The State as God or as monster?: Nietzsche’s “Zarathustra”, presuppositions, environment, consequences

Abstract

Nietzsche did not miss any opportunity to disparage Mill as a typical passive-minded Englishman, an aspect that instead makes current interpreters of Nietzsche cautious, since the German philosopher read Mill very carefully, in particular his On Liberty. When he encourages Zarathustra to speak about “the coldest of all cold monsters”, he does so not without a promise of the future: “There, where the state ends, there begins the human being who is not superfluous […]. There, where the State ends, — look at me in this way, my brothers! Do you not see him, the rainbow and the bridges of the superhuman?” This paper establishes a comparison between the vision of God and the State in modern times, and the reflection that Friedrich Nietzsche makes in Thus Spoke Zarathustra about the State as something monstrous (Ungeheuer). For this purpose, passages from the works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Arthur Schonpenhauer, Friedrich Leopold Stolberg, Karl Marx, Max Sterner, Wilhelm von Humboldt and John Stuart Mill will each be discussed.