Nietzsche's Zarathustra

Volume one of Jung’s seminar on the book that moved him profoundly and had a lifelong influence on his thought

Nietzsche’s infamous work Thus Spake Zarathustra is filled with a strange sense of religiosity that seems to run counter to the philosopher’s usual polemics against religious faith. For some scholars, this book marks little but a mental decline in the great philosopher. For C. G. Jung, however, Zarathustra was an invaluable demonstration of the unconscious at work, one that illuminated both Nietzsche’s psychology and spirituality and that of the modern world in general. This is the first of two volumes of Jung’s lively seminar on Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, which remains an important source for specialists in depth psychology. In these historic sessions, the mature Jung speaks informally to members of his inner circle about a thinker whose work not only overwhelmed him with the depth of their understanding of human nature but also provided the philosophical sources of many of his own ideas.