The Anti-Christ

Although untrained in philosophy (as you will undoubtedly infer), I have read quite a bit on my own. Of course, while reading philosophy I often (usually) encounter writings which denigrate Christianity, often times with very solid argument. However, I have never been as captivated by a book which stands in such complete opposition to my own beliefs as I was by "The Antichrist."

Nietzsche's passion, rage, scorn and conviction are utterly compelling. Compared to such bland offerings like "Why I Am Not A Christian" by Bertrand Russell, this book really sparks (two different animals, I know). I sensed that, while writing this book, Nietzsche was simultaneously sinking into the depths of his madness AND thinking as clearly as he'd ever dared. He comes across as both complete loon and literary genius. Truly captivating reading!

I will say that I disagree with almost all that Nietzsche writes in this book. As a Christian, I have the luxury of being able to call some things right and some things wrong without being tripped up by relativism. Nonetheless, it is a singularly powerful and captivating read, regardless of stance. I would recommend this book to anyone searching for passionate, vigorous and captivating philosophy.

This book gives me a great new perspective on why Christianity is detrimental to the advancement of society, or at least the Overmen. Sure Christianity is false and weird and perverse, I knew that, but this book instead deals with how Christianity takes away man's "will to power" that is the driving force of all life. I had heard of "will to power" before reading this but this is the first time I understood exactly what it means. As a result of this book I now consider myself an immoralist. What a great Christmas present for that preachy aunt who gets on your nerves... well, perhaps Christmas isn't the most respectful time. One part that struck me as a little inaccurate is when he says "One loses force when one pities". I have to disagree with this. Without pity or sympathy you have a psychopath, and that psychopath won't get far, he'll be either killed, imprisoned or institutionalized. We have acquired the ability to "pity", but make no mistake, it's because it helps us gain power by forming an alliance with the rest of the human race. Nietzsche has made us honest about our animal nature, but nothing much has changed. As usual, a great thought provoking read from Nietzsche.

Nietzsche's The Anti-Christ is the most revealing piece of writing concerning Christianity. Although Nietzsche tends to repeat himself often, the book offers an insightful look at the history of Christianity and how it is affecting our lives today.

Nietzsche discusses the affects Christianity has on our society, including limiting education for the good of the church. I would recommend reading Nietzsche's other writings, especially Genealogy of Morals, to understand why he feels so critical toward Christianity. In conclusion, Mencken's translation of The Anti-Christ keeps intact Neitzsche's original thoughts concerning Christianity and religion as a whole.

As Nietzche himself said, he is not a philosopher, he is dynamite. And there is certainly an explosive force to this book. Nietzche unmasks Christianity for the nihilistic life-denying system of belief that it is. Unfortunately his disrepectful style is likely to make believers sick with disgust and so prevent them from appreciating his message.

Nietzsche poured is blood into this book. I really think its indecent and inhuman for anybody to remain a christen after reading this work. I am shocked at what some of the reviewers are writing here...that he was a "madman" (all great men went mad seeing you small men doing small things!)...that he was responsible for fascism of Hitler (If a pygmy like Hitler misuses Nietzsche then whose fault it is?)...

and great misunderstanding of "Superman"( His "Superman" is not your physical Hulk hogan!) and what about his personal life(whether he went man, or died miserably, utterly destitute, lonely, matters to you all...?) Really, if you have some humanness then prove it by providing one counter argument against his arguments. You cannot, you who still call yourself christen!

Really a great book: Read, wash yourself off the Christianity; and aim for the Übermensch.

Nietzsche's chief weaknesses--weaknesses for which he is famous--are immodesty; bad manners; a proneness to exaggeration (often absurd exaggeration); bad scholarship (often abominably bad scholarship); and disregard for evidence. At times he was able to check these faults. The works he produced at his best, like Beyond Good And Evil, which gives perhaps the best explanation of his opinions, are much less affected by these habitual faults than the work he produced at his worst.

