FYI

How many of you guys actually know the prophet Zarathustra that Nietzsche chose to name the protagonist of his famous book after?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroaster

Pretty interesting.

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youtube.com/watch?v=LWwf4wdBmpg
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kys

>T. 14 year-old.

woah...

It's all because you didn't start with Sumerians.

All of us idiot

Wow thanks op TIL. Also did you know that neetchee was actually not a racist, it was just his sister all along so he is all good to read (or just watch the school of life episode about him).

I think the School of Life only did one vid on him. Shame. I really expand knowledge when watch them talk to me

Well you guys aren't very supportive, plus I am certain most of you are faking you knew this.

ama about nietzsche. i'll give short answers.

Was he a nihilist?

Was he gay? Did he die lonely and bitter?

kek.

Oh, man. You're so out of the loop. Nietzsche is pretty much the endgame of philosophy; you have to do everything before him first - especially the Greeks.

You might find this "interesting": youtube.com/watch?v=LWwf4wdBmpg

>he read a translation of the Vedas

first half-good bait on this board in 48 hours

Complete opposite. It's only if you think norms need an objective reality beyond the man in order to be legitimate that you can think of him as a nihilist.

No. Yes.

Zoroaster is a curious figure, but Alexander the Great slaughtered the old priesthood when he invaded Persia – theirs tradition was primarily an oral one, so the only genuine fragments we have left from the time is the Gathas: the majority of the Zend Avesta is the byproduct of the Sassanid revival, composed some time during the reign of Khosrau I.

Zoroastrianism was indeed influental, not only on the formation of the Abrahamic religions, but also on the Vedic. Very interesting links between the two, if you're up for some comparative study.

I'm getting Thus Spoke Zarathustra when my paycheck hits. Some folks fancy that this is a bad start, but I'm used to and have a flair for dense and cryptic material. I'm trying to keep Nietzsche to a minimum, since my shelf is stacked with unread books – which of his works should I supplement with, and of his predecessors, who is he closest to in spirit?

>Alexander the Great slaughtered the old priesthood when he invaded Persia

you're thinking of the Brahmins in India senpai

Zoroastrianism wasn't a secret you brainlet

>The heritage of the Sasanian period includes two widely divergent storylines about Alexander, both of which were presumably transmitted by Zoroastrians and can therefore be labelled “Zoroastrian.” One of these, which portrays Alexander in a positive light and is continued in the later Persian Alexander Romances, is discussed elsewhere (see ESKANDAR-NĀMA). This tradition appears to be at least partly of non-Iranian origin, but had clearly become fully integrated into the storytelling tradition of the Sasanian Zoroastrians.

>It may be typical of the still predominantly oral character of Sasanian culture that different and indeed contradictory traditions continued to be transmitted on the same subject. The second storyline on Alexander, describing him as the “accursed” (gizistag) wrecker of the Zoroastrian tradition, figures prominently in works reflecting the views of the Sasanian court and priesthood. It is found both in religious literature and in semi-secular sources likely to have been inspired by court circles.

>A full version of the second storyline is found in the Ardāy Wirāz Nāmag (1.1-7; text: Vahman, 1985, pp. 76 f.; tr. Bailey, 1943, pp. 151-52, and Gnoli, p. 137): “Once Zarathustra had received the religion it was propagated in the world until 300 years were completed. Then the accursed, wicked Evil Spirit deluded the accursed Alexander the Roman (i.e., Byzantine), who lived in Egypt, in order to cause the people to have doubt about this religion; and he came to the land of Iran with great destruction, strife, and trouble. He killed the ruler of Iran and destroyed the court and sovereignty, and ruined them. And this religious tradition (dēn), the entire Avesta and Zand as it was written on adorned ox-hides in golden ink, had been placed in Pābak’s (city of) Istaxr in the Fortress of Archives (diž ī nipišt). That ill-omened adversary, the wicked, evil-doing heretic Alexander the Roman, who lived in Egypt, carried them off and burnt them. And he slew some of the religious authorities (dastwarān), judges, hērbeds, mōbeds, religious leaders, and able and wise people of the land of Iran. ... Since they (the Iranians) had no rulers, chiefs, leaders, or judges who knew the religion, and they were doubtful about things connected with the Divine Beings, many types of sects, beliefs, heresy, doubt, and disagreement came into being in the world.”

iranicaonline.org/articles/alexander-the-great-ii

That source is completely bunk. There is no record of Alexander (the Roman?) slaughtering Persian priests. The only Persian priests he persecuted were the ones left in charge of the tomb of Cyrus, which was desecrated on their watch. Even these he did not kill, but interrogated and let go.

