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Title: The Anti-Christ by H. L. Mencken, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche ISBN: 1-884365-20-5 Publisher: SEE SHARP PRESS Pub. Date: August, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.64 (25 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: the subtle perfection of religion
Comment: Though FN is exposes many truths and errors and Christianity, this book should not scare believers. I you read Kierkegaard (Fear and trembling), you will find K is just as harsh on strucured religion for a whole other set of reasons, but still leaves the a untouchable (even unfalsefiable in its elusiveness) realm of God. After reading this work of FN I hesitate to call him an atheist, but he is clearly anti-christian. The beuty of this work (and K's) is the development (or blatant statement) of that difference.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Bad-Tempered, Blasphemous Blast
Comment: THE ANTICHRIST (1888) is Nietzsche's most coherent and well-organized work, in some ways a rhetorical masterpiece, yet at the same time a striking example of his infantile megalomania and insupportable presumption. He dedicates it to the man of tomorrow who can endure "my seriousness, my passion," who is "accustomed to living on mountaintops Ä and to looking upon the wretched gabble of politics and nationalism as beneath him," who moreover has "the courage for the forbidden, predestination for the labyrinth." But very shortly he is writing as though that man of tomorrow had already arrived, multiplied and gathered around him in a cluster: "we ourselves, we free spirits, are already a transvaluation of all values... this higher type of man... we others, who have the courage for health and likewise for contempt..." This said by a puny, sickly and neglected ex-professor who takes drugs to go to the bathroom and to go to sleep. He rails against "the learned world of Germany, three-fourths of which is made up of the sons of preachers and teachers," himself being the rebellious end-product of five generations of clergymen. He makes his famous pronouncement, that "there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross," and characterizes Jesus as a revolutionary distorted by nineteen centuries of church obfuscation; then declares that only "we free spirits" can understand him, so that "one might actually call Jesus 'a free spirit.'" Thus while seeking to destroy the church, he provides a goad to its renewal, like Kierkegaard in his ATTACK UPON CHRISTENDOM (1855).
Actually Nietzsche's attack is upon Paul, whom he sees as the inventor of Christianity, and upon the "slave mentality" of the Jews who found a psychological way to weaken and defeat their Roman masters--by injecting pity, guilt and heavenly judgement into their healthy minds and institutions. He glorifies the Roman Empire, which he misrepresents as the fulfillment of the Greek ideal, and anathematizes the "dirty Jew," the "evil-smelling mess of Jewish rabbinism," and the power-usurping logic of the Christian priesthood ("three times Jewish") as unspeakable filth, weakness and decadence. His re-evaluation is maximally blasphemous, but also inspired, insightful and thought-provoking, and must be read as cultural history, though it remains on the level of adolescent protest.
The chief flaw in his attack is treating Christian history as stages in an unfolding conspiracy, as if Paul planned the Crusades and Luther intended to end the Renaissance. With equal or greater justice, one could claim that Nietzsche heralded the Third Reich, which embodied so many of his principles, such as "What is good?--Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man." (Section 2) And: "What is freedom?.. That one is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one's cause, not excluding oneself." (TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS, section 38) His apologists want to write off his canonization by the Nazis as just an unfortunate episode, and indeed after the war he was adopted by the political left, as Allan Bloom has shown in THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND (1987), but actually Nietzsche was simply a egotist with a bad temper and no political persuasion, an anarchist with delusions of grandeur, and any attempt to realize his ideas socially is certain to prove a disaster.
The reason to read this version of THE ANTICHRIST is that H.L. Mencken, the famous journalist, turned Nietzsche's German into such direct, plain-spoken American English that it puts the haranguing philosopher right up in your face. Also Mencken, himself an Anti-Semite, brings out the strain of anti-Semitism in this work in all its ugly rancor, so that it cannot be mistaken, though elsewhere Nietzsche blasts anti-Semitism as well. He thought himself above judgement, and it is an anomaly of history that any grown-up ever took him seriously, but then he said the same thing about Saint Paul. Both were tormented geniuses who tranformed the world, and we must deal with the consequences.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Great Attack
Comment: The real face of Christendom Nietzsche knew only too well.He knew it to be a sly, many-faced, destructive force, devoted more to politics than love.
"Embarassingly Untrue"? writes one reviewer. Nietzsche's whole family and friends,etc. were not only Christians, but were ministers of the faith itself! It is not "disrespectful" of Paul to call him Paul. That is what Protestants do! The Catholics, et al., may append the undeserved title of Saint if they wish. And the cross excuses their arrogance!? Of course they forgive themselves and others, no matter the crime!
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Title: Beyond Good & Evil : Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future by Walter Kaufmann, Friedrich Nietzsche ISBN: 0679724656 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 17 December, 1989 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche ISBN: 0486406636 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 16 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $3.50 |
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Title: The Will to Power by Friedrich Nietzsche ISBN: 0394704371 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 August, 1968 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Basic Writings of Nietzsche by Peter Gay, Walter Kaufmann, Friedrich Nietzsche, Peter Gay ISBN: 0679783393 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 28 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche ISBN: 0486285154 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 01 June, 1995 List Price(USD): $2.00 |
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