Zarathustra's Homecoming: 'Nietzsche in Iran', by Daryush Ashouri

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Zarathustra's Homecoming "Nietzsche in Iran"

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900) has been called a philosopher of culture, because the central concern of his thought is the emergence, development, and historical transformations of human cultures, especially their moral systems. His brilliant, meticulous analyses of ancient, medieval, and modern European cultures, and his critical perspectives on them, testify to his brilliant erudition and the agility of his thought as a philosopher of history and culture. Although Nietzsche's gaze is fixed on European history and culture and his scholarship is fundamentally in this field, he is not unaware of ancient Asian cultures, particularly those of China, India, and Iran, and refers to them frequently, especially when comparing cultures. He repeatedly praises Asian 'wisdom' in contrast to modern rationalism.

Nietzsche was a brilliant student of classical philology (the historical linguistics of the ancient Greek and Latin languages) and, before completing his doctorate in this field, was appointed to a professorship in the same discipline at the University of Basel. His vast knowledge of Greek and Roman languages, history, and culture is evident in the numerous discussions he devotes to them, as well as in the countless references scattered throughout his writings. He has at least two separate books on Greek culture and philosophy: one is The Birth of Tragedy, and the other is Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, both among his earliest works. His scholarly familiarity with Greek and Roman history and culture, and his study of their surviving historical works, also led to his acquaintance with the history and culture of ancient Persia. For the Persians, as a great Asiatic power, were in constant conflict first with the Greek city-states and later with the Roman Empire. In the totality of his writings, including the fragments and notes left in his notebooks, which constitute a large volume of his entire oeuvre, he frequently mentions the ancient Persians. Nietzsche's attachment to Persia and his admiration for its ancient culture can be seen in his choice of the name Zarathustra as the herald of his philosophy, and in bestowing this name upon the book he considered his most important work, namely Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche shows no particular attention to the history of Persia in the Islamic period, although he occasionally mentions Muslims and at least once praises the Assassins. In his notes, the name of Sa'di appears once, quoting a witticism of his; but he mentions the name of Hafez several times and speaks of his poetry and mentality.

Nietzsche's View of Ancient Persia

In the collected works of Nietzsche, Persia (Persien) is mentioned twice, and Persian (persisch) several times, and once also pre-Persian (vorpersisch), which are references to the relations of the Greek city-states with the Persian Empire and occasionally an analysis thereof. His attention, above all, is directed to the consequences of the Greco-Persian Wars and their profound effect on the Greek world, which led to the 'Peloponnesian War' between the city-states of Athens and Sparta, with the participation of other city-states. This war engulfed all of Greece for fifty years and caused immense devastation. In addition to these, he mentions the Persians (die Perser) twenty-eight times, and in some of his fragments (Fragmente), his view of the ancient Persians and their culture can be clearly found. He particularly admires the mastery of the Persians in archery, horsemanship, and warfare, as well as their lordly bearing and will to power; and also their insistence on the virtue of truthfulness. These are deeds and values he deems worthy of a noble human life. But he shows the highest degree of his attention to the Persians and his veneration of them where he speaks of the Persian conception of time; a belief that resembles his own view of time and its 'eternal recurrence'. This view stands in opposition to that Greek metaphysical view which, with Plato, posits a 'true' supratemporal being against a transient or temporal 'virtual' being: 'I must pay homage to a Persian, to Zarathustra. The Persians were the first to think of history in its entirety.' Following this, in this fragment, Nietzsche refers to the millennia in ancient Persian religious beliefs and adds, '[The Persians thought of history] as a chain of processes, each link in the hand of a prophet. Each prophet has his own millennium (hazar); his own thousand-year kingdom.' In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he speaks of the 'great millennium (grosser Hazar) of Zarathustra's kingdom', 'the great distant kingdom of man, the thousand-year kingdom of Zarathustra.'

