Paul Loeb and Keith Ansell-Pearson (eds.), Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Critical Guide" [Book Review]

Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra (TSZ), written in instalments between 1883-1885, has had a tremendous impact in and outside of academic philosophy.A text that famously was distributed to German soldiers in WWI by military order, TSZ has been discussed and praised amongst philosophers, literary theorists, and artists.Nietzsche himself considered the book to be his crowning achievement, not-so-modestly describing it as "the greatest present that has ever been made to[mankind] so far (EH, 'Preface': 4).Nevertheless, contemporary Nietzsche scholars disagree about the text's philosophical and aesthetic quality, as well as it's overall importance in Nietzsche's corpus.On one end of the spectrum, some commentators find TSZ overblown, laborious to get through, and beyond these perceived aesthetic flaws, lacking in philosophical quality and (perhaps thankfully) inessential to understanding Nietzsche's philosophical aims.In an introduction to a relatively recent edition, for example, Robert Pippin describes TSZ as "in large part a failure" (Robert Pippen, 2006, "Introduction" in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: xiii).On the other end of the spectrum, some commentators take Nietzsche at his word, finding TSZ to be a literary wonder, marking a new epoch of the use of German language, preceded in the modern period only by Goethe and Luther.But further, and more relevant for philosophers, this faction take TSZ to be of the upmost importance for unlocking Nietzsche's philosophy-proper, and in particular, to reveal the solutions he constructed for various philosophical problems and existential challenges for the human being that he merely diagnoses elsewhere in his corpus.Keith Ansell-Pearson's and Paul Loeb's critical guide brings together an impressive lineup of Nietzsche scholars in an attempt to fight the corner for the latter position that TSZ is not only useful but in fact essential to understanding the key themes of Nietzsche's philosophy; that, as they put it: "TSZ needs to assume a central role in any informed appreciation of his style of philosophical practice