In arguing that Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a philosophical
explanation of the possibility of modernism--that is, of the possibility
of radical cultural change through the creation of new values--the
author shows that literary fiction can do the work of philosophy.
Nietzsche takes up the problem of modernism by inventing Zarathustra, a
self-styled cultural innovator who aspires to subvert the culture of
modernity (the repressive culture of the "last man") by creating new
values. By showing how Zarathustra can become a creator of new values,
notwithstanding the forces that hinder his will to innovate, Nietzsche
answers the skeptic who proclaims that new-values creation is
impossible. Zarathustra is a story of repeated clashes between
Zarathustra's avant-garde, modernist intentions and figures of doubt who
condemn those intentions.
Through a close reading of Zarathustra, the author reconstructs
Nietzsche's explanation of the possibility of modernism. Showing how
parody, irony, and plot organization frame that explanation, he also
demonstrates the central significance of Zarathustra's speeches on the
body and the will to power. The author argues that Nietzsche's critique
of the modern philosophy of the subject revises Kant's concept of the
dynamical sublime and makes allegorical use of the myth of Theseus,
Ariadne, and Dionysus. He also proposes an original interpretation of
the thought of eternal recurrence (according to Nietzsche, the
"fundamental conception" of Zarathustra). Breaking with conventional
Nietzsche scholarship, the author conceptualizes the thought not as a
theoretical or a practical doctrine that Nietzsche endorses, but as a
developing drama that Zarathustra performs.
