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A prophetic teacher named Zarathustra delivers a series of poetic discourses and parables in four parts that explore the death of God, the will to power, the ideal of the overman, eternal recurrence, and the transvaluation of moral values. Mixing lyrical sermon, aphorism, and allegory, the text stages encounters, speeches, and symbolic episodes that critique Christian morality, celebrate self-overcoming, and insist on creative reevaluation of life’s aims. Recurring motifs such as solitude, the three metamorphoses, teaching and rejection, and paradoxical humor bind the fragments into a visionary call to invent new, life-affirming values.
In this discourse Zarathustra opens his exposition of the doctrine of relativity in morality, and declares all morality to be a mere means to power. Needless to say that verses 9, 10, 11, and 12 refer to the Greeks, the Persians, the Jews, and the Germans respectively. In the penultimate verse he makes known his discovery concerning the root of modern Nihilism and indifference,—i.e., that modern man has no goal, no aim, no ideals (see Note A).