Bro. Shins Kakkaniyil 

III Philosophy

Nietzsche; an inconsistent philosopher on 

the subject of Christianity

Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the most influential philosophers of modern age is well criticized of his inconsistent perspectives on Christianity.it is indeed a curious paradox, that Nietzsche, a pastor’s son, who had been brought up in a Christian and clerical atmosphere, made a violent attack against Christianity. This paradoxical nature frequently reflects in his inconsistent views on Christianity too.

Christianity, for Nietzsche, was ‘the best example of ideal life’, he came to know.And he was immensely proud of his Christian origin and considered it an honor to come from ‘a breed, earnest of its Christianity in every sense’. He argues that Europe owes to Christianity for its spiritualization and refinement of its culture and manners. Nevertheless, Nietzsche, by his shocking savagery against Christianity, viewed that the proclamation and spread of Christianity was happened unexpectedly by the lack of intellectual integrity and emotional temperance. It is by creating spiritual tensions that emerge out of the tremendous psychological complications, and by means of ‘original falsification of values’, that Christianity hunted and conquered the souls of the individuals. Thus Christianity, he concluded, has become hostile to life.

Christianity, according to Nietzsche, refined the