会退到早已被超过了的阶段——动物预备阶段。“对于人来说，猴子是什么?一种大笑或者是一种痛苦的羞辱。而人类对于超人来说正是如此：一种嘲笑或者是一种痛苦的羞辱。”4当人类回顾自己的历史时，他看到了成为人之前的全部发展阶段。一方面他发现自己在一定程度上已经在猴子中显现同时猴子又颇具人性，这时他会哈哈大笑；另一方面当他想起自己的祖先曾是猴子时，又会面红耳赤。有朝一日超人也会产生这样两方面的感觉。对此赫拉克立特也有同感：“最漂亮的猴子与人相比也是丑陋的。最聪明的人在上帝身边看起来如同一只猴子，这涉及到智慧，美丽和其它的一切。”5
查拉图斯特拉在爱听耸人听闻消息的观众面前做了他的第一次演讲，但是他的听众不理解他的演说，因为这些人甚至还未达到人的阶段“你们之中最聪明的人也只是植物和魔鬼的一种矛盾的混种。但是我教你们成为魔鬼或植物了吗?/你们看哪，我教你们什么是超人：/超人是大地的意义。你们的意志说：超人是大地的意义!”6在尼采笔下的查拉图斯特拉看来，由于人类还算不上一个完整出色的整体，只是两个相互矛盾的部分的组合，这两部分之间密不可分的关系还未被认识到，所以在从猴子到人的过渡期间就出现了物质和精神的分离。
很显然，尼采不想在进化论的狭隘的意义中去展示人类的生物进化史而想从生物遗传学方面来演示植物→虫子→猴子→从→超人的整个发展史。在此清楚地显示了尼采的历史观（１）是发展的而不是停止的，（２）既不是简单的机械的因果过程也不同于达尔文的进化论。尼采始终认为达尔文的观点是片面的，达尔文在生存斗争中忽略了精神，没有黑格尔就没有达尔文，因此尼采强烈反对把他当作达尔主义者，“受过训练的有角动物使我对达尔文主义产生了怀疑”。7
下面让我们再看看尼采笔下的精神的三个发展阶段。查拉图斯特拉对众人说：“我告诉你们精神的三种变形：精神是如何变成骆驼，骆驼是如何变成狮子，最后狮子如何变成小孩。”8这精神的历史经历了“物质化”的三个阶段。第一个阶段即骆驼的阶段，刻画了西方传统观念中自我悟性的特征。在第二阶段即狮子的阶段，查拉图斯特拉扮演了传统价值的批判者的角色。在第三阶段即小孩阶段指明超人还没有诞生。乍一看起来似乎精神的三种变形与黑格尔的三段论：正题、反题、综合很相似。但这仅仅是在一定条件下。在第一阶段，精神以骆驼的外形出现，扮演了屈服顺从的角色，一个外在的、来世的、永远固定的超精神强加于它。在第二阶段，它认识到了骆驼是一种自鄙的形式，因而彻底否认了骆驼的行为，它自己宣告了自己的死亡，并为自己的新生做好了准备，这是一次凤凰涅盘，于是精神发展到了第三阶段：小孩阶段。“小孩是天真与遗忘的”9表明精神通过产生自己的第二个起点而忘记了以前的失败和过失。精神在超越了狮子阶段以后就把自己的往事忘得一干二净，因为在当年它不是自觉自愿，而是被外来力量强制的物化的魔鬼精神，只有在小孩阶段才恢复了自我，才有了创造性“一个自转的轮”。“是的，为了创造的游戏，我的弟兄们，一个神圣的肯定是必要的：精神现在要有它的意志力，失去世界者赢得了他的世界。”10总之，在精神发展的第三阶段，只有在这个阶段，世界做为精神活动的真正产物才诞生了。顺便说一句，尼采在此对精神系列的三种变化的描绘与基督教教义中上帝从虚无中创造了世界的情形很相似。看来坚决反对基督教神学的尼采也无法摆脱时代与环境对他的潜移默化的影响。
从以上我们可以看出，尼采认为精神和物质在极端对立中相互依存，并因此形成了一个又一个超越自己又回归自己的向高级发展的运动。
(二)辩证的一元论观点
尼采用查拉图斯特拉的名义从植物和魔鬼的情形入手来研究肉体和灵魂这个古老的问题。按照查拉图斯特拉的观点，尽管传统哲学将人类视为肉体——灵魂、物质 ——精神所组成的整体，但在事实上已经将精神物化了，精神变成了可以脱离物质单独存在的实体。因此就有了查拉图斯特拉的反问：“我教人们成为魔鬼和植物吗?”11唯心主义和唯物主义同样都是人类自我悟性的片面形式，在这其中或者是人的肉体的那一面或者是人的精神的那一面被否定了。在查拉图斯特拉一开始演讲时我们就听到了人类应该是被超越的。现在当人类被分裂成肉体与灵魂两部分时我们再次听到他的声音：“你们看哪，我教人们什么是超人!”12当我们思考超越人——这个前进中的质的飞跃时，让我们再回忆一下人类已经超越的那些阶段，以便更好地理解从猴子到人的过程中如何出现了灵魂和肉体的分离。首先要回忆的是从植物→虫子→猴子→人的发展过程中被描绘为在两个平面上发生的过程。其一是空间的平面：活动半径由植物到人递增，因而活动余地和生活空间变大了变广了。为了适应扩展了的生活空间带来的多样性，就必须在思想这第二个非空间的平面上加工出新的东西来。生活空间愈是色彩斑斓，思想活动就愈是抽象枯燥。这思想活动不得不把各种秩序、条理带入生存所必须的繁杂的多样性中，并以这种方式形成了与生活空间相关联的意识。这样一来在猴子阶段就逐渐现出了猴子和世界的二元不同性的绉形，尽管还没有达到人类所特有的反省、抽象那样高级的程度。人类不仅在与世界的联系中而且在自身中也发现了我与非我的二元性。这样一来人类将自身也作为客体对立起来，并用这种方式与自己拉开了距离，于是乎意识的我与肉体的我撕裂了，势不两立地对立了。人类出现的这个错误已被尼采在《真实的世界究竟是如何成为寓言的》这篇文章中讨论过。人类的这个错误在于：意识到了自身却忘记了出身，忘记了从植物一直到人类的整个发展史，所以才使精神和物质相脱离。