The Antichrist: Anti-what, exactly?

The thing that stood out the most for me on The Antichrist, though I can't honestly say I was surprised, was the amount of respect with which Nietzsche describes the Biblical Jesus (that is, his psychological interpretation of the character described in the Bible).

He had no quarel with the Christ Buddha, so to speak. Just as he had no real quarel with the Buddhist monks, he had a lot of respect for their honest phenomenalism and the history of their prescriptive philosophy.

What Nietzsche had a quarel with was the historical trajectoy of the Christ cult among the European peoples. The effect it had was monstrous in a bad sense (I hope it is obvious that I mean bad in the nietzschean way).

I would venture to say that the Jewish cult of Jesus is only a catalist for what The Antichrist is really anti-: the decadence of Neo-Jesusidic European imperialism.

Pezer wrote:

The thing that stood out the most for me on The Antichrist, though I can't honestly say I was surprised, was the amount of respect with which Nietzsche describes the Biblical Jesus (that is, his psychological interpretation of the character described in the Bible).

He had no quarel with the Christ Buddha, so to speak. Just as he had no real quarel with the Buddhist monks, he had a lot of respect for their honest phenomenalism and the history of their prescriptive philosophy.

What Nietzsche had a quarel with was the historical trajectoy of the Christ cult among the European peoples. The effect it had was monstrous in a bad sense (I hope it is obvious that I mean bad in the nietzschean way).

I would venture to say that the Jewish cult of Jesus is only a catalist for what The Antichrist is really anti-: the decadence of Neo-Jesusidic European imperialism.

It wasn't really a "Jewish cult of Jesus" since Jesus led to a break-away sect from Judaism that no longer identified itself as such. Jesus may have thought himself Jewish (I am not familiar enough with the guy to know either way, nor do I really care) but his followers certainly (at least eventually) did not. Or rather, the mainstream Jewish faith did not align with the new Christ cult.


Nietzsche had issue with metaphysics. Thus he had issue with pretty much all religion. He valued Greek myth more because it was rooted more directly and honestly in human psychology, it was not moralizing and "weak" like Christianity. The relationship between the Greeks and their gods was quite different from the relationship between the Christian and his God - the Greek myth was designed (or had the effect of) making man stronger rather than weaker, while Christianity (and pretty much all other religion too) had the opposite effect, at least that is what Nietzsche thought (arguments can be made counter to this, of course).

I know he spoke not entirely antagonistically of Buddhism here and there, but he did not only have nice things to say about it either (I don't really feel like looking up the references... sorry you'll have to do your homework on your own). I think Shopenhauer was more favorable toward Buddhism than Nietzsche, you could look into him if you want a comparison.

You missunderstand Judaism as a religion. It is a culture, religion being a small part of it.

I think, in fact, that here we can see the distinction between cult and religion perfectly: A cult overtakes your life. A religion is a small part of your life. Even when you have been named priest of a certain religion, you automatically join a cult.

Christiasm is just a Jewish cult that was crafted by masters. And it is, in fact (thanks to the silly romans who pissed the apostles off so much), the cult of the murder of all gods.

This "Nietzsche was against metaphysics" is too easy, misses the point. He was against a very specific historical phenomena that he recognized as such. I don't think he even really mentioned "metaphysics" much, if at all.

Antichrist is not antimetaphysics, antimetaphysics is just an almost unimportant component, a characteristic of a broader image.

This from the second-to-last aphorism in Beyond Good and Evil:

"The very fact that Dionysus is a philosopher, and that therefore Gods also philosophize, seems to me a novelty which is not unensnaring, and might perhaps arouse suspicion precisely among philosophers;—among you, my friends, there is less to be said against it, except that it comes too late and not at the right time; for, as it has been disclosed to me, you are loth nowadays to believe in God and gods."

Clearly, it is not Godship that Nietzsche had an issue with.

