Tuesday, October 29, 2024

The Antichrist - Friedrich W. Nietzsche


Let's start by stating that this is not a book against Jesus Christ, meaning the historical person, the religious prophet or the revolutionary philosopher. This is definitely a very harsh criticism of Christianity, the Christian church and its founding fathers (the Apostles, Paul of Tarsus, the Popes, the priests), of its roots planted in a corrupt version of Judaism (corrupt when compared with the original form of it) and of the German Lutheran reformation.
One might not agree with Nietzsche's conclusions, judgments, opinions and some creative historical interpretations, which I do find extremely fascinating and often very convincing, at least much more convincing than most of the orthodox ones - the idea that 
the Greco-Roman tradition was bled by Christianity from inside (as opposed to destroyed by a natural catastrophe or a military invasion), that the middle age crusades did contribute to obliterate the advanced Moorish civilization in Spain and that the German Lutheran reformation did a similar thing to the Italian Renaissance cultural-revolutionary movement, is a brilliant historical intuition.
One might not agree with all that, however some of the historical analyses of Nietzsche's are devastatingly eye-opening. At times he seems to be stating the obvious - at least something that I and a few others, being raised as Roman Catholics, have always deeply and intimately felt as obvious - yet, despite being so obvious, that something has surprisingly eluded the most brilliant minds of the Western world for the astonishing long time-span of NINETEEN centuries (that's 19 times hundred years, 1.9 millenniums, one thousand and nine hundred years!!!). Beautiful minds that have consumed energy, time and experience doing exactly the opposite: trying to make some of the most absurd basic principles of Christianity fit into the rational, logical, sensible, philosophical, scientific, in a word cultural framework their minds thrived in.
Take for example Christ's psychological type. Why have we been told (and have unquestioningly believed) for such a long period of time that Jesus Christ did all that he did and said all that he said to redeem us from our sins? What does that even mean? Why would he do that? And why would our sins be redeemed by his excruciatingly painful crucifixion? And what sins of ours exactly? Why would his example grant us free entry to the kingdom of heaven in the afterlife, which means after we'll be dead? I've heard this explained (if you can call this an explanation) hundreds of times. An incredibly faulty logical argument that can only be swallowed on the extremely unfair and unsound assumption of religious faith. Which basically means: "we (meaning the priests) need you to believe this for our own advantage, so you just take it as true and shut up, temporarily obliterating your naturally amazing mental skills and all your powerful sensory faculties, your whole beautiful understanding of what's real, natural and true." Characteristics that, according to their own words, were gifted to us by none other than Mr Almighty himself.
Nietzsche's interpretation is simply what our mind and our senses would suggest under similar circumstances, had we not been brainwashed for centuries: Jesus lived the way he lived and said the things he said because he was convinced that that was the right way to lead a life and those were the right things to say. He surely lived to give us an example, yet not an example aimed at entering the kingdom of heaven in the afterlife; on the contrary, he gave us an example of how to live our lives here and now, how to be blessed while we are still alive. Sin, punishment, redemption are lies that the priests need implanted in people's minds in order to maintain their position of power. We don't need them: actually they go against our living a natural, meaningful and fulfilling life.
Long live Nietzsche's free spirit, original thinking and intellectual honesty.

Click here for previous reviews of Nietzsche's works.


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