Nietzsche's Zarathustra

"The publication of the revised edition of Kathleen Marie Higgins's Nicizscbe's Zarathustra is a great boon to Nietzsche scholars and Zarathustra specialists alike, for Higgins's consistently subtle analysis of Nietzsche's bold experiment in philosophical writing---especially her groundbreaking interpretation of Zamthustra, part IV---is replete with invaluable insights More than twenty years after its initial appearance, Nietzsche's Zarathustra remains an indispensable point of reference for philosophers and critics who take seriously Nietzsche's judgment that Zamthustra is his most significant work."---Robert Gooding-Williams, University of Chicago "This Spoke Zarathustra is Nietzsche's most popular and yet least comprehensible book Many have left the matter there, deriding both the author and his public. Kathleen Marie Higgins refuses to take this easy path. She reveals the complexities underlying the work's apparent lack of organization and argues that these complexities, far from being gratuicous, are telling and significant. She argues that Zarathustra breaks the boundaries that separate a number of genres from one another. Her own interpretation, reflecting the features of its subject, breaks the boundaries that separate a number of academic disciplines. Higgins has written an engaging book that will prove indispensable to Nietzsche's many readers."---Alexander Nehamas, University of Pennsylvania "Nietzsche thought that philosophy chairs would be offered for the best interpretations of This Spoke Zarathustra one hundred years after its publication. Professor Higgins's treatment of Nietzsche's thought, which most writers on Nietzsche ignore, neglect, deny, or don't even see." ---Joan Stambaugh. Hunter College With an interdisciplinary approach to Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Kathleen Marie Higgins's Nietzsche's Zarathustra focuses on the philosophical function of its literary techniques and its fictional mode of presentation. Now appearing after twenty years as a revised edition, this valuable roadmap to Zaratbustra argues that the fictional format is essential to Nietzsche's philosophical message in his work. There is always a discrepancy between the living philosophical insight and any attempt to articulate it, and Nietzsche portrays the philosopher's task as an on-going balancing act in which folly is a means to further insight.