Nietzsche's thought contains a critique of metaphysics. He may not mention this word too often (but he does mention it here and there) but that is the essence of it. You can read Beyond Good and Evil, Thus Spoke Zarathustra or Ecce Homo to find a lot on this. His criticism is with ideas counter to actual lived and experienced reality... after-life, eternal soul, free will, universalist moralism, God. All of these are metaphysical ideas. Now this does not mean Nietzsche did not also appreciate the power of these ideas, nor even their historical necessity. Nietzsche was a naturalist and not a moralist, he made natural observations, called it like he saw it. He didn't consider religion merely "good or bad", it was what it was and he critiqued it honestly as he saw it. And his critique of these ideas was not metaphysical itself, it was naturalistic: they represent man's weakened instincts. We don't even need to invoke will to power here; Nietzsche had issue with the repression and distortion of the instinctual organism, which metaphysical thought plays a large part in.

Nietzsche wrote metaphorically about God and gods. He made observations about God or the Greek gods, such as "the gods philosophize" or "God died of his pity for man". This does not mean Nietzsche "didnt have issue with Godship" (I dont know what Godship means, I will assume you mean God). If you think this then you may not want to read TSZ, it would really confuse you...

Nietzsche critiqued religion for many reasons, and rightly so. If there are certain critiques of imperialistic culture that you think Nietzsche made toward Christianity, you are welcome to post them here so we can analyze them. But Nietzsche generally speaking did not have that much of a problem with "imperialism". He was concerned with broader issues, and in terms of master morality there are aspects of cultural imperialism that Nietzsche could appreciate. Napoleon, for instance.

By this, "Neo-Jesusidic European imperialism" I assume you mean Christianity. But there is a difference between widespread decadent Christian cultural in Europe and "European imperialism". But if you are trying to say that Nietzsche was anti-Christianity in the sense of how Christianity had taken over so much culture in Europe, then yes that is certainly true. But Nietzsche did not have a problem with imperialism per se.

And I understand what Judaism is. Yes it is a culture. It is also a religion. My point was that Christ caused a schism within Judaism, where Christianity split off from it and formed a separate religion (and also left Jewish culture as well). Christianity largely lacks the cultural aspect which is central to Judaism (Christianity does not have or need a "state"), but both are religions. Christianity works so well in so many diverse national and cultural contexts because it is essentially culturally devoid in itself, or rather its essential content is a dogma and method of thinking divorced from strict cultural-historical-national dependency or alignment.

I always say Nietzsche was not a conventional phiilosopher, and I always get accused of idolatry. But it's true; Nietzsche did not set out hard, specific elements to be cleanly separated and understood. He purposefully wrote in a cryptic way, setting conscious traps to those reading with academic goals in mind.

Metaphysics? As I said, only as a sympton of a larger thing, which the Antichrist sets out to attack.

You, for example, make a distinction between post-roman European imperialism and the Christian tradition in Europe... But they are the same! This is what Nietzsche was trying to tell us: beware, for christianity hides in the unlikeliest places.

Evil, for example, is almost completely the work of christianism. When one tries to rebel against Jesus, the trap of Evil and Satan are there, waiting, set up by the christian theologians themselves.

Quote :

Nietzsche wrote metaphorically about God and gods. He made observations about God or the Greek gods, such as "the gods philosophize" or "God died of his pity for man". This does not mean Nietzsche "didnt have issue with Godship" (I dont know what Godship means, I will assume you mean God). If you think this then you may not want to read TSZ, it would really confuse you...

Precicely that it is metaphorical is the reason I did not and probably will not read TSZ. The Antichrist is not the same kind of book, and Nietzsche himself did nothing but consciously broaden the gap between that book and all his others. The Antichrist is most certainly not metaphorical, and when Nietzsche talks about Gods, he is talking beyond metaphor, in the realm of the Ancient Greeks to whom he truly dedicated his life. He wasn't joking with that Dyonisus stuff, I mean I don't see how you can get around this: "for, as it has been disclosed to me, you are loth nowadays to believe in God and gods." Godship is the state of being god, and Nietzsche was a gleeful pagan.

