The Anti-Christ

By Friedrich Nietzsche

Here is Friedrich Nietzsche's great masterpiece The Anti-Christ, wherein Nietzsche attacks Christianity as a blight on humanity. This classic is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand Nietzsche and his place within the history of philosophy. "We should not deck out and embellish Christianity: it has waged a war to the death against this higher type of man, it has put all the deepest instincts of this type under its ban, it has developed its concept of evil, of the Evil One himself, out of these instincts-the strong man as the typical reprobate, the 'outcast among men.' Christianity has taken the part of all the weak, the low, the botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism to all the self-preservative instincts of sound life; it has corrupted even the faculties of those natures that are intellectually most vigorous, by representing the highest intellectual values as sinful, as misleading, as full of temptation. The most lamentable example: the corruption of Pascal, who believed that his intellect had been destroyed by original sin, whereas it was actually destroyed by Christianity!" -Friedrich Nietzsche

• Language: English
• Publisher: Start Publishing LLC
• Release date: Apr 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781627931410

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was an acclaimed German philosopher who rose to prominence during the late nineteenth century. His work provides a thorough examination of societal norms often rooted in religion and politics. As a cultural critic, Nietzsche is affiliated with nihilism and individualism with a primary focus on personal development. His most notable books include The Birth of Tragedy, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. and Beyond Good and Evil. Nietzsche is frequently credited with contemporary teachings of psychology and sociology.

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The Anti-Christ

By Friedrich Nietzsche

Start Publishing LLC

Copyright © 2012 by Start Publishing LLC

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

First Start Publishing eBook edition October 2012

Start Publishing is a registered trademark of Start Publishing LLC

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-1-62793-141-0

Table of Contents

Introduction

Preface

The Anti-Christ

Introduction

Save for his raucous, rhapsodical autobiography, "Ecco Homo, The Antichrist" is the last thing that Nietzsche ever wrote, and so it may be accepted as a statement of some of his most salient ideas in their final form. Notes for it had been accumulating for years and it was to have constituted the first volume of his long-projected magnum opus, The Will to Power. His full plan for this work, as originally drawn up, was as follows:

Vol 1: The Antichrist: an Attempt at a Criticism of Christianity.

Vol. 2: The Free Spirit: a Criticism of Philosophy as a Nihilistic Movement.

Vol. 3: The Immoralist: a Criticism of Morality, the Most Fatal Form of Ignorance.

Vol. 4: Dionysus: the Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence.

The first sketches for The Will to Power were made in 1884, soon after the publication of the first three parts of Thus Spake Zarathustra, and thereafter, for four years, Nietzsche piled up notes. They were written at all the places he visited on his endless travels in search of health—at Nice, at Venice, at Sils-Maria in the Engadine (for long his favourite resort), at Cannobio, at Zürich, at Genoa, at Chur, at Leipzig. Several times his work was interrupted by other books, first by Beyond Good and Evil, then by The Genealogy of Morals (written in twenty days), then by his Wagner pamphlets. Almost as often he changed his plan. Once he decided to expand The Will to Power to ten volumes, with An Attempt at a New Interpretation of the World as a general sub-title. Again he adopted the sub-title of An Interpretation of All That Happens. Finally, he hit upon An Attempt at a Transvaluation of All Values, and went back to four volumes, though with a number of changes in their arrangement. In September, 1888, he began actual work upon the first volume, and before the end of the month it was completed. The Summer had been one of almost hysterical creative activity. Since the middle of June he had written two other small books, The Case of Wagner and The Twilight of the Idols, and before the end of the year he was destined to write "Ecco Homo." Some time during December his health began to fail rapidly, and soon after the New Year he was helpless. Thereafter he wrote no more.

The Wagner diatribe and The Twilight of the Idols were published immediately, but The Antichrist did not get into type until 1895. I suspect that the delay was due to the influence of the philosopher’s sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, an intelligent and ardent but by no means uniformly judicious propagandist of his ideas. During his dark days of neglect and misunderstanding, when even family and friends kept aloof, Frau Förster-Nietzsche went with him farther than any other, but there were bounds beyond which she, also, hesitated to go, and those bounds were marked by crosses. One notes, in her biography of him—a useful but not always accurate work—an evident desire to purge him of the accusation of mocking at sacred things. He had, she says, great admiration for the elevating effect of Christianity . . . upon the weak and ailing, and a real liking for sincere, pious Christians, and a tender love for the Founder of Christianity. All his wrath, she continues, was reserved for St. Paul and his like, who ressentiment—set forth at length in the first part of The Genealogy of Morals, published under his own supervision in 1887. And the rest are scattered through the whole vast mass of his notes, sometimes as mere questionings but often worked out very carefully. Moreover, let it not be forgotten that it was Wagner’s yielding to Christian sentimentality in Parsifal that transformed Nietzsche from the first among his literary advocates into the most bitter of his opponents. He could forgive every other sort of mountebankery, but not that. In me, he once said, "the Christianity of my forbears reaches its logical conclusion. In me the stern intellectual conscience that Christianity fosters and makes paramount turns against Christianity. In me Christianity . . . devours itself."

