Leo Strauss on Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra Quotes

“One can state Descartes’s view by saying: nature may be bad, reason cannot be bad. Not nature but reason supplies the standard. Only such knowledge as is purely rational is certainly and evidently true. We possess purely rational knowledge— not of nature, because our knowledge of nature depends on sense perception. Nor do we possess purely rational knowledge of the soul, because what we know of the soul depends very much on internal perception, on what Locke and other men called reflection, and looking back at you. Purely rational knowledge, knowledge depending in no way on events or any other experience, we have only of the moral law, which is to say the law of freedom in opposition to the law of nature. This is the Kantian view: reason takes the place of nature for supplying standards.”
― Leo Strauss, Leo Strauss on Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“Nietzsche was not an Existentialist. Existentialism emerged out of the conflict between Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, the Danish religious writer.”
― Leo Strauss, Leo Strauss on Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“Nietzsche’s atheism is characterized by an element of gratitude; it is not simply a rebellion.”
― Leo Strauss, Leo Strauss on Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“Nietzsche thought it impossible to find a purely political solution to the problem. This would mean, for example, an institutional solution. The political problem is for him a moral problem, and one can perhaps say—with a misuse of the term which is today fashionable, although not altogether misleading—[with] a religious solution, in spite of his atheism. In Nietzsche’s opinion, a society is not possible without a culture of its own. A culture requires ultimately some commitment, which we may loosely call a religion. This is Nietzsche’s chief concern: a regeneration of man. What this would mean in terms of institutions, etc., is of no concern to him.”
― Leo Strauss, Leo Strauss on Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“This is Nietzsche’s fundamental problem: to find a way back to nature, but on the basis of the modern difficulty of conceiving of nature as the standard.”
― Leo Strauss, Leo Strauss on Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra