2025.10.09 Reading through the first part of Zarathustra but still ruminating on the whole issue of master morality and slave morality from Geneology of Morals and Beyond Good & Evil. This noble ideal of positively defining good and orienting oneself towards it versus the slave ideal of defining oneself negatively against evil. This speaks to a deeper sentiment he expresses often of forming his philosophy in a positive way out in this productive manner, he draws on such a broad range of references and is clearly so well read even when he is critiquing some philosophy of the past (spinoza comes to mind) he is still using their ideas productively to continue his process. Definitely seeing the throughline here to Deleuze's whole thing about the creation of concepts. His whole constructed discourse between Rome and Jerusalem, Master and Slave, feels like he tends towards this noble ideal, but almost insofar as he sets himself contra the times he's found himself in, but it still feels like there has to be a tension there. Although he's non-dialectical, he still comes up with these dichotomies to illustrate his points. The other one to discuss here is the opposing forces of Apollo and Dionysus, which he also puts in this position of Apollo over Dionysus while still stressing the importance of the tension between the two. I'm open to just calling this preference of Apollo over Dionysus, Rome over Jerusalem, a simple matter of contrarianism and Nietzsche's general antagonistic vibe, but the notion of unequal duologies I recently learned a bit about in the context of Incan religion. Not really going there but worth noting. Zarathustra is so far impenetrable on the level of prose but I am enjoying the poetic beauty of it.