Becoming Nietzsche's Child
A piece of your Philosophical Self-Portrait
“This - is now my way: where is yours?' Thus I answered those who asked me 'the way'. For the way - does not exist!” -Friedrich Nietzsche
BECOMING NIETZSCHE'S CHILD
Provide your own interpretations of the main symbolic elements in On Three Metamorphoses of the spirit and see what story emerges. It will be your story of human transformation, with a nudge from Nietzsche. Main Interpretative Elements: Camel, Lion, Great Dragon, Child.
"Of the three metamorphoses of the spirit I tell you: how the spirit becomes a camel; and the camel, a lion; and the lion, finally, a child."
With these opening words, Friedrich Nietzsche gives us an allegorical account of two crucial transformations that propel us to new ways of being, and the barriers that keep us from them. The central figure in the story is a Child, which itself emerged from a Lion, which emerged from a Camel, all mediated by a Great Dragon. The Child emerges from a great supporting cast to present a striking image of two crucial human transformations and a direction for our highest spiritual aspirations.
While Nietzsche is telling his own story of human transformation here, he is also nudging us to make our own. What is Your Child? Your Dragon? Your Lion and Camel! As he says later in the same text: “This is now my way: where is yours?''
The Allegory below is his invitation to express yours. The Child most likely represents Nietzsche's vision of the Overman (Ubermencsh), but more importantly for us here, the Child and Camel signify different forms of existence in which a person might find themself. Nietzsche has his own version of this, but so do you and that’s what we are here for. The story seems to extoll the virtues of the child above the Camel, and even the Lion. That can be a fruitful comparison to your version, and perhaps even a third version you or a friend makes later.
There are many transformative stories that can be woven from the short piece. As an Allegory, the reader has to give an interpretation of the main symbolic elements to give it full significance. The main figures are a beast of burden (camel), a beast of prey (lion), a Great Dragon and a child. The child clearly represents a higher state of the spirit than the camel or lion in the allegory, but Nietzsche does not directly tell us why. For Nietzsche, it has something to do with the Overman (Ubermensch). You can either compare your Child to Nietzsche’s, or just make your own Child and explore that.
ON THE THREE METAMORPHOSES OF THE SPIRIT
Of the three metamorphoses of the spirit I tell you: how the spirit becomes a camel; and the camel, a lion; and the lion, finally, a child.
There is much that is difficult for the spirit, the strong, reverent spirit that would bear much: but the difficult and the most difficult are what its strength demands.
What is difficult? asks the spirit that would bear much, and kneels down like a camel wanting to be well loaded. What is most difficult, O heroes, asks the spirit that would bear much, that I may take it upon myself and exult in my strength? Is it not humbling oneself to wound one's haughtiness? Letting one's folly shine to mock one's wisdom?...
Or is it this: stepping into filthy waters when they are the waters of truth, and not repulsing cold frogs and hot toads?
Or is it this: loving those that despise us and offering a hand to the ghost that would frighten us?
All these most difficult things the spirit that would bear much takes upon itself: like the camel that, burdened, speeds into the desert, thus the spirit speeds into its desert.
In the loneliest desert, however, the second metamorphosis occurs: here the spirit becomes a lion who would conquer his freedom and be master in his own desert. Here he seeks out his last master: he wants to fight him and his last god; for ultimate victory he wants to fight with the great dragon.
Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and god? "Thou shalt" is the name of the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says, "I will." "Thou shalt" lies in his way, sparkling like gold, an animal covered with scales; and on every scale shines a golden "thou shalt."
Values, thousands of years old, shine on these scales; and thus speaks the mightiest of all dragons: "All value has long been created, and I am all created value. Verily, there shall be no more 'I will.'" Thus speaks the dragon.
My brothers, why is there a need in the spirit for the lion? Why is not the beast of burden, which renounces and is reverent, enough?
To create new values -- that even the lion cannot do; but the creation of freedom for oneself and a sacred "No" even to duty -- for that, my brothers, the lion is needed. To assume the right to new values -- that is the most terrifying assumption for a reverent spirit that would bear much. Verily, to him it is preying, and a matter for a beast of prey. He once loved "thou shalt" as most sacred: now he must find illusion and caprice even in the most sacred, that freedom from his love may become his prey: the lion is needed for such prey.
But say, my brothers, what can the child do that even the lion could not do? Why must the preying lion still become a child? The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred "Yes." For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred "Yes" is needed: the spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers the world.
from Nietzsche's Thus spoke Zarathustra, part I, Walter Kaufmann transl.