Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche

Reasoning

I found through various sources that it generally doesn't matter what order you read Nietzsche's books in because of his lack of a clear order or system in his writings, and that Thus Spoke Zarathustra was Nietzsche's most popular book, given to the German soldiers in WW1 alongside the Bible as inspirational reading. I felt that this would be a good starting point in my investigation into Nietzsche because, having read parts of the Bible in the past, it would be a good way to start comparing Nietzsche's teachings to those of Christianity.

What I Gained

It would be difficult to clarify what I gained from this book as I had nothing to measure it against. Primarily it gave me a unique opportunity in this module, to have a truly first-hand reading of the book, which can only assist the critical aspect of the project.

It particularly made clear the below two things:

1. The similarities between Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the Bible. It could therefore be argued that Thus Spoke Zarathustra is an alternate, anti-moral (although not necessarily immoral) Bible.
2. Zarathustra is a character representative of Nietzsche himself, and the 'story' (as it could possibly be interpreted as) of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is essentially Nietzsche writing up a fictitious account of how he saw society at the time and how it would've reacted to his teaching.  

Potentially useful quotes:

Next Steps

I found myself to be somewhat confused at times throughout the book, having only previously been introduced to the fact the Nietzsche criticised Christianity for being a religion of pity. However, I feel like this has put me in a good position to develop my own opinion of Nietzsche as my first impressions of him were my own rather than someone else's.

Because of this slight confusion I will be reading a book on Nietzsche rather than by him in order to gain a more rounded knowledge and understanding on him. A series that was suggested was the Routledge Critical Thinkers books. The book on Nietzsche in particularly is written by Dr Lee Spinks, a senior lecturer in English Language at the University of Edinburgh.