Key Arguments

• He identifies revenge as their core motive: 'Revenge sits within your soul: wherever you bite, there grow black scabs; with revenge your poison makes the soul whirl round!'
• They hide vengeance behind the noble word 'justice': 'your revenge jump out from behind your word ‘justice’.'
• They redefine virtue as equality to legitimize their resentment: 'And “will to equality”–just that shall henceforth be the name for virtue; and against all that has power we will raise our outcry!'
• Their 'justice' desires storms of revenge, not balance or order: 'This precisely is what justice is for us, that the world be filled with the storms of our revenge'.
• Their psychology stems from 'soured arrogance' and 'repressed envy'—even inherited: 'Soured arrogance, repressed envy, perhaps the arrogance and envy of your fathers: they burst forth from you as flames and the madness of revenge.'
• They become 'judges' to enjoy punishing: 'to be judges seems to them the highest bliss.'
• They even pursue 'thinkers’ paths' out of jealousy, overreaching until exhaustion: 'this is the real mark of their jealousy–they always go too far: so that their weariness at last has to lie down to sleep, even on snow.'
• They once were 'world-slanderers and heretic-burners,' showing their punitive lineage: 'they themselves were formerly the best world-slanderers and heretic-burners.'

Source Quotes

Your triangle and omen sits black upon your back; and I know too what sits within your soul. Revenge sits within your soul: wherever you bite, there grow black scabs; with revenge your poison makes the soul whirl round! Thus I talk to you in a parable, you who make people’s souls whirl round, you preachers of Tarantulas you are to me, and hidden vengeance-seekers!

But now I want to bring your hiding-places to light: therefore I laugh in your visages my laughter of the heights. Therefore I rake your webs, that your rage might bring you out of your holes of lies, and your revenge jump out from behind your word ‘justice’. For : that is for me the bridge to the highest hope and a rainbow after lasting storms.

‘Revenge we will practise and defamation of all who are not the same as us’–thus the tarantula-hearts vow to themselves. ‘And “will to equality”–just that shall henceforth be the name for virtue; and against all that has power we will raise our outcry!’ You preachers of equality, the tyrants’ madness of impotence cries out of you thus for ‘equality’: your most secret tyrants’ desires disguise themselves thus in words of virtue!

But of course the tarantulas want it otherwise. ‘This precisely is what justice is for us, that the world be filled with the storms of our revenge’–thus they talk among themselves. ‘Revenge we will practise and defamation of all who are not the same as us’–thus the tarantula-hearts vow to themselves.

You preachers of equality, the tyrants’ madness of impotence cries out of you thus for ‘equality’: your most secret tyrants’ desires disguise themselves thus in words of virtue! Soured arrogance, repressed envy, perhaps the arrogance and envy of your fathers: they burst forth from you as flames and the madness of revenge. What the father kept silent, that comes in the son to be spoken; and often I found the son to be the father’s unveiled secret.

Their jealousy even leads them onto thinkers’ paths; and this is the real mark of their jealousy–they always go too far: so that their weariness at last has to lie down to sleep, even on snow. From each of their complaints sounds revenge, in their every eulogy is an infliction of pain; and to be judges seems to them the highest bliss. Thus, however, I counsel you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the drive to punish is powerful!

Key Concepts

• Revenge sits within your soul: wherever you bite, there grow black scabs; with revenge your poison makes the soul whirl round!
• your revenge jump out from behind your word ‘justice’.
• ‘And “will to equality”–just that shall henceforth be the name for virtue; and against all that has power we will raise our outcry!’
• ‘This precisely is what justice is for us, that the world be filled with the storms of our revenge’–thus they talk among themselves.
• Soured arrogance, repressed envy, perhaps the arrogance and envy of your fathers: they burst forth from you as flames and the madness of revenge.
• From each of their complaints sounds revenge, in their every eulogy is an infliction of pain; and to be judges seems to them the highest bliss.

Context

Opening invective of 'On the Tarantulas': Zarathustra exposes the hidden motives of egalitarian preachers by drawing them out of their 'holes' and 'webs,' unmasking 'justice' as revenge.

Perspectives

Nietzsche

Strong agreement: this is a genealogical diagnosis of egalitarian moralities as expressions of ressentiment and the will to punish; 'justice' serves reactive leveling and hidden will to power.

Zarathustra

He denounces the tarantulas and seeks to expose their hiding places; he separates his teaching from theirs and treats their 'justice' as a vengeful masquerade.