ABSTRACT
At the beginning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the true meaning of Zarathustra's mission is apparently obvious. For Zarathustra proclaims himself as the teacher of the Overman, and in his very first speech he harangues the assembled multitude with the smallness of "man," and the need to go beyond him. In The Gay Science, the original parable of Eternal Recurrence makes it abundantly clear that the Eternal Recurrence is a device that intensifies the existence of the individual by forcing her to confront herself within the perspective of eternity. The demon creeps into loneliest loneliness, just as Zarathustra can only encounter the idea when his loneliest loneliness has begun. The Eternal Recurrence is apparently a contradictory thought, which, from different perspectives, may intensify or overwhelm the individual life. Perhaps it may be argued that in this respect it fails to resolve the question of sovereignty or that it even leaves this question deliberately ambivalent.
