In this reading of Nietzsche's most elusive work, Francesca Cauchi claims that Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a moral polemic, one grounded in its own set of moral values that posits its own moral goal - the self-overcoming of Christian morality through the creation of new values.

By way of a sustained interrogation of Zarathustra's doctrine of self-overcoming, Francesca Cauchi lays bare the asceticism underlying the prescriptive injunctions set forth in the first two parts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. These injunctions fall under three heads: self-legislation, self-denial and self-sacrifice, which are shown to bear striking affinities with concepts first formulated by Kant, Hegel and Feuerbach, respectively. In Cauchi's new reading, the Kantian rational will, the Hegelian 'labour of the negative' and Feuerbach's indivisible trinity of love, sacrifice and suffering are seen to resurface in Zarathustra as the agents of a ferocious and self-eviscerating doctrine of self-overcoming that exhibits all the attributes of a moral tyranny.