假如人类从生物发展史的起源阶段就正确理解自身意识，那么人类就会自然而然地在自身中找到自己超越过的每一个阶段，发展成人类的这个生物进程就会被描绘成肉体和精神辩证关系的自然延续。而西方人在很长时间里却不是这样。他们使灵魂和肉体相互脱节，他们为精神杜撰了一个完全不同的、更高级的起源并因此发明了一个非感官所能感觉到的、超自然的世界。物质和精神的彻底分裂在肉体和灵魂这个问题上清清楚楚地表现出来了。当人类由如此相相互对立的、老死不相往来的两部分组成时又该如何想象作为一种自身统一的生物的人呢?灵魂和肉体之间的脱节问题在这个疑问中得到了最高体现。这些僵化的规则希望将关于两个世界的二元论以及物质和精神的鸿沟最终地永久地固定下来，而尼采笔下的查拉图斯特拉却用具有大地意义的超人的理念来与之相对抗。尽管这是用一种唯心主义来对抗另一种唯心主义，但查拉图斯特拉的对抗显然技高一筹，这对抗产生了新事物，因为它使两个对立面之间有了即使是瞬间统一的可能性，正如在彩虹中可以看出它是光与水等等元素共同作用的结果一样，从物质与精神、肉体与灵魂的相对抗中就产生了超人。总而言之，尼采笔下的查拉图斯特拉把传统的灵魂和肉体对立分裂的二元论思想理解为人类一种自我误解的结果，这正是尼采的高明过人之处。一旦人类消除了这种误解，那么灵魂和肉体相互撕裂的问题就解决了，这就意味着人类阶段被超越了，那么随之而来的就是超人阶段。无论如何对于人类来说有一点是可以肯定的，即大地的意义和生活的意义不存在于一个静止的、物化了的精神产物中，不存在于魔鬼、上帝、理念式的理性中，而只存在于对立面的对立统一的辩证关系之中。
从以上分析人们不难看出，尼采用一元论克服了二元论，尽管尼采的出发点仍是唯心主义，但是他用发展的辩证的唯心主义来取代僵化的静止的唯物主义，这无疑是一种进步。
在《查拉图斯特拉如是说》中，尼采还拟人化地讽刺揭露了当时灵魂和肉体之间的错误关系：“从前灵魂蔑视肉体，这种蔑视在当时被认为是最高尚的事：——灵魂要肉体枯瘦、丑陋并且饿死。它以为这样便可以逃避肉体，同时也逃避了大地。/啊，这灵魂自己还是枯瘦、丑陋、饿死的，残忍就是它的淫乐!”13对于查拉图斯特拉来说，肉体在传统的形而上学和基督教那儿所受到的贬低是一种谬论。这种谬论认为，人应该抛弃一切感官的感受，抛弃人类的以往的动物的历程而只通过关注精神就能向更高阶段发展。这种谬论只承认精神的积极因素和肉体的消极因素。查拉图斯特拉的看法正相反，如果灵魂能够作为肉体的灵魂而存在，那么它试图从肉体中独立出来的每一次尝试都是胡闹；如果灵魂贬低肉体，那无异于贬低灵魂自己，灵魂和肉体永远相辅相成不可分离。查拉图斯特拉还认为，灵魂对肉体的评价恰恰等于肉体对灵魂的判断：“你们的肉体是怎样说明你们的灵魂呢?你们的灵魂难道不是贫乏、污秽与可怜的自满吗?”14灵魂为自己创造了一个虚幻的世界，它臆想着战胜肉体的辉煌胜利，但这只是可怜又可笑的精神胜利法。只有与肉体同时存在，灵魂才能越来越丰富；只有当精神和物质相互终结并产生于对方之中时才会出现“贫乏、污秽与可怜的自满”的反面。查拉图斯特拉的结束语是：“不是你们的罪恶，而是你们的节制向天呼喊!/那道用舌头舔你们的闪电何在?那个应当向你们注射的疯狂何在?/现在我教你们什么是超人：他就是这闪电，他就是这疯狂!”15查拉图斯特拉在这儿抨击的正是被基督教深恶痛绝的“罪恶意识”：如果人们满足了肉体的欲望就意味着背叛精神，就意味着有罪。查拉图斯特拉公然与基督教教义背道而驰，他认为原罪不存在于违背精神的罪恶中而存在于违背肉体的罪恶中，当人类真的因为有罪过要受到惩罚时，肉体首当其冲在劫难逃。为了彻底摧毁基督教教义，需要电闪雷鸣，以便让二元论人物及其观点彻底暴露，以便让千百年来僵化凝固的教条都活动运转起来。
与此同时，尼采以圣者来反衬突出查拉图斯特拉的发展、运动的一元论观点。圣者追求尽善尽美。他将自己对人类的爱当作这个世界上最完美的事情，可惜，这个爱永远不可能从理想变为现实。因为人类存在的有限性从原则上禁止他们去达到那位圣者所要求的完美。持有这种看法的圣者让自己孤立于人类之外而转向唯一能满足这个要求的生物：上帝。谁要是象这位圣者一样在对上帝的爱中找到了自己的满足，那他就实在无法理解为什么查拉图斯特拉背离完美的事物而去寻找不完美的事物。
圣者的这种观点是由他的以宗教为基础的生活方式决定的。圣者崇尚完美，并因此而完全脱离并不完美的人类世界。他独居在森林中每天赞美上帝。圣者所理解的完美是自身封闭的、不变的、无法超越的，因此可以说圣者为自己选择的生活方式是静止不变的，这一点，从尼采的笔下可以清楚地看出。查拉图斯特拉跳舞，圣者唱歌、谱曲、作词。他的歌声表达了他对尽善尽美的执着的追求。通过歌唱他不断地接近完美并与之越来越相似。前面已经谈到当查拉图斯特拉跳舞时，圣者唱歌。他伴着歌声在原地动，可以说他始终停留在圆周的中心点上，所有的半径从此开始，所有的直径通过此处，圣者围绕自身绝对旋转。他的生活方式凝固成油画般的静态的完美，在其内部所有的运动都消失贻尽。
上帝之死的想法对于圣者来说是不堪设想的。因为死亡意味着一种由活转变为死的变化过程。圣者之所以爱上帝是因为上帝是至高无尚的完美无瑕的化身的体现，是一成不变的无比至尊的代表的体现，也就是说排除了任何运动变化的可能性，上帝绝不可能变成别的什么，也绝不可能死去，上帝必须永远是上帝，永远是尽善尽美、完美无瑕的化身。对于圣者来说这个永远的存在象征性地固定在他停留的那个中心点，使他也成为完美与永恒。对于查拉图斯特拉来说，在现实世界中不存在永恒不变的事物，在现实世界中万事万物都在诞生、变化和终结，而绝不可能超时空而存在。如果在我们这个唯一的真实世界里谈论上帝，那么上帝就必须被认为和其它的万事万物一样是发展变化的，而不是凝固不变的，那么上帝也会和其它的万事万物一样存在着产生和终结，对于已经终结的上帝，人们可以如此这般地说，上帝死了!圣者是个典型的二元论者，象其他的二元论者一样在他那里真实的世界与想象的世界被相互颠倒，真实的世界被歪曲成了表象的世界，而想象的世界却被称之为真实的世界，所以尼采才针锋相对地写了那篇教育戏剧《真实的世界究竟是如何变成寓言的》。我们可以举个通俗的例子，在想象中人们总是把现实世界描绘为一汪静止不动的清泉，这汪清泉总是被描绘成无比纯、无比净、无比透明。但事实上真实的世界是一个肮脏的池沼。柏拉图认为真实的世界代表了昏暗的洞穴，而这昏暗的洞穴又被看作人类肉体的象征。而对于苏格拉底来说最艰难的就是从上面的大地回到下面的洞穴中，即从明亮的精神那里返回污秽的肉体中。这一上一下、一个天堂一个地狱活生生地将一个完整的生物的人撕裂成两部分。总而言之尼采通过塑造这个追求尽善尽美的二元论者——圣者，反衬了查拉图斯特拉辩证、发展的一元论观点。
(三)超人模式
查拉图斯特拉说：“人类是一根系在动物和超人之间的绳索，一根悬在深谷上的绳索。/往彼端去是危险的，停在半途是危险的，向后望也是危险的，战栗或者不前进，都是危险的。”16查拉图斯特拉的意思是说，人类刚好处在猴子阶段和超人阶段的过渡中。如果他回首自己的历史，那他就面临遵循早已无效的规则的危险；如果他踌躇不前，他就会发现自己的脚下是万丈深渊，这样他就会因惧怕跌落而战甚至坠落。与回首、前瞻和停止相联系的这三种危险给人的印象是，查拉图斯特拉将人类与一个走绳者相比较，后者随着他在绳上迈出的每一步都会陷入一种死亡的危险之中，而人类却是绳索和走绳者的合二而一。这就是说并不存在一条现成的路 (绳索)和某个在这条路上行走的人(走绳者)，而是如果没有走路的人，也就不存在这条路。路是由于有了那个在路上行走的人才产生的。此人知道自己曾经是谁，也知道他将会是谁，但是不肯定自己能否够成为他将是的人。超越自己要冒很大的风险，因为人们为此必须将习惯的、久经考验的、安全的事物抛开，以便朝着一个未知的目标前进。绝没有现成的道路通往这个目标，人们要在奔向目标的过程中自己创造出路来。路途中的每次怀疑和犹豫都会产生灾难性的后果，因为只要人们一停止前进，脚下的路和远处的目标就消失了；行者脚下若踩空同样也就跌入了未知和虚无的深渊。人类只有永无止境地向前走，才会脚踏实地，即脚踩绳索。换句话说，人类通过行走自己创造出支撑自己走路的支架，最终目的也不再会同路脱离开，因为目的不是别的，正是走路本身。随着每一步的迈出，就意味着不断的离开和到达。这条直直的绳索，从固定的一端伸展到另一端，可以理解成绕圆周行走的辩证法。这行走代表了生命，代表了超越自己的强烈追求。在走这条路时，人类产生出了作为绳索的超人。人类走在这根绳索上，与此同时，人类就是这根绳索。
查拉图斯特拉继续说：“人类的伟大之处，在于他是一座桥梁而不是一个目的。人类的可爱之处，在于他是一个过程和一个终结。”17桥梁以及前面提到的绳索都可以理解为走过去，朝着人类还不曾是的情形前进。而人类本身也正因为是一座承前启后的桥梁而不是一个目标才变得伟大。如果人类是目的，那他就不能自己设定目的，他就无法将自己设计为他将要成为的情形，而会受到他的内在的目的性的限制，那么人类所做的一切努力最终不外乎仅仅是去实现他无需去做就已经存在的目的了。被视为目的的人类显然不能通过自我超越而向更高层次发展，因为他就是他自己的最高层次。但是，假如人类将自己视为一个通向最高层次的阶段，通过一次次的自我超越，建立起连接现在的他和将来的他的桥梁，那么人类的这个事业就比人类将自己本身当作目标的事业要伟大得多。只有当人类走出现在的自我以后才决定自己要成为谁和要干什么时，那么在最初的意义中人类就是自由的。这时，只有在这时，人类的目标才不再是人类，而是超越了人类的超人。因此查拉图斯特拉才说，人类的伟大和可爱之处在于，他是一个过程和终结。过程表示超越作为人的自我运动；终结表示通过这个运动人类阶段消失了，超人阶段来临了，如同涓涓细流汇入奔腾咆哮的无边大海。
对于人类之后的超人阶段，查拉图斯特拉用散文诗的形式抒发了自己对其的热爱“我爱那些只知道为终结而生活的人。因为他们是跨过桥者。”18谁作为人类而终结，谁就跨过了桥，就迈向了超人。“我爱那些伟大的轻蔑者，因为他们是伟大的崇拜者，是射向彼岸的渴望之箭。”19渴望之箭意味着渴望超越自己的努力，这种努力鄙视人间的一切目的，唯独想要到达彼岸世界。“我爱那些人，他们不先到星星后面寻找某种理由去终结、去牺牲，他们为大地牺牲，使大地有朝一日能属于超人。”20任何一个能正常思维的人都不会为一个虚无飘渺的来世作出牺牲。地球，我们生活的大地，有足够的理由让人类为它做出超越自我的牺牲。