In truth, the present philippic is as necessary to the completeness of the whole of Nietzsche’s system as the keystone is to the arch. All the curves of his speculation lead up to it. What he flung himself against, from beginning to end of his days of writing, was always, in the last analysis, Christianity in some form or other—Christianity as a system of practical ethics, Christianity as a political code, Christianity as meta years too late. His dreams were thoroughly Hellenic; his whole manner of thinking was Hellenic; his peculiar errors were Hellenic no less. But his Hellenism, I need not add, was anything but the pale neo-Platonism that has run like a

Reviews for The Anti-Christ

[gottfried_leibniz-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As a devout Christian,
I had very high expectations from this book.
I was surprised to learn that Nietzsche was not anti-semitic, that was something I learnt from this book.
He likes Buddhism better than Christianity. "Buddhism, I repeat is a hundred times colder, more truthful, more objective."
He goes on to attack the origin of Jewish concept of God, concept of sin, psychology of Christians, gospels.
He says,"Christian is the hatred of the intellect, of pride, of courage, of freedom and senses."
Indeed, I felt really funny reading this and I am in a better mood.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Tal van knappe inzichten die intussen gemeengoed zijn geworden. Toch blijft hij met zijn religiekritiek steken in secundaire kwesties.

[maxernst11 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Tal van knappe inzichten die intussen gemeengoed zijn geworden. Toch blijft hij met zijn religiekritiek steken in secundaire kwesties.

[hadriantheblind · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An intense and damning work - one not to be caught reading in public where I live.

A fearsome, angry, snarl against Christianity, as it was at the time. Rails and rambles against the decadence and nihilism of Christianity, of weakness, of parasitism, of the promise of eternal life, the corruption of the Church and priesthood, and of the evils justified by religion. It is a means for which the weak can resent and dominate or refuse the strong, or the ways of the world, as he says.

As for Jesus? A misguided redeemer, who promised "The kingdom of god is within you", and perhaps the only true Christian.

This is not exactly a book one can read, and put aside, and say, "That was interesting. On to the next one." It stays with you - as madness or as a spark of genius.

As a side note, my copy was translated by H. L. Mencken, also famous for his acidic style and critique of American religion. A funny historical coincidence.

Recommended for Hyperboreans.

[uh8myzen_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I found Friedrich Nietzsche when I was still in high school, and have been a huge fan ever since. Sadly, he is one of the most misunderstood and maligned thinkers, but stands as a huge influence on so much of modern thought. Nietzsche is not only a philosopher who is easy to read, but he is a joy to read. He is ecstatically involved in his thought and passes that ecstasy on the reader. I have always drawn strength from his work, and return to it often.

[tullius22 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It is possible to see this as too aristocratic. After all, 'Or can any teach God knowledge? Seeing as he judges those which are high.' But for all that, here is hot fury and cold steel, and it cuts deep...And, of course, it would be easy to draw facile comparisons between him and the 'New Atheists'--Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris--and it's been done; but that's just comparing children with a grown-up. Each one of them is--Smart Like A Moron! Though I suppose they're sure clever, since stupid people say so. After all, it's not like the Pharisees and the dictionary freaks (of monkish habit) are going to find the answer. They're as lost as Hitler!And, if anyone's wondering, Was Nietzsche German? I doubt it. Indeed, it was his cross to be so surrounded by the plague of Victorian Germanic-Teutonic introverted losers which had so infected and deformed the Europe of his day. Far more real of an infection than whatever dream of "Eastern Jews" that the Nazis used to fret of...like wrestlers with the sensibilities of snobs: "Eastern Jews! (Uneducated)!" Yet those old German military-academic scientists were really 'life unworthy of life', as the Nazis used to say. God! useless weak people, always trying to bully everyone. Like one of those two-and-a-half pound dogs that always wants to fight...Although I like the ones that are too grand to fight even better. They go through life with their eyes safely shut, and they if they provoke you, they'll never admit it, because their eyes are too weak to see you or your concerns, their eyes are too weak to even see their feet, although at least they have their conceit, even if they are too fat to reach their feet. And too grand, of course, to even want to. But whatever fools say, there is never anything wrong with wanting to be a little noble, no matter how low-born you are. So let them say of thee, that he, 'adventured his life far'. Or else is she, 'wild for to hold, though I seem tame'. But what do they know of life, who live as the dead? So rest in your conceit, Christians, for your sin rests on you. For, after all, they have no sense of correctness, only of conceit, and the privilege of little lords who are too lazy to do any work: so what is more weak than that? And jealousy of anything capable of real kindness and generosity: did they think that this too would go unnoticed? But, come, let us not disturb the moral invalids--the ethically feeble, more vexed by slights to their cloistered names and parochial words, than to the sorrows of the people and catastrophes of the others--let them rest in their sins, for their sins rest in them. (9/10)