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Twilight of the Idols/The Anti-Christ

by Friedrich Nietzsche, Michael Tanner (Introduction)

4.13 of 5 stars 4.13 · rating details · 3,565 ratings · 93 reviews

In 1888, the last sane year of his life Nietsche produced these two brief but devastating books.

Twilight of the Idols, 'a grand declaration of war' on all the prevalent ideas of his time, offers a lightning tour of his whole philosophy. It also prepares the way for The Anti-Christ, a final assault on institutional Christianity. Yet although Nietzsche makes a compelling cas

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Paperback, 208 pages

Published February 15th 1990 by Penguin Classics (first published 1888)

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Apr 18, 2012 John Martindale rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy, classics, religion, audiobook

I have a friend that shared with me how if there is no God, then Nietzsche makes perfect sense; for his philosophy naturally follows from the assumption that "God is dead". Oh man, if this is so, then this books makes me desperately hope there is a God! Nietzsche scorns Christian morality, which is arguably the very foundation for western civilization. With fanatic zeal he tries to saw off the limb upon which he sits. With a moralistic passion he derides self-control, mercy, equality and kindnes...more I have a friend that shared with me how if there is no God, then Nietzsche makes perfect sense; for his philosophy naturally follows from the assumption that "God is dead". Oh man, if this is so, then this books makes me desperately hope there is a God! Nietzsche scorns Christian morality, which is arguably the very foundation for western civilization. With fanatic zeal he tries to saw off the limb upon which he sits. With a moralistic passion he derides self-control, mercy, equality and kindness as vile wickedness that should be purged from the earth. Whereas the ideal world would be one that is in a continual state war, cruelty, struggle, injustice and evil.

Nietzsche, what?! Oh you poor soul, You were born in the wrong place. Oh if only you were born in some cannibalistic headhunting tribe in the Amazon. You would have been in your idea of heaven, but dang it, you'd never would have gotten a chance to write about it.

What?! Why should I heed? Its like you demand me to try to find oxygen on the ocean floor. You give me the recipe for a miserable, empty, meaningless life and then you act like I am the fool for not consuming it?

What!? You counsel me to be the slave of my animal passions, to chained myself to instinct and to be a faithful servant to my every irrational whim? You want me to cut away from myself all that is human until I am nothing more then a beast? You want me to work with you in shaving away from the world all that is beautiful, good and true? Oh Nietzsche, what else can I say, but NO THANK YOU!

But yeah, with my emotional response out of the way. One thing I wish, is that it was possible for Sam Harris or one of the other "new atheist" to debate with Nietzsche on the topic of morality. My question is who is right? Nietzsche or Sam Harris who after discarding God, clothes Christian morality in evolutionary and scientific garb, lest it be lost too. Read this quote by Nietzsche

"They are rid of the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality. That is an English consistency; we do not wish to hold it against little moralistic females à la Eliot. In England one must rehabilitate oneself after every little emancipation from theology by showing in a veritably awe-inspiring manner what a moral fanatic one is. That is the penance they pay there.
We others hold otherwise. When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident: this point has to be exhibited again and again, despite the English flatheads. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands. Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know, what is good for him, what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows it. Christian morality is a command; its origin is transcendent; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticism; it has truth only if God is the truth — it stands and falls with faith in God.
When the English actually believe that they know "intuitively" what is good and evil, when they therefore suppose that they no longer require Christianity as the guarantee of morality, we merely witness the effects of the dominion of the Christian value judgment and an expression of the strength and depth of this dominion: such that the origin of English morality has been forgotten, such that the very conditional character of its right to existence is no longer felt. For the English, morality is not yet a problem."(less)

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Feb 24, 2012 Yrinsyde rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 52-books-around-the-world, borrowed-from-a-friend

Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist are two short books combined into one. The first is a collection of ideas, opinions and conjectures and the other is his criticism of christianity. My first impression of Twilight of the Idols was that Nietzsche was a bit hysterical … (it was all those exclamation marks)., but it turns out that he was a curmudgeon. He was not impressed with how the German populace was being educated – the teachers! He thought that people now were not taught how to see, to...more Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist are two short books combined into one. The first is a collection of ideas, opinions and conjectures and the other is his criticism of christianity. My first impression of Twilight of the Idols was that Nietzsche was a bit hysterical … (it was all those exclamation marks)., but it turns out that he was a curmudgeon. He was not impressed with how the German populace was being educated – the teachers! He thought that people now were not taught how to see, to experience or to think. And Romanticism, huh! Concentrating on feelings, emotional impulses and requiring more and more stimulation to feel, was a sign of decadence, of a civilisation in decline. I don’t think he would be very impressed with all today’s high tech gadgetry. He wasn’t a fan of Socrates – he thought that Socrates didn’t know what he was talking about. And to compound that, people who talked about Socrates didn’t know what they were talking about!! The other thing that stuck me was that he was an advocate of euthanasia. People should have the power to end their life when they no longer have power over what gives their life quality. This also means that people would then have the chance to organise to have all the people around them in order to take a full leave-taking.

When I started reading The Antichrist, I began to think that Nietzsche is not a Nihilist – in fact, he asserts that christians are Nihilists because they advocate the denial of life and focus on what they call the hereafter. I asked my husband, who is educated in philosophy, whether Nietzsche was a Nihilist and he said ‘yes and no …’ Even though the book is short, there is a fair amount of repetition. So according to Nietzsche, christianity is closer to the jewish religion than people realise – the ancient jews started to transform the religion towards a christian model with a strict priest hierarchy. Nietzsche is sympathetic towards Jesus. He states, and quite rightly I think, that Jesus was a rebel and was revolting against the priest hierarchy. He wouldn’t recognise christianity today (or at any time – a totally alien concept to him because he was jewish … said my husband on reading this) because the hierarchy that he was fighting against is still in place. Another interesting thing that Nietzsche states is that people change the god if the god is not suiting current circumstances. How often this has happened to the christian god! So, after the death, the remaining followers got revengeful and so it turned out that they ignored his raison d’etre and turned him into a martyr and had his death image made and distributed as reminder to his sentencers. It could be seen as a anti-semitic statement. And gosh, Nietzsche doesn’t pull any punches about Paul’s lust for power and how he fed Jesus’ death into concreting in the priest hierarchy. Amazing stuff.(less)

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Jul 23, 2011 David Sarkies rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy

I found this book in the bible college library and as such decided that I had to read it (who would expect to find Nietzsche, a man who hated christianty, in the bible college). However, he was there, and I decided to read him. It also help that in my Church History lecture we looked at the 19th Century German Critics, of which he was one.

If I had one thing to say about Frederick Nietzsche, and that is that he is a nutter. It might sound harsh, but it is true. He went insane in about 1888, and d...more

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Jun 19, 2007 Carolyn added it Recommends it for: anyone who doesn't get offended easily

Shelves: philosophy

Twilight of the Idols is one of my favorite books of all time. My favorite quote from the book is, "To attack the passions at their roots means to attack life at its roots." Nietzsche is, as has often been said, religion for philosophers. This book is about the meaning of life, mostly, and how we should conduct ourselves in light of that meaning, or lack thereof. At the time, I was coming from a Judeo-Christian background, though I wasn't a Christian any longer, and it really opened my eyes to o...more

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Sep 18, 2011 1.1 rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Not half as good, refreshing, original or wildly insightful and exuberant as The Birth of Tragedy but still very interesting, exuberant in its own way, and above all impassioned. I just feel that the same points came to the fore in slightly altered forms so often that my interest began to degenerate towards the midpoint of The Anti-Christ.