人类向超人超越的过程是一个极其艰难曲折危机四伏的过程，随时可能付出生活的代价。走绳者无疑代表人类，他想建立一座由动物通向超人的桥梁。走绳者是查拉图斯特拉所喜爱的人们中的一个。这些人蔑视末人的理想社会，敢于进行危险的超越，勇敢地向着超人的理想前进。超人的事业是前所未有的事业，必将受到旧势力的疯狂攻击，走绳者的坠落就标志着基督教教义的胜利，这教义抨击所有违背基督教教义的事为原罪并对触犯原罪的人处以死刑。走绳者在其过去(顺从的羔羊)和未来(独立的个体)之间被拉来扯去，最终过去获胜了，未来被放弃了，魔鬼战胜了超人。但是这一结局并不是最终结局，每个作为走绳者的个体都必须在从动物到超人的过渡中经受多次这样的死亡(“原罪”)，直到有一天他成功地在自身内超越人类这个阶段。我们在前面已经谈到绳索和走绳者是不可分的，绳索这条路的存在正是由于人们在它上面行走，随着迈出的每一步超越自己的行为都重新进行，这种行为的总和就是超人。换句话说超人是走绳者、绳索和目标交织在一起向前进的一个整体。遗憾的是走绳者没有能够将这个统一体坚持到底，他在行进中失去了冷静和平衡，摔了下去。在某种程度上人们可以说走绳者掉进了肉体和灵魂的二元论中，坠进了他想超越的物质和灵魂之间的鸿沟中。这坠落使由走绳者、绳索、目标三方面组成的统一体破裂了，解体了。如果一个人让宗教或形而上学的偏见主宰着自己，那他就会被它(们)所超越，走绳者的悲惨结局就是一个最好的例子。查拉图斯特拉试图让走绳者在临死前明白，他(走绳者)本来已经超越了基督教关于魔鬼和地狱的教义，只是他还未来得及做出不存在灵魂不死的结论。要知道肉体和灵魂始终相依相存；肉体是经济基础，灵魂是上层建筑，肉体终结了，灵魂也就不存在了。走绳者虽然没有走到绳索的那一端，但他用自己宝贵的生命向世人展示他是一位勇敢者、创新者，是一位向着超人理想奋勇直前者。从这个意义上说，他是一位大无畏的先驱。
查拉图斯特拉在其演讲的结尾谈到了自己所扮演的角色——超人的宣告者。“我爱所有那些人，他们象沉重的雨点，一滴一滴地从人们头顶上的乌云中落下；它们预告着闪电的到来，并作为预告者而终结。/看吧，我是一道闪电的预告者，一滴自云中落下的重雨点：但是这道闪电便是超人。——”21查拉图斯特拉不是超人，也不是超人的代表，而是超人的宣告者。他要将人们的注意力吸引到预示着超人的闪电事件中。这闪电将旧世界突然间照亮，撕掉了它的全部伪装，展露出狰狞的本来面目，并宣告了它的末日。这闪电表明了旧的思维方式和旧的历史观的终结，这闪电预示了新的质的飞跃的来临。随着这闪电的到来，作为宣告者的查拉图斯特拉就终结了。因为闪电、雷鸣、暴风雨过后，人类就成功地过渡到了超人，作为超人的宣告者就成为多余的人了。人类自身超越了传统的人物形象，并把这个新形象放到恰当的位置上。一旦超人的理念直接进入到人类的意识中，查拉图斯特拉的使命就完成了，那时他将同其他人一样，把所有的力量集中在更新自己，全力以赴地创造一座由动物向超人过渡的桥梁。
非常遗憾，查拉图斯特拉的演讲超出了人类理解水平的地平线。所以，当查拉图斯特拉结束演讲时，听众大声轰笑、怪叫、咂舌头。人们嘲笑他，就象当年苏格拉底向洞穴人解释他的理念时受到的嘲笑一样。即便在那儿，洞穴人也向苏格拉底嚎叫：让我们看看你的理念吧!接着他们指向每一堵有阴影的墙，在这些洞穴人看来，这些阴影就是真理的化身。苏格拉底无法向他们展示什么是理念，并不仅仅因为他从阳光普照的世界回到昏暗的洞穴中感到头晕目眩，还因为而且首先是因为理念表达的方式和墙上阴影表达的方式截然不同，理念是无论如何无法以阴影的形式出现的。查拉图斯特拉和苏格拉底的遭遇如此相似，听众想看见他宣扬的超人，但人们没有搞明白，超人是无法看见的，只能做出来。遗憾的是，按照人类的传统悟性，人类只能理解物化了的、客观上触摸得到的形体，而恰恰在这种意义上既不存在超人，也不存在理念。超人就不是人，更不是那种超级人。超人不是个体，而是个体一项活动的总称。这项活动的特点是既超越出去又在更高的程度上回归自己。所以，只有当我们去做这件事时，只有当我们去超越人类自身时才会有超人。由于世人的不理解，查拉图斯特拉下山后的第一次演讲失败了。人们用旧的思维方式来理解查拉图斯特拉的超人学说，似乎他要宣布一个新的救世主的降临。按照传统观念这个新的救世主是特定的个体的人，他以说教者的身份来此地教训人类，人们想看的就是这种人。回顾人类的思想史，人类对于超出了自己理解力的改革者通常都采取从肉体上消灭的解决办法。到目前为止查拉图斯特拉是第一个幸免于难的人，这也许得益于人类的误解。在世人看来，查拉图斯特拉是个难得的白痴，一个令人捧腹大笑的丑角，但恰恰是这个丑角向旧世界的尊贵无比的人物形象和至高无上的理性观念宣战。
(四)对立统一体的圆周运动
尼采在《查拉图斯特拉如是说》中塑造了查拉图斯特拉的两个动物形象：鹰与蛇。这两只动物象征着一个对立同一体。在这个统一体中对立面既相互对立又相依相存。鹰这个高傲的动物盘旋在高空，它代表了理智与精神。蛇这个聪明狡猾的动物生活在地面，它代表了肉体与物质。尽管这两种动物向前运动的方式不同，但是其共同点是都做圆周运动：鹰在空中画圈，蛇在地上圈曲前进。蛇缠绕在飞翔的雄鹰的颈上的情影直观地表现了对立面的统一。鹰与蛇，精神与物质是如此的不同，只有圆周运动才将二者联系在一起。对于尼采来说超越自我的行为就是向高层次发展的原则，它既超越自己，又在超越后回归自我，只不过是在更高的层次上。鹰与蛇尽管相互对立，截然不同，可它们二者之间没有敌意，它们在友好的合作中完成圆周运动。同样的，精神和物质不是相互抵毁，而是相互依存、相互补充，精神通过物质来实现，物质通过精神来提高。蛇在与鹰的共同飞翔中离开了它在地上的居留地升跃到了它依靠自己的力量无法达到的层次，同样的物质作为精神的实现者进入了它通过自己的努力无法涉足的领域。精神中有物质，物质中有精神，不论物质还是精神都存在向更高层次发展的要求。这种要求作为权力意志的原则在共同的又存在差异的圆周运动中表现出来。
