a little help with the language...

[seekingUnderstanding]

hi everyone, just stumbled across this site, it looks great, best wishes to all.

i have the Penguin Classics version of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, this translation first published in 1961, reprinted with new introduction in 1969. i hope this clarifies which version i have.

my problem comes quite early in the introduction and i fear it's going to be a long and tricky read for me!

on page 13, the author refers to "The nihilism of his position is now stated frankly:

The four errors. Man has been reared by his errors: first he never saw himself other than imperfectly,..."

this is where my problem is. even trying to work it out from the context, this sentence confuses me. i'm just not sure what this means. does it mean that he sees himself as being imperfect, or as perfect? i'm leaning towards perfect, but i'm just not sure. i've skipped it and moved on am getting into the gradually but i can't get it off my mind.

can anyone help please?

thanks.

[War God]

"Imperfectly" is an adverb which refers to "saw". The statement means that when man looked at himself, he did not see everything there was there. Compare the next statement, where Nietzsche says that when man looked at himself, he also saw things that weren't there at all.

[the_dwarf]

does it mean that he sees himself as being imperfect, or as perfect?

that wasn't the topic. rewriting it like this should help:

"Man has been reared by his errors: first he never could see himself perfectly, second he attributed to himself imaginary qualities, ..."

[Onasander]

can't even remember where it says this.

Just sounds like he was pointing out the subjectivity even inherent in our own identity, What we feel outselves to be, and know ourselves to be, isn't the sum total of who we are. We are more than language can denote, more than the activity of the sunapses, or the memory of it. We are the who hulking flesh and resulting cauality of the being in place and time.

As I said, I can't even recall the context of this, but that seems straighforeward enough. Modern work with brainwaves and behavioral psychology, as well as regressive memory, makes this obvious enough.