Book Summary and Quotes: The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche

ISBN: 9789389440416

My rating: 84/100

See Book Notes for other books I have read. If you like my notes, go buy it!

Key Points and Themes

Nietzsche praises Buddhism in some detail, see sections 20, 21, 22, 23 and 42. He states that “Buddhism is a hundred times more realistic than Christianity,” “Buddhism is the only genuinely positive religion,” “Buddhism is not a religion in which perfection is merely an object of aspiration: perfection is actually normal,” and “Buddhism promises nothing, but actually fulfils.”
Section 40 is of primary importance, and contains Nietzsche’s explanation for the origins of the impossible concept: God forgiving our sins through the murder-sacrifice of his son.
In Judaism the priesthood, and in Christianity the apostles, Nietzsche argues that these institutions were created exclusively to exert power.
“Men of convictions are prisoners.” Nietzsche understands convictions, laws, maxims, beliefs, oaths, and other such rigid concepts as a hindrance to life. He praises those who are willing to challenge their convictions and adapt rather than be stuck in their ways forever, no matter what.
Nietzsche does not believe in equal rights. “Inequality of rights is essential to the existence of any rights at all. – A right is a privilege.”
He thinks that the Christian movement was essentially created as a reaction, a revenge against the powers-that-be (dominant Judaism and Roman rule). And furthermore, believes that the Roman Empire was “The most magnificent form of organization under difficult conditions that has ever been achieved, and compared to which everything before it and after it appears as patchwork, bungling, dilettantism.”

Preface

[the most rare of men] must carry intellectual integrity to the verge of hardness. He must be accustomed to living on mountain tops – and to looking upon the wretched gabble of politics and nationalism as beneath him. He must have become indifferent; he must never ask of the truth whether it brings profit to him or a fatality to him … He must have an inclination, born of strength, for questions that no one has the courage for; the courage for the forbidden; predestination for the labyrinth. The experience of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for what is most distant. A new conscience for truths that have hitherto remained unheard. And the will to economize in the grand manner – to hold together his strength, his enthusiasm … Reverence for self; love of self; absolute freedom of self …

The Antichrist

Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction; it fights on the side of those disinherited and condemned by life; by maintaining life in so many of the botched of all kinds, it gives life itself a gloomy and dubious aspect.

I find the arrogant habit of the theologian among all who regard themselves as “idealists” – among all who, by virtue of a higher point of departure, claim a right to rise above reality, and to look upon it with suspicion.

A word now against Kant as a moralist … the contrary [of Kant] is demanded by the most profound laws of self-preservation and of growth – every man find his own virtue, his own categorical imperative.

Buddhism is a hundred times as realistic as Christianity … able to face problems objectively and coolly.

Buddhism is the only genuinely positive religion to be encountered in history.

Cheerfulness, quiet and the absence of desire are the chief desiderata, and they are attained. Buddhism is not a religion in which perfection is merely an object of aspiration: perfection is actually normal.

23 Buddhism, I repeat, is a hundred times more austere, more honest, more objective. It no longer has to justify its pains, its susceptibility to suffering, by interpreting these things in terms of sin – it simply says, as it simply thinks, “I suffer.” To the barbarian, however, suffering in itself is scarcely understandable: what he needs, first of all, is an explanation as to why he suffers. (——> hint: the devil)

[Christianity] knows that it is of very little consequence whether a thing be true or not, so long as it is believed to be true. Truth and faith: here we have two wholly distinct worlds of ideas, almost two diametrically opposite worlds.

When a man is in love he endures more than at any other time; he submits to anything. The problem was to devise a religion which would allow one to love: by this means the worst that life has to offer is overcome – it is scarcely even noticed.

The public notion of this god now becomes merely a weapon in the hands of clerical agitators, who interpret all happiness as a reward and all unhappiness as a punishment for obedience or disobedience to him, for “sin”: that most fraudulent of all imaginable interpretations, whereby a “moral order of the world” is set up, and the fundamental concepts, “cause” and “effect”, are stood on their heads.

The priest had formulated, once and for all time and with the strictest meticulousness, what tithes were to be paid to him, from the largest to the smallest (-not forgetting the most appetizing cuts of meat, for the priest is a great consumer of beefsteaks); in brief, he let it be known just what he wanted, what “the will of God” was … From this time forward things were so arranged that the priest became indispensable everywhere, at all the great natural events of life, at birth, at marriage, in sickness, at death, not to say at the “sacrifice” (that is, at meal times), the holy parasite put in his appearance, and proceeded to denaturize it – in his own phrase, to “sanctify” it.

Disobedience to God, which actually means to the priest, to “the law”, now gets the name of “sin” … [the priest] alone can “save” … Psychologically considered, “sins” are indispensable to every society organized on an ecclesiastical basis; they are the only reliable weapons of power; the priest lives upon sins; it is necessary for him that there be “sinning” … Prime axiom: “God forgiveth him the repenteth” – in plain English, him that submitteth to the priest.