To my mind N.'s weaknesses make The Antichrist a wreck of what it might have been. It might have been a trenchant argument in favour of atheism, or at least a trenchant argument in favour of N.'s most important ideas. And it is neither. His characteristic weaknesses lie everywhere. First, in the book, he is often absurdly conceited.

'We have discovered happiness, we know the way, we have found the exit out of the labyrinth of thousands of years.' [TA, 1]

This evidently refers to N.'s own philosophy. He might have applied some of his criticisms of the arrogance of other philosophers to himself, and written with a stitch more modesty.

Second, in the book he is often unnecessarily rude.

'The good god and the devil--both abortions of decadence.' [TA, 17]

Broadly speaking, there are two explanations of the universe that are made possible by the evidence we have--that something produced the universe; and that someone produced the universe. Either conclusion is a generalisation. So neither can be proven in such a way that the other is shown to be categorically false. Moreover, the universe is evidently in many ways a highly organised universe; it evidently appears, in many ways, as you would expect it to appear, if it had been made by someone not something. N. might have written more respectfully of a hypothesis he could only ever disprove (if it can be disproved) using probable arguments.

Three, at times in the book N.'s scholarship is unspeakably bad.

'The imperium Romanum which we know, which the history of the Roman provinces teaches us to know better and better, this most admirable work of art in the grand style was a beginning: its construction was designed to prove itself through thousands of years: until today nobody has built again like this, nobody has even dreamed of building in such proportions sub specie aeterni. This organisation was firm enough to withstand bad emporors: the accident of persons may not have anything to do with such matters--first principle of grand architecture. But it was not firm enough against the most corrupt kind of corruption, against the Christians.' [TA, 58]

The idea that the Roman Empire fell chiefly because of Christianity is ridiculous. What about the weakness of the Senate? the ambition of those who were near the Emperor, and strong enough to challenge him? the power of the army? the disillusion with civic religion? the barbaric purges? the difficulties of adminstering an empire so large? the rebellions within and attacks from without?

Perhaps the fault that is most damaging to The Antichrist, though, is N.'s disregard for evidence. You cannot criticise his argument, because he provides no argument, other than, perhaps, the nonsensical one that if you find a plausible explanation for a phenomenon, then it is the correct explanation of that phenomenon. N. offers the view that Christianity is adequately explained if it is taken as the product of selfish barbarism. Needless to say, this assertion he takes as sufficient reason to conclude that Christianity is only the product of selfish barbarism.

'The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its corruption; it has turned every value into an un-value, every truth into a lie, every integrity into a vileness of the soul. Let anyone dare to speak to me of its `humanitarian' blessings! To abolish any distress ran counter to its deepest advantages: it lived on distress, it created distress to eternalize itself.' [TA, 62]

The Christianity N. attacks is, depending on the need of the moment, a Christianity that he has made up himself; or monastic Christianity; or the worst form of Christianity that exists. He does not do justice either to orthodox Christian doctrine, or to any good the Church has done.

When you have to use this kind of reasoning, you show fairly clearly how little talent you have for marshalling evidence well, and weighing it impartially. It is worth contemplating N.'s open acknowledgement that his atheism was not adopted because of reasoning.

'I have absolutely no knowledge of atheism as an outcome of reasoning, still less as an event: with me it is obvious by instinct.' [EH, `Why I Am So Clever', 1]

Evidently, not even N. himself fancied that his religious opinions had anything to do with reasoning carefully about worthwhile evidence.

Why should a Christian read this book? This is a very scathing critque of Christianity and points to it as the cause of many of the modern ills of society. If you are a Christian, reading this book will make you re-evaluate the way you are living. He attacks the modern trends of anti-philosophy and anti-intellectualism among Christians. These things need to be addressed!
It must be stated that Nietzsche hated Christianity, but if your faith can stand against his critcism, then you will be better off for having read this book.
Even though some of Nietzsche's attacks against Christianity are true, it does seem that he sets up the religion as a straw man and as a scapegoat. If you look beyond this, and the fact that he wrote this right before he lost his marbles, you will find a benefit in reading this.

