Key Arguments

• He identifies a type—‘preachers of death’—whose doctrine is anti-life and notes their widespread audience.
• He claims the earth is ‘full of the superfluous’ and that life is corrupted by ‘the all too many,’ implying social conditions fertile for death-preaching.
• He suggests redirecting such people with promises like ‘eternal life’ to lure them away from earthly life.

Source Quotes

There are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom rejection of life must be preached. Full is the earth of the superfluous; corrupted is life by the all too many.

There are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom rejection of life must be preached. Full is the earth of the superfluous; corrupted is life by the all too many. Let one use ‘eternal life’ to lure them away from this life!

Full is the earth of the superfluous; corrupted is life by the all too many. Let one use ‘eternal life’ to lure them away from this life! ‘Yellow ones’: this is the name for the preachers of death, or ‘black ones’.

Key Concepts

• There are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom rejection of life must be preached.
• Full is the earth of the superfluous; corrupted is life by the all too many.
• Let one use ‘eternal life’ to lure them away from this life!

Context

Opening thesis and diagnostic frame of ‘On the Preachers of Death’: Zarathustra names a preaching type and a mass of the ‘superfluous’ susceptible to anti-life doctrine.

Perspectives

Nietzsche

Agrees: identifies a décadent type and a mass culture in which life-denying values thrive; sees this as a symptom of herd morality and exhaustion.

Zarathustra

Sets the polemical target and strategy: expose and, if possible, hasten the exit of life-deniers rather than reform them.