Key Arguments

• He identifies Zarathustra as one who divined 'how he feels who killed him– the murderer of God.'
• He claims the all-seeing gaze was intolerable because it exposed 'the depths and grounds of the human, all its veiled disgrace and ugliness.'
• He characterizes the deity’s pity as shamelessly invasive: 'He crawled into my filthiest corner.'
• He states a motive of revenge against the divine witness: 'on such a witness I wanted to take revenge– or else not live myself.'
• He concludes that a God who sees everything must die because humans cannot tolerate such surveillance.

Source Quotes

Hail to you, O Zarathustra, that you are standing again! ‘You divined, I know it well, how he feels who killed him– the murderer of God. Stay!

I know the axe that fells you. ‘But he– die: he saw with eyes that saw – he saw the depths and grounds of the human, all its veiled disgrace and ugliness. ‘His pitying knew no shame: he crawled into my filthiest corner.

‘But he– die: he saw with eyes that saw – he saw the depths and grounds of the human, all its veiled disgrace and ugliness. ‘His pitying knew no shame: he crawled into my filthiest corner. This most inquisitive, over-importunate, over-pitying creature had to die.

This most inquisitive, over-importunate, over-pitying creature had to die. ‘He saw always: on such a witness I wanted to take revenge– or else not live myself. ‘The God who saw everything, : this God had to die!

‘He saw always: on such a witness I wanted to take revenge– or else not live myself. ‘The God who saw everything, : this God had to die! The human cannot that such a witness should live.’ Thus spoke the ugliest man.

Key Concepts

• You divined, I know it well, how he feels who killed him– the murderer of God.
• he saw the depths and grounds of the human, all its veiled disgrace and ugliness.
• His pitying knew no shame: he crawled into my filthiest corner.
• He saw always: on such a witness I wanted to take revenge– or else not live myself.
• The God who saw everything, : this God had to die! The human cannot that such a witness should live.

Context

In the deathly valley 'Serpents’ Death,' the 'ugliest man' stops Zarathustra and reveals a riddle that he solves as the psychology of the 'murderer of God': the intolerable, shamelessly pitying, all-seeing witness provokes deicidal revenge.

Perspectives

Nietzsche

Endorses this as a psychological-genealogical dramatization of 'God is dead': the ascetic, omniscient moral gaze becomes unendurable to a humanity that seeks to protect its creative and dark depths; the motive is not atheistic deduction but ressentiment against surveillance and pity.

Zarathustra

Recognizes the truth of the motive and the deed; his brass-voiced accusation—revenge against the all-seeing witness—matches his critique of pity and priestly God. He keeps distance, chilled, affirming the epochal fact while refusing pity.