Abstract

This chapter discusses how the final aphorism, 575, of Nietszsche's Dawn, presents a positive vision of humanity as future‐oriented and self‐cultivating. It explores how Nietzsche's vision of humanity as future‐oriented and self‐creating is taken up once again by him in his later writings. In the final aphorism Nietzsche's use of the symbolism of flight is significant. This final aphorism is entitled "We aeronauts of the spirit". As Duncan Large has pointed out, the aeronauts in the aphorism are flying an "air‐ship", and their flying out over the sea indicates "how close is their kinship to their more earthbound, or at least sea‐bound mariner‐cousins". In addition to his use of the sea as a metaphor for both the infinity of the future and humanity's orientation toward this future, Nietzsche draws upon the metaphor of flight to elaborate on this continuation of human development.