The Antichrist

by Friedrich Nietzsche

Some men are born posthumously.

the wretched gabble of politics and nationalism

predestination for the labyrinth.

I find the arrogant habit of the theologian among all who regard themselves as “idealists”—among all who, by virtue of a higher point of departure, claim a

right to rise above reality, and to look upon it with suspicion… . The idealist, like the ecclesiastic, carries all sorts of lofty concepts in his hand (—and not only in his hand!); he launches them with benevolent contempt against “understanding,” “the senses,” “honor,” “good living,” “science”; he sees such things as beneath him, as pernicious and seductive forces, on which “the soul” soars as a pure thing-in-itself—as

Wherever the in fluence of theologians is felt there is a transvaluation of values, and the concepts “true” and “false” are forced to change places: whatever is most damaging to life is there called “true,” and whatever exalts it, intensifies it, approves it, justifies it and makes it triumphant is there called “false.”…

When theologians, working through the “consciences” of princes (or of peoples—),

stretch out their hands for power, there is never any doubt as to the fundamental issue: the will to make an end, the ni...

Definition of Protestantism: hemiplegic paralysis of Christianity—and of reason…

The theological instinct of German scholars made them see clearly just what had become possible again… . A backstairs leading to the old ideal stood open; the concept of the “true world,” the concept of morality as the essence of the world (—the two most vicious errors that ever existed!),

Out of reality there had been made “appearance”; an absolutely false world, that of being, had been turned into reality… . The success of Kant is merely a theological success; he was, like Luther and Leibnitz, but one more impediment to German integrity, already far from steady.—

A virtue must be our invention; it must spring out of our personal need and defence. In every other case it is a source of danger. That which does not belong to our life menaces it; a virtue which has its roots in mere respect for the concept of “virtue,” as Kant would have it, is pernicious. “Virtue,” “duty,” “good for its own sake,” goodness grounded upon impersonality or a notion of universal validity—these

are all chimeras, and in them one finds only an expression of the decay, the last collapse of life,

Quite the contrary is demanded by the most profound laws of self-preservation and of growth: to wit, that every man find his own vi...

A nation goes to pieces when it confounds its duty with the general concept of duty. Nothing works a more comple...

every “impersonal” duty, every sacrifice before the Moloch...

To think that no one has thought of Kant’s categorical imperative a...

An action prompted by the life-instinct proves that it is a right action by the amount of pleasure that goes with it: and yet that Nihilist, with his bowels of Christian...

What destroys a ...

quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleas...

This calamitous spinner of cobwebs passed for the German philosopher—still passes today!…

man is the great second thought

the process of organic evolution.

He is, in truth, anything but the crown of creation: beside him stand many other animals, all at similar stages of development… . And even when we say that we say a bit too much, for man, relatively speaking, is the most botched of all the animals and the sickliest, and he has wandered the most dangerously from ...

it is illogical to set man apart, as Descartes did: what we know of man today is limited precisely by the extent to which we have regarded him, too, as a machine.

what was called “free will”; now we have taken even

this will from him, for the term no longer describes anything tha...

… Formerly it was thought that man’s consciousness, his “spirit,” offered evidence of his high origin, his divinity. That he might be perfected, he was advised, tortoise-like, to draw his

senses in, to have no traffic with earthly things, to shuffle off his mortal coil—then only the important part of him, the “pure spirit,” would remain. Here again we have thought out the thing better: to us consciousness, or “the spirit,” appears as a symptom of a relative imperfection of the organism, as an experiment, a groping, a misunderstanding, as an affliction which uses up nervous force unnecessarily—we

deny

that anything can be done perfectly so long as it is ...

take away the nervous system and the senses, the so-called “mortal shell,” and the rest is m...

Of course, they do not call themselves the weak; they call themselves “the good.”…

The good god, and the devil like him—both are abortions of décadence.—How

How can we be so tolerant of the naïveté of Christian theologians as to join in their doctrine that the evolution of the concept of god from “the god of Israel,” the god of a people, to the Christian god, the essence of all goodness, is to be described as progress?—But

what does such a reduction of the godhead imply?—To

messieurs the metaphysicians, those albinos of the intellect. They spun their webs around him for so long that finally he was hypnotized, and began to spin himself, and became another metaphysician.

The collapse of a god: he became a “thing-in-itself.”

The Christian concept of a god—the god as the patron of the sick, the god as a spinner of cobwebs, the god as a spirit—is one of the most corrupt concepts that has ever been set up in the world: it probably touches low-water mark in the ebbing evolution of the god-type. God degenerated into the contradiction of life.

In him war is declared on life, on nature, on the will to live! God becomes the formula for every slander upon the “here and now,” and for every lie about the “beyond”! In him nothingness is deified, and the will to nothingness is made holy!…

monotono-theism!

This hybrid image of decay, conjured up out of emptiness, contradiction and vain imagining, in which all the instincts of décadence, all the cowardices and wearinesses of the soul find their sanction!—

Under Christianity the instincts of the subjugated and the oppressed come to the fore: it is only those who are at the bottom who seek their salvation in it. Here the prevailing

pastime, the favourite remedy for boredom is the discussion of sin, self-criticism, the inquisition of conscience; here the emotion produced by power (called “God”) is pumped up (by prayer); here the highest good is regarded as unattainable, as a gift, as “grace.” Here, too, open dealing is lacking; concealment and the darkened room are Christian.

Christian, too, is a certain cruelty toward one’s self and toward others; hatred of unbelievers; the will to persecute. Sombre and disquieting ideas are in the foreground;

Christian is all hatred of the intellect, of pride, of courage, of freedom, of intellectual libertinage; Christian is all hatred of the senses, of joy in the senses, of joy in general…

Christianity aims at mastering beasts of prey; its modus operandi is to make them ill—to make feeble is the Christian recipe for taming, for “civilizing.”

Truth and faith: here we have two wholly distinct worlds of ideas, almost two diametrically opposite worlds—the road to the one and the road to the other lie miles apart.

When, for example, a man gets any pleasure out of the notion that he has been saved from sin, it is not necessary for him to be actually sinful, but merely to feel sinful.

But when faith is thus exalted above everything else, it necessarily follows that reason, knowledge and patient inquiry have to be discredited: the road to the truth becomes a forbidden road.—Hope,