Book One: Sections 1–10

Abstract

These ten sections develop the difference between conventional morality and Nietzsche’s star/creator morality. The opening section constitutes another of the deliberately multiple beginnings for his “gay science”. It subverts itself as a foundational beginning, by tacitly refer­ring back to the Prelude’s closing poems. As we saw, those point simultaneously backwards and forwards, culminating in a morality of purity consisting of ceaseless, creative self-renewal. Nietzsche now shows this morality differs dramatically from traditional moralities, which all claim existence has an aim. The Prelude’s metaphors of the artist as a rolling cask, a phoenix, and an orbiting star overturn and tacitly question that teaching. Nietzsche now explicitly asks what the continual reappearance of the instructors of the aim of existence signifies.