Remember how you theorized that a post-christian might freely explore concepts of divinity once the old paradigms have been done away with? In all honesty, Nietzsche did that.

Remember that he was the son of a priest, that means something. This fight was personal for him. Nietzsche did not kill the Jesus God, he simply showed that when the Romans killed him, the apostles started a cult of dead gods.

Quote :

15.

Under Christianity neither morality nor religion has any point of contact with actuality. It offers purely imaginary causes (“God,” “soul,” “ego,” “spirit,” “free will”—or even “unfree”), and purely imaginary effects (“sin,” “salvation,” “grace,” “punishment,” “forgiveness of sins”). Intercourse between imaginary beings (“God,” “spirits,” “souls”); an imaginary natural history (anthropocentric; a total denial of the concept of natural causes); an imaginary psychology (misunderstandings of self, misinterpretations of agreeable or disagreeable general feelings—for example, of the states of the nervus sympathicus with the help of the sign-language of religio-ethical balderdash—, “repentance,” “pangs of conscience,” “temptation by the devil,” “the presence of God”); an imaginary teleology (the “kingdom of God,” “the last judgment,” “eternal life”).—This purely fictitious world, greatly to its disadvantage, is to be differentiated from the world of dreams; the latter at least reflects reality, whereas the former falsifies it, cheapens it and denies it. Once the concept of “nature” had been opposed to the concept of “God,” the word “natural” necessarily took on the meaning of “abominable”—the whole of that fictitious world has its sources in hatred of the natural (—the real!—), and is no more than evidence of a profound uneasiness in the presence of reality.... This explains everything. Who alone has any reason for living his way out of reality? The man who suffers under it. But to suffer from reality one must be a botched reality.... The preponderance of pains over pleasures is the cause of this fictitious morality and religion: but such a preponderance also supplies the formula for décadence....

His issue was the specific falsity of christianity, not Godship (literally, the existence of Gods) in general.

In fact, Nietzsche argued that Gods could have points of contact with reality.

The idea that the nature of Christianity is rooted in Judaism seems evidently false. Jesus was, in the hypothetical, unlikely case that he existed, a Jew, but Christianity is wholly Hellenic, as in decadent post Platonic perverse/reverse erotic flesh worship. There is literally nothing Jewish in its code, logos, symbolism and of course language and this is why Jews detest Christianity, the sacrificed God on the cross, so violently, much more than Nietzsche did.

Historically, I can think of no Jew who ever had anything to do with Christianity, except to feed the imagination of Christians. They only serve as the background of the symbolic fiction of the prophets life. Only in gnostic interpretations of Jesus as an Essene can we find some marginal Judaica in there, such as sun worship, and certain codes of health pertaining to nutrition.

Capable wrote:

Nietzsche had issue with metaphysics. Thus he had issue with pretty much all religion. He valued Greek myth more because it was rooted more directly and honestly in human psychology, it was not moralizing and "weak" like Christianity. The relationship between the Greeks and their gods was quite different from the relationship between the Christian and his God - the Greek myth was designed (or had the effect of) making man stronger rather than weaker, while Christianity (and pretty much all other religion too) had the opposite effect, at least that is what Nietzsche thought (arguments can be made counter to this, of course).

¨
I would go even further and say that the notions of humanity, of the human psyche, of human individualism, things like the Ego and Self, were made possible by the creation of God archetypes, passionate aesthetic symbolizations which the fortunate human animal of the Greek isles and shores projected outward in entranced inspiration and saw, through narrative over generations, reflected back on himself in the formation of of Greek ethics, our notion of the human being.

First Homer, the exterior, society and its agents, then tragedy, the interior, the self and its agents.

It has been the invention of Gods that made possible the self consciousness of self valuing, by making it aesthetically/cognitively accessible (read attractive) to itself. In which process cognition itself took shape, as a form of trance.

Consciousness is at root an intoxiation, the animal physiology becoming entwined with increasingly substantial autoerotic secretion cycles of excess into the forming psyche.