Key Arguments

• He lists the reigning prescriptions: submission, acquiescence, cleverness, industry, considerateness, and a litany of small virtues.
• He attributes this ascendancy to what is ‘of the female kind,’ ‘menial’s kind,’ and especially the ‘mob mish-mash,’ signaling the leveling, servile character of the ruling ethos.
• He identifies their central, incessant question as self-preservation ‘best, longest, most comfortably,’ which grants them present lordship.
• He urges overcoming these ‘lords of today’ because they are the greatest danger to the Overhuman.

Source Quotes

For you have not learned how to submit; you have not learned the little clevernesses. For today the little people have become lord and master: they all preach submission and acquiescence and cleverness and industry and considerateness and the long and-so-forth of the small virtues. Whatever is of the female kind, whatever comes from the menial’s kind and especially the mob mish-mash: would now become lord of all human fate– oh disgust! disgust! disgust! is what asks and asks and never tires: ‘How does the human preserve itself, best, longest, most comfortably?’

For today the little people have become lord and master: they all preach submission and acquiescence and cleverness and industry and considerateness and the long and-so-forth of the small virtues. Whatever is of the female kind, whatever comes from the menial’s kind and especially the mob mish-mash: would now become lord of all human fate– oh disgust! disgust! disgust! is what asks and asks and never tires: ‘How does the human preserve itself, best, longest, most comfortably?’ With that– they are the lords of today.

For today the little people have become lord and master: they all preach submission and acquiescence and cleverness and industry and considerateness and the long and-so-forth of the small virtues. Whatever is of the female kind, whatever comes from the menial’s kind and especially the mob mish-mash: would now become lord of all human fate– oh disgust! disgust! disgust! is what asks and asks and never tires: ‘How does the human preserve itself, best, longest, most comfortably?’ With that– they are the lords of today. Overcome for me these lords of today, O my brothers– these little people: are the Overhuman’s greatest danger!

With that– they are the lords of today. Overcome for me these lords of today, O my brothers– these little people: are the Overhuman’s greatest danger! Overcome for me, you superior humans, the little virtues, the little clevernesses, the grain-of-sand considerations, the ant-like irritations, the pitiful comforts, the ‘happiness of the greatest number’– !

Key Concepts

• For today the little people have become lord and master: they all preach submission and acquiescence and cleverness and industry and considerateness and the long and-so-forth of the small virtues.
• Whatever is of the female kind, whatever comes from the menial’s kind and especially the mob mish-mash: would now become lord of all human fate– oh disgust! disgust! disgust!
• is what asks and asks and never tires: ‘How does the human preserve itself, best, longest, most comfortably?’ With that– they are the lords of today.
• are the Overhuman’s greatest danger!

Context

Zarathustra polemicizes against contemporary moral-political dominance of herd values, depicting their program as preservationist-small-virtue morality hostile to rank and creation.

Perspectives

Nietzsche

Affirms the critique as a genealogy of modern morality (utilitarianism, social-democratic herd ethics) that enthrones safety and comfort, stifling higher creation.

Zarathustra

Rallies his audience to active overcoming of the ‘little people’ and their ethos; disgust functions as a spur to revaluation.