The Antichrist E-Book

Friedrich Nietzsche

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

“The Antichrist” was written by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The reference to the antichrist is not meant to refer to the biblical antichrist, but rather to an attack on the “slave’s moral” and the apathy of Western Christianity. Nietzsche’s fundamental claim is that Christianity (as he saw in the West) is a poisoner of Western culture and the perversion of Jesus' words and practice. In this light, the provocative title expresses primarily the animus of Nietzsche towards Christianity, as such. In this book, Nietzsche is very critical of the institutionalized religion and its priestly class, from which he himself descends.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

THE ANTICHRIST

THE ANTICHRIST

by

F. W. NIETZSCHE

First digital edition 2018 by Gianluca Ruffini

INTRODUCTION

Save for his raucous, rhapsodical autobiography, “Ecce Homo,” “The Antichrist” is the last thing that Nietzsche ever wrote, and so it may be accepted as a statement of some of his most salient ideas in their final form. Notes for it had been accumulating for years and it was to have constituted the first volume of his long-projected magnum opus, “The Will to Power.” His full plan for this work, as originally drawn up, was as follows:

Vol. I. The Antichrist: an Attempt at a Criticism of Christianity.

Vol. II. The Free Spirit: a Criticism of Philosophy as a Nihilistic Movement.

Vol. III. The Immoralist: a Criticism of Morality, the Most Fatal Form of Ignorance.

Vol. IV. Dionysus: the Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence.

The first sketches for “The Will to Power” were made in 1884, soon after the publication of the first three parts of “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” and thereafter, for four years, Nietzsche piled up notes. They were written at all the places he visited on his endless travels in search of health, at Nice, at Venice, at Sils-Maria in the Engadine (for long his favourite resort), at Cannobio, at Zürich, at Genoa, at Chur, at Leipzig. Several times his work was interrupted by other books, first by “Beyond Good and Evil,” then by “The Genealogy of Morals” (written in twenty days), then by his Wagner pamphlets. Almost as often he changed his plan. Once he decided to expand “The Will to Power” to ten volumes, with “An Attempt at a New Interpretation of the World” as a general sub-title. Again, he adopted the sub-title of “An Interpretation of All That Happens.” Finally, he hit upon “An Attempt at a Transvaluation of All Values,” and went back to four volumes, though with a number of changes in their arrangement. In September, 1888, he began actual work upon the first volume, and before the end of the month it was completed. The Summer had been one of almost hysterical creative activity. Since the middle of June, he had written two other small books, “The Case of Wagner” and “The Twilight of the Idols,” and before the end of the year he was destined to write “Ecce Homo.” Sometime during December his health began to fail rapidly, and soon after the New Year he was helpless. Thereafter he wrote no more.