4 - Festivals of Recognition

Summary

Nietzsche's conception of the rabble is more disparaging than his vision of the herd. Nietzsche's elitism might be in keeping with his having the lower social classes in mind when he refers to the rabble, Zarathustra also refers to the power-, writing-, and pleasure-rabble. Nietzsche suggests the philosopher as thinker: Whoever thinks in words thinks as an orator and not as a thinker. With regard to the philosopher in the oratorical mode, Nietzsche recalls a line from a song originating in the medieval Ass Festival, a pre-Lenten celebration on the order of Mardi Gras in which clerics mocked the liturgy, sometimes with a procession leading an ass into church. The festivals of recognition enable the hermit, too, to find a place in a community. The ideal of community for Nietzsche is the community in which political order has simply dissolved and where punishment has disappeared.