thus stands Zarahustra

thus still stands Zarahustra

by Lea Celik Sommerseth Shaw

It was just times like this, inflation, segregation, stigmatization that led to twilight and brink in to the wars. Nietzsche tried first to enlighten people through different methods, the theogical approach was not a coincidence, yet he was a philosopher and not theologist after all

The historical Zarathustra, founder of Zoroastrianism, had moralized the cosmos. He made the universe ethically intelligible. Good and evil were no longer arbitrary. Human beings participated in a divine drama.

The metaphysical foundation of morality has eroded, yet humanity still clings to inherited values like scaffolding without walls. The result is nihilism.And nihilism is not destruction; it is exhaustion.

Nietzsche understood that when the transcendent collapses, two dangers emerge: despair and conformity. Either one sinks into meaninglessness, or one retreats into herd morality, borrowed convictions, inherited virtue, passive obedience.

Against this, Zarathustra proposes the Zarahustra teaching on how to become an overhuman, and thats not a ruler of others, its is a creator of values. He does not depend on divine command, nor does he collapse into moral vacuum. He accepts the terrifying freedom of authorship.

This is Nietzsche’s audacity: he replaces obedience with creation.The mountain in Thus Spoke Zarathustra is symbolic. The solitude is necessary. Only in isolation can one confront the absence of ultimate authority. But the prophet does not remain in isolation. He descends.

Descent is responsibility. And yet, the crowd misunderstands him. They prefer comfort to transformation. Nietzsche knew this. His Zarathustra is tragic because he speaks ahead of his time.

Where the ancient prophet promised final restoration of the cosmos, Nietzsche offers no cosmic guarantee. There is no final judgment. No ultimate reconciliation. Only the demand to affirm life, even suffering.

This is why the book reads like scripture but undermines scripture. It echoes sacred cadence while dissolving sacred certainty. Nietzsche did not destroy morality, he reset the lost moral order.

Nietzsche understood that the historical Zarathustra had introduced a powerful moral dualism into the structure of Western religious imagination. Good versus evil became metaphysical reality.

This is not atheistic celebration. It is diagnosis. The metaphysical foundation of European morality had eroded. Science, secularism, and rationalism had hollowed out belief, yet moral structures remained.

Historically, Zarathustra shaped Western religious imagination, influencing Jewish, Christian, and Islamic eschatology through concepts of judgment, heaven, hell, and cosmic struggle.

Nietzsche wanted to save humanity from wars, and sought to dismantle that metaphysical scaffolding of moral decay, just before the twilight, thus wrote Niezsche

Lea Celik Sommerseth Shaw

17 February 2026 Saint Germain Des Pres