In a fragment among his posthumously published works, he laments a lost historical opportunity, wondering why the Persians did not prevail over Greece instead of the Romans: ‘Instead of these Romans, how good it would have been if the Persians had become the masters (Herr) of the Greeks.’ This brief note can be interpreted as Nietzsche here again showing his inclination toward the time-affirming worldview of the Persians as opposed to Greek metaphysics. For with the Roman domination of Greece, Greek culture and its philosophical metaphysics came to dominate the Roman sphere and paved the way for the emergence of Christianity and its otherworldly, time-escaping, and nihilistic view of earthly life. Nietzsche holds that Christianity, as the religion of the ‘wretched,’ rejects transient earthly life in the name of the ‘eternal kingdom of heaven’ and thus turns a positive or ‘yea-saying’ attitude toward life into a negative one. Whereas Persian rule over Greece, with their positive attitude toward life and time, could have altered the course of this current and prevented a fateful event in history.

The Persian Zoroaster and Nietzsche's Zarathustra

In his earliest writings, Nietzsche uses the familiar name Zoroaster, which is of Greek origin and is used in European languages. Zoroaster first appears in notes from 1870–71, a decade before the writing of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In this note, perhaps with a tone of regret, he says, ‘If Darius had not been defeated, the religion of Zoroaster would have ruled over Greece.’ Also, in a treatise from this period, published after his death, he refers to the story of Heraclitus being a disciple of Zoroaster. The name of Zoroaster in its ancient Persian form, Zarathustra, first appears in The Gay Science (aphorism 342), published in 1882. Here Nietzsche included the first section of ‘Zarathustra's Prologue,’ or his prayer before the sun, from the book Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The following year, this section took its original place in the publication of the first of the four parts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

It is worth asking why Nietzsche abandoned the familiar name Zoroaster and turned to its ancient Iranian form, Zarathustra; a form with which perhaps no one, apart from philologists specializing in the ancient Indo-Iranian languages, was familiar. He himself offers no explanation for this, but the reason, in my opinion, could be that Nietzsche wishes to enter into dialogue not with the Zoroaster known in Europe through the Greeks, but with the original Zarathustra at the very dawn of history. And, as he himself says, through this dialogue he wishes both to pay homage to the great primordial thinker and to remind him of his greatest 'error,' and, through his mouth, to rectify this great inaugural error of human history. The fundamental error of Zarathustra—and of all the great prophets and philosophers who have laid the foundation of the history of human thought to this day—is that they have interpreted existence based on values, based on morality, based on good and evil. Zarathustra, the Iranian prophet, at the dawn of human history, conceived of existence as the arena of the battle between good and evil, manifested in the two opposing divine figures, namely Ahura and Ahriman. This interpretation is the forerunner of the Christian interpretation that considers existence the realm of 'sin and eternal punishment,' or the Socratic and Platonic interpretation that places the Idea of the 'Good,' as the highest value, at the pinnacle of existence. Against this Moralismus, Nietzsche sets his Immoralismus, which considers existence in its essence free from human values and seeks to restore its primordial 'innocence' to it. Thus, the moralistic ontology of the original Zarathustra, which entered the arena at the beginning of history and shaped human mentality and culture, stands opposed to the immoralist ontology of Nietzsche's Zarathustra, who, at the end of this history, in the age of the rise of the 'last man,' proclaims the call for the transition from man to the Overman. The Overman is a human who has overcome his own 'humanity' and returned to primordial innocence; a human who can laugh at his own moral 'humanity,' and all its sullenness, severity, and aridity. The Overman is a 'laughing' human who liberates existence from all human colors and deceptions (all-too-human) and, with his will freed from 'ressentiment,' accepts it as it is and says 'Yes' to life.

Thus, the immoralism of Nietzsche's Zarathustra is precisely the antithesis or the polar opposite of the moralism of the original Zarathustra. In his book Ecce Homo, where he recounts his intellectual life and provides a brief analysis of his works, Nietzsche explains the reason for choosing the name Zarathustra to convey his philosophy:

I have never been asked, but I should have been asked, what the name Zarathustra means in my mouth, in the mouth of the first immoralist: for what constitutes the tremendous uniqueness of this Persian in history is precisely the opposite of this. Zarathustra was the first to see the struggle of good and evil as the very wheel in the machinery of things: the translation of morality into the metaphysical, as force, cause, end-in-itself, is his work. But this question is fundamentally its own answer. Zarathustra created this most fateful of errors, the error of morality: consequently, he must also be the first to recognize this error. Not only has he had longer and greater experience here than any other thinker—the whole of history is the experimental refutation of the principle of the so-called 'moral world order'—what is more important is that Zarathustra is more truthful than any other thinker. His teaching, and his alone, posits truthfulness as the highest virtue—contrary to the cowardice of the 'idealists' who flee from reality. Zarathustra has more courage than all other thinkers put together. To speak the truth and to shoot well with arrows, that is the Persian virtue. —Am I understood? … The self-overcoming of morality through truthfulness, the self-overcoming of the moralist into his opposite—into me—that is what the name Zarathustra means in my mouth.

