Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra 03: The Last Man

By Sadhika on

Part I: Zarathustra’s Prologue, Thus Spake Zarathustra

“And thus spake Zarathustra unto the people:
It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the germ of his highest hope.
Still is his soil rich enough for it. But that soil will one day be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow thereon.
Alas! there cometh the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man—and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whizz!
I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: ye have still chaos in you.”

In a world where ultimate values and virtues are freshly crucified, it is with a heavy heart that Zarathustra looks upon the people and sees legions of “last men”. With the hope that at least one amongst them might be willing to cast off the disfigured demeanour of the contemptuous men who are unable to feel contempt for themselves, and shoulder the burden of the overman, Zarathustra talks of the urgency of setting up new tables of values. Now that the sea of Chaos encircles us, some of us must desist from letting it engulf us whole. It is the formless that must give birth to new forms. Time is of the essence, for the barrenness of our souls and societies seeks to spread as a blight upon our race. 

“Alas! There cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.
Lo! I show you THE LAST MAN.
‘What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?’—so asketh the last man and blinketh.
The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth the last man who maketh everything small. His species is ineradicable like that of the ground-flea; the last man liveth longest.
‘We have discovered happiness’—say the last men, and blink thereby.
They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth. One still loveth one’s neighbour and rubbeth against him; for one needeth warmth.”

Nietzsche predicted the onset of both the age of undifferentiated sympathy and the age of nihilism through several of his works, Beyond Good and Evil, being one among them. Here again, Zarathustra talks about the despicable last men as the generation that wishes to do away with suffering altogether, to redistribute the gifts of Nature such that no man is different from the other and no hierarchies of value or competence remain standing. Brave New World comes to mind as the last men are, in some ways, not far off from the mass-produced individuals from Huxley’s dystopian world. 

It is a wave of cynicism that has swept our age: where social institutions are treated with careless derision, where religious and cultural frameworks are discarded after a perfunctory reading, where modern values of “freedom”, “equality”, “compassion”, “rights” have taken the place of more robust ones like “independence”, “integrity”, “resilience” and “responsibility”, where the liberal-minded singlehandedly dominate academic institutions, where conservatism (at any level of analysis - social, political or individual) is looked down upon condescendingly as an unreasonable position to hold, where complacency festers through the mindless strawmanning of opponents to make oneself weaker, where weakness and suffering is virtue, where the dispossessed are heroes, and where the meaningful structures and hierarchies that our forefathers paid for with their blood and sweat, are deemed oppressive and fundamentally fractured. And the wave spreads unchecked, growing larger every minute as more and more faithless ones join its ranks.

“Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily. He is a fool who still stumbleth over stones or men!
A little poison now and then: that maketh pleasant dreams. And much poison at last for a pleasant death.
One still worketh, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one.
One no longer becometh poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wanteth to rule? Who still wanteth to obey? Both are too burdensome.
No shepherd, and one herd! Every one wanteth the same; everyone is equal: he who hath other sentiments goeth voluntarily into the madhouse.
‘Formerly all the world was insane,’—say the subtlest of them, and blink thereby.
They are clever and know all that hath happened: so there is no end to their raillery. People still fall out, but are soon reconciled—otherwise it spoileth their stomachs.”

The last men live the longest, for they fight no wars amongst their fellows. Nor do they fight the wars in themselves.
What will kill them? Old age? Disease? Are they not diseased already? Are they even alive?
What do they believe in? Unbelief? Where do they get their meaning now that God is dead? From the state? From the sciences?
Why do they continue living if their lives are void of meaning? Why do they continue acting if the Day of Judgement won’t come to pass? How do they choose how to act in a world where all actions are equal?
Why do the comforts of detachment, renunciation and objectivity not discomfit them? Will they play their lyres while their house burns? Will they choose their distractions at a time where it is critical to be in one’s senses? How will they save their house, if they do not choose to feel the flames first?
Why do they preach peace? To avoid conflict between men? To avoid conflict within man?
Will they stone the ones that aren’t faithless yet? Are they not stones themselves? 

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