Antichrist by Nitzsche

November 17, 2025 | 2,090 words | 10min read

Paper Title: Antichrist

Link to Paper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Antichrist_(book)

Date: 1895

Paper Type: Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion

Short Abstract: In his book The Antichrist, Nietzsche criticizes Christianity and religion more broadly for not focusing enough on the world we currently live in, but instead on a world beyond, whose existence is uncertain. He further argues that religion is used by priests to oppress people by demanding obedience and suppressing their instincts and desires.

Preface

Nietzsche begins the book by saying that he has written it for a very limited audience, and that to understand it one must be completely honest with oneself. He dismisses all other readers.

Sections 1–10

He starts by introducing the Hyperboreans, a mythical tribe who enjoy everlasting happiness, and compares them to modern people, whom he considers lazy and resigned.

Nietzsche then introduces the will to power, which he uses to define goodness, badness, and happiness:

What is good? — Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man. What is evil? — Whatever springs from weakness. What is happiness? — The feeling that power increases — that resistance is overcome.

This is contrasted with the harsh statement that follows:

The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it. What is more harmful than any vice? — Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak — Christianity….

According to Nietzsche, the weak are brainwashed by the Church into giving up happiness and living like herd animals. He blames Christianity for waging a war on people of higher intellect by trying to destroy all natural instincts and desires.

Nietzsche’s central position is that Christianity corrupts people by forcing them to adopt a value system that condemns their natural instinct to seek power. He describes Christianity as a religion of pity; this pity, he argues, depresses people and drains their vitality.

He identifies this corruption not only in Christianity but also in pessimistic philosophers like Schopenhauer, who believed pity was a virtue. Figures like Leo Tolstoy and Richard Wagner also adopted this position, whereas Aristotle already recognized that pity can be dangerous.

Idealism is another position he criticizes because, like religion, it focuses not on the present world but on something beyond it — merely using a different name.

Theologians, he argues, have made what is false seem true and have elevated themselves at the expense of others.

Section 11–20

This problem is very pronounced in Germany, where behind every philosopher stands a theologian—for example, Kant (who argues that people should do the right thing because they respect that the moral law applies equally to all). Nietzsche says that a society decays when virtue, duty, the good itself, or the categorical imperative are followed out of respect for an abstract concept rather than for life itself. Kant’s moral philosophy, he argues, is dangerous to life; his way of thinking is idiotic and no different from that of theologians. Both preach values that benefit only the weak and the herd.

Humans, Nietzsche says, are the poorest of all animals because they have been made to believe that a “pure spirit” can guide them to perfection. What Christianity promises is a fiction, built of imaginary causes (e.g., God, soul), imaginary effects (e.g., sin, punishment, grace), and imaginary beings (e.g., souls, God, angels). This fiction is false and strips value away from reality. Its roots lie in hatred for everything natural.

He argues that the Christian God is a castrated God—one who can only do good and not evil—whereas human beings need a God who can do evil as well. The loss of the drive for power leads to an emasculated deity that appeals only to the weak and the masses.

God degenerated into the contradiction of life. Instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yea! 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”!

He blames Europeans for not creating their own god for two thousand years. The traditional, pitiful god of Christianity leads to decadence—that is, cowardice and tiredness of the soul.

Lastly, he praises Buddhism for being a hundred times more realistic than Christianity. Buddhism has discarded the concepts of God and morality; it is beyond good and evil. It focuses on real, present suffering in this world, and uses reason to address it, suggesting healthy methods instead of prayer or asceticism. In Buddhism, egoism or the self is important and central.

Section 21–30

Nietzsche argues that Buddhism thrives in gentle climates and teaches people to be cheerful. Christianity, by contrast, is based on hatred—hatred of the self, of the senses, of joy, intellect, pride, courage, and reality. In a sense, Christianity is cruelty directed both at oneself and at others.

Buddhism is more objective; it does not need to give metaphysical meaning to suffering. Christianity, by contrast, interprets suffering as sin.

Next, Nietzsche investigates the impact of Judaism on Christian morality. He calls the Jews strange, because they chose, “with perfectly unearthly deliberation,” to falsify all of nature. They reversed every value of religion, culture, morality, and psychology into something contrary to nature—a morality of ressentiment.

Originally, he says, in Israel everything was in order: Yahweh was an expression of power, the god of victory and justice. But this did not last. After they were conquered by the Assyrians, their old god could no longer help them. As a result, they changed what “god” meant; the meaning of God and morality became corrupted. Nietzsche blames the priests, who abused the name of God to serve their own purposes. The priests reinterpreted history as one long divine punishment; they degraded God and falsified Jewish history.

Christianity emerged from this corrupted Judaism. Jesus Christ, he argues, led an insurrection against the social hierarchy and was killed for this. Jesus did not die for humanity’s sins; he was a saintly anarchist who died for his own actions. This was misunderstood by later followers.

This saintly anarchist, who aroused the people of the abyss, the outcasts and “sinners,” the Chandala of Judaism, to rise in revolt against the established order of things… this man was certainly a political criminal…. This is what brought him to the cross…. He died for his own sins…

Nietzsche does not consider Jesus a genius or a hero—that is an evangelical reinterpretation. Instead, Jesus encouraged everyone to see themselves as children of God. The Gospels, in Nietzsche’s reading, announce the good news that happiness comes from living fully in the present as Jesus did. This can be embraced by anyone; it requires no special talent. It was not a new faith but a new way of life.

