a brief look into Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, b. Oct. 15, 1844, d. Aug. 25, 1900, was a German philosopher.

Nietzsche's attack on Christianity and Christian morality is based on his suspicion that these are in fact crutches for weakness, instruments for the weak and mediocre to use against the strong and self-reliant. They are products of what he calls "the herd," the legacy of a slave morality that prefers safety and security to personal excellence and honor. But as opposed as Nietzsche may be to Kierkegaard (neither one ever read the other), these two 19th-century existentialists shared one essential line of approach. They both attacked the Christianity of their day as hypocritical, insisting that it was an expression of the herd instinct and personal weakness. Despite Nietzsche's wish to eliminate Christianity, this ideology is perhaps less significant from a philosophical standpoint than his common insistence on the importance of individual passion against the calm public pronouncements of reason and conformity.

In Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-85; Eng. trans., 1954), his most celebrated book, he introduced in eloquent poetic prose the concepts of the death of God, the superman, and the will to power. Vigorously attacking Christianity and democracy as moralities for the "weak herd," he argued for the "natural aristocracy" of the superman who, driven by the "will to power," celebrates life on earth rather than sanctifying it for some heavenly reward. Such a heroic man of merit has the courage to "live dangerously" and thus rise above the masses, developing his natural capacity for the creative use of passion.