Solitudes and Reverences: Gift and Friendship in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra

Abstract

In the present article, we will examine the concept of creation as gift in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The aim is to demonstrate that solitude is the creative act, and that creation, being a solitary endeavor, results in a gift that, when offered, forges a special kind of bond which the philosopher classifies as great love, the ultimate expression of which is the idea of friendship as Mitfreude. We will therefore show how the offering of a gift implies a connection with the self-affirmative task of “fidelity to the earth” and to oneself, reversing the ancient premises of the morality of compassion to express joy as the festive criterion that em bodies the task imposed by the present: the overcoming of man and the attainment of the Übermensch.