Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the most influential philosophical work since Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, a visionary prose poem in which Friedrich Nietzsche announced the death of God, introduced the concept of the Übermensch (the "overman" who creates new values in a godless world), and proposed the doctrine of eternal recurrence — the ultimate test of affirmation in which one must will the repetition of one's entire life for all eternity. The work stands at the crossroads of philosophy, literature, and prophecy.

Emerging during Nietzsche's most productive period between 1883 and 1885, Thus Spoke Zarathustra inspired Richard Strauss's celebrated tone poem of 1896 and has permeated modern culture in ways both significant and troubling — the Wehrmacht distributed copies to soldiers during the Second World War, though Nietzsche's philosophy resists reduction to any political program. The work influenced virtually every major twentieth-century philosopher.