Final answer:
Nietzsche regarded Zarathustra as the first teacher of morality and humanity because Zarathustra's teachings laid the groundwork for moral constructs that Nietzsche later scrutinized. Nietzsche's critique highlighted a shift from a natural admiration of nobility to a morality rooted in powerlessness. He saw Zarathustra's ideological influence as pivotal in the development and eventual subversion of natural human hierarchy, impacting the evolution of humanity.
Step-by-step explanation:
Friedrich Nietzsche saw Zarathustra as the world's first teacher of morality and humanity due to his foundational role in the development of moral and ethical thought. Nietzsche perceived morality as an ideological construct, originally rooted in the natural admiration for excellence or nobility. However, over time, this concept of nobility was co-opted and transformed into abstract virtues through the influence of Judeo-Christian philosophy, which redefined "good" in terms of spiritual virtue and powerlessness, and "evil" in terms of strength and vice. This transformation, from Nietzsche's viewpoint, was a dangerous subversion of natural hierarchy, whereby the inherently strong are stifled by the weak, impeding humanity's progress.
Nietzsche's philosophical genealogy - or his form of deconstruction - argued that Zarathustra's teachings, which orbited around the ideas of a primary god (Ahura Mazda) and human involvement in the struggle between good and evil, set the stage for these subsequent moral transformations. Nietzsche challenged this traditional morality, claiming that it arose from envy of the noble class, led to the suppression of the strong by the priestly class, and had negative implications for human culture and achievement. In contrast, Nietzsche championed qualities he considered genuinely good, such as the will to power and the individual's supremacy, as these were in line with human nature's instinctive drive to assert and evolve. Ultimately, Zarathustra, through his teachings, was seen by Nietzsche as the pivot from a recognition of natural nobility to a moral structure that subverts natural order and curtails the growth of humanity. Zarathustra's influence extended to shaping a framework where moral dualities could be understood and power dynamics questioned, marking him as a significant figure in the trajectory of philosophical thought on morality.