Traditional Zoroastrian narrative relates that at the age of thirty, Zarathustra went into the mountains and spent ten years there in contemplation, then came to the people as a messenger from the god of goodness, Ahura Mazda, to inform them of the turning of the wheel of existence upon the axis of the war between good and evil and to urge them to take the side of goodness. But the second Zarathustra bears a message that is the exact opposite of this, and not only does he not see existence as turning upon the axis of good and evil, but views it as a scene of dance and play, free from any supernatural moral constraint. If the first Zarathustra, at the dawn of the history of the opening of the spiritual horizon to humanity, returns from conversing with God and bearing His message to humankind, bringing a ‘heavenly’ book, the second Zarathustra appears at the end of this spiritual history and brings with him the most shattering and also the most liberating message: God is dead! With this message, he announces the end of the possibility of a moral and teleological interpretation of existence and its foundational spiritual and metaphysical history, and heralds the possibility of another history for humankind. His message is this: ‘Remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes.’

Nietzsche, Sa‘di, and Hafez

The names of Sa‘di and Hafez are apparently the only names from Islamic-era Iran that appear in Nietzsche’s writings. In Nietzsche’s collected works, a fragmentary note quotes a witticism from Sa‘di, the translation of which is: ‘Sa‘di asked a sage, “From whom did you learn all this [wisdom]?” He replied, “From the blind, who do not lift a foot from its place without first testing the ground beneath them with a cane.”’ This is a point that Sa‘di relates from the tongue of Luqman—the legendary symbol of wisdom in Arabic and Persian literature—in the preface to the Golestan: ‘They asked Luqman, “From whom did you learn wisdom?” He said, “From the blind, who do not set foot where they do not see.”’ Nietzsche offered no commentary on this witticism, but, based on Nietzsche’s philosophy, one could say that this saying represents a cautious, slow-paced wisdom; the wisdom of the ‘blind,’ which Nietzschean wisdom stands in direct opposition to—that is, the fearless, seeing wisdom that rushes in, saying ‘yes,’ throwing itself into the heart of life and its dangers, and takes a ‘devilish pleasure’ in hastening.

But Nietzsche finds one of the supreme examples of his own seeing, ‘Dionysian’ wisdom in Hafez. Hafez’s name appears ten times in his collected works. Undoubtedly, Goethe’s fondness for Hafez and the praise he lavished upon Hafez and his ‘Oriental’ wisdom in the West-Eastern Divan played a fundamental role in drawing Nietzsche’s attention to Hafez. In Nietzsche’s writings, Hafez’s name appears alongside Goethe’s in most instances, and Nietzsche praises both as pinnacles of profound wisdom. For him, Hafez represents that Oriental free-spiritedness which, with Dionysian ecstasy and a tragic gaze, passionately celebrates life, turns toward its pleasures, and, at the same time, does not turn its back on its dangers and calamities (‘For the affliction the Beloved sends, a thousand times we said, Welcome!’). These, from Nietzsche’s perspective, are the characteristics of a positive and courageous, or ‘tragic,’ approach to life.

Among the fragmentary notes left by Nietzsche is a poem addressed to Hafez: ‘To Hafez. The Question of a Water-Drinker.’

The tavern that you have built for yourself

Is more spacious than any house,

The wine that you have nurtured within it

The whole world cannot drink it down.

The bird that was once called the phoenix,

Is a guest in your house,

The mouse that was born of the mountain,

Is indeed——yourself!

You are all and nothing, you are the wine and the tavern,

You are the phoenix, you are the mountain, you are the mouse,

You who forever pour into yourself and

Forever soar out of yourself—

You are the deepest descent of the heights,

You are the brightest light of the depths,

You are the intoxication of the most intoxicated intoxications

——— You, you —— what have you to do with wine?