ABSTRACT
The market square setting is highly significant insofar as it registers a thematic link between the parable of the ropedancer and the earlier parable of the madman. Both parables share the same basic presupposition – the death of God and the same existential legacy – the exigency of finding a surrogate god. 'The contradictory nature at the bottom of the German soul', or what Hamann refers to as the idealism and realism instinct in all philosophy, is represented by the two towers between which the human rope is stretched. Upon even closer inspection, however, the buffoon can also be seen to represent the idealism of Zarathustra's missionary intent. As a marginal figure simultaneously inside and outside society, the buffoon 'holds the social world open to values that transcend it' in the same way that Zarathustra – oscillating between mountain and valley, solitude and society – offers the multitude transvalued moral values.
