Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and Zarathushtra Spitama

Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and Zarathushtra Spitama

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Primary Source: NIETZSCHE AND PERSIA.....Daryoush Ashouri (2010)......http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/nietzsche-and-persia

"Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, like the original Zarathustra according to Zoroastrian tradition, goes to the mountain for meditation when he is thirty years old, and, like him, descends ten years later to convey his message to humanity. The early Zarathustra, at the dawn of the metaphysical history of humanity, after having long dialogues with his God of goodness, descends from the mountain to proclaim the heavenly message that interprets being in moralistic terms of Good and Evil; while the “second” Zarathustra, at the end of this history, descends to announce, first of all, the dreadful news which has immense consequences for human life and thought: the death of God......Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900)......Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None.......composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885 and published between 1883 and 1891"........http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/nietzsche-and-persia

"Zoroaster (Greek Ζωροάστρης Zōroastrēs), also known as Zarathustra (/Persian: زرتشت‎‎ Zartosht), or as Zarathushtra Spitama, was the founder of Zoroastrianism. He was a native speaker of Old Avestan and is credited with the authorship of the Yasna Haptanghaiti as well as the Gathas, hymns which are at the liturgical core of Zoroastrian thinking. Most of his life is known through the Zoroastrian texts.....Modern scholars of Zoroastrianism generally place Zoroaster as having lived in north-east Iran or northern Afghanistan (Balkh) some time between 1700 and 1300 BC......Avestan, the language spoken by Zoroaster and used for composing the Yasna Haptanghaiti and the Gathas, on archaeological and linguistic grounds, is dated to have been spoken probably in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC.....Zoroaster's death was said to have been in Balkh located in present-day Afghanistan during the Holy War between Turan and the Persian empire in 583 BC..... Jamaspa, his son-in-law, then became Zoroaster's successor... Zoroaster himself hailed from the Airya (Aryan) people but he also preached his message to other neighboring tribes.... the Avesta contains the names of various tribes who lived in proximity to each other: "the Airyas [Aryans], Tuiryas [Turanians], Sairimas [Sarmatians], Sainus [Ashkuns] and Dahis [Dahae]"......Michael Witzel, THE HOME OF THE ARYANS, Harvard University & Encyclopedia Iranica

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"Tūrān (Persian توران) literally means "the land of the Tur", and is a region in Central Asia. The term is of Persian origin and may refer to a certain prehistoric human settlement, a historic geographical region, or a culture. The original Turanians were an Iranian tribe of the Avestan age........ according to the Shahnameh's account, at least 1,500 years later after the Avesta, the nomadic tribes who inhabited these lands were ruled by Tūr, who was the emperor Fereydun's elder son.....Tur/Turaj is the son of emperor Fereydun in ancient Iranian mythology......Turan comprised five sub regions: Southern Turkmenia, the Atrak Valley, the Eastern Elburz Mountains, the Helmand Valley, and Bactria and Margiana.....Similar to the ancient homeland of Zoroaster, the precise geography and location of Turan is unknown. In post-Avestan traditions they were thought to inhabit the region north of the Oxus, the river separating them from the Iranians.".....Possehl, Raymond (2002). The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective

" Artaxerxes II invokes the goddess Anahita and the god Mithra, but as we have already seen above, Zarathustra was not a monotheist; he wrote Yashts for these two gods."....http://www.livius.org/articles/religion/ahuramazda/

"Nietzsche's study of classical philology and his deep immersion in Greek and Latin literature also introduced him to the ancient history of Persia and its culture, conceived as an Asiatic culture embodied in an imperial power in contradistinction to the Greek city-states in its neighborhood. In his collected works, including the voluminous fragments left in his notebooks (Nachgelassene Fragmente), there are many references to the ancient Persians. Nietzsche’s concern with Persia is well reflected in his choice of “Zarathustra” as the prophet of his philosophy and the eponymous hero of his most popular work, Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra). He shows no particular interest in Persian history after the rise of Islam..."....http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/nietzsche-and-persia

"Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), had studied philosophy and law in Great Britain and received his doctorate 1908 in Munich with a thesis on The Development of Metaphysics in Persia, in which he retraced the development of metaphysics in Persia from Zoroaster to Baha ’ullah, the founder of the Baha’i religion. It is therefore not surprising that he also showed interest in Nietzsche, the poet of Thus spoke Zarathustra and the concept of the overhuman proposed in it......http://www.academia.edu/331812/NIETZSCHE_IN_INDIAN_EYES