Cowardice is being audacious enough to dismiss a book without so much as constructive criticism or an elementary analysis of what you're attempting to make a mockery of. Certainly a peurile stone-chucking review is easier to materialize than a meaningful analysis. It's becoming quite common these days to write off Nietzsche's thought as a satiating appetizer for rebellious teenagers, psuedo-intellectuals and the like and in fact i would agree that there is a whole plethora of idiots running around clutching "The Anti-Christ" against their bosom because of its appealing title but alas it's much easier to claim to have read and understood a book than to actually have read it. I'm surprised you didn't also dismiss Nietzsche because of his influence on the Nazi's; after all, Hitler reading the will to power exposes the shame that is Nietzsche. It's comforting to know that we don't all judge a book by those we want to associate it with. Grow up

Please be aware that this refers ONLY to the Cosimo Classics edition of H.L. Mencken's translation of "The Anti-Christ," not to any others.

This is a slipshod ripoff of the 1999 See Sharp Press edition of "The Anti-Christ." First, the "editors" at Cosimo Classics makes two gross errors on the copyright page: 1) They put the original publishing date of the Mencken translation at 1895, when in fact it was published in 1920; 2) They claim copyright of this work which is in the public domain. The kindest terms for these these things are incompetent and sleazy.

Worse, Cosimo omitted the Publisher's Note from the See Sharp edition, which dealt with Mencken's anti-semitic comments in his Introduction. They also omitted ALL of the footnotes from the See Sharp edition, both those of the See Sharp editor and those of Mencken. The only reason for this that seems plausible is that they feared legal action and were too lazy to track down a copy of the original 1920 Knopf edition to check whose footnotes were whose. So, they chose to publish an incomplete version of Mencken's translation rather than go to such small bother.

Their laziness runs so deep that they didn't even bother to scan in the See Sharp edition and then produce their own type. No, they simply reproduced the type from the See Sharp edition while stripping out the footnotes. (Compare the interior pages via "Look Inside the Book" -- they're identical. Same typeface, same line breaks, even the same typos.)

Please buy any other edition of this very good book other than this very sleazy Cosimo Classics edition.

the anti-christ has to be nietzsche's most accessible work. for those interested in nietzsche, start here.

the antichrist is constructed from a combination of most of his life works... nice and concise... almost like an introduction to his philosophy.

I had always had a different view on christianity and I never was able to explain it well until I read Nietzsche's Anti-Christ. Immediatley I was placed into deep thought. I began to fully understand why I thought what I thought because Nietzsche thought some of the same things. I truly belive that a large quantity of Christians are very hateful,judgemental and overly hipocritical people. I now have new beliefs in a "higher being" thanks to not only Nietzsche, but others like Marilyn Manson, Aliester Crowley, Anton Levey, and the Bible.

I don't typically review books. In fact this will be my first. But the comments by 'Matthew Acheson' leave an opening for rebuttal.
Now, I hold no claim on religion itself, so those rolling their eyes thinking I'm just another 'biased Christian' can throw that canned theory out of the window right now. I study both points, theological and scientific, and consider both to be viable, understandable viewpoints of the world.
What I cannot stand, though, is a constant and bloody attack by pseudointellectuals on anything they consider below them. In this case, religion. Do they not realise that by their vicious assaults, they commit the SAME crime the Catholic church was guilty of in the Middle Ages? Do they believe the rules do not APPLY to them simply because they're on the opposing side? How quaint.
On the other hand, I cannot stand theological morons who can only give me an elaborate version of "Jesus is Lord" for their beliefs. Can they not spare the brainpower to think, to EXPLORE their own religion? Must we as humans be so weak as to hop after whatever cause or following may appeal to our most base of senses at the moment?
Matthew Acheson, your comments are, as such, very base. While I am not Christian, Jesus, whether the son of some God or no, was a brilliant philosopher, and appealed to nothing but sensibility and logic. There's no line in the Bible that attacks religion. In fact, read Genesis closely, about how and what we could eat at first, about WHERE we came from (Water, anyone), and they'll see it falls right into place. Do I believe the Bible was divinely inspired? I think the bigger question here should be- does it MATTER?
As for every 'dunamentalist' religion asking for blind faith, I ask you to look at Proverbs 14:15, and for Buddhists, look at the Kalama Sutra. As someone who's gone through everything from pure atheist works, to full-fledged theological works such as the Bible and Samyutta and Digdha Nikayas, I can say that most atheists have as skewed an image of religion, as most religionists have about atheism.
People, think for yourselves, please. We all follow something. Whether a God or philosophy, whether Christianity, Taoism, Atheism... does it really matter? Must we critique and insult another for it? Perhaps to you, 'survival of the fittest', Matthew Acheson, is something you would enjoy. Darwinism, perhaps. But remember- we tried Might makes Right once before in history. It was called the Dark Ages. It didn't turn out too well.
For any that want an opposing view of this, especially on the points of somehow Christianity being responsible for the fall of Rome (Which any reasonable historian would laugh at), look at 'City of God', by Saint Augustine, who was alive when Rome fell. Please, people, on both sides- try to be more tolerable. We only have one world.

