Book 4

Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra was first published as a prologue and three books; the fourth came later, meant for a select audience of friends. Clancy Martin calls it the strangest of the books and notes that some scholars read it as satire. The plot: a soothsayer warns Zarathustra that his final temptation will be Mitleid, pity or compassion, literally suffering with; Zarathustra goes looking for the higher man and finds a whole cast; there's a feast and the worship of a donkey.

The turn comes in the morning, after a lion scatters the higher men. Zarathustra realizes the problem of suffering is no longer central to his teaching, and Martin says all of philosophy before this had been concerned with that question. Zarathustra leaves his cave asking what his suffering and his compassion matter, since he strives after his work. Martin's gloss: raising a child, being a good friend, a proud career, all involve suffering, and saying yes to life means saying yes to that too.