by William Finlator
“The tragedy of Friedrich Nietzsche is a monodrama: no other figure is present on the brief lived stage of his existence; the isolated combatant stands alone beneath the brief lived stage of his existence.”
—Stefan Zweig, Nietzsche
The above quote from Stefan Zweig’s acclaimed biography of Nietzsche is perhaps the most succinct caricature of the myth about the German philosopher. Presenting Nietzsche as a lone, far-sighted genius, it simultaneously canonizes him and plays up the role of his idiosyncrasies and personal life (22). The subtext is that genius dwells in Nietzsche’s tortured soul and not from engagement with other texts, thinkers, or peoples. Rather, Zweig presents solitude and the sovereignty of the idea as working in tandem, foregrounding the uniqueness of Nietzsche’s psychological disposition at the expense of his intellectual encounters with others. For Zweig, in the “the airless space of the idea,” genius flourishes.
Nietzsche is typically portrayed as a stadial philosopher of the “Western” philosophical canon, bridging the chasm between Kant or Schopenhauer and later continental thinkers. In this lens, he is defined by both exceptional genius and separation from the society he lived in. However, the myth of Nietzschean genius neglects the importance of personal experiences in shaping his views. Notably, such a myopic view of Nietzsche’s influences obfuscates his relationship with ancient Iran. It has been argued that there is little meaningful connection between Nietzsche and the Avesta and that it would be a mistake to “search laboriously for a direct reflection and representation of the ideas of the ideas of the Persian prophet, or Mazdean texts, in his work.” As I will show, this assertion appears doubtful for several reasons.
The myth of Nietzsche’s genius obscures what should be relatively obvious, given the title, content, imagery, and probable influences of what he assumed to be his most important work, Also Sprach Zarathustra (ASZ). A close analysis of Nietzsche’s reading habits and teaching suggests that his philosophy was profoundly influenced by Zoroastrianism. Far from a work of uniquely “Western” or “modern” genius, ASZ owes much of its originality to the appropriation and reinterpretation of Zoroastrian themes and ideas. As a result, Nietzsche, a thinker central to a “Western” philosophical canon, can be seen as largely deriving his theoretical depth and ingenuity from non-Western and non-European sources.
The interpretations denying Zoroastrianism’s influence on Nietzsche fail to historicize the extensive and controversial role of philology in nineteenth-century Germany. By the eighteenth century, thanks to the hermeneutical tradition of Lutheran Bible studies, the academic community in Germany was exceptionally adept at reading ancient languages. Philology departments in Göttingen, Heidelberg, Berlin, Leiden, and other cities produced innovative works that explored and compared conceptual worlds from different periods and regions. Importantly, the study of these ancient worlds often clashed with the moral system of Christianity. Already in 1723, Christian Wolff argued that because China possessed a complex ethical system without knowledge of Biblical scripture, it could be seen as proof that reason alone could act as the basis for morality (112-130). The lectures outraged Pietist communities in Prussia, who viewed his ideas as an attempt to move away from Christian teachings, and eventually led to Wolff losing his chair at the University of Halle. Thus, the philological world of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Germany possessed a dual quality. On the one hand, it served as the place where ancient languages were learned, often providing an important route to cultural self-knowledge, especially in relation to the Bible. On the other hand, German philological studies regularly proved subversive and radical, threatening the moral world of Christian Germany.
That Nietzsche, who proclaimed the “Death of God,” came from this community is no coincidence. Rather than being solitary, unique, and special, Nietzsche was just one of many nineteenth-century German scholars who used the fruits of philological research to question Christian universalism. As a philologist of ancient Greece, at a moment of staggering intellectual advances in the study of the Near East, it would be a mistake to treat “Zarathustra” solely as a rhetorical flourish.
Not only was Nietzsche a professor of philology during this exceptionally tumultuous time, but there is also evidence that he directly engaged with the most controversial philologists. We know that Nietzsche read Creuzer’s Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Volker (1812) multiple times, first at Basel in 1871 and later bought the book in 1875. According to Creuzer, the ingenuity of the ancient Greeks originated from engagement with their eastern neighbors, for which reason “nothing could be more absurd than attributing to the Greeks an autochthonous culture; on the contrary, they drew their nourishment from the living cultures of all the other people that surrounded them.” Creuzer’s work included chapters on the “Aryan Religion,” as well as on Zoroastrian “Demonology, Cosmogony and Eschatology.” Like in the case of Wolff before, this engagement with non-Western cultures proved unacceptable to many. Creuzer’s Symbolik work sparked the controversy known as “Creuzerstreit,” and Classical philologists like Johann Heinrich Voss wrote fierce polemics questioning the claim that Western cultural and religious traditions had their roots in ancient India.