Judging from the mania and hatred of his tone, Nietzsche was suffering when he wrote this from whatever (syphillis?) would soon destroy his mind. But of course it's impossible to say how much an influence that had no what he wrote here about Christianity.
The book is useful mainly as a study in how one can fuss and fume at Christianity all one wants, but in the very forms of our debate we tend to invite in Christian assumptions that have informed our culture for two millennia. Nietzsche, who was a pastor's son, might have given his own assumptions a look or two before writing this, keeping what he liked and discarding what didn't nourish him. Needless to say, stereotyping, blaming, and attacking an entire belief system does no one good, least of all the attacker.
"When one hunts monsters, one must be careful not to become a monster oneself--for when you look deeply into an abyss, the abyss looks deeply into you." -- Nietzsche

Nietzsche's keen and fearless polemics against Christianity has sent forth wider ripples than any other stone he ever heaved into the pool of philistine contentment. The closing chapter of "Anti Christ"-his swan song- contains his famous philippic beginning "I condemn" It recalls Zola's "j'accuse" letter in the Dreyfus case. Of all Nietzsche's books, "The Antichrist" comes nearest to conventionality in form. It presents a connected argument with very few interludes, and has a beginning, a middle and an end.

Stylistically, the work is, like most of Nietzsche's books very candid and incisive. The often clipped cadences offer a refreshing contrast to Zarathustra. Nietzsche is at his best in sections 45 and 48. Voltaire and Shaw might well have envied him such passages!

Nietzsche's impassioned diatribes against Christianity have led many to believe that whatever is Christian is eo ipso not Nietzschean. Thus one of Nietzsche's foes, the Zionist Jew Max Nordau holds that, "of course, self-sacrifice is a Christian, not a Nietzschean ideal." We have tried to show that it is not only"a," but nothing less than "the," ideal. In his keen appreciation of suffering and self-sacrifice as indispensable
conditions of self-perfection, Nietzsche seems more "Christian" than most philosophers.

Nietzsche differs with Christianity in his naturalistic denial of the breach between flesh and geist (spirit), in his claim that self-sacrifice is the very essence of life, and his assertion___so well illustrated by his polemics against the Stoics___that man's attempts to sublimate his animal nature exemplify the very way of nature, and his suggestive definition of spirit (Geist) is offered: "spirit is the life that cuts into life".

The "Antichrist" is a peculiar work within the rather interesting body of work from Nietzsche.

Contrario sensu to all his other books, which follow a logical line of development/maturing of ideas, from "Birth of Tragedy" to "Ecce Homo", "Antichrist" seems to be a sparse collection of aphorisms and thoughts, just as if they came from another incarnation of Nietzsche, more rageful, less thoughtful and reflective, analyzing his work from the outside and no longer clinging to conventions, saying everything he thinks about the world around him, without further ado.

