Societal Institutions: God’s lingering shadow on the cave wall

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra knows that the anthropomorphized God,

created by reason, has been killed by reason. God is dead, and Zarathustra understands

that without a transcendental God ideal, the human condition risks losing all meaning.

Since God had formerly given meaning to existence, and God is now dead, Zarathustra

defines a new meaning for humanity in the overman, the ideal of the perfect human. All

of humanity must now strive for this ideal; it is now the task of each individual to

transform themselves into the overman. Throughout part one of Thus Spoke Zarathustra,

Zarathustra criticizes modern institutions such as religion, the State, education, and the

law. The essence of Zarathustra’s criticism is that these societal institutions are a product

of the old morality, the old order defined by humanity’s belief in the late God. In a world

without God, these institutions and the constraints that accompany them must be

dispelled so that man may be free to strive towards the new overarching goal of all of

humanity, the overman. By examining Zarathustra’s Prologue, and Zarathustra’s

speeches, “On the Preachers of Death”, “On the Three Metamorphoses”, “On the New

Idol”, and “On the Way of the Creator”, we come to understand Zarathustra’s reasoning.

In Zarathustra’s prologue, he speaks of the human condition as one of complacent

happiness or “wretched contentment” (p.125), the very antithesis of becoming overman.

This complacent happiness is a product of religion. Christianity perpetuates complacency

and contentment through its ideal that death would bring with it an eternal afterlife in

paradise. In “On the Preachers of Death”, we learn that complacency, now marked by

melancholy, is a product of following “the preachers of death,” or eternal life (158).

Following the preachers of eternal life means that one complacently accepts and lives by

the guidelines set by Christianity, which pave the way to the afterlife. Paradise, infinitely

better than life on earth, waits for those who dutifully act by the guidelines set by societal

institutions with God’s morality as their source. However, God is dead and his meaning

has died with him. There is no eternal afterlife, no paradise. All that humanity has is life

on earth, and becoming the overman is the meaning of life. Becoming the overman

means becoming god-like in oneself, on earth. It is a process of continuous striving

towards the perhaps unreachable ideal of the perfect human. Life becomes a series of

severe tests of oneself towards growing spiritually and mentally into the overman. The

old religious order that begot complacency cannot survive the coming of the overman as

humanity’s greatest goal.

With the overman as humanity’s greatest goal, the “Thousand and One Goals” of

the “thousand peoples,” or societies, must be given up (172). Nowhere in part one does

Zarathustra better define the thousand and one goals of the thousand peoples as in his

speech “On the New Idol”. The new idol is the modern State, or Nation State. The

Nation State is the societal institution that educates the people on good and evil (161-62).

“It has invented its own language of customs and rights” and “every people [of each

Nation State] speaks its tongue of god and evil, which the neighbor does not understand”

(161). The State is a “monster” (160) reminiscent of the dragon named “Thou shalt,”

from “On the Three Metamorphoses”, whose scales shine with the values of a thousand

years of the old order (138-39). It is the task of the aspiring overman, in her lion aspect,

to kill this monster and destroy the old values enshrined in the State so that the will to be

overman can realize its goal (139). As long as there are different peoples grouped into
nation states, each with their own goals, ideals, and values, the great goal that humanity

as a whole lacks, the overman (172), cannot realize its place. The State inhibits the

realization of the overman. It educates the peoples on traditional values in which the

overman has no place. For the overman to be realized, the modern State must be

destroyed.

Not only does the modern State enshrine the old, traditional values, and educate

the peoples on these values, but it also embodies the traditional law based in the morality

of the late God. In “On the Way of the Creator”, Zarathustra discusses the overman’s

relationship to society’s law (175). By throwing off the yoke of society’s law, one is

“free for what?” To “give yourself your own evil and your own good,” and “be your own

judge and avenger of your own law” (175). The aspiring overman must be ruled by his

own will, her own law (175). Thus, the law of society that constrains the individual in his

pursuit of the overman must be destroyed so that the overman may be realized.

Realization of the overman requires that societal institutions like the State and

religion be dispelled. The State educates the people on the traditional values defined by a

God who is now dead, rejecting the new highest value of the overman. Societal law is

also a product of these traditional values, not allowing room for the overman’s self

enforced law. Societal law is created and perpetuated through the modern State, so the

State must be destroyed in order to replace societal law with the law of the overman.

Ultimately though, it is religion that plays the most important role in disseminating the

gratuitous values of the late God and allows his shadow to linger on the wall of the

allegorical cave, which humans know as reality. Zarathustra’s “wretched complacency”

is the contemplation of this shadow and the acceptance of the outmoded values that this
contemplation entails. Taking the overman as humanities highest value means dispelling

the old values and the institutions that perpetuate them.