At Basel Nietzsche had become a close friend of
Richard Wagner (1813-1883),
Thus Spoke Zarathustra centered around the notions of the will to power, radical nihilism, and the eternal recurrence. Pain, suffering, and contradictions are no longer seen as objections to existence but as an expression of its actual tensions. In a note entitled 'Anti-Darwin' Nietzsche stated that "man as a species is not progressing."
Hopes for
a higher state of being after death are explained as compensations for
failures in this life.