Nietzsche's accusation against the Christian religion (and by extension, against the European world of his time) is present in all his works, and to propagate it was the "mission" of the philosopher / prophet. But here, it reaches an unsuspected level:

Was ist gut? - Alles, was das Gefühl der Macht, den Willen zur Macht, die Macht selbst im Menschen erhöht.
Was this schlecht? - Alles, was aus der Schwäche stammt.
Was ist Glück? - Das Gefühl davon, dass die Macht wächst, dass ein Widerstand überwunden wird.
Nicht Zufriedenheit, sondern mehr Macht; Nicht Friede überhaupt, sondern Krieg; Nicht Tugend, sondern Tüchtigkeit (Tugend im Renaissance-Stile, virtù, moralinfreie Tugend)
Die Schwachen und Missrathnen sollen zu Grunde gehn: erster Satz unsrer Menschenliebe. Und man soll ihnen noch dazu helfen.
Was it schottlicher als irgend ein Laster? - Das Mitleiden der That mit allen Missrathnen und Schwachen - das Christenthum ...

[My literal translation: What is good? Everything that increases power, the will to power, the power itself in man.
What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness.
What is happiness? The sense of growing power, that an opposition is overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; Not peace at all, but war: not virtue, but courage (virtue in the Renaissance sense- style, manhood, immoral virtue).
The weak and the losers must fall: the first affirmation of our love for humanity. And we must help them in this.
What vice is more harmful than any other? - Compassion with all the losers and the weak - Christianity.]

Basically, Nietzsche understands Christianity as a religion that loves and encourages the weaker side of the human being (the one which needs and depends on a deity, a set of beliefs, to live) while marginalizing the stronger side (which affirms life, the earthly life, which wants force, victory, not the passive acceptance of events), either for fear of it, or to manipulate it. By extension, Nietzsche "condemns" modernity (Kant, Hegel, Marx) by understanding that it was "resurrecting" the Christian ideals fought by the Renaissance, the ultimate affirmation of Man as the center of all things, which Nietzsche greatly admired.

In this frame of mind, Nietzsche tended to ignore what his own [imaginary] opponents said about Christianity, especially Marx and the socialists [acerbic critics of any religion], and was content only to label his adversaries, sometimes almost childishly.

In a way, the Nietzschean view is very close to the perspective of another great individualist of the nineteenth century, Max Stirner, who states in his great work "Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum" (The Ego and Its Property) that Feuerbach, author of a very serious refutation of Christianity as a revealed religion entitled "The Essence of Christianity" [Das Wesen des Christentums], precursor of Marx, was doing nothing more than replacing a false god [the Christian God] with another [universal love for men, socialism].

However, unlike Stirner, who made his refusal of religion and modernity merely an instrument for consolidating his own individualistic philosophy, without any greater impetus or pretense to be a prophet, Nietzsche thought that it was not enough to adopt a philosophy of his own and to go forward, letting humankind follow its inglorious course, he believed that he should become a "prophet" and "proclaim" the falsity of Christianity and the moral hypocrisy of the moderns.

It is not difficult, for someone with a clear vision, to understand the provocative character of Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity. More than a critique of religion itself, it must be properly understood as a critique of Christian morality (that is, "all can be saved"), which ends up putting all men, great or insignificant, intelligent or ignorant, on an equal footing. And with the extension of this criticism to modern post-Kantian thinkers, Nietzsche intends to criticize the hypocrisy of men who deny God in practice to affirm him in theory. In this respect, his criticism is certainly valid.

But, as Feuerbach brilliantly demonstrated in his The Essence of Christianity, what remained of this religion in modern times was only a fixed idea. In his book, Feuerbach [one of Marx's forefathers, together with Hegel] argues that the Christian God is nothing more than a divine personification of His different spokesmen. So, in fact, Nietzsche's own attack cannot be understood literally as an attack on Christianity, but on its morality, on its more permanent side. Because, while few men still believed literally in every word written in the Gospels in Nietzsche's times, the fundamental belief in the value of Christian morality remained. It remained in Kant, in Hegel, in Marx and Feuerbach, in socialists and anarchists. Nietzsche understood the revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as insurrections of this old morality, as attempts to reestablish the underlying power of Christian morality, though veiled under the label of modern post-Kantian ideas.

