Key Arguments

• He claims to have led his disciples away from fables by teaching ‘The will is a creator.’
• He asks whether the will has unlearned revenge and become its own redeemer and joy-bringer.
• He presses for something ‘higher than any reconciliation’: a positive willing of the past, suggestively phrased as learning to will backwards and want back.
• This anticipates an ethic of affirmation that embraces the past as one’s own will.

Source Quotes

This, this is what is eternal in the punishment ‘existence’: that existence itself must eternally be deed and guilt again! ‘ “Unless the will should at last redeem itself and willing should become not-willing–” : but you know, my brothers, this fable-song of madness! ‘I led you away from such fable-songs when I taught you: “The will is a creator.” ‘All “It was” is a fragment, a riddle, a cruel coincidence–until the creating will says to it: “But thus I willed it!” ‘–Until the creating will says to it: “But thus do I will it!

Has the will been unharnessed yet from its own folly? ‘Has the will yet become its own redeemer and joy-bringer? Has it unlearned the spirit of revenge and all gnashing of teeth? ‘And who has taught it reconciliation with time, and something higher than any reconciliation?

Has it unlearned the spirit of revenge and all gnashing of teeth? ‘And who has taught it reconciliation with time, and something higher than any reconciliation? ‘Something higher than any reconciliation the will that is will to power must will–yet how shall this happen?

‘And who has taught it reconciliation with time, and something higher than any reconciliation? ‘Something higher than any reconciliation the will that is will to power must will–yet how shall this happen? Who has yet taught it to will backwards and want back as well?’ –But at this point in his speech it happened that Zarathustra suddenly fell silent and looked like one who is terrified in the extreme. With a terrified eye he looked at his disciples; his eye pierced their thoughts and the motives behind their thoughts as if with arrows.

Key Concepts

• I led you away from such fable-songs when I taught you: “The will is a creator.”
• Has the will yet become its own redeemer and joy-bringer? Has it unlearned the spirit of revenge and all gnashing of teeth?
• And who has taught it reconciliation with time, and something higher than any reconciliation?
• Something higher than any reconciliation the will that is will to power must will–yet how shall this happen? Who has yet taught it to will backwards and want back as well?

Context

Zarathustra pushes beyond mere peace with time to a stronger doctrine: the will to power must affirm the past itself; the speech breaks off at this climactic question.

Perspectives

Nietzsche

Signals the approach to amor fati and eternal recurrence as the supreme test of affirmation: willing the past as one’s deed.

Zarathustra

Challenges his disciples to surpass reconciliation and embody creative affirmation that wants back what has been.