人类好比鹰与蛇的统一体。因此查拉图斯特拉乞求高傲(鹰)永远伴随他的智慧(蛇)，因为只有这样才能保证人类永远以圆周运动的方式前进。在这圆周运动中人类存在的对立面辩证地统一在一起，相互斗争，相互依存，就象查拉图斯特拉的鹰与蛇一样。它们各是不同种的生物，但是缠绕在一起共同做圆周运动。在现实世界中精神(灵魂)既要紧跟物质(内体)，以便不与物质脱节并随时汲取生活的活力，同时精神还要反作用于物质，发挥其独特的能动作用。
最后，让我们分析一下查拉图斯特拉的终结。从表面意义上看，这首先是指查拉图斯特拉本人。他在十年前走了自下而上之路——复活，现在走的是自上而下之路 ——终结。从一个非表面的意义上看，查拉图斯特拉在进行这两种相反的运动中执行的是权力意志的原则，这一点在形成过程中表现得非常直观。传统的二元论观点把对立面不是看作既矛盾又统一的，而是看成极端相反、水火不相容的。恰好在这一点上尼采与传统的二元论者分道扬镳。西方哲学界的普遍错误在于他们把对立面作为誓不两立的二元论固定、延袭下来了，其实质问题为如何看待对立面之间的关系。在真实世界(即西方传统观念中所说的表象的世界)中立面之间的关系是对立统一的辩证关系，二者既极端对立又相互依存，并在一定条件下相互转化，尼采一针见血地指出了这一点。在《查拉图斯特拉如是说》中，尼采表达了清晰明确的一元论思想。二元论的思想渊源流长，无论是在人类早期哲学的璀璨明珠希腊哲学中还是在人类宗教史上历史最长分布最广影响最大的基督教教义中同样存在着两个世界的学说——真实的世界和表象的世界。这两个世界之间的关系被绝对化了。形象地说，好比人们设定了圆周的直径，却忘记了圆周本身。这样一来势必给人造成一种错误印象：这是一对无法调节、无法统一的对立面，人们只能或者选择这一面或者那一面；或者向上到精神，踏上通往所谓的真实的、美妙的世界之路，或者是向下到物质，坠入所谓的表象的邪恶的世界之中，二者之间是一道无法逾越的鸿沟。尼采力图超越二者之间的鸿沟，他用形象的比喻和散文诗的语言生动地表述了二者之间的对立统一关系以及圆周式的前进方式。超人的思想是尼采超现实的想象，超人的理论无疑应归入唯心主义的体系。但是这里面所包含的一元论的思想和辩证发展的历史观是无论如何应该肯定的。另外尼采的唯心主义体系里所包含的异常生动的辩证法思想，此起当时在欧洲大陆广为流行的庸俗唯物主义机械唯物主义和拜物教不知要高明多少倍。马克思主义以前的唯物论，由于其机械的、形而上学的性质，没有在强调思维依赖于存在，精神依赖于物质的前提下，充分估价意识、精神、主观的巨大能动作用，人类这方面的正确认识首先是在唯心主义哲学范畴中被体现出来了。尼采在《查拉图斯特如是说》中所提出的超人理论和永恒轮回的思想就是出类拔萃的例证。
《查拉图斯特拉如是说》-目录
代总序尼采，一位应该被超越的伟人
译者前言尼采最具轰动效应的扛鼎之作
第一卷
查拉图斯特拉前言
查拉图斯特拉的演说
论三种变形
论道德讲坛
论信仰彼岸世界的人
论蔑视肉体者
论快乐和激情
论苍白的罪犯
论阅读和写作
论山旁之树
论死之说教者
论战争和战士
论新偶像
论市场的苍蝇
论贞洁
论朋友
论一千零一个目标
论爱邻人
论创造者的道路
论老妪和少妇
论毒蛇的咬啮
论孩子和婚姻
论自由之死
论馈赠的道德
第二卷
持镜的小孩
在幸福岛上
论同情者
论牧师
论道德家
论流氓无赖
论毒蜘蛛
论著名的智者
夜歌
舞蹈之歌
坟墓之歌
论超越自我
论高尚者
论教化的国度
论纯洁的知识
论学者
论诗人
论伟大事件
预言家
论解救
论人的智慧
最寂静的时刻
第三卷
漫游者
论相貌和谜
论违背意志的幸福
日出之前
论逐渐变小的道德
橄榄山上
离弃
背叛者
归家
论三件恶事
论沉重的思想
论新旧招牌
痊愈者
论伟大的渴望
另一支舞曲
七个印章
第四卷
蜂蜜祭品
痛苦的呼号
与两位国王的谈话
水蛭
魔术家
逊位
最丑陋的人
自愿行乞者
影子
正午
欢迎
晚餐
更高级的人
忧郁之歌
论科学
在沙漠的女儿们中间
觉醒
驴节
沉醉之歌
征兆
Described by Nietzsche himself as "the deepest ever written," the book is a dense and esoteric treatise on philosophy and morality, featuring as protagonist a fictionalized prophet descending from his recluse to mankind, Zarathustra. A central irony of the text is that Nietzsche mimics the style of the Bible in order to present ideas which fundamentally oppose Christian and Jewish morality and tradition.
