The Anti-Christ

“This book belongs to the very few.” So beginsTheAntichrist—the most powerful and most bellicose criticism ever offered against modern values and beliefs. The objects of these critiques are the Christian Church and the Christian belief system. The “very few” to whom the book is addressed are those “hyperboreans” who possess “the courage for theforbidden;” those who “thirst for thunderbolts and great deeds.” The author and critic is Friedrich Nietzsche: philosopher, psychologist, poet, and “the last disciple and initiate of the god Dionysus.” In earlier books Nietzsche had made that most profound announcement: “God is dead.” In other words, there are no absolute, unconditional, or objective values in the world. Whatever meanings that exist in life are put there by us, by human beings, by “value-creators.”The Antichristwas intended as the first part of a four-part work to be titledThe Revaluation of All Values—Nietzsche’s desire to lay bare the psychological, social, and cultural weaknesses that humanity has imposed upon itself over the past two thousand years, and to point to a higher sense of health and creative development and responsibility for the future. An outline of this proposed work provides the following scheme: (1) The Antichrist: Attempt at a Critique of Christianity; (2) The Free Spirit: Critique of Philosophy as a Nihilistic Movement; (3) The Immoralist: Critique of the Most Fatal Kind of Ignorance, Morality; and (4) Dionysus: Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence.The Antichristis all that we have of this ambitious enterprise, which was the last flash of creative frenzy before Nietzsche’s mind was dimmed by madness.

“This book belongs to the very few.” So beginsTheAntichrist—the most powerful and most bellicose criticism ever offered against modern values and beliefs. The objects of these critiques are the Christian Church and the Christian belief system. The “very few” to whom the book is addressed are those “hyperboreans” who possess “the courage for theforbidden;” those who “thirst for thunderbolts and great deeds.” The author and critic is Friedrich Nietzsche: philosopher, psychologist, poet, and “the last disciple and initiate of the god Dionysus.” In earlier books Nietzsche had made that most profound announcement: “God is dead.” In other words, there are no absolute, unconditional, or objective values in the world. Whatever meanings that exist in life are put there by us, by human beings, by “value-creators.”The Antichristwas intended as the first part of a four-part work to be titledThe Revaluation of All Values—Nietzsche’s desire to lay bare the psychological, social, and cultural weaknesses that humanity has imposed upon itself over the past two thousand years, and to point to a higher sense of health and creative development and responsibility for the future. An outline of this proposed work provides the following scheme: (1) The Antichrist: Attempt at a Critique of Christianity; (2) The Free Spirit: Critique of Philosophy as a Nihilistic Movement; (3) The Immoralist: Critique of the Most Fatal Kind of Ignorance, Morality; and (4) Dionysus: Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence.The Antichristis all that we have of this ambitious enterprise, which was the last flash of creative frenzy before Nietzsche’s mind was dimmed by madness.