Key Arguments

• He explicitly defines society as an ‘experiment’ and a ‘lengthy searching,’ giving it a dynamic, exploratory character.
• He specifies the telos: ‘the search is for commanders!,’ centering society on discovering those fit to rule.
• He rejects social-contract theory by contrasting experiment with ‘a “contract”!’ implying that contractual fictions misconstrue society’s essence.

Source Quotes

Who can command, who must obey– Ah, with what lengthy searching and guessing and failing and learning and experimenting anew! Human society: this is an experiment, thus I teach– a lengthy searching: but the search is for commanders!– – an experiment, O my brothers! And a ‘contract’!

Who can command, who must obey– Ah, with what lengthy searching and guessing and failing and learning and experimenting anew! Human society: this is an experiment, thus I teach– a lengthy searching: but the search is for commanders!– – an experiment, O my brothers! And a ‘contract’!

Human society: this is an experiment, thus I teach– a lengthy searching: but the search is for commanders!– – an experiment, O my brothers! And a ‘contract’!

Key Concepts

• Human society: this is an experiment, thus I teach– a lengthy searching: but the search is for commanders!–
• – an experiment, O my brothers! And
• a ‘contract’!

Context

Programmatic claim concluding the passage: a direct polemic against contractarian models, replacing them with an aristocratic-experimental view.

Perspectives

Nietzsche

Strong agreement: repudiates Rousseauian contract; society is a dynamic field of will-to-power and rank selection aimed at producing commanders.

Zarathustra

Teaches his brothers to treat social life as a laboratory to find rulers; contracts are herd fictions that obscure the experimental search for rank.