Nietzsche's planetary thought in Así hablo Zarathustra

Abstract

Affirming our responsibility to the earth is the heart of the instruction in the famous book Así habló Zarathustra. For Nietzsche, the key responsibility of future generations of philosophers is to care for the earth and part of this ethics of care is the idea that we have to return the human being to naturalness and reconnect with another life that is not human. This article will attempt to connect recent developments in the humanities and social sciences, the "plant turn" and the "planetary turn," and relate both developments to the burning question of how we should inhabit this planet now. that our own activity is making livable for so many members of the community of life. We asked ourselves what Nietzsche's philosophy could teach us, and his book Así spoke to Zarathustra about tender bridges between worlds and reconnecting humans with terrestrial and planetary life. The objective of my article is to extract what I call the planetary thought of Así hablo Zarathustra through three key ideas from the book: 1. the idea of the human being in so much tension between the animal and the superhuman; 2. the idea of the philosopher in such a tree, and more specifically the image of Zarathustra as a peg; and 3. the idea of the virtue that regales. Thinking of the human as a rope, the philosopher as a plant and the virtue that bestows it provides ways of reconsidering our relationship with others, even when this other is not human, which is very relevant today in a time of environmental collapse. These three ideas or images offer clues to understanding Nietzsche as a planetary thinker who understands human life as rooted in the earth and at the same time connected to the atmosphere. In Nietzsche, this bond with the earth and the planetary is inseparable from our responsibility for the earth, recognizing that we are a kind of caretaker deeply rooted in terrestrial and planetary life.