I have written an improved version of this:
Having just finished reading "The Mask of Enlightenment", I come to
this conclusion:
That Stanley Rosen is strongly anti-Nietzschean is made quite clear in
his Conclusion (p. 249): "Nietzsche's doctrines are at least as
dangerous politically as those of Marx, and in a post-Marxist epoch,
obviously even more so. Once the Marxist dream of wakefulness is
punctured, the temptation intensifies to turn to the Nietzschean
effort to derive individual significance from chaos."
Rosen contends that Nietzsche is a nihilist (p. 247) who sees the
cosmos as only random chaos. This may be an over-generalization since,
on the human plane, Zarathustra says that Will to Power is the
foundation - see Lampert's classic commenatary: Nietzsche's Teaching:
An Interpretation of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"
Rosen thinks that Nietzsche's "metaphor" of eternal recurrence could
destroy the myth of linear Progress of the Enlightenment, but that
this is totally deterministic (amor fati); Rosen then concludes that
all Zarathustra's calls for a "creative transvaluation of values" (p.
247) and for the coming of a Superman are impossible and are a "noble
lie" (p. 183)
I think that this contradictory vision is by no means inevitable. It
is possible for example that the two aspects (determinism and
creation) refer to successive phases in Zarthustra's own evolution in
the course of the text. Robert Gooding-Williams' commentary
Zarathustra's Dionysian Modernism (2001) pays closer attention to the
connections between Zarathustra's beliefs and the dramatic sequences
of the text.
Rosen's reading of Book 4 is very stimulating though. He points out
the very ironic tone used towards the "higher men" who have stopped
their progression, their self-overcoming, on the way towards the
Superman, because of fear, or too much prudence. Rosen notes:
"Zarathustra then warns them to restrict their will to their capacity.
There should be no doubt here that he is condemning rather than
praising the higher men." (p. 235)

Thomas
France