A few weeks ago I scoured the Kindle library and downloaded every free, copyright-expired book I could find. That collection included several works by Nietzsche, who's one of those guys that I've always wanted to read but never got around to. Well, a nine-hour train ride from Prague to Mannheim gave me a nice excuse to give it a shot. The Antichrist is probably not the best book to start with, but it's short, which is often as good a reason as any. There's really no reason for me to be posting this to my blog, but I wanted to process the book in writing after finishing it, and since I haven't posted on here for a while I figured you guys will probably read anything, even my boring summary of a German philosopher's diatribe against Paul. And on a more serious note, I typically like to talk through books a bit when I finish them, so maybe some of you have read The Antichrist and can give me your thoughts. Anywho:
The Antichrist is, as the title would suggest, a critique of Christianity through a quasi-historical lens. Now, I don't know all that much about Nietzsche's philosophy, but if I had to sum up the bit I do know, I would use the phrase 'life-affirming.' Nietzsche is at heart a Classicist with an inflated sense of chivalry and derring-do, which means that he disdains any form of thought that deemphasizes or weakens glory, power and any other sign of a strong nation or individual. Nietzsche is often interpreted as an über White Male racist, but his arguments are a bit more nuanced than that -- he believes in helping the poor (this is included in his concept of real manliness), but he openly despises the concept that 'the meek shall inherit,' which gets into his critique of Christianity.
Nietzsche begins his discussion of Christianity with a glance at ancient religions. The long-and-short of it is that nations in Greco-Roman times had gods whose deeds and miracles were a direct consequence of their peoples' power -- any strong nation by consequence had a strong god. This meant that, in the conquestatorial ancient world, nations that were conquered would typically give up their own gods to honor those that were powerful enough to subdue them. But there was one exception: those pesky Jews. When the Romans conquered the Israelites, the Jews refused to acknowledge that their god had been defeated and instead invented a system whereby reality was inverted: the Israelite god was still strong, even omnipotent, but political reality no longer reflected that fact. Devotion to the now-capital-G God became an act of subversion and a denial of the reality of the Israelites' weakness. Jewish 'reality' sees its conquering nations as transient and weak, and the continued survival of Jews (even in a constantly subjugated class) as a sign of their own power. The problem with this view for Nietzsche is not even so much that it's a lie, but that it's a lie born from ressentiment (the French for resentment). That is to say that the Jewish ego refuses to acknowledge its subordinate fate and sets up a whole system in which Judaism becomes morally superior to its conquerors, allowing Jews to freely judge, hate and condemn non-believers. The bottom line is that, to give power to the weak, one must make use of a moral system that lies outside of political reality, and this action will necessarily breed tension and outright hate between different subsets of society.
Jesus attempts to undo the evil of Jewish morality by adopting a stance of infinite openness -- he rejects the invented power of the Israelite priesthood (for Nietzsche, who can be quite the conspiracy theorist, Jewish morals were invented solely to keep power in the hands of the Kohanim) and instead advocates a philosophy based on innocence. Jesus does not seek to redefine reality, he is simply ignorant of it. He does not care about Jews and Romans, right and wrong, good and evil. He approaches life with a childlike openness and curiosity, and Nietzsche has some respect for his Buddha-like actions, especially because they so deeply angers the Jewish establishment. Thus, Christianity as a phenomenon outside of politics -- as an approach to life that is universal -- is for Nietzsche an acceptable and perhaps even laudable idea. But for the average early Christian (a member of the lower castes), it is not easy to completely ignore political reality at all times.
Things go from strained to impossible when Paul comes on the scene: by shifting Jesus from 'righteous man to emulate' to 'untouchable divine ideal,' Paul makes the poor even more conscious of their struggles. When Jesus enters into the godhead, when he dies for the world's sins, he is now beholden to the people -- in a just world, the oppressed believer cannot be truly oppressed. Thus, the need arises for another revision of reality, and Paul's theodicy is much more earth-shattering than that of the Jews. While the Jews responded to their subjugation by developing a subversive and insular morality, Paul wants Christianity to appeal universally, and rather than inverting the world he develops an entirely new one -- the afterlife. Through a system of heavenly rewards and punishments, material reality is deemed meaningless, and devotion to God(and thereby to the Christian priesthood) will earn you a host of benefits that you will never see in this lifetime. Even worse for Nietzsche, the fact that you suffer (and even cause yourself to suffer) is actually a good omen for this heavenly world to come. Christianity embraces and elevates suffering while resenting and rejecting strength, and thus presents itself as a religion of 'world-rejection' completely contrary to Nietzsche.
Nietzsche goes on to say that, during the Renaissance, Christianity briefly threw off its shackles of pity to bask in some of its own glory. Of course, Martin Luther comes along to rein things in, attacking the 'excesses' of the Church and making German Protestantism as the true successor of Paulian Christianity (leading to Nietzsche's utter loathing of his home country).
The Antichrist is, if nothing else, an entertaining read -- Nietzsche is incredibly adept at getting his points across in an engaging way. And I think there's something to be said for the fact that, unlike Freud, who simply attacks religion because it is built on an illusion, Nietzsche has something to say about why Christianity in particular deserves to be attacked. Now, whether belief in an afterlife genuinely impairs your ability to live in the world is another question, and one that I should probably put to some Christians.
I'll probably move onto Beyond Good & Evil next. In fact, now that I think about it it may be a good idea for me to write about all the books I finish while I'm here, just so I can indulge myself as much as possible.
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