[H]e knew that it was only by a way of life that one could feel one’s self “divine”, “blessed”, “evangelical”, a “child of God”. Not by “repentance”, not by “prayer and forgiveness” is the way to God: only the Gospel way leads to God—it is itself “God”!

Section 31–40

The early Christian community played a major role in distorting the story of Christ by portraying him as a supporter of war and propaganda. In doing so, Jesus’s special message was erased.

Nietzsche calls Jesus a “free spirit,” an anti-realist who navigated life not through reason but through inner experience. Jesus spoke only of the inner world—light and truth. He was peaceful; there is no evidence that he ever asked his followers to take up the sword. Christ taught that wisdom requires the mind of a child. Nietzsche says Jesus’s wisdom lies in pure ignorance: he had no recipe for a happy life, but promised eternal bliss simply through living a joyful life.

The “Kingdom of Heaven” that Jesus preached is a state of heart, not a place. His followers will still meet natural death; Christ did not come to teach people how to die, but how to live. This, Nietzsche argues, is visible in the way Jesus behaved on the cross.

Nietzsche thinks the mischaracterization of Jesus came from misunderstandings of the original symbolism of his life and teachings, and Christian missionaries spread these resulting errors to the masses.

Modern Christianity, he says, is the priests’ tool for exerting dominion over the world. The Gospels are the reverse of how Jesus actually lived. In Nietzsche’s view, the only true Christian to have ever lived was Jesus Christ himself. Everything that came after cannot be Christian because of the lies told by the priests.

Jesus was a disturber of the existing order of power and was executed for his revolutionary activities. He died free of ressentiment, but his disciples—the apostles—became consumed by it. As revenge, they elevated Jesus to godhood.

Section 41–50

Among the apostles, the one most at fault was Saint Paul, who preached a false gospel built upon abstract ideas detached from Jesus’s very real life. Jesus’s life, Nietzsche claims, demonstrated the possibility of unity between God and man; Jesus had eliminated the very concept of guilt. Paul intentionally reversed this achievement. He is responsible for the “death” of Christ and of his authentic gospel.

St. Paul… gave a logical quality to that conception, that indecent conception, in this way: “If Christ did not rise from the dead, then all our faith is in vain!” — And at once there sprang from the Gospels the most contemptible of all unfulfillable promises, the shameless doctrine of personal immortality…. Paul even preached it as a reward….

The origin of Christianity—Jesus Christ—was thus similar to Buddhism: a peace movement. But after Jesus’s death, Christianity changed. Whereas Buddhism promises nothing yet fulfills it, Christianity promises everything and fulfills nothing.

Christianity shifts the focus away from life and toward the “beyond,” toward nothingness. Paul’s great lie of personal immortality destroys all meaning: life here no longer matters if everything meaningful is supposedly waiting beyond it.

The Christian doctrine of the immortal soul destroys all natural hierarchy and distance between people. Nietzsche argues it fosters attitudes like “the world revolves around me” and “the same rights for everyone.” This universal promise of immortality was, for Nietzsche, the greatest and most destructive assault on humanity. Christianity is the revolt of everything low against everything high.

Morality, in this view, becomes a device for leading humankind by the nose.

Nietzsche then lists passages from the Gospels he finds problematic. He considers the only hero in the Gospel story to be Pontius Pilate, because Pilate at least questioned the meaning of truth while dealing with Jesus’s execution.

Another problem with Christianity is its conflict with science. Faith is the veto against science—the lie at any price. Nietzsche identifies the apple in Genesis with science, claiming that the “first sin,” from a Christian perspective, is science itself, because it encourages independent human pursuit of knowledge.

The priest spreads misery and unhappiness through his lies to distract people from science. “The priest rules through the invention of sin.” This, Nietzsche says, is the priest’s greatest crime against humanity.

Section 51–62

Christians, Nietzsche argues, are similar to mentally ill patients. The European Christian movement is a movement of decay. Ancient Greek culture relied on health; Christianity relies on sickness (sin).

Martyrdom, he says, is not good evidence for Christianity but merely stupidity. In fact, martyrs have contributed to distorting reality; they have harmed truth.

What begins as a lie often develops into a conviction, and lying is a special tool of priests.

[T]he right to lie and the shrewd dodge of “revelation” belong to the general priestly type…. The “law”, the “will of God”, the “holy book”, and “inspiration”—all these things are merely words for the conditions under which the priest comes to power and with which he maintains his power…

He praises the Hindu religion because it aspires to reach higher forms of life and art.

Nietzsche ends the book by calling Christianity the greatest of all imaginable corruptions.

“[Christianity] turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul…. [I]t lives by distress; it creates distress to make itself immortal.”

Decrees Against Christianity

1. Priests should be imprisoned.
2. Participation in religion is an assassination attempt on public morality.
3. The location from which Christianity has spread should be eradicated.
4. The preaching of chastity is a public incitement to anti-nature and should be punished.
5. Priests are chandalas; anyone who associates with them should be ostracized and starved.
6. What was formerly called “holy” and “God” is to be called criminal and cursed.
7. “The rest follows from this.”

reply via email