The Antichrist
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~29,900 words · 142 passages
Cite this work
- APANietzsche. (n.d.). The Antichrist. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/nietzsche/the-antichrist
- MLANietzsche. The Antichrist. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/nietzsche/the-antichrist.
- ChicagoNietzsche. The Antichrist. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/nietzsche/the-antichrist.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The Antichrist (1888): the frontal attack on Christianity, and the most violent text he wrote.
Context and history
Two things are needed to read it. First, that he distinguishes Jesus — of whom he speaks with a surprising respect — from the Church and above all from Paul, who is the real defendant. Second, the date: he wrote it weeks before the collapse in Turin, and the tone shows it. English translation by H. L. Mencken (New York, 1918), in the public domain. It is over a century old and it shows. The original is GERMAN, and citation should follow the original, which is also in the catalogue: Der Antichrist.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
is merely a modern idea, which is to say, a false idea. The European of today, in his essential worth, falls far below the European of the Renaissance; the process of evolution does _not_ necessarily mean elevation, enhancement, strengthening. True enough, it succeeds in isolated and individual cases in various parts of the earth and under the most widely different cultures, and in these cases a _higher_ type certainly manifests itself; something which, compared to mankind in the mass, appears as a sort of superman. Such happy strokes of high success have always been possible, and will remain possible, perhaps, for all time to come. Even whole races, tribes and nations may occasionally represent such lucky accidents. 5. We should not deck out and embellish Christianity: it has waged a war to the death against this _higher_ type of man, it has put all the deepest instincts of this type under its ban, it has developed its concept of evil, of the Evil One himself, out of these instincts--the strong man as the typical reprobate, the "outcast among men." Christianity has taken the part of all the weak, the low, the botched; it has made an ideal out of _antagonism_ to all the self-preservative instincts of sound life; it has corrupted even the faculties of those natures that are intellectually most vigorous, by representing the highest intellectual values as sinful, as misleading, as full of temptation. The most lamentable example: the corruption of Pascal, who believed that his intellect had been destroyed by original sin, whereas it was actually destroyed by Christianity!--6. It is a painful and tragic spectacle that rises before me: I have drawn back the curtain from the _rottenness_ of man. This word, in my mouth, is at least free from one suspicion: that it involves a moral accusation against humanity.…