Alexander did not kill the Shah of Iran (Darius III). Darius was betrayed by another chieftain named Bessus, who had him captured and put in fetters. With Alexander hard on their heels, Darius refused to mount a horse, and Bessus had him speared. Alexander arrived after he was dead, and threw his own cloak on the body. Darius was afterwards give a state funeral with such honors as befitted a Great King of Persia.

Alexander was famous for his tolerance of other faiths, which is what won him admission into Egypt and Babylon without a single scuffle.

The Brahmins were hanged for inciting holy war against his forces in India.

Sorry you decided to make your first post on Veeky Forums something retarded.

We are not your support circle and this is not your safe space >>

Start with Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. There Nietzsche tries to understand what makes a genuine philosopher. Pay attention to what he says serves as the impetus for all great philosophy, and then what they attempted to achieve with their philosophy (it wasn't truth), and then read Z with the understanding that this is the product of a man who is trying to do what he understood those tragic age philosophers were trying to do. To cut to the chase, as with Plato [and this should answer your second question, even though Plato is not one of the tragic age philosophers he talks about in taht first book] Nietzsche understands the genuine philosopher, himself and Zarathustra, as a cultural physician.

A cultural physician diagnoses the problem, and prescribes a cure. The cure is ideas, and more specifically an ideal. The point of Z is to erect a new ideal, a new goal on top of the 1000 which have hitherto flourished in Europe, and that goal is Z himself, just as with Plato, the goal, the new ideal, was Socrates.

>Become like Socrates. This is the healthy man. Behold! Your new ideal. Ecce Homo.
That is the cure that Plato, the cultural physician, provides his patient. Nietzsche does the same with Zarathustra, who is supposed to low key be himself, just like Plato's Socrates is nothing more than “Plato at the front, Plato at the back, Chimaera in the middle.”

His Ecce Homo should be read in the same light, except its a sober presentation of the convalescent, i.e., the once sick man, sick from the illness of society, who has cured himself, and now presents himself to the world as its new ideal, new goal.

>plus I am certain most of you are faking you knew this
There's nothing more annoying than an idiot confidently projecting his stupidity on you.

I said I'd give short answers, but I'll say this as well.

The philosopher for Nietzsche, and he fashions himself one, is like a canary in the coal mine, in the sense that he suffers the sickness that will soon befall everyone else first, and most deeply. Unlike other sensitive souls, however, the philosopher heals himself. He finds a way to be healthy again, and this usually involves constructing an entirely new world outlook complete with new estimations, i.e., new values, of things within that world.

Buddha, for instance, was just the first Hindu to experience the sickness that would befall many among them, but he constructed a new worldview, a new lifeworld within which he COULD make sense of suffering and death and generally the human condition--and he could not reconcile these things within the old hindu lifeworld (THAT is the sickness that befalls a culture, i.e., when it can no longer reconciles the human condition within an existing lifeworld...remember that god is dead in this one, etc.., etc., and that's why were sick...). So, the Budha feels the sickness before anyone else, and he heals himself, this new convalescent, and then presents himself as the new ideal. Be like Budha if you suffer like he did, and many did suffer as he did eventually, and so many did follow his example.

That is what Nietzsche is trying to do with his overall works, and specifically with his Zarathustra.

Also keep in mind the true meaning of the "speaking" in Thus SPOKE Zarathustra. Speaking as in the story of Z, as in the logos of Z, as in, to be concise here, the lifeworld of Zarathustra.

This is why I come here – the occasional glimpse of a well thought out quality post. Excellent through and through. Thanks.

As it says in the beginning, there are different accounts.

Out of curiosity, what is your take on the legends surrounding Alexander, Dandamis and Kalanos?

Not familiar with Dandamis, the whole dialog sounds apocryphal. Kalanus' relationship with the king was well documented and interesting. The story of him telling Alexander he would see him again in Babylon is fantastic and yet believable. All sources have them as close companions. The other priests that Kalanus was living with were angry with him for leaving to join Alexander.

I'm surprised this bait worked.

>worked
It didn't. People called OP an idiot and ignored him. If it actually worked, this thread would be at 250 with arguments everywhere and people taking up OP's position to help feed the fire. Quit being so easy to please with regards to baiting.