This study, first published in 1998, makes a lively and welcome contribution to the critical analysis of Nietzsche’s seminal classic This Spoke Zarathustra. Through a close textual reading of the neglected and ill-understood part four of the text, the author seeks to show that Nietzsche’s project of self-overcoming is a failure. Offering herself as a philosopher-priestess of the wisdom of pessimism, Francesca Cauchi invokes a complex of responses in the reader, providing a necessary challenge to any and all advocates of life.
The Fall: The Parable of the Ropedancer 1. Realism versus Idealism 2. Ropedancer as Buffoon Convalescence: The Eagle and the Serpent 3. Cunning Reason and Proud Imagination 4. Physicians as Metaphysicians Pilgrimage: The Higher Men and Zarathustra’s Shadow 5. The Art of Self-Overcoming 6. The Decadence of Modernity 7. The Decadence of Christianity Apotheosis: The Tragic Buffoon 8. Ignoble Lies and Insolent Truths
