Book · 1883
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
by Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche's prophet descends a mountain with three ideas — the Ubermensch, eternal recurrence, the death of God — and r/askphilosophy explains why to read something else first.
What does Reddit think of Thus Spoke Zarathustra?
107 mentions across 3 subreddits. R/askphilosophy dominates with 68; r/philosophy holds 36; r/Stoicism adds 3. The split matters. R/philosophy generates explainer threads: the 'God is dead' framing (↑438), the eternal return as affirmation rather than dread (↑357), the three transformations of camel-lion-child (↑104), the Zarathustra storyline (↑102). These are well-upvoted philosophy-education posts. R/askphilosophy runs a different operation: the ↑110 comment flags TSZ as a poor entry point, noting Nietzsche attacks prior philosophers you haven't read yet. The ↑106 comment pushes back on academic jargon as an answer to newcomers without fixing the access problem. Sentiment across all three subs sits neutral, which is not enthusiasm. The 3 r/Stoicism mentions are cautionary — people arrive at Nietzsche through hardship and find the philosophies working in opposite directions. The ↑319 r/philosophy comment explains the mismatch: Stoicism counsels equanimity, Zarathustra demands self-overcoming. The overlap is superficial.
Community feedback & reader fit
Themes
- · Übermensch and self-overcoming
- · Eternal recurrence as existential test
- · Death of God and the collapse of transcendent values
- · The three metamorphoses: camel, lion, child
- · The Last Man and cultural stagnation
- · Prophetic prose and the misreading problem
Common praise
- + The eternal recurrence thought experiment forces a confrontation with how you actually feel about your own life — r/philosophy's ↑357 thread treats it as affirmation, not dread.
- + The three-transformations framework gives readers a developmental arc to argue with; the ↑104 thread has people working through it seriously.
- + The Last Man passages on consumption and stagnation read sharper now than in the 19th century, and r/philosophy's explainer threads pull ↑300+ votes consistently.
- + The ↑438 'God is dead' thread is the most-upvoted in the dataset and generates genuine clarification rather than surface-level takes.
Common criticism
- − R/askphilosophy explicitly recommends against starting here — the ↑110 comment calls it poorly suited for newcomers, as Nietzsche's attacks assume familiarity with the targets.
- − The literary-prophetic prose frustrates readers who want arguments rather than aphorisms; no thread in the data defends that style as accessible.
- − People arrive via r/Stoicism and leave confused — the philosophies conflict and the book doesn't signal that at all.
Who it's for
Read it if you've already done some philosophy and want to understand why half of 20th-century continental thought is borrowing from or arguing with Nietzsche. Starting here because someone quoted 'God is dead' at you will leave you with the wrong impression — the ↑438 r/philosophy thread exists partly to correct exactly that misread. The r/Stoicism crossover crowd should know upfront that Zarathustra is not a coping manual. The ideal reader has a prior philosopher to compare against, a tolerance for prose that refuses to argue in straight lines, and no need for the book to confirm existing beliefs.
Mentions over time
Top subreddits
Which Reddit comments matter for Thus Spoke Zarathustra?
Top-upvoted quotes across the subreddits where this book is mentioned. Click through to read the full thread.
“Abstract “God is dead” is a widely quoted statement made by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche used the phrase to express his idea that the Enlightenment had eliminated the possibility of the existence of God. But here’s where things get tricky. Nietzsche’s exasperation,…
“ABSTRACT: In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche lays out his notion of the eternal return. Such a hypothetical situation, in which one must live their lives over and over, can be taken as a dreadful possibility. However, this video, using notable scholar John Kagg’s Hiking With Nietzsche, argues tha…
“There is a large portion of posts on /r/Stoicism that go like this: "Hey guys, X happened, how should I deal with it? What is a stoic way to deal with this? How do I not feel bad". I didn't personally write a post like this, but hardships were also a reason why I got interested in that philosophy. …
“Imo, *Thus Spoke Zarathustra*. I think Nietzsche is many people's first introduction to philosophy, which I think is fine in general if one is persistent and curious of philosophy more generally - Nietzsche is quite critical of other philosophers prior and concurrent of his time - but *TSZ* is qui…
“Some of the other answers here are a bit myopic, focusing on his influence on such and such academic philosopher. If someone isn't familiar with this world, I don't think these answers are helpful. Rattling off words like *Post-post-structuralist* and *methodological* is completely missing the point…
“Abstract: in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche outlines the three transformations that the philosopher must go through. The camel is the stage of learning where we burden ourselves with a great weight. This is the phase of the scholar and the apprentice learning the ways of the world and everything …
“Abstract: In this video, I explain the storyline of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Zarathustra is a sage who descends from isolation to save mankind from the era of the Last Man. Humanity has become preoccupied with consumption and pleasure; so much so that they no longer create anything. Zarathustra gathe…
“He didn't. Fanon quoted him as saying this, but he got it from Beauvoir and she has Descartes as having said it. I don't know if Descartes did say it, but yeah. Nietzsche did talk about children and 'becoming child' in Zarathustra, so you can look at that if you want to know his thoughts. >On the …
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Readers also mention
Books that share discussion threads with Thus Spoke Zarathustra — counted from the comments, not curated.
Beyond Good and Evil
Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche dismantles the moral framework Western civilization built on, then refuses to tell you what to replace it with.
On the Genealogy of Morals
Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche traces where 'good' and 'evil' come from — and argues the answer involves priests, resentment, and a deliberate inversion of aristocratic values.
The Myth of Sisyphus
Albert Camus
A 1942 essay that opens with the question of whether life is worth living and ends by insisting Sisyphus is happy.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra — frequently asked
Is Thus Spoke Zarathustra a good starting point for Nietzsche?+
No — and r/askphilosophy says so explicitly. The ↑110 comment calls it unsuited for newcomers because Nietzsche spends much of the book attacking philosophers you haven't read. Most regulars suggest Beyond Good and Evil or the essay collections first. TSZ rewards readers who already have the target in view.
What does Reddit actually think of Thus Spoke Zarathustra?+
Neutral, across all three tracked subs: r/askphilosophy (68 mentions), r/philosophy (36), r/Stoicism (3). That neutrality isn't indifference — the ↑438 'God is dead' thread and ↑357 eternal recurrence thread show real engagement.
Why does Thus Spoke Zarathustra keep appearing in r/Stoicism threads?+
People find Stoicism during hard times and follow the trail to Nietzsche, which is a natural path. The problem, flagged in the ↑319 r/philosophy comment, is that the communities are philosophically opposed: Stoicism counsels equanimity toward what you can't control; Zarathustra demands you reshape yourself entirely. The overlap is superficial.
Is the 'God is dead' line in Thus Spoke Zarathustra being misread online?+
Constantly. The ↑438 r/philosophy thread exists largely to correct this — the phrase describes the Enlightenment's epistemological dismantling of God's necessity, not a triumphant atheist declaration. R/askphilosophy makes the same correction in nearly every attribution thread touching Nietzsche.