It is easy to imagine Friedrich Nietzsche sitting in his study, writing away, merrily imagining the look of horror which will cross the faces of his readers when they come across the line he just penned. He obviously liked to shock people; the bigger the shock, the happier he was. But, alas, unlike his contemporary creator of scandalous bon mots, Oscar Wilde, Nietzsche was not popular in the salons of the day. People never knew what the guy was mumbling about over there in the corner.
Having never read a biography of Nietzsche, I have no idea if that portrait is correct. But, it sure feels right. How else to explain bits like this:
This book belongs to the very few. Perhaps not one of them is even living yet…
The conditions under which I am understood, and then of necessity—I know them only too well. One must be honest in matters of the spirit to the point of hardness before one can even endure my seriousness and my passion. One must be skilled in living on mountains—seeing the wretched ephemeral babble of politics and national self-seeking beneath oneself. One must have become indifferent; one must never ask if the truth is useful or if it may prove our undoing. The predilection of strength for questions for which no one today has the courage; the courage for the forbidden; the predestination to the labyrinth
That is from the Preface to a book Nietzsche wrote in 1888, shortly before he went insane. It wasn’t published for another 7 years because, well, the Publisher (quite understandably) was a bit leery. The title of the book: The Antichrist. Yep. Nietzsche put on his most malicious grin and pulled out all the stops in this one.
The quick summary: Christians are really bad. The longer version: Christians are really really bad.
The book is a mess if you want a nice linear dispassionate argument. Then again, all of Nietzsche’s books are a mess on those grounds, which, not coincidentally, is what makes him fun to read. Would you rather read a long dry explanation of the failures of Christianity or witticisms like this: “What is more harmful than any vice? Active pity for all the failures and the weak: Christianity.”
Be careful before you agree with that witticism, however. Do you really think pity is a vice?
Quite in general, pity crosses the law of development, which is the law of selection. It preserves what is right for destruction; it defends those who have been disinherited and condemned by life; and by the abundance of the failures of all kinds which it keeps alive, it gives life itself a gloomy and questionable aspect.
This is the same issue with which Darwin struggles in The Descent of Man. If you have a passel of pigs (also known as a bunch of pigs), and one of them is sickly and weak, you don’t take pity on it and let it spend its days breeding and bearing offspring. You kill it off to preserve the passel. (Yes, really!, a group of pigs called a passel. I am not making this up! There is, incidentally, also a “Sounder of Swine” and a “Singular of Boars.”)
Where did we get this crazy idea that we should have pity on the weak? Yeah, that is a Christian idea. Nietzsche explains that it is part of the slave revolt, the rise of the priest, whom Nietzsche recognizes “for what he is, the most dangerous kind of parasite, the real poison-spider of life.” Again, be careful before you agree that priests are really that evil.
If you are a Christian, can you really take offense? Nietzsche is, after all, right. You do take pity of the weak, you do think they should be loved and helped. And, if you are honest with yourself, you also know you would not prosper in Nietzsche’s preferred playground.
Nietzsche may seem like he is all merry fun if you like the idea of mocking Christians. If you like the frisson of shocking religious types, a book like The Antichrist seems like the perfect tome. Well, until you hit this sort of passage:
Whom do I hate most among the rabble of today? The socialist rabble, the chandala apostles, who undermine the instinct, the pleasure, the worker’s sense of satisfaction with his small existence—who make him envious, who teach him revenge. The source of wrong is never unequal rights but the claim of “equal” rights.
What is bad? But I have said this already: all that is born a weakness, of envy, of revenge. The anarchist and the Christian have the same origin.
What’s worse than a Christian? A socialist! An anarchist! Anyone who thinks that all people are equal. People like you.
The poison of the doctrine of “equal rights for all”—it was Christianity that spread it most fundamentally. Out of the most secret nooks of bad instincts, Christianity has waged war unto death against all sense of respect and feeling of distance between man and man, that is to say, against the presupposition of every elevation, of every growth of culture…
And let us not underestimate the calamity which crept out of Christianity into politics. Today nobody has the courage any longer for privileges, for masters’ rights, for a sense of respect for oneself and one’s peers—for a pathos of distance. Our politics is sick from this lack of courage.
The aristocratic outlook was undermined from the deepest underworld through the lie of the equality of souls…
Are you still agreeing with Nietzsche about the evils of Christianity?
Nietzsche is entirely right about this: Christianity is the source of the belief that everyone deserves equal respect. As Paul notes in his letter to the Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” That is a very radical claim. We have still not perfected the idea of living like that. Truth be told, we will never be able to perfect that life as long as we are all stamped with sin. But the idea that this is something to which we should all aspire is powerful. How powerful? It is powerful enough that you can hear it echo in the arguments of people today who believe they have completely rejected Christianity.
You want an honest and total rejection of Christianity? See Nietzsche. But, if you want to talk about equal rights, then perhaps you should acknowledge your debt to the New Testament.
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