Importantly, likely due to his reading of Anquetil-Duperron’s translated Avesta, Creuzer placed greater emphasis on the symbolic world of the religion rather than its practices. The result was a tendency to exaggerate the moral component in comparative analysis vis-à-vis other world religions—mimicked in those who read him, including Hegel and Nietzsche. It seems that this reading had a significant impact on the latter. After reading Creuzer, Nietzsche himself lectured on “Greek Antiquities and Religious Cults” in 1877-78, using Creuzer’s work to historicize their origins in Persia. Thus, he displayed not just a passing acquaintance with Zoroastrian Persia but a deep curiosity that bled into his worldview.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the Avesta, which had been translated by Anquetil-Duperron in 1762, had filtered deep into the consciousness of European scholars. It is striking that Nietzsche held in such high regard those most influenced by it. For example, Nietzsche deeply admired Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom he considered the “author who has been richest in ideas over this century” and his “twin soul.” Tellingly, Emerson’s work draws extensively on Persian sources (187). In an 1869 article in the Atlantic on “Zoroaster and the Zend-Avesta,” Emerson devotes considerable attention to the symbolic universe of “sacred bills” of the “Magian religion,” Consequently, his transcendentalist philosophy is heavily influenced by Eastern traditions, offering an alternative to Christian morality. In History, Emerson states that he “cannot find any antiquity” in “Moses,” “Zoroaster,” and “Socrates,” rejecting the conceptual hegemony of “progress” and prefiguring Nietzsche’s concept of “eternal return.” Though Nietzsche rarely emphasizes that in his academic works, he was heavily influenced by Emerson. As Herwig Freidl argues, Nietzsche treats Emerson as a “lens,” a tool for seeing the world, rather than a source of explicit philosophical inspiration. Simultaneously, it is important to note that much of what Nietzsche read about Zoroaster came from literary sources rather than academic works. This is vital as in ASZ itself, as the treatment of Persia and Zoroaster is more poetic than academic—a bearer of symbolic richness rather than analytically tight thought with specific insights.
Both Nietzsche and the Avesta share a metaphysical ontology where a constant earthly battle between moral systems defines existence. Nietzsche sees religions as reflecting the earthly interests of defined groups. In this view, Christianity originates from the “Oriental slave” taking “revenge on Rome” by creating a moral system that worships the meek and has suffering at its heart. According to Nietzsche, this constitutes an abhorrent inversion of values, universalizing the values of the Judaic slave and resulting in a warped world where strength is evil and poverty is good. In his view, Christianity removes energy and life from the world, frittering away human potential in hapless moralistic self-denial. The most representative of this approach is the famous dialogue between Zarathustra and a Christian “saint” in ASZ. In this section, Zarathustra announces his intention to provide a gift to town inhabitants, yet the Christian saint opposes this action. Instead, the saint advises Zarathustra to “give them nothing, take rather part of their load.” The saint continues that if Zarathustra insists on giving gifts, it should be “no more than alms, and let them also beg for it.” In this dialogue, we see a clash between a saint keen to doggedly defend a moral system based on suffering and Zarathustra’s desire to give freely without moralizing intent. Thus, Nietzsche’s moral worldview is based around two opposing poles—namely, a dying Christianity as exemplified by the saint and an alternative, represented as Zarathustra.
The dialogue between the saint and Zarathustra mirrors Anquetil-Duperron’s Avesta, which, like ASZ, sees reality as defined by moral struggle. In the commentary on the holy book, Anquetil-Duperron argues that “a thing is either agreeable to Ormazd or Ahriman, as Nature is divided between these two Principles.” The result is a total, all-consuming ethical war. For Anquetil-Duperron, there is a recognition that it is this war that gives Zoroastrianism its unique spiritual character as “the whole [ceremonial and ethical system] may be reduced to two points” (65-66): The first “to recognize and adore the Master of all that is good,” and the second “detesting Ahriman, the author of every evil, moral and physical” (68). Here, as in Nietzsche, conflict rather than unity gives an ethical system its character.
It is no coincidence that Nietzsche articulates his critique of Christianity through Zarathustra, whose moral system was defined by conflict. In fact, Nietzsche’s critique can be seen as a Zoroastrian bite-back at a religion that Christianity thought it had aped. Nietzsche uses intellectual tools found in the Avesta to articulate an alternative to the Christian moral worldview. Even if this parallel were to be contested, it becomes harder to ignore the influence of Zoroastrianism when looking at the language and metaphors that Nietzsche employs in his work. It is striking how similar the metaphors used in ASZ seem to be to Zoroastrian religious principles and practices. ASZ is written in a powerful poetic language that has given it such staying power, and a close analysis reveals a great similarity to the Avesta. This similarity particularly concerns the language of purity, pollution, and fire—found throughout both texts and often taking on very similar meanings.
