Abstract

Employing Nietzsche’s critique of the ascetic ideal, Katherine Graham claims that the free spirits of late nineteenth-century Europe were - and their contemporary inheritors continue to be - mired in and uncomprehending of “a moral-metaphysical interpretation of the world” that hinders them from overcoming Europe’s Christian inheritance. Following Nietzsche’s statements in the Genealogy she maintains that Nietzsche’s vision of Europe lies in Zarathustra and provides a vision capable of contending with the ascetic ideal that goes beyond Europe. Graham asserts that the re-naturalizing counter-ideal Zarathustra expresses in ‘The Sublime Ones’ provides a prescription through which future free spirits might transmute Europe’s post-Christian decadence.