The problem, according to Katsafanas, is the tendency to negate what presently exists in favor of an imagined future ideal. This tendency is dramatized in Zarathustra’s overwhelming urge to be rid of the rabble and the small human (ZII: “Rabble”; ZIII: “Convalescent”). At the same time, however, Nietzsche insists that life-affirmation should be unconditional, meaning that it should not depend on the possibility of removing objectionable elements from life. This is why Zarathustra needs the thought of life’s eternal recurrence. Since all such objectionable elements must eternally recur as the same, his attitude to this thought serves to reveal any conditionality in his claim to affirm life. Zarathustra must seek to affirm the eternal recurrence of life because only in this way will he be pursuing his higher values while at the same time affirming life as it is actually lived in the present moment.

This chapter argues that Nietzsche hoped to emancipate genuine philosophers, as exemplified by his idealized Zarathustra, from the long-standing ascetic influence of science and religion in order that they might finally embrace their proper role as autonomous value-creating rulers in both these spheres.