"Allama Sir Mohammed Iqbal, the 'muslim of the century' and the first great Persian-language poet in 400 years, stated clearly that Persian Sufism is essentially the same as Tantric Buddhism. Iqbal is highly regarded in the great centres of learning of the muslim world both as a mystical poet and a religious reformer. A Kashmiri lawyer, he lived in Lahore, had a German wife, was knighted by the Brits, and had a great regard for Afghanistan. I have a handmade book of poetry he wrote about his only trip there - he visited a series of famous shrines behind Ghazni - its in Urdu and not so far translated into English."...RA

"Nietzsche’s deepest interest and admiration for the Persians manifest themselves where he discusses their notion of history and cyclical time. This Persian concept of time resembles to some degree his own concept of the circle of the Eternal Recurrence, expressed in a highly poetic and dramatic manner in his Zarathustra. Through this concept Nietzsche emphasizes the cyclical nature of cosmic time and the recurrence of all beings in every “circle”: “I must pay tribute to Zarathustra, a Persian (einem Perser): Persians were the first to have conceived of History in its full extent” (Sämtliche Werke, XI, p. 53). In this fragment Nietzsche uses the Persian word hazār referring to the millennial cycles (hazāra) in ancient Persian religious beliefs, “each one presided by a prophet; every prophet having his own hazar, his millennial kingdom.” In Also Sprach Zarathustra, he speaks of the great millennial (“grosser Hazar”) kingdom of his own Zarathustra, as “our great distant human kingdom, the Zarathustra kingdom of a thousand year,” (“Das Honigopfer”[The Honey Sacrifice,] Part IV).".........http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/nietzsche-and-persia

"Nietzsche implicitly expresses once more his radical opposition to Greek metaphysical thought, as developed by Socrates and Plato, and its later prevalence in Western world through the supremacy of Greek culture within the Roman Empire. This process ultimately led, at the hands of the Church Fathers, to the integration of the Platonic metaphysics, as developed in Rome by the Neoplatonists, within the theological doctrines of Christianity. Nietzsche considered this whole historical development as constituting an ascetic and nihilistic worldview that denied and reviled the reality of this-worldly existence in the name of an illusory, eternal, and other-worldly life. Therefore, he thought that if the Persians rather than the Romans had been successful in gaining dominance over Greece, the predominance of their positive outlook towards worldly life and time would have prevented such a lamentable event in human history."......http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/nietzsche-and-persia

"Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and the Persian Zarathustra. Nietzsche’s proficiency in classical philology, and the insertion of “Zarathustra” as the title of his most popular work, have misled some scholars of Zoroastrian studies to search laboriously for a direct reflection and representation of the ideas of the Persian prophet, or Mazdean texts, in his work (Rose, p. 174ff). Moreover, uncritical admirers of pre-Islamic Iranian history and culture, particularly among Iranians themselves, insist on seeing in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra an exact replica of the original Persian prophet and his teachings. Nietzsche’s sister, Elizabeth, has related that many Persian visitors used to come to her weekly open house in Weimar to express “their gratitude that Nietzsche had chosen a Persian sage to be the prophet of a new and superior race of man” (Rose, p. 186).....However, it is by no means certain that he had ever read Anquetil-Duperron’s translation of Zend Avesta. It could be said that his selection of the name of Zarathustra and allusions to his solitude in the mountains for ten years, and a concept like hazār (see above), testify to a broad acquaintance with Zoroastrian traditions and doctrines. However, by considering the trajectory of his intellectual interests from early youth, it becomes apparent that his historical and philological studies, including his thought-provoking studies on history of Eastern and Western religions and their sacred books, was not a matter of investigative scientific concern, but aimed at a hermeneutical reading from a novel revolutionary philosophical point of view. Moreover, he had a disdainful attitude toward supposedly “objective” scholarship restricted solely to painstaking research in specialized fields in the absence of a broad philosophical view (see, “On Scholars” and “The Leech” in Zarathustra Parts II and IV). Thus, he never intended to merely copy or adopt Zoroaster’s words and ideas uncritically."........http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/nietzsche-and-persia

"Nietzsche made several references to “Zoroaster” in his early writings. This familiar name in European languages, of Greek origin, was used in his notebooks of 1870-71, about a decade before writing Also Sprach Zarathustra. There he speaks with great admiration of Zoroaster and his religion and, in a short note, as elsewhere (see above), implicitly expresses his sympathy for the historically not improbable possibility that Zoroastrianism could have well triumphed in ancient Greece: “Zoroaster’s religion would have prevailed in Greece, if Darius had not been defeated.” (Sämtliche Werke, VII, p. 106). Also in his posthumously published work of the same period, Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen (Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks), he refers to the probable influence of Zoroaster on Heraclitus (Sämtliche Werke, I, p. 806; English tr. P. 29). The name of “Zarathustra,” as such, first appears in Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (The Gay Science, fragment 342), published in 1882. Nietzsche inserts here the first fragment of the prologue to Also Sprach Zarathustra, i.e. Zarathustra’s prayer before the sun. This fragment appears in the following year in the published text of the first part of Zarathustra.".........http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/nietzsche-and-persia