If there is anything essentially unevangelical, it is surely the concept of the hero. What the Gospels make instinctive is precisely the reverse of all heroic struggle, of all taste for conflict: the very incapacity for resistance is here converted into something moral: (“resist not evil!” – most most profound sentence in the Gospels.

When the early Christians had need of an adroit, contentious, pugnacious and maliciously subtle theologian to tackle other theologians, they created a “god” that met that need, just as they put into his mouth without hesitation certain ideas that were necessary to them but that were utterly at odds with the Gospels – “the second coming,” “the last judgement,” all sorts of expectations and promises, current at the time.

all history, all natural science, all worldly experience, all knowledge, all politics, all psychology, all books, all art – [Jesus] “wisdom” is precisely a pure ignorance of all such things. He has never heard of culture.

Denial is precisely the thing that is impossible to him.

Such a doctrine cannot contradict: it doesn’t know that other doctrines exist, or can exist, and is wholly incapable of imagining anything opposed to it … If anything of the sort is ever encountered, it laments the “blindness” with sincere sympathy – for it alone as “light” – but it does not offer objections…

The Christian … is distinguished by a different mode of action … He offers no resistance, either by word or in his heart, to those who stand against him.

He is angry with no one, and he despises no one. He neither appeals to the courts of justice nor heeds their mandates. He never under any circumstances divorces his wife, even when he has proofs of her infidelity.

My note: This concept, in various forms, appeared regularly for me when I was Christian. Reality and common sense would dictate that a man divorce his unfaithful wife, but Christianity states otherwise – and people conveniently ignored the clear instruction from the Bible. A common one I saw was a woman who was in an abusive relationship confused whether she ought to stay or go – receiving instruction from the fundamentalists to stay, and instruction from the less strict but nonetheless Christian practicalists to leave.

The whole idea of natural death is absent from the Gospels.

What men always sought, with shameless egoism, was their own advantage therein; they created the church out of denial of the Gospels…

My thoughts: What Nietzsche means is that Jesus essentially lived his message – that of non-violence or retaliation – yet the apostles wanted to exact revenge upon the Romans and the Jewish leadership status-quo, and so wrote the Gospels in hopes that their movement might usurp the incumbent power structures.

There was only one Christian, and he died on the cross. The “Gospels” died on the cross.

My note: Why, when Jesus during his lifetime didn’t write but a few words in the sand, did his disciples feel the need to buck his example and write profusely?

To reduce being a Christian, the state of Christianity, to an acceptance of truth, to a mere phenomenon of consciousness, is to formulate the negation of Christianity.

It was only death … this appaling paradox which brought the disciples face to face with the real riddle: “Who was it? what was it?” – The feeling of dismay, of profound affront and injury; the suspicion that such a death might involve a refutation of their cause;

Only then did the chasm of doubt yawn: “Who put him to death? who was his natural enemy?” … Answer: dominant Judaism, its ruling class. From that moment, one found one’s self in revolt against the established order, and began to understand Jesus as in revolt against the established order. Until then this militant, this nay-saying, nay-doing element in his character had been lacking; what is more, he had appeared to present its opposite. Obviously, the little community had not understood what was precisely the most important thing of all: the example offered by this way of dying, the freedom from and superiority to every feeling of ressentiment – a plain indication of how little he was understood at all!

But his disciples were very far from forgiving his death

On the contrary, it was precisely the most unevangelical of feelings, revenge, that now possessed them. It seemed impossible that the cause should perish with his death.

Once more the popular belief in the coming of a messiah appeared in the foreground … the “kingdom of God” is to come, with judgement upon his enemies.

It was only now that all the familiar contempt for and bitterness against Pharisees and theologians began to appear in the character of the Master – he was thereby turned into a Pharisee and theologian himself!

Their revenge took the form of elevating Jesus in an extravagant fashion, and thus separating him from themselves.

And from that time onward an absurd problem offered itself: “how could God allow it!” To which the deranged reason of the little community formulated an answer that was terrifying in its absurdity: God gave his son as a sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. At once there was an end of the gospels!

From this time forward the type of the Savior was corrupted, bit by bit, by the doctrine of judgement and of the second coming.

One now begins to see just what it was that came to an end with the death on the cross: a new and thoroughly original effort to found a Buddhistic peace movement, and so establish happiness on earth – real, not merely promised. (My note: that is, the peace movement died)

Buddhism promises nothing, but actually fulfils; Christianity promises everything, but fulfils nothing.

[Paul] represents the genius for hatred, the vision of hatred, the relentless logic of hatred.

He simply struck out the yesterday and the day before yesterday of Christianity, and invented his own history of Christian beginnings.

What he wanted was power; in Paul the priest once more reached out for power.

