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Tuesday 16 February 2010

Nietzsche about men and women - Part 1, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“She knows only love, but tell me, you men, which of you is capable of friendship?’

Zarathustra, the main character in Nietzsche’s book believes that women are incapable of friendship. He doubts in human’s purity of intentions and ability to create a pure and truthful relationship with other people.


Speaking of women, Zarathustra does not value them in high purpose for humanity, he simply says that “everything about woman is riddle, and everything about woman has one solution: it is called pregnancy.”

Picturing a woman in man’s eyes he says that “the true man wants too things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous playing.” Negative experiences from Nietzsche’s life, as he had not much luck with love of his life and his intentions of marriage were unsuccessful.

Broken heart of the author dictated a lot of cold and shallow views on women. Zarathustra says that “man should be trained for war and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly.”

Zarathustra is representing stereotypical views on family structure and relations between men and women. Woman understands children better than a man; but man is more childlike than woman.”

He also speaks of man’s ego: “The man’s happiness is: I will. The woman’s happiness is: He will.” Even though author tries to compare men and women equally and accurately, he admits that he knows not enough about women. Author reveals it by bringing another character to the conversation, an old woman, who is listening to Zarathustra and making him realise that he does not know all about women.

When speaking of men and women, the main character seeks new values and creation of good and evil. He says that “ truly, men have given themselves all their good and evil (…), they did not take it (…), it did not descend to them as a voice from heaven. Man first implanted values into things to maintain himself- he created the meaning of things, a human meaning!”

The University of Winchester Journalism Course
History and Context of Journalism, Part IV,
Friedrich Nietzsche,
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
, Part 1