Abstract

Kathleen Higgins has delivered the type of book philosophers rarely write anymore. Nietzsche's Zarathustra is a deeply personal meditation on Nietzsche's least accessible work. The teacherly and patient prose of Nietzsche's Zarathustra evinces Higgins's commitment to philosophy as more than a narrow academic Fach, as a holistic, eminently practical ars vitae. She genuinely hopes to share with her readers the inspiration and insight she has gleaned from reading Zarathustra. In fact, a more accurate title would be Higgins's Zarathustra, insofar as the book is richly informed by the author's own personal experiences of music, love, suffering, teaching, Christianity, and, of course, reading Zarathustra. Higgins's personal investment accounts for both the evocative attraction of the book and for its discursive limitations. Higgins argues that the "message" of Zarathustra cannot exhaustively be conveyed to others via discursive media; this insight ensures both the success and failure of Nietzsche's Zarathustra as a philosophical study.