Genesis
Thus Spoke Zarathustra was conceived while Nietzsche was writing The Gay Science; he made a small note, reading "6,000 feet beyond man and time," as evidence of this. More specifically, this note related to the concept of the Eternal Recurrence, which is, by Nietzsche's admission, the central idea of Zarathustra; this idea occurred to him by a "pyramidal block of stone" on the shores of Lake Silvaplana in the Upper Engadine, a high alpine region whose valley floor is at 6,000 ft. Nietzsche planned to write the book in three parts over several years. He wrote that the ideas for Zarathustra first came to him while walking on two roads surrounding Rapallo, according to Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche in the introduction of Thomas Common's early translation of the book.
While developing the general outlook of the book, he subsequently decided to write an additional three parts; ultimately, however, he composed only the fourth part, which is viewed to constitute an intermezzo.
Nietzsche commented in Ecce Homo that for the completion of each part: "Ten days sufficed; in no case, neither for the first nor for the third and last, did I require more" (trans. Kaufmann). The first three parts were first published separately, and were subsequently published in a single volume in 1887. The fourth part remained private after Nietzsche wrote it in 1885; a scant forty copies were all that were printed, apart from seven others that were distributed to Nietzsche's close friends. In March 1892, the four parts were finally reprinted as a single volume. Since then, the version most commonly produced has included all four parts.
The original text contains a great deal of word-play. An example of this exists in the use of the words "over" or "super" and the words "down" or "abyss/abysmal"; some examples include "superman" or "overman", "overgoing", "downgoing" and "self-overcoming".
Synopsis
The book chronicles the fictitious travels and pedagogy of Zarathustra. The name of this character is taken from the ancient prophet usually known in English as Zoroaster (Avestan: Zaraθuštra), the Persian founder of Zoroastrianism. Nietzsche is clearly portraying a "new" or "different" Zarathustra, one who turns traditional morality on its head. He goes on to characterize "what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth, the mouth of the first immoralist:"
[F]or what constitutes the tremendous historical uniqueness of that Persian is just the opposite of this. Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things: the transposition of morality into the metaphysical realm, as a force, cause, and end in itself, is his work. […] Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it. […] His doctrine, and his alone, posits truthfulness as the highest virtue; this means the opposite of the cowardice of the "idealist” who flees from reality […]—Am I understood?—The self-overcoming of morality, out of truthfulness; the self-overcoming of the moralist, into his opposite—into me—that is what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth.
– Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, "Why I Am a Destiny", §3, trans. Walter Kaufmann
Zarathustra has a simple characterisation and plot, narrated sporadically throughout the text. It possesses a unique experimental style, one that is, for instance, evident in newly invented "dithyrambs" narrated or sung by Zarathustra. Likewise, the separate Dithyrambs of Dionysus was written in autumn 1888, and printed with the full volume in 1892, as the corollaries of Zarathustra's "abundance".
Some speculate that Nietzsche intended to write about final acts of creation and destruction brought about by Zarathustra. However, the book lacks a finale to match that description; its actual ending focuses more on Zarathustra recognizing that his legacy is beginning to perpetuate, and consequently choosing to leave the higher men to their own devices in carrying his legacy forth.
Zarathustra also contains the famous dictum "God is dead", which had appeared earlier in The Gay Science. In his autobiographical work Ecce Homo, Nietzsche states that the book's underlying concept is discussed within "the penultimate section of the fourth book" of The Gay Science (Ecce Homo, Kaufmann). It is the Eternal recurrence of the same events.
This concept first occurred to Nietzsche while he was walking in Switzerland through the woods along the lake of Silvaplana (close to Surlei); he was inspired by the sight of a gigantic, towering, pyramidal rock. Before Zarathustra, Nietzsche had mentioned the concept in the fourth book of The Gay Science (e.g., sect. 341); this was the first public proclamation of the notion by him. Apart from its salient presence in Zarathustra, it is also echoed throughout Nietzsche's work. At any rate, it is by Zarathustra's transfiguration that he embraces eternity, that he at last ascertains "the supreme will to power". This inspiration finds its expression with Zarathustra's Roundelay, featured twice in the book, once near the story's close:
“ O man, take care!
What does the deep midnight declare?
"I was asleep—
From a deep dream I woke and swear:—
The world is deep,
Deeper than day had been aware.
Deep is its woe—
Joy—deeper yet than agony:
Woe implores: Go!
But all joy wants eternity—
Wants deep, wants deep eternity." ”
Another singular feature of Zarathustra, first presented in the prologue, is the designation of human beings as a transition between apes and the "Übermensch" (in English, either the "overman" or "superman"; or, superhuman or overhuman. English translators Thomas Common and R. J. Hollingdale use superman, while Kaufmann uses overman, and Parkes uses overhuman). The Übermensch is one of the many interconnecting, interdependent themes of the story, and is represented through several different metaphors. Examples include: the lightning that is portended by the silence and raindrops of a travelling storm cloud; or the sun's rise and culmination at its midday zenith; or a man traversing a rope stationed above an abyss, moving away from his uncultivated animality and towards the Übermensch.
The symbol of the Übermensch also alludes to Nietzsche's notions of "self-mastery", "self-cultivation", "self-direction", and "self-overcoming". Expostulating these concepts, Zarathustra declares:
"I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?
"All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape.
"Whoever is the wisest among you is also a mere conflict and cross between plant and ghost. But do I bid you become ghosts or plants?
"Behold, I teach you the overman! The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go!"
– Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, §3, trans. Walter Kaufmann
The book embodies a number of innovative poetical and rhetorical methods of expression. It serves as a parallel and supplement to the various philosophical ideas present in Nietzsche's body of work. He has, however, said that "among my writings my Zarathustra stands to my mind by itself" (Ecce Homo, Preface, sec. 4, Kaufmann). Emphasizing its centrality and its status as his magnum opus, it is stated by Nietzsche that:
With [Thus Spoke Zarathustra] I have given mankind the greatest present that has ever been made to it so far. This book, with a voice bridging centuries, is not only the highest book there is, the book that is truly characterized by the air of the heights—the whole fact of man lies beneath it at a tremendous distance—it is also the deepest, born out of the innermost wealth of truth, an inexhaustible well to which no pail descends without coming up again filled with gold and goodness.
– Ecce Homo, Preface, §4, trans. Walter Kaufmann
Since, as stated, many of the book's ideas are also present in his other works, Zarathustra is seen to have served as a precursor to his later philosophical thought. With the book, Nietzsche embraced a distinct aesthetic assiduity. He later reformulated many of his ideas, in his book Beyond Good and Evil and various other writings that he composed thereafter. He continued to emphasize his philosophical concerns; generally, his intention was to show an alternative to repressive moral codes and to avert "nihilism" in all of its varied forms.
Other aspects of Thus Spoke Zarathustra relate to Nietzsche's proposed "Transvaluation of All Values". This incomplete project began with The Antichrist.
Themes
Nietzsche injects myriad ideas into the book, but there are a few recurring themes. The overman (Übermensch), a self-mastered individual who has achieved his full power, is an almost omnipresent idea in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Man as a race is merely a bridge between animals and the overman. Nietzsche also makes a point that the overman is not an end result for a person, but more the journey toward self-mastery.
The eternal recurrence, found elsewhere in Nietzsche's writing, is also mentioned. The eternal recurrence is the idea that all events that have happened will happen again, infinitely many times. Such a reality can serve as the litmus test for an overman. Faced with the knowledge that he would repeat every action that he has taken, an overman would be elated as he has no regrets and loves life.
The will to power is the fundamental component of human nature. Everything we do is an expression of the will to power. The will to power is a psychological analysis of all human action and is accentuated by self-overcoming and self-enhancement. Contrasted with living for procreation, pleasure, or happiness, the will to power is the summary of all man's struggle against his surrounding environment as well as his reason for living in it.
Copious criticisms of Christianity can be found in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in particular Christian values of good and evil and its belief in an afterlife. Nietzsche sees the complacency of Christian values as fetters to the achievement of overman as well as on the human spirit.
Style
Harold Bloom calls Thus Spoke Zarathustra a "gorgeous disaster", adding that its rhapsodic fiction is "now unreadable".
Noteworthy for its format, the book comprises a philosophical work of fiction whose style often lightheartedly imitates that of the New Testament and of the Platonic dialogues, at times resembling pre-Socratic works in tone and in its use of natural phenomena as rhetorical and explanatory devices. It also features frequent references to the Western literary and philosophical traditions, implicitly offering an interpretation of these traditions and of their problems. Nietzsche achieves all of this through the character of Zarathustra (referring to the traditional prophet of Zoroastrianism), who makes speeches on philosophic topics as he moves along a loose plotline marking his development and the reception of his ideas. One can view this characteristic (following the genre of the bildungsroman) as an inline commentary on Zarathustra's (and Nietzsche's) philosophy. All this, along with the book's ambiguity and paradoxical nature, has helped its eventual enthusiastic reception by the reading public, but has frustrated academic attempts at analysis (as Nietzsche may have intended). Thus Spoke Zarathustra remained unpopular as a topic for scholars (especially those in the Anglo-American analytic tradition) until the second half of the twentieth century brought widespread interest in Nietzsche and his unconventional style that does not distinguish between philosophy and literature. It offers formulations of eternal recurrence, and Nietzsche for the first time speaks of the Übermensch: themes that would dominate his books from this point onwards.
A vulnerability of Nietzsche's style is that his nuances and shades of meaning are very easily lost — and all too easily gained — in translation. The Übermensch is particularly problematic: the equivalent "Superman" found in dictionaries and in the translations by Thomas Common and R.J. Hollingdale may create an unfortunate association with the heroic comic-character "Superman", while simultaneously detracting from Nietzsche's repeated play on "über" as well as losing the gender-neutrality of the German.
The "Übermensch" is the being that overcomes the "great nausea" associated with nihilism; that overcomes that most "abysmal" realization of the eternal return. He is the being that "sails over morality", and that dances over gravity (the "spirit of gravity" is Zarathustra's devil and archenemy). He is a "harvester" and a "celebrant" who endlessly affirms his existence, thereby becoming the transfigurer of his consciousness and life, aesthetically. He is initially a destructive force, excising and annihilating the insidious "truths" of the herd, and consequently reclaiming the chaos from which pure creativity is born. It is this creative force exemplified by the Übermensch that justifies suffering without displacing it in some "afterworld".
Translations
The English translations of Zarathustra differ according to the sentiments of the translators. The Thomas Common translation favors a classic English approach, in the style of Shakespeare or the King James Version of the Bible. Common's poetic interpretation of the text, which renders the title Thus Spake Zarathustra, received wide acclaim for its lambent portrayal. Common reasoned that because the original German was written in a pseudo-Luther-Biblical style, a pseudo-King-James-Biblical style would be fitting in the English translation.
The Common translation, which improved on Alexander Tille's earlier attempt, remained widely accepted until the more critical translations, titled Thus Spoke Zarathustra, separately by R.J. Hollingdale and Walter Kaufmann, which are considered to convey more accurately the German text than the Common version. Kaufmann's introduction to his own translation included a blistering critique of Common's version; he notes that in one instance, Common has taken the German "most evil" and rendered it "baddest", a particularly unfortunate error not merely for his having coined the term "baddest", but also because Nietzsche dedicated a third of The Genealogy of Morals to the difference between "bad" and "evil". This and other errors led Kaufmann to wondering if Common "had little German and less English". The translations of Kaufmann and Hollingdale render the text in a far more familiar, less archaic, style of language, than that of Common.
Clancy Martin's 2005 translation opens with criticism and praise for these three seminal translators, Common, Hollingdale, and Kaufmann. He notes that the German text available to Common was considerably flawed, and that the German text from which Hollingdale and Kaufmann worked was itself untrue to Nietzsche's own work in some ways. Martin criticizes Kaufmann for changing punctuation, altering literal and philosophical meanings, and dampening some of Nietzsche's more controversial metaphors. Kaufmann's version, which has become the most widely available, features a translator's note suggesting that Nietzsche's text would have benefited from an editor; Martin suggests that Kaufmann "took it upon himself to become his editor".
Graham Parkes describes his own 2005 translation as trying "above all to convey the musicality of the text (which was not a priority for Walter Kaufmann or R.J. Hollingdale, authors of the best English translations so far)."
