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Philosophers sometimes convey incredibly complex ideas in cryptic forms, and Friedrich Nietzsche was no exception. His aphorisms, by their very definition, condense a powerful message into a terse, perhaps oversimplified phrase. His parables, on the other hand, veil his thoughts in narratives and force the studious reader to dig for deeper meaning. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche “made his first attempt to put down his philosophy – not merely sundry observations – in one major work” that …

…knows nothing of love, but Nietzsche fails to address this point, and thus we can only conjecture as to his intentions. Perhaps these new free thinkers threaten Zarathustra’s monopoly of wisdom much as they threatened the “good” person’s social position. Or perhaps Zarathustra, as the narrative embodiment of Nietzsche, the teacher’s teacher, represents the exception to this rule. Unfortunately, we cannot resolve this dilemma by simply reevaluating a set of common definitions.