Hence, Nietzsche would eventually label all thinkers of his day, except himself, as "nihilists", "Christians", even if they also claimed to be bitter critics of Christianity.

This puerile, almost childlike strategy of labeling opponents so as not to bother reading and understanding them, begat fruit in the post-Nietzsche era. In fact, part of the blame for the "fever", which is still present in the Western world today, and it is abundantly exemplified by the communities in social networks on the internet, can be attributed to Nietzsche: to avoid the study and analysis of divergent ideas through the convenient choice of a generic label. So far, very few proponents of capitalism have bothered to read Marx- simply because there is already a ready-made label of Marx as a socialist/leftist that automatically makes everything he wrote wrong- and therefore makes it unnecessary to read whatever was written by him. By assigning to the socialists a convenient label of "nihilists," slanderers of life, Nietzsche gave his future followers ammunition to reject socialism a priori, without even considering, for a single minute, the socialist arguments.

Not surprisingly, Nietzsche's first "great" biographer in the United States [Henry L. Mencken] turned the philosopher into a kind of right-wing "guru."

In "Antichrist," the exaggerated tone of Nietzsche's accusations discredits the philosophical value of his work. In an effort to present himself definitively as the "prophet" of a future generation of Übermenschen, Nietzsche attacks everything and everyone in an uncritical and nihilistic way, leaving no room for any kind of middle ground and without leaving open any possibility of ever meeting someone among all living beings on earth who could truly "fit" into his ideal view of man- not even he would fulfill his "requirements," for he was not an "Übermensch", quite the contrary, he was a man of poor health.

Evidently, following Nietzsche's logic in the "Antichrist", every man would, sooner or later, be expunged from an ideal Nietzschean world- Nietzsche's criticism leaves nothing standing, he would end up refusing anyone who said any thing, however insignificant, contrary to his positions. Not only Christians, Marxists, Kantians - anyone could be struck down by the "Antichrist", including - and especially - the "Nietzscheans" themselves, for Nietzsche regarded any follower as a sheep without personality.

One can extract from the other works of Nietzsche [especially The Gay Science and Twilight of the Idols] a healthy and welcome perspective on the possibilities of man, a kind of deepening of the Renaissance view, as well as the importance of having a critical thinking, the value of not accepting ready-made truths and of not subjecting oneself to prefabricated idols. At worst, one can learn to question and doubt, without fear.

But from the "Antichrist" one cannot extract anything but nihilism.

Even in "Ecce Homo", with its beautiful analises of Nietzsche's own work, even though Nietzsche [highly] exaggerates in self-praise and self-complacency, one can perceive a course, a direction to his thought, an intention. This is because the man who wrote the work was a person imbued with self-control, a man with control of his words, aware that nothing is built with invectives, or through an "against everything and everyone" attitude, but with the prospect of transmitting an idea , albeit for few people.

With the exception of a few noteworthy passages [such as surprising compliments to Islam and Buddhism] what is drawn from the "Antichrist" is a message of the danger underlying any extremism - be it religious, anti-religious, political, or anti -political. Nietzsche's extremism consists in his naïve vision of his being at the center of the universe, with his new truth being announced to everyone- at whatever cost and independent of their will. Nietzsche just forgot that no one in the world meant anything to him - all people were just slaves of the "herd mentality", and therefore he was talking, all the time, to himself. He was like a rabid prophet who wants the right to tell people around him that they are worthless. Of course, people would not be able to care - how would you attach importance to someone who tells you that you are utterly insignificant? The "Antichrist" shows that Nietzsche had entered an intellectual deadlock, for the modernity he despised so much was the same that gave him the possibility of venting his hatred against itself, in a vicious and meaningless cycle that could only end in madness, and is the appropriation of his thinking by extremists of every sort.

Do you want to respect Nietzsche? Stay away from the "Antichrist". This book is an embarrassment, does not add anything to the work of the great German thinker and, not surprisingly, does not receive even a passing mention in his intellectual autobiography "Ecce Homo".

Deep down he himself was fully aware that the content of this work was mere diatribe.

And diatribe has nothing to do with philosophy.