Musical adaptation
The book inspired Richard Strauss to compose the tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra, which he designated "freely based on Friedrich Nietzsche." Zarathustra's Roundelay is set as part of Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony (1895-6), originally under the title What Man Tells Me, or alternatively What the Night tells me (of Man). Frederick Delius based his major choral-orchestral work A Mass of Life (1904-5) on texts from Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The work ends with a setting of Zarathustra's Roundelay which Delius had composed earlier, in 1898, as a separate work. Carl Orff also composed a three-movement setting of part of Nietzsche's text as a teenager, but this work remains unpublished.
Editions of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
* 1st - 1909 - (limited to 2,000)
* 2nd - 1911 - (limited to 1,500)
* 3rd - 1914 - (limited to 2,000)
* 4th - 1916 - (limited to 2,000) of Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None translated by Thomas Common, published by the MacMillan Company in 1916, printed in Great Britain by The Darwien Press of Edinburgh.
* Also sprach Zarathustra, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (study edition of the standard German Nietzsche edition)
* Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by Walter Kaufmann, New York: Random House; reprinted in The Portable Nietzsche, New York: The Viking Press, 1954 and Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976
* Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by R. J. Hollingdale, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961
* Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by Graham Parkes, Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 2005
* Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by Adrian del Caro and edited by Robert Pippin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006
Commentaries on Thus Spoke Zarathustra
* Gustav Naumann 1899-1901 Zarathustra-Commentar, 4 volumes. Leipzig : Haessel
* Higgins, Kathleen. 1990. Nietzsche's Zarathustra. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
* Lampert, Laurence. 1989. Nietzsche's Teaching: An Interpretation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. New Haven: Yale University Press.
* Rosen, Stanley. 2004. The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche's Zarathustra. New Haven: Yale University Press.
* Seung, T. K. 2005. Nietzsche's Epic of the Soul: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Introduction to Thus Spoke Zarathustra
* Rüdiger Schmidt Nietzsche für Anfänger: Also sprach Zarathustra - Eine Lese-Einführung (introduction in German to the work)
Essay collections on Thus Spoke Zarathustra
* Essays on Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Before Sunrise, edited by James Luchte, London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2008. ISBN 1847062210
1789年生于但泽(Danzig)的叔本华从小孤僻，傲慢，喜怒无常，并带点神经质。叔本华早年在英国和法国接受教育，能够流利使用英语、意大利语、西班牙语等多种欧洲语言和拉丁语等古代语言。他最初被迫选择经商以继承父业，在父亲死后他才得以进入大学。1809年他进入哥廷根大学攻读医学，但把兴趣转移到了哲学，并在1811年于柏林学习一段时间。在那里他对费希特和施莱艾尔马赫产生了浓厚的兴趣。他以《论充足理由律的四重根》获得了博士学位。歌德对此文非常赞赏，同时发现了叔本华的悲观主义倾向，告诫说：如果你爱自己的价值，那就给世界更多的价值吧。他称柏拉图为神明般的，康德为奇迹般的，对这两人的思想相当崇敬。但厌恶后来费希特，黑格尔代表的思辨哲学。
他对自己的哲学也极为自负，声称是一种全新的哲学方法，会震撼整个欧洲思想界。然而他的著作却常常受人冷落。在柏林大学任教时，他试图和黑格尔在讲台上一决高低，结果黑格尔的讲座常常爆满，而听他讲课的学生却从来没有超出过三人。于是叔本华带着一种愤遭的心情离开了大学的讲坛。叔本华与黑格尔的对抗实际上是两种哲学倾向之间的较量。他失败了。因为他不属于那个时代。用叔本华自己的话说，他的书是为后人写的。事实也是如此：到了晚年，时代才和他走到了一起，他终于享受到了期待了一生的荣誉。
他对自己的哲学也极为自负，声称是一种全新的哲学方法，会震撼整个欧洲思想界。然而他的著作却常常受人冷落。在柏林大学任教时，他试图和黑格尔在讲台上一决高低，结果黑格尔的讲座常常爆满，而听他讲课的学生却从来没有超出过三人。于是叔本华带着一种愤遭的心情离开了大学的讲坛。叔本华与黑格尔的对抗实际上是两种哲学倾向之间的较量。他失败了。因为他不属于那个时代。用叔本华自己的话说，他的书是为后人写的。事实也是如此：到了晚年，时代才和他走到了一起，他终于享受到了期待了一生的荣誉。
林猹 主编
编者前言
后改革中国与商鞅（序言）
天将降大任于斯人（代跋）
卷一 交锋后的中国
>>第一章 历史赋予的机遇
>>第二章 重提商鞅
卷二 再现革命之精神
>>第三章 回首一望，遍地鲜花
>>第四章 大方略
>>第五章 奠基百年
卷三 为了中华之崛起
>>第六章 未来之路
天将降大任于斯人（代跋）
返回上页
编者前言
后改革中国与商鞅（序言）
天将降大任于斯人（代跋）
卷一 交锋后的中国
>>第一章 历史赋予的机遇
>>第二章 重提商鞅
卷二 再现革命之精神
>>第三章 回首一望，遍地鲜花
>>第四章 大方略
>>第五章 奠基百年
卷三 为了中华之崛起
>>第六章 未来之路
天将降大任于斯人（代跋）
返回上页
《智慧书--永恒的处世经典》这本书谈的是知人观事、判断、行动的策略--使人在这个世界上功成名就且臻于完美的策略。全书由三百则箴言警句构成，这些箴言警句滋味绝佳而不可不与友朋同事分享共赏，又鞭辟入里而不能不蒙敌人对手于鼓里。
巴尔塔沙·葛拉西安（1601一1658），一个满怀入世热忱的那稣会教士，对人类的愚行深恶痛绝。但《智慧书 --永恒的处世经典》全书极言人有臻于完美的可能，并云只要佐以技巧，善必胜恶。在《智慧书--永恒的处世经典》中，完美并不靠宗教上的启示（全书罕言上帝），而取决于人的资源与勤奋：警觉、自制、有自知之明及其余明慎之道。
巴尔塔沙·葛拉西安（1601一1658），一个满怀入世热忱的那稣会教士，对人类的愚行深恶痛绝。但《智慧书 --永恒的处世经典》全书极言人有臻于完美的可能，并云只要佐以技巧，善必胜恶。在《智慧书--永恒的处世经典》中，完美并不靠宗教上的启示（全书罕言上帝），而取决于人的资源与勤奋：警觉、自制、有自知之明及其余明慎之道。