Very sharp, though, rather insightful, and full of interesting psychological explanation and philosophical digression. This book makes me wish Nietzsche was st...more

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Jun 10, 2012 David Withun rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, philosophy

These two books, two of Nietzsche's last books, are simultaneously one of the greatest challenges ever launched against Christianity (after that of Dostoyevsky in The Brother's Karamazov) and are the greatest challenge to modern atheists. No matter which side of the debate you belong to -- or if you are a third party altogether -- Nietzsche has something to rock your world. I first read these books as a teenager and they forever changed the way that I view the world. The question that everyone w...more

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Aug 07, 2011 Andrew Rosner added it

"Twilight of the Idols" is essentially a concise summation of Nietzsche's thought, a remarkable achievement considering the breadth of his writings. I see it as a gateway to his other works, which go into more detail on specific ideas. The Anti-Christ is Nietzsche at his most provocative and tremendously entertaining to boot. This is hardly the space to discuss his philosophy in great detail. But having just finished "The Kindly Ones", it occurred to me that Nietzsche did a much better job of pr...more

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Dec 03, 2007 Eliot rated it 5 of 5 stars

Late Nietzsche is amazing. Finally freed from the constraints of even remotely making sense or forming coherent arguments, Nietzsche invites his readers to make up more or less anything and attribute it to these books. The best part is that, if one were inclined to feel guilty about such loose attributions, by this point in his corpus Nietzsche has already gotten you over any such compunctions.

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Jun 07, 2012 John David rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy

“Twilight of the Idols” and “The Anti-Christ” are two of the last books, both composed in 1888, that Nietzsche wrote before his final descent into syphilis-induced madness which occurred during the first week of 1889. It continues themes he had developed in his earlier work, and “The Anti-Christ” especially approaches Christianity with a particularly ferocious and critical eye.

As anyone who has thumbed through a volume of Nietzsche can tell you, his work isn’t composed of clear, well-defined pr...more “Twilight of the Idols” and “The Anti-Christ” are two of the last books, both composed in 1888, that Nietzsche wrote before his final descent into syphilis-induced madness which occurred during the first week of 1889. It continues themes he had developed in his earlier work, and “The Anti-Christ” especially approaches Christianity with a particularly ferocious and critical eye.

As anyone who has thumbed through a volume of Nietzsche can tell you, his work isn’t composed of clear, well-defined propositions to be ultimately accepted or rejected; instead, his arguments have a kind of ravishing rhetorical force to them. His writing is less apothegmatic here than in other work, but is still never syllogistic or ratiocinated in such a way that we usually associate with philosophy. This isn’t a mistake; he intended his work to speak as much if not more through the force of style than anything else. In his “attack” on Socrates in the first book, he calls reason itself a “tyrant,” and wonders if Socrates enjoys his “own form of ferocity in the knife-thrust of the syllogism.”

The greatest part of “Twilight of the Idols” is the chapter called “Morality as Anti-Nature” in which he says that all moral systems up until now, and particularly Christianity, are wrong precisely because they try to deform and reshape human nature to their own image. For Nietzsche, the moral is the natural, but Christianity – and this is really an attack on all religious systems, though some more than others – stops being moral when it tries to impose concepts that are
completely foreign to human beings like the idea that “everyone is created the same” or a selfless Christian charity. Whether or not you agree with the thrust of the argument, I found the idea of moral systems as rational attempts to remold nature an interesting one. Of course, people jump on these passages to try to make him look like some kind of nihilist or immoralist, when nothing could be further from the truth. He simply wants the principles and drives of human nature to inform ethical systems, not something foreign to them. Freud may have picked up on this, admitting as he did a great debt to Nietzsche. “The Anti-Christ” goes on to attack what I would call religious psychology, and especially the moral precepts of Christianity.

If you haven’t read Nietzsche and have some sort of caricature of what he says in your head, start with this book, probably one of his most readable, which is ironic when considered in the light of his mental breakdown immediately thereafter. His attacks are never the ones you hear from atheists these days, “that the idea of God is irrational” or “we have no scientific evidence for such a being.” His criticisms are fresh and invigorating, including accusations that the apostle Paul distorted Christ’s message beyond measure and that Christianity focuses on another world essentially devaluing this one. Again, this isn’t about agreement or disagreement with his basic assertions. (Some of the people on whom he had the biggest influence fundamentally disagreed with what he said.) It’s the punch that he packs while delivering them. There was a reason why he subtitled the book “Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert” (“How to Philosophize with a Hammer”).