The symbolism of fire provides yet another parallel to Zoroastrianism. In the prelude to ASZ, an old man asks Zarathustra: “Will thou now carry thy fire into the valleys?” Less than a page later, Nietzsche says he spent ten years on a mountain, just like the historical Zarathustra. In Zoroastrianism, the bringing of fire to the valleys below by Zarathustra, who had spent ten years in the mountains in dialogue with the sun, represents truth and purification. Two sentences later, the language of purity, so central to the Yasna ritual, appears, with the old man saying: “Pure his eye, and no loathing lurketh about his mouth.” Nietzsche also refers to Christian concepts in the language of “pollution,” describing Christian virtues as “poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency.” Given these parallels in symbolism, it appears highly probable that Nietzsche read the Avesta, even if there is no written evidence elsewhere.
Even more telling is Nietzsche’s treatment of animals, which again resembles Zoroastrianism and plays an important role in his philosophy. In ASZ, Nietzsche considers animals equal to the prophet, whose actions are spiritually independent and important. Right after visiting a town where humans refused to listen to his message, Zarathustra sees a “serpent” on an “eagle,” “not like prey, but like a friend.” Zarathustra proceeds to preach to the animals, praising their wisdom and their virtues, going as far as arguing, “More dangerous have I found it among men than among animals.” Nietzsche’s portrayal of animals in ASZ is uniquely Zoroastrian, giving them an independent moral character that mimics “Izeds” and “Devas” in Anquetil-Duperron’s Avesta.
Lastly, both Zoroastrianism and Nietzsche’s philosophy walk a delicate balancing act between a world defined by moral conflict and one characterized by moral universalism. This is important as it demonstrates not only the similarities of the philosophies in their positive character and linguistic formulations but also in their flaws. In both the Avesta and Nietzsche’s ASZ, a tense co-existence takes place between one moral system and multiple. In Zoroastrianism, such tension comes from the division of the world between Ormazd and Ahriman and the creation of it by Ormazd alone. In Anquetil-Duperron’s Avesta, this tension is very clear; in his commentary, there seems to be uncertainty as to the role of Ormazd. Ormazd and Ahriman are “secondary principles” that are “active and productive” and originate from the “First Principle,” which indicates an incessant undetermined struggle between good and evil. Yet, at the same time, time has a quasi-eschatological character—with time ending with the “triumph of Ormazd.” This tension is confusing and not fully resolved in Anquetil-Duperron’s work, and Nietzsche has a similar ambiguity. Throughout his work, Nietzsche claims to “overcome” morality and deny that there is a singular meta-ethical framework or “good” way to live life. But, as in Zoroastrianism, this opens up tensions that never get fully resolved: Zarathustra says that “man is something that is to be surpassed” but never fully expresses the character of this being. Instead, he poetically dances around the tension, hinting at what this Übermensch looks like without fully endorsing an ethical alternative. Nietzsche describes this Übermensch, for example, as describing it as superior to “man” as an “ape to man.” For the Übermensch, man is “a laughing stock, a thing of shame.”
Considering the above, it is justified to argue that Nietzsche largely owes the ingenuity and path-breaking quality of his work to a Zoroastrian ontology. This discovery has significant ramifications for how we think about the canon of modern “Western” philosophy. Foucault greatly admired Nietzsche’s “genealogical approach,” and Deleuze took heavy inspiration from his ideas of “eternal recurrence.” Sartre and other existentialists tried to grapple with a world no longer defined by the God that Nietzsche killed—and psychoanalysts like Jung drew on Nietzsche’s introspective and symbolic emphases. Nietzsche’s influence also proved to be destructive. In the early twentieth-century Europe, Nazi ideologues like Alfred Rosenberg appropriated the imagery of the battle between good and evil over thousands of years and the rhetoric of “pollution” to justify their most egregious crimes. Paradoxically, some of those thinkers, most often thought of as “modern” and “Western,” seem to be drawing the heaviest inspiration not from contemporary Europe but from ancient Persia. Far from influential thought being the offspring of deep and critical introspection, Also Sprach Zarathustra seems to have sprung from a pan-generational cultural collision. Thus, much of the thought that powers the dominant strains of contemporary philosophy originates not from the modern “West” but rather from the Avesta, one of the world’s oldest books.
William Finlator is an undergraduate student at the University of St Andrews.
Edited by Artur Banaszewski
Featured Image: Life of Zoroaster, founder of Zoroastrianism, via Wikimedia Commons.
