Key Arguments

• He frames nobility as productive and forward-looking: 'progenitors and cultivators and sowers of the future'.
• He repudiates purchasable status and price-based value, implying true nobility is beyond exchange and cannot be commodified.
• He shifts honor from origin to destination: honor should be determined by where one is going, not where one comes from.
• He emphasizes will and movement beyond oneself ('your foot, which wills beyond you yourselves') as the criterion of honor.
• He dismisses service to princes and buttressing existing orders as worthless measures of nobility.
• He rejects courtly posture and static display ('to stand ... to sit') as counterfeit virtues of nobility.
• He rejects holy-lineage justifications and crusading pedigrees tied to the Cross as ignoble and unworthy.

Source Quotes

12 O my brothers, I dedicate and direct you to a new nobility: you shall become for me progenitors and cultivators and sowers of the future– – verily, not to a nobility that you could buy like shopkeepers and with shopkeepers’ gold: for of little value is anything that has its price. Not whence you come shall henceforth constitute your honour, but whither you are going!

12 O my brothers, I dedicate and direct you to a new nobility: you shall become for me progenitors and cultivators and sowers of the future– – verily, not to a nobility that you could buy like shopkeepers and with shopkeepers’ gold: for of little value is anything that has its price. Not whence you come shall henceforth constitute your honour, but whither you are going! Your will and your foot, which wills beyond you yourselves– may those constitute your new honour!

Not whence you come shall henceforth constitute your honour, but whither you are going! Your will and your foot, which wills beyond you yourselves– may those constitute your new honour! Verily, not that you have served some prince– what are princes worth now!– or that you have become a bulwark for that which stands, that it might stand more firmly!

Your will and your foot, which wills beyond you yourselves– may those constitute your new honour! Verily, not that you have served some prince– what are princes worth now!– or that you have become a bulwark for that which stands, that it might stand more firmly! Not that your lineage has become courtly in courts, and you have learned to stand, colourfully, like a flamingo, for long hours in shallow ponds.

Not that your lineage has become courtly in courts, and you have learned to stand, colourfully, like a flamingo, for long hours in shallow ponds. For to stand is a merit in a courtier; and all courtiers believe that bliss after death consists in– to sit!– Also not that a spirit they call holy led your ancestors to much-praised lands that praise not: for where the worst of all trees grew, the Cross– about that land there is nothing to praise!– – and verily, wherever this ‘Holy Spirit’ led its knights too, in such crusades there were always goats and geese and criss- and crosspatches – O my brothers, not back shall your nobility look, but Refugees shall you be from all father-and forefather-lands! Your you shall love: may this love be your new nobility– the undiscovered land, in the farthest sea!

Key Concepts

• O my brothers, I dedicate and direct you to a new nobility: you shall become for me progenitors and cultivators and sowers of the future–
• – verily, not to a nobility that you could buy like shopkeepers and with shopkeepers’ gold: for of little value is anything that has its price.
• Not whence you come shall henceforth constitute your honour, but whither you are going!
• Your will and your foot, which wills beyond you yourselves– may those constitute your new honour!
• Verily, not that you have served some prince– what are princes worth now!– or that you have become a bulwark for that which stands, that it might stand more firmly!
• For to stand is a merit in a courtier; and all courtiers believe that bliss after death consists in– to sit!–
• Also not that a spirit they call holy led your ancestors to much-praised lands that praise not: for where the worst of all trees grew, the Cross– about that land there is nothing to praise!–

Context

Opening of section 12 (lines 3842–3861): Zarathustra redefines 'nobility' against inherited, purchasable, courtly, and priestly criteria, and orients it toward future-creation.

Perspectives

Nietzsche

Endorses: this articulates revaluation of aristocratic values as future-creating rank (Rangordnung) rather than birth or price; aligns with the critique of herd, court, and priestly ideals and the affirmation of will to power as forward-going creation.

Zarathustra

Commands his brothers to embody a creator’s nobility: not inherited titles or service to princes, but willful going-beyond and sowing new values for the future.