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"Nietzsche (1844-1900), is best known as a philosopher of culture. His insightful critique of Western civilization in its different stages, classical, medieval, and modern, bears witness to his vast erudition and profound concern regarding the historical development of human culture, particularly in relation to ethical norms. But his spirit of enquiry goes well beyond European borders and in many instances and contexts he refers to the great Asiatic cultures of China, India, and Persia.....Nietzsche was a brilliant student of classical philology and later occupied its chair at the University of Basel. His profound knowledge of Greco-Roman culture and history permeates his writings, appearing in innumerable discussions and references. His studies of classical philology and his deep immersion in Greek and Latin literature also introduced him to the ancient history of Persia and its culture, .....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, though he does make occasional allusions to Moslems, including one reference to the Assassins (Zur Genealogie der Moral [On the Genealogy of Morals], Part III, Fragment 24). Among the prominent figures of Persian history from the Islamic era the name of the poet Sa‘di is mentioned once in his notebooks, while there are several references to Hafez." ....... http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/nietzsche-and-persia
"Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (German: Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen, also translated as Thus Spake Zarathustra) is a philosophical novel by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885 and published between 1883 and 1891. Much of the work deals with ideas such as the "eternal recurrence of the same", the parable on the "death of God", and the "prophecy" of the Übermensch, which were first introduced in The Gay Science."
"The book chronicles the fictitious travels and speeches of Zarathustra. Zarathustra's namesake was the founder of Zoroastrianism, usually known in English as Zoroaster (Avestan: Zaraϑuštra). Nietzsche is clearly portraying a "new" or "different" Zarathustra, one who turns traditional morality on its head. He goes on to characterize "what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth, the mouth of the first immoralist:"
For what constitutes the tremendous historical uniqueness of that Persian is just the opposite of this. Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things: the transposition of morality into the metaphysical realm, as a force, cause, and end in itself, is his work. [...] Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it. [...] His doctrine, and his alone, posits truthfulness as the highest virtue; this means the opposite of the cowardice of the "idealist” who flees from reality [...]—Am I understood?—The self-overcoming of morality, out of truthfulness; the self-overcoming of the moralist, into his opposite—into me—that is what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth.
— Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, "Why I Am a Destiny", trans. Walter Kaufmann
"ZOROASTER iii. ZOROASTER IN THE AVESTA Zaraθuštra is considered the founder of the Mazdayasnian religion who lived in Eastern Iran during the end of the second millenium BC.... According to Zoroastrian tradition, at the age of 30 Zaraθuštra encountered Ahura Mazdā .....About Zaraθuštra’s time and homeland we have to refer primarily to the Old Avestan texts.....The Younger Avesta describes or refers to an ideal Zaraθuštra: He is the person who lived fully according to the will of Ahura Mazdā and practiced the religion he was fostering in a perfect way......http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/zoroaster-iii-zoroaster-in-the-avesta
"HAFT KEŠVAR (seven regions), the usual geographical division of the world in Iranian tradition....The concept of the “seven regions” had Indo-Aryan roots (Geiger, pp. 302-3) and despite some claims (e.g., Herzfeld, pp. 684-85), was independent of Mesopotamian world view (Boyce, Zoroastrianism I, p. 134, n. 29), ......http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/haft-kesvar
"A second tradition handed down by the Greeks goes back to the Hellenistic era, saying that Zaraθuštra appeared 258 years before the “coming of Alexander....(356 BC – 323 BC)” Most probably, this dating originated with Aristoxenos, who lived at the end of the fourth century BC and was a disciple of Aristotle...Apollodoros gave a more precise calculation: in 570 BCE Pythagoras met with Zaraθuštra."......http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/zoroaster-iii-zoroaster-in-the-avesta
"Zoroaster’s homeland. Avestan geography only refers to eastern Iranian regions, and within the texts there is a clear preference for the land of Airyanəm Vaējah......Arguments that put Zaraθuštra’s homeland in the region east of Mashad and in the area of Bactria in Afghanistan (Humbach, 1991, pp. 40-44) have gained greater acceptance. W. Hinz (1961, pp. 22-23) reckons with Zaraθuštra’s origin from Chorasmia or Bactria, before he left his homeland (Y. 46) and went to Kešmar (i.e., modern Kāšmar in Khorasan Province, Iran), where the Šāh-nāma places his activity (see, e.g., Jackson, p. 255 ff.). ".....http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/zoroaster-iii-zoroaster-in-the-avesta
"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
"In another posthumously published fragment, he deplores a lost historical opportunity: “It would have been much more fortunate had the Persians become masters (Herr) of the Greeks, rather than have the Romans of all people [gerade die Römer] assume that role” (Sämtliche Werke, VIII, p. 65). In this note, 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, as a student of philology, lived at the time of great advancement in the study of the Avesta and Indo-Iranian philology, and he was certainly not oblivious of the achievements in this field. But 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.".....http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/nietzsche-and-persia
"In the entire text of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra one finds only one indirect allusion to the Persians and their beliefs (Zarathustra I, “On the Thousand and One Goal”), while there is an abundance of references and allusions to the Bible, reflecting his perennial struggle and obsessive concern with Judeo-Christian beliefs and their impact on human history....Zarathustra is a central figure in Nietzsche’s poetical representation of his philosophy because the opposition to morality and moralism stands at the heart of his critical historical thought..".....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
"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, and reverse his teachings at the same time, according to his fundamental critical views on morality....The original Zoroastrian world-view interpreted being on the basis of the universality of the moral values and saw the whole world as an arena of the struggle between two fundamental moral elements, Good and Evil, depicted in two antagonistic divine figures. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, in contrast, puts forward his ontological immoralism and tries to prove and reestablish the primordial innocence of beings by destroying philosophically all moralistic interpretations and evaluations of being."..........http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/nietzsche-and-persia
" In the intellectual outline of his life and works, Ecce Homo, Nietzsche describes his reasons for choosing Zarathustra as harbinger of his philosophy:.....What the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth, the mouth of the first immoralist: for what constitutes the tremendous historical uniqueness of that Persian is just the opposite of this. Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things: the transposition of morality into the metaphysical realms as a force, cause, and end in itself... Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality, consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it.... To speak the truth and to shoot well with arrows, that is, Persian virtue ----Am I understood? ---The self-overcoming of morality, out of truthfulness; the self-overcoming of the moralist, into his opposite---into me---that is what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth (trans. Kaufmann, pp. 327-28)."............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."...............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.....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. ....There is even a short poem in Nietzsche’s collected works, entitled An Hafis. Frage eines Wassertrinkers (To Hafez: Questions from a Water Drinker). The poem celebrates the insightfulness of Hafez and his poetical achievements. At the end, he asks Hafez, as a “water drinker,” why he demands wine while he himself has the power of making everybody intoxicated (Sämtliche Werke, XI, p. 316). It must be remembered that, for health reasons, Nietzche himself was apparently a lifelong abstainer. He considered “alcohol and Christianity” as the two harmful narcotics for the European soul, and particularly pernicious in regards to the German Geist (see “Was den Deutschen abgeht,” fragment 2, in Götzen-Dämmerung [Twilight of the Idols])."............http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/nietzsche-and-persia
Email....okarresearch@gmail.com
Northern New Mexico
October 2016
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