Description
Book SynopsisThis book argues that Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra employs circular and cyclical (diurnal and seasonal) symbols to communicate both the life-affirmative and the cosmological aspect of recurrence as a unifying idea. It shows that twelve day cycles, which run throughout the book's narrative, and the one full annual cycle, which encompasses the circular and the diurnal images in a continuous cycle of life affirmation, track Zarathustra's ever-changing identity throughout the text. In representing the eternal recurrence, the circular and the cyclical symbols respectively convey the book's central message: Zarathustra comes into being in order to affirm existence as the teacher of eternal recurrence in an endlessly repeating cosmos. The study complements recent findings that Nietzsche's book is on eternal recurrence by establishing the unity among its language, structure, and fundamental conception, which solves the century-old problem of the communication or location of the
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements – Abbreviations – Introduction – Circular Symbols and Eternal Recurrence – Analysis of the Circular Images in Thus Spoke Zarathustra – Analysis of the Diurnal Symbols in Thus Spoke Zarathustra – Analysis of the Seasonal Symbols in Thus Spoke Zarathustra – Summary – Notes – Bibliography – Name Index – Subject Index.
