The Antichrist

The Antichrist was written by F. W. Nietzsche and first published in 1888. This work is both an unrestrained attack on Christianity and a further exposition of Nietzsche's will-to-power philosophy so dramatically presented in Zarathustra. Christianity, says Nietzsche, represents "everything weak, low, and botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism towards all the self-preservative instincts of strong life." By contrast, Nietzsche defines good as: "All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and power itself in man. What is bad?--All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness?--The feeling that power is increasing,--that resistance has been overcome." In attempting to redefine the basis of Western values by demolishing what Nietzsche saw as the crippling influence of the Judeo-Christian tradition, THE ANTICHRIST has proved to be highly controversial and continuously stimulating to later generations of philosophers.