Product Description

'Twilight of the Idols', an attack 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. Both works show Nietzsche lashing out at self-deception, astounded at how often morality is based on vengefulness and resentment. Both reveal a profound understanding of human mean-spiritedness which still cannot destroy the underlying optimism of Nietzsche, the supreme affirmer among the great philosophers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37708 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-29
• Original language: German
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

About the Author
Frederich Nietzsche was born in Leipzig in 1844, the son of a Lutheran clergyman. At the age of twenty-four he became the chair of classical philology at Basel University until his bad health forced him to retire in 1879. He divorced himself from society until his final collapse in 1899 when he became insane. He died in 1900. M. Tanner is Lecturer in Philosophy at Cambridge. R.J. Hollingdale has translated eleven of Nietzsche's books and published two books about him.

Customer Reviews

MAYBE GOD IS NOT DEAD: IT IS ANOTHER GOD WE MUST FIND
This two works by one of the more influential philosophers of the end of the 19th century, must be read with a proviso. They were published posthumously by Elisabeth, his sister, in a sequence conforming to her own authoritarian views.
This said, the Antichrist is a must read for those philosophers concerned with the nihilistic (nihilismus) and transmutation of all occidental values (Umwertung aller Werte) central aspects of Nietzche's philosophy. If you read them at face value, confusion might ensue, and the intrinsical power of an effort to demonstrate the futility and perversion of certain occidental values, will be lost. Then the road opens for misrepresentations and the exploitation for propaganda and other purposes. To put things in perspective, one must not forget that "God's death", according to N. is a metaphysical event consisting in the slaughter of God by the human being, for the sake of truth and religion itself. According to the author, God's death appurtains to the essence of christianism because, by way of the interpretation of Plato's philosophy, this religion considers truth and God as exogenous or outherworld elements. As a consequence of this platonic view, the world itself and its Gods appear void of basis and truth, and therefore the nihilism of the modern man ensues. That God is dead is evident, but no man lives this event as a passage and liberation from metaphysical duality ( world and outher world), in order to reconcile with the earth and real life. So, steer clear of this book, if you are faint minded, unless you are looking for material to misuse or abuse. For the theologian and philosopher, on the other hand , this is required reading.

Heavy going but, in the end, hugely rewarding.
Forget 'The Twilight of the Idols', just head straight for 'The Anti-Christ', an incredible diatribe against western Europe's dominant cultural and religious institution. After reading this outpouring of vitriol, the reader comes to realise (after long suspecting it) that Christianity, in a specifically European context, is not the great spiritual adventure its adherents make it out to be, but is rather the imported Middle Eastern moral system which has somehow found its way to the very top of the western world's power structure. Nietzsche's idea, that Christianity is the anti-European religion of the weak, the spiteful and the jealous, is like intellectual hand grenades being thrown at the foundations of European power and culture. Nietzsche's absolutely uncompromising stance against Christianity and the eloquence and knowledge with which he argues, indeed, rams home, his point makes this monograph compelling and fascinating. Whereas previously, writers, philosophers and academics may have studied the finer theological points of Christianity without questioning its supreme role in European life, Nietzsche is outraged by the malignant influence of this stifling, foreign religion in the arts and affairs of his continent. He unashamedly wants to expose the cultural forces of the time as a weak, pathetic and sycophantic reflection of Christianity's malicious stranglehold on his continent's wild, pagan, liberated pulse. This is the work of a furious and passionate thinker, a man blinded by bitter delusions of militant grandeur. However, Nietzsche was also a man who saw through the veil of selfless humility and piousness which so often hides the sinister, self-serving wishes of the religious elite. This book is brain food, thankfully, genetically unmodified, and like Nikos Kazantzakis' 'The Last Temptation', is essential to anybody who wishes to know the squalid, mundane truth behind the sordid words and intentions which are all too often presented as divine doctrine.

Greatest Book?
Look; I know it is ridiculous to say of any book that is is the greatest every written: yet, it is true of some books that they must figure in any list of the most remarkable books in history. All Nietzsche's works are thought provoking and leave his contemporaries (then and now, for so few thinkers have still caught up with him) toiling to state anything original or incisive or useful to our present milieu.
Nietzsche, unlike many big names in philosophy, charts a future clearly - not wistfully or hopefully. This makes him, in my view, the greatest of all philosophers. In this book, he criticises with an intensity, lucidity and penetration never before seen (as far as I know - and I've had a look at nearly everyone who is supposed to come close); he creates with a voice, imagery and conviction which is, again as far as I have ever read, original, witty, moving and profound.
This is the best introduction to Nietzsche there is, because it is him at his 'whirlwind' best. Whether the reader will agree or not, you cannot help but be impressed by the passion of this work.