Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography

CHAPTER 12

Setting the Stage

for The Will to Power

Reprise of Zarathustra · So light, and yet so weighty · The

will to love and the will to power · Early stages and devel-

opment · Violence and the cosmic game · The unsolved

problem: self-enhancement and solidarity · Byways on the

path to the unwritten magnum opus: Beyond Good and Evil

and On the Genealogy of Morals

ZARATHUSTRA IS NO Τ just preaching to others; he must also
convince himself. Nietzsche stated unequivocally in his notebooks that
a teacher can "incorporate" his own doctrine only by teaching it.
Zarathustra's conversation with the dwarf, however, conveys the impres-
sion that Zarathustra does not succeed in clarifying his doctrine of eter-
nal recurrence. His ideas remain abstract, inciting the dwarf's "scornful"
rejoinders.
Did Nietzsche write a fourth Zarathustra book in eady 1885 because
he found that he had not really expressed the crux of the matter in the
eadier sections, even though he was convinced after writing the third book
that his work on Zarathustra was complete? After the fourth book, he did
not feel that he could put Zarathustra behind him. He may have disen-
gaged himself from the character, but not from the doctrines for which
Zarathustra served as the "mouthpiece." Nietzsche continued to work on

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