Who is Nietzsche’s Jester? Or Birthing Comedy in Cave Shadows

Jan Gresil Kahambing

doi:10.57106/scientia.v9i2.123

Authors

Jan Gresil Kahambing

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.57106/scientia.v9i2.123

Keywords:

Nietzsche, Jester, Ascetic Ideal, Ressentiment, Comedy, Fictionalism, Overcoming, Shadows, Caves, Plato

Abstract

This essay delves into Nietzsche’s understanding of the jester in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I argue here that its existence explains the shifting ethos from tragedy to comedy. The jester in the societal context exhibits the figure of fictionalism that redirects reality into a detour of comic interplays. As such, he embodies fictional overcoming from the modern backdrop. I then employ On the Genealogy of Morals to explain further four principles that aid in taking into effect the birth of the jester. Nietzsche’s critique of morality attacks such principles as ressentiment, guilt and bad conscience taken together, free will, and ascetic ideal. Later, I present a way of going into the shadows as a manner of confronting the jester and overcoming it.

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