Reflections on Nietzsche’s Life Sentence and Thus Spoke Zarathustra

By Joan Stambaugh

Reflections by Joan Stambaugh on Nietzsche’s Life Sentence and Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Nietzsche’s Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence

by Lawrence J. Hatab, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, New York and London (June 2005), $26.95

Before proceeding to discuss briefly Larry Hatab’s valuable book, I should like to pose two questions concerning his title: Nietzsche’s Life Sentence.

A sentence is generally proposed by some authoritative figure, for example, a god or a judge. This I think is lacking in Nietzsche.

A life sentence is incurred by some drastic misdoing. I’m unaware that Nietzsche is guilty of any such thing.

To the best of my knowledge, Prof. Hatab’s distinction between the literal and the factual is his own. This somewhat tenuous distinction replaces, perhaps overcomes, the subject object split. This split was somewhat blatantly propagated by Lowith who spoke of the anthropological and the cosmological version of eternal recurrence. Certainly, whatever else it does, Prof. Hatab’s distinction softens this problem.

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It’s too his merit that Prof. Hatab emphasizes laughter, dancing and the satyr play, unusual elements which alleviate the gravity of the problem of eternal recurrence. Finally, I should like to commend Larry Hatab for his persistence in pursuing the problem and his faithfulness to the texts.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and Nobody

by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by Graham Parkes, Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York, December 2005, $14.95

Graham Parkes has given us a superb new translation of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. One specific example of the improvement over the old translation: Overhuman instead of Superman or Overman is much more appropriate; for mensch in German is not man, but human being. The explanatory notes are rich and very helpful. There were many things that I learned from them that I was not aware of. Congratulations!

The choice of the figure on the book’s cover, however, is questionable.

Joan Stambaugh