The Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ: or How to Philosophize with a Hammer (Penguin Classics)

published	February 15th 1990 by Penguin Classics
binding	Paperback
isbn	0140445145 (isbn13: 9780140445145)
pages	208
date added	01-28-07 edit book

find at: Amazon | Half.com | Barnes & Noble | Abebooks | more...

Sign in to Goodreads to see your friends' reviews of The Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ: or How to Philosophize with a Hammer.

discuss this book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

friend reviews (0)

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

lists with this book

Where's the love? Add this book to your favorite list.

other reviews (showing 1-20 of 545)

Trevor rated it:

04/10/08

I had to read this in my Introduction to Philosophy at uni a lifetime ago. My one memory of it that really stands out is how annoyed he made me. I mean, this guy was trashing Socrates – and I’ve always been rather fond of Socrates – and the criticism seemed quite pathetic. I mean, criticising Socrates because he was ugly! What sort of argument is that? Is this really ‘philosophy’?

This book ends with the line, “I, the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus — I, the teacher of...more I had to read this in my Introduction to Philosophy at uni a lifetime ago. My one memory of it that really stands out is how annoyed he made me. I mean, this guy was trashing Socrates – and I’ve always been rather fond of Socrates – and the criticism seemed quite pathetic. I mean, criticising Socrates because he was ugly! What sort of argument is that? Is this really ‘philosophy’?

This book ends with the line, “I, the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus — I, the teacher of the eternal recurrence.” And do you know what? The idea of the eternal recurrence is just about the only of his major themes that is not touched on in this book. Well, when I say that, it is a bit hard to know, because if there is one thing that Nietzsche can be that is obscure. All the same, I doubt one would feel that they have been ‘taught’ about the eternal recurrence from this book.

This is considered Nietzsche’s most accessible book – which, unfortunately, isn’t really saying all that much. I’ve said it before and will again – Nietzsche is someone that young men really enjoy. His bloody mindedness and near mock fury are very attractive to young men – particularly relatively powerless young men, frustrated young men, even.

I listened to this book last week – after downloading it from here: http://librivox.org/the-twilig...

I don’t mind librivox recordings, although some of the readers can be a bit stilted. All the same, this one was well read and if there is one thing you can say about Nietzsche, it is that he doesn’t really hold back on his contempt or anger or, well, rants.

I still find a lot of his views obnoxiously right wing – but I’ve mellowed over the years and find him more amusing now than did the younger version of myself. His criticism of Socrates and Christianity – both much for the same reasons – is sharp and in the main an attack from ‘the inside’. Nietzsche would have loved to have been allowed to remain religious, and that, I feel, is part of the reason why his attack on Christianity in particular is so devastatingly pointed.

The aphorisms at the start can be a nice read – many of them are almost poetic. Some of them are really very witty and others do make me think for ages, think while trying to untie the knot he has so skilfully twisted. I like this one, for example: “To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both — a philosopher.” Or yet another of his truth is woman quotes (as he does in the first line of Beyond Good and Evil – “Among women: "Truth? Oh, you don't know truth! Is it not an attempt to kill our modesty?"” Yes, it is definitely obscure enough, isn’t it?

So, what’s he on about? Well, I guess the basic idea of this book is that to live an authentic life one doesn’t need to know ‘the truth’ or ‘reason’ or ‘morality’ – what one needs is to grab life by the throat and to live it. Life is like a work of art and we should engage in it as an artist might, as the creator of meaning in our own life. God is dead (although, that isn’t really an idea that is discussed in this work either – explicitly or in any length) and we have to live with the responsibility of not only killing God, but of being responsible for our own lives.

Morality is the history of an error, and the error is in treating everybody as equal. The world has much more ‘noble’ souls who ought never be compared to the herd animals that are most people. We tend to destroy what is best in humans and replace it with the blandness of mediocrity. This is the role that Christianity and Socrates and Civil Society have played.

Nietzsche sees all this – this altruism and charity and common feeling – as signs of degeneracy. It is symptomatic of the weak dominating the strong. But if we were not a degenerate society we would be quite different. We would not worry about the weak, we would act in accordance with our natures.

Like I said, I still find this guy a little hard to take – I was once told that I was taking his ‘social theory’ too much to heart, when really, he meant it as a metaphor to how one ought to live one’s own life. Yeah, maybe – but there is a smell of burning flesh about Nietzsche’s writings that I find a little too sickly and a little too sweet.
...less

Like this review? yes

title link
avg rating
small image
med image
large image

The Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ: or How to Philosophize with a Hammer (Penguin Classics)

discuss this book

friend reviews (0)

lists with this book

other reviews (showing 1-20 of 545)

book data (includes all editions)

blog this book

popular shelves

other editions

quote