"One may wonder why Nietzsche abandoned the familiar name of Zoroaster for the original Old Persian form of it, Zarathustra, at a time when only specialists in Indo-Iranian philology were familiar with the original form. As Nietzsche admits himself, by choosing the name of Zarathustra as the prophet of his philosophy in a poetical idiom, he wanted to pay homage to the original Aryan prophet as a prominent founding figure of the spiritual-moral phase in human history."........http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/nietzsche-and-persia

"Sa‘di and Hafez are the only Persian names of the Islamic era mentioned in Nietzsche’s writings......Hafez provides him with a prime example of “Dionysian” ecstatic wisdom, which he extols so extensively in his writings. There are several references to the poet in Nietzsche’s works. Obviously, Goethe’s admiration for Hafez and his “Oriental” wisdom, as expressed in West-östlisches Divan, has been the main source of attracting Nietzsche to the Persian poet. The name of Hafez, usually in association with Goethe, appears about ten times in his writings. He admires both poets for reaching the zenith of joyful human wisdom. For him Hafez exemplifies the Oriental free spirit who gratefully receives both the pleasures and sufferings of life. Nietzsche commends such an attitude as sign of a positive and courageous valuation of life."...........http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/nietzsche-and-persia

"Yasnas 5 & 105 describe how "Zoroaster prayed to Anahita for the conversion of King Vištaspa", this provides further evidence that Zoroaster resided during the reign of King Vištaspa; which would corroborate a chronology of late-6th century BC.....His wife, children and a cousin named Maidhyoimangha were his first converts after his illumination from Ahura Mazda at age 30. According to Yasnas 5 & 105, Zoroaster prayed to Anahita for the conversion of King Vištaspa, who appears in the Gathas as a historic personage"....Williams Jackson, A.V. (1899), Zoroaster, the prophet of ancient Iran

"Zarathushtra and its derivative, Zoroaster..... The authentic form of Zoroaster’s name is that attested in his own songs, the Gathas, Old Av. Zaraθuštra- (Old Avestan [OAv.] and Young Avestan [YAv.] ....The speculation that Zarathushtra's name had something to do with camels appears to have started with Eugene Burnouf when explained Zarath-ustra as 'fulvos camelos habens' meaning 'having yellow camels' (Comm. sur le Yacna, pp. 12- 14, Paris, 1833). Later he changed his theory and stated that the name meant 'astre d'or' meaning 'golden star'".....http://zoroaster-zarathushtra.blogspot.com/p/etymology-of-name-zoroaster.html

"Nietzsche's original text contains a great deal of word-play. An example of this is the use of words beginning über ("over" or "above") and unter ("down" or "below"), often paired to emphasise the contrast, which is not always possible to bring out in translation, except by coinages. An example is Untergang, literally "down-going" but used in German to mean "setting" (as of the sun), which Nietzsche pairs with its opposite Übergang (going over or across). Another example is Übermensch (overman or superman)."....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Übermensch

"Untergang.....Setting of the Sun, Downfall, (Unter: down,below)...Untergang, literally "down-going" but used in German to mean "setting" (as of the sun), which Nietzsche pairs with its opposite Übergang (going over or across). Another example is Übermensch (overman or superman)."...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Übermensch

Übermensch.....(Über: going over, across)...." Zarathustra proclaims the Übermensch to be the meaning of the earth...The turn away from the earth is prompted, he says, by a dissatisfaction with life- a dissatisfaction that causes one to create another world in which those who made one unhappy in this life are tormented. The Übermensch is not driven into other worlds away from this one".....The Übermensch (German for "Overman, Overhuman, Above-Human, Superman, Superhuman, Ultraman, Ultrahuman, Beyond-Man") is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. In his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra (German: Also Sprach Zarathustra), Nietzsche has his character Zarathustra posit the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself. It is a work of philosophical allegory, with a structural similarity to the Gathas of Zoroaster/Zarathustra.".....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Übermensch

"Swastika is the symbol of Mithra, the deity of sun, or sun god, and hence its own religion, Mithraism; not Zoroastrianism. The difference is great although at some point they must have overlapped in certain regions of Iran. Mithraism predates the Iranian race, but Zoroastrianism is a strictly Iranian (in fact even Persian) religion...".....https://www.flickr.com/photos/briansearwar/3184317959

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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com

December 2015

John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico

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