The “salvation of the soul” – in plain English: “the world revolves around me” … The poisonous doctrine, “equal rights for all,” has been propagated as a Christian principle.

Nowadays no one has courage any more for special rights, for the right of domination, for feelings of honourable pride in himself and his equals – for the pathos of distance.

The gospels have been read as a book of innocence … surely no small indication of the high skill with which the trick has been done.

Let us not be led astray: they say “judge not,” and yet they condemn to hell whoever stands in their way.

Forced, like hypocrites, to be sneaky, to hide in corners, to slink along in the shadows, they convert their necessity into a duty.

The fact is that the conscious conceit of the chosen here disguises itself as modesty: it is in this way that they, the “community,” the “good and just,” range themselves, once and for always, on one side, the side of “the truth” – and the rest of mankind, “the world,” on the other … In that we observe the most fatal sort of megalomania that the earth has ever seen: little abortions of bigots and liars began to claim exclusive rights in the concepts of “God,” “the truth,” “the light,” “the spirit,” “love,” “wisdom,” and “life,” …

Paul was the greatest of all apostles of revenge.

Must I add that, in the whole New Testament, there appears but a solitary figure worthy of honour? Pilate … The noble scorn of a Roman, before whom the word “truth” was shamelessly mishandled, enriched the New Testament with the only saying that has any value – and that is at once its criticism and its destruction: “What is truth?…” (My note: this is John 18:38)

“Faith,” as an imperative vetoes science – in praxi, lying at any price … Paul well knew that lying – that “faith” – was necessary; later on the church borrowed the fact from Paul.

“Faith” means the will to avoid knowing what is true.

One best disposes of a cause by respectfully putting it on ice.

Do not let yourself be deceived: great intellects are skeptical. The strength, the freedom which proceed from intellectual power, from a superabundance of intellectual power, manifest themselves as skepticism.

Men of convictions are prisoners. They do not see far enough, they do not see what is below them.

The man of faith, the “believer” of any sort, is necessarily a dependent man – such a man cannot posit himself as a goal, nor can he find goals within himself. The “believer” does not belong to himself; he can only be a means to an end; he must be used up.

To avoid seeing many things, to be impartial about nothing, to be a party man through and through, to estimate all values strictly and infallibly – these are conditions necessary to the existence of a [weak willed man].

The pathological limitations of his vision turn the man of convictions into a fanatic – Savonarola, Luther, Rousseau, Robespierre, Saint-Simon – these types stand in opposition to the strong, emancipated spirit.

A conviction: a falsehood that becomes a matter of principle because it serves a purpose.

The “law,” the “will of God,” the “holy book,” and “inspiration” – all these things are merely words for the conditions under which the priest comes to power and with which he maintains his power.

“Truth is here”: this means, no matter where it is heard, the priest lies…

A book of laws such as the Code of Manu has the same origin as every other good law-book: it epitomizes the experience, the sagacity and the ethical experimentation of long centuries; it brings things to a conclusion; it no longer creates.

A law-book never recites the utility, the grounds, the casuistical antecedents of a law: for if it did so it would lose the imperative tone, the “thou shall,” on which obedience is based. The problem lies exactly here. – At a certain point in the evolution of a people, the class within it of the greatest insight, which is to say, the greatest hindsight and foresight, declares that the series of experiences determining how all shall live – or can live – has come to an end.

The thing that is to be avoided above everything is further experimentation – the continuation of the state in which values are fluent, and are tested, chosen and criticized ad infinitum. Against this a double wall is set up: on the one hand, revelation, which is the assumption that the reasons lying behind the laws are not of human origin, that they were not sought out and found by a slow process and after many errors, but that they are of divine ancestry, and came into being complete, perfect, without a history, as a free gift, a miracle …; and on the other hand, tradition, which is the assumption that the law has stood unchanged from time immemorial, and that it is impious and a crime against one’s forefathers to bring it into question.

The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is in self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, an instinct. They regard a difficult task as a privilege; it is to them a recreation to play with burdens that would crush all others … Knowledge – a form of asceticism. – They are the most honorable kind of men: but that does not prevent them being the most cheerful and most amiable. They rule, not because they want to, but because they are; they are not at liberty to play second.

Inequality of rights is essential to the existence of any rights at all. – A right is a privilege.

Whom do I hate most heartily among the rabbles of today? The rabble of Socialists … who undermine the workingman’s … feeling of contentment with his petty existence – who make him envious and teach him revenge. What is bad? … all that proceeds from weakness, from envy, from revenge.

The imperium Romanum, the most magnificent form of organization under difficult conditions that has ever been achieved, and compared to which everything before it and after it appears as patchwork, bungling, dilletantism – those holy anarchists made it a matter of “piety” to destroy “the world,” which is to say, the imperium Romanum.

With this I come to a conclusion and pronounce my judgement. I condemn Christianity.