Other than Nietzsche’s writing itself, some of the most impressive things about him are the downright preposterousness of the criticisms that people levy against him, the sheer width and breadth of intellectual laziness with which people read him. Just from reading a small sampling of the reviews posted on this book alone, there are accusations of him “deriding self-control” and being “obnoxiously right-wing,” the first a willful misreading, the second a risible attempt to foist a set of anachronistic political opinions on the ideas of a man who was hugely contemptuous of the German politics of his own day, left and right alike. Those who are trying to discover their token protofascist in Nietzsche would do better to look elsewhere, especially at his contemporaries Paul de Lagarde, Julius Langbehn, and Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, all of whose ideas make Nietzsche’s supposed illiberalism look like mere child’s play (for details, see either Fritz Stern’s marvelous “The Politics of Cultural Despair” or my review of it posted on this site). That Nietzsche still serves as a lodestar around which people feel free to hang their own various political opinions can only be a testament to his continued cultural importance.
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Nov 09, 2010 Daimen Vauban rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy

This was an excellent read. Eveyrthing you have silently questioned, Nietzsche has placed on paper. The titles may create misgivings amongst the religious community, but they should really take a moment to explore what he has put forth. The Twilight of the Idols represents a collection of various thoughts and points interspersed with a lot of ravings against people he did not uphold. Getting past those ravings leaves you with some very wise prose. The Anti-Christ targets the aftermath of Jesus'...more

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Apr 12, 2012 Peerawat Chiaranunt rated it 4 of 5 stars

Reading Nietzsche seems to always leave one thinking "of course that's it!" His aphorisms are written in engaging prose that easily allows the reader to actually imagine him speaking enthusiastically about the decline of German intellectualism and the 'decadence' of Christianity. Style aside, I found this book to be rather hateful in content. While it offers a great overview of his philosophy and of all he considers to be a denial of life, the book itself offers no solution to this. Its quite ea...more

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Oct 30, 2008 Kam rated it 5 of 5 stars

Really amazing stuff. Eye-opening. My first true reading experience of Nietzsche. Even if you disagree with them, the thought that goes into this, the imagination, the excellent questions and questioning -- everybody should read this guy!

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Mar 27, 2013 Salvatore rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This collection reiterates points that Nietzsche doesn't belabour nearly as much elsewhere. But it is truly philosophising with a hammer - short, aphoristic statements that speak truths (sometimes) or really dreadful not ok things about society. The most important to him: the damnation of humankind/Western civilization because of Christianity and Christianity's permitting of the weak to inherit the Earth, to allow mediocrity, and to grant equality to all. I'd imagine arguing with Nietzsche pre-s...more

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Nov 02, 2010 Eric Franks rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book actually contains two separate works by one of my favorite philosophers, Frederich Nietzsche. What I love about Nietzsche is the sheer passion behind each of his works. Reading passages out of the context of the whole might suggest that most of his writings are the ravings of a mad man (which they were near the end of his life.) But the fact is there is a beautiful symmetry and narrative even to these works which are mostly separated into many different sections about many wide ranging...more

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Jun 21, 2011 David rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy

This is an intense read, at times ecstatic at times repetitive but Nietzsche's powerful prose takes you along for the ride. In Twilight of the idols he attacks his former heroes, this is consistent with any intellectual the more knowledge that is gained and truth that is sought, what previously was held as great will become trivial. Its just that Nietzsche attacks some quite renowned people like Socrates and Wagner. There are many words of wisdom that i think anyone can relate to for example he...more This is an intense read, at times ecstatic at times repetitive but Nietzsche's powerful prose takes you along for the ride. In Twilight of the idols he attacks his former heroes, this is consistent with any intellectual the more knowledge that is gained and truth that is sought, what previously was held as great will become trivial. Its just that Nietzsche attacks some quite renowned people like Socrates and Wagner. There are many words of wisdom that i think anyone can relate to for example he writes "Whenever man feels in any way depressed, he senses the proximity of something ugly, the ugly is understood as a sign and symptom of degeneration", i relate to that whenever i go to work and hear the juvenile music and presenters of Radio 1 i become depressed. Also he writes "My conception of the genius, great men like great epochs, are explosive material in whom tremendous energy has been accumulated". One need only think of Beethoven or Einstein for that description.
In The Anti-Christ he forcefully attacks Christianity and doesnt hold back, although he predicted that he'd live to see the last christian alive due to the advances in science that religion would be swept aside in an avalanche of truth. Nietzsche recognises Buddhism as the only religion, but as he writes its not truly a religion its a philosophy of life, although not many people experience a life changing event that makes them search for truth and enlightenment in whatever context it relates to them, most are happy to plod along like some Huxlian cog in a machine. The foreward to The Anti-Christ is one of my favourite sections in the book he writes "One must have become indifferent, one must never ask whether truth is useful or a fatality, strength which prefers questions for which no one today is sufficiently daring, courage for the forbidden, predestination for the labyrinth. An experience out of 7 solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for the most distant things. A new conscience for truths which have hitherto remained dumb". What one could actually do is replace the word Christianity with the new religion of the masses today popular culture and its strikingly relevant.(less)

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Feb 21, 2013 Colin rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read this back in my twenties and found it a fearsome and assumption-shaking book that left me gasping for breath and questioning everything. Reading it again, with another 20 years behind me it seems a lot tamer. He rants on, is wrong about a lot of things (notably, I see now, the work of Charles Darwin) and that robs a lot of his other passages of their sting.
The aphorisms are great; he is definitely one of the more tweetable philosophers, but all in all I'm just measuring how I've developed...more

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Oct 15, 2011 Cassandra Silva rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy

I read this on the train and I have to say at a number of points it made me look up from my book and take a cursory glance around the car and see if and who on it might be German. This is of course a horrible thing to admit and I don't even know what I am confessing it! I do know that Nietzsche came across as a complete arrogant ass in this work. He seemed to have nothing better to do than spit bile at every other philosopher and what he deemed "the so called institution of philosophy" itself. T...more

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Jan 07, 2012 Saleh is currently reading it

Shelves: nietzsche

by reading the book description, I truly believe that the capitalism cannot handle great warriors of thinking. they are not part of the marketing game. one can never write a fancy glamorous review on Nietzsche. you are not able to make horrifying books like this tangible to everybody. Nietzsche himself once wrote: a book for all and none (thus spoke zarathustra). this is applied to all of his writings.
welcome to the great declaration of war, against all of the idols. the more wounds on the body...more

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Nov 11, 2012 Sara rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read both of these books with a close friend and we discussed each and every idea as we worked our way through these two classics. Nietzsche is thought-provoking and upended much of what I had previously thought about the nature and content of western thought. Studying his thought processes has taught me to reevaluate every single idol of my own. More than one has come up wanting.

His perspective on organized religion and Christianity in particular truly resonated for me. What he wrote was exa...more

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May 17, 2012 Jeremy Ra rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Misinterpreted and abused, the infamy of Nietzsche needs no further comment. Even Nietzsche himself has foreseen what might become of his theories when he dedicated the book to all and none. Yet his mysterious aphorisms completely altered the course of intellectual current, and the thoughts that he provoked are still radical and surprising, not to mention relevant.

Although known best by many to have authored the Will to Power, the sagacity that Nietzsche possessed culminates in its fullest gran...more

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Apr 10, 2008 Trevor rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy

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 recur...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-twilight-of-t...

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.
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Oct 29, 2007 Justin rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Fans of Nietzsche/Non-fans of Nietzsche

I recently lost this book at a party that--don't ask why I brought it but--I got drunk at and since I read like 85% of it I'm considering it "read". Truth be told, these days I've been boozy a little more than I'd like to admit which is not the best state to be reading philosophy. However, I read (present tense) Nietzsche more to peer into the mind of a tragic figure and someone whom I have some affection for, intellectually, of course. He's indisputably more radical than most of what passes for...more

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Jul 31, 2007 Ross rated it 4 of 5 stars

He's weirdly conflicted about whether or not one should seek truth at any cost, or whether it's wiser NOT to know some things, whether that's better for one's life and ability to form projects and move forward. He's gone back and forth on this several times, from "On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life" to "Dawn" and "The Gay Science" to here. There's a split in him between the joyful guy who loves life and accepts everything as it is, and the feverish, deadly serious prophet who...more

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Jul 31, 2012 joycesu rated it 4 of 5 stars

"Anti-Christ" is one of the best life-affirming texts I have yet encountered. I was skeptical, stepping into it, as Nietzsche tends to be so heavy-handed with his writing, but I found it to be only somewhat abrasive- truthful, and wildly insightful. He attacks Christianity with such fervor that I can only imagine a Christian would be extremely put off by the text unless they can somehow come at it disinterestedly and with an open mind.

To sum it up- God is dead, so celebrate your free life.

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Feb 12, 2012 Garrett Dunnington rated it 4 of 5 stars

Twilight of the ideals is yet another observational account of the empty culture in Germany. The Germans possessed no iconography, or longing for life. They lacked philosophers (in Nietzsche's eyes) who ever dared to step away from the metaphysical constructs of religiosity. Poets were also scarce, with the tyrannical triumph of Wagner: the monopoly. The thoughtlessness, vapidity and valuelessness of Germany was worthy for Nietzsche to re-evaluate.

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Nov 10, 2009 Palindrome Mordnilap rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: top-10-books, philosophy-books

It is hard to choose a "favourite" from amongst Nietzsche's works because they are all amazing, both as literature and as philosophy. However, the "Twilight of the Idols" and "The Anti-Christ" essays are so scintillating that they stand out as some of Nietzsche's finest work. Though he does not put forward any specific theories or doctrines (indeed, Nietzsche would consider the very notion of his putting forward a theory as preposterous) he consolidates much of what he has written thus far and d...more

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Oct 07, 2008 Mr. rated it 4 of 5 stars

In this powerful work of philosophy, Nietzsche ponders the value of nearly everything. In the first text Twilight of the Idols, he offers a compelling attack on the prevalent beliefs of his time, including such thinkers as Hegel and Kant, as well as Socrates, theology, morality, and all things German. In the second text, the Anti-Christ, Nietzsche brilliantly and energetically provides his counter-arguement to Christianity and the ways the institution has distorted and murdered the teachings of...more

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Dec 23, 2010 Venus rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy

Twilight of the Idols, 'a grand declaration of war' on all the prevalent ideas of his time, offers a lightning tour of his whole philosophy. It also prepares the way for The Anti-Christ, a final assault on institutional Christianity. Yet although Nietzsche makes a compelling case for the 'Dionysian' artist and celebrates magnificently two of his great heroes, Goethe and Cesare Borgia, he also gives a moving, almost ecstatic portrait of his only worthy opponent: Christ. Both works show Nietsche l...more

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Feb 26, 2009 Andrew added it

Shelves: philosophy, nietzsche

Oh Friedrich, how I love a polemic... and while your flaws are glaring as all hell to even the most inane reader, you still say some shit that's just as refreshingly radical today as it was in the late 19th Century. What so many people don't realize about Nietzsche, I think, is how secretly Nietzschean they themselves are. Recommended to all snarky antitheists, die-hard materialists, and general rabble-rousers.

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Feb 28, 2013 Jason Marciak rated it 4 of 5 stars

Great book for any person looking into the world for insights. Nietzsche gives up a perspective perhaps counter-intuitive to what most people consider "history" by asking the first question "why does this work?" And in doing so is methodically stating how society, religion and organizational structures rise and legitimate themselves. Wonderful introspective work.

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About Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher of the late 19th century who challenged the foundations of Christianity and traditional morality. He was interested in the enhancement of individual and cultural health, and believed in life, creativity, power, and the realities of the world we live in, rather than those situated in a world beyond. Central to his philosophy is the id...more

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Books by Friedrich Nietzsche

The Gay Science: with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

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“Without music, life would be a mistake.” — 36,453 people liked it

“To learn to see- to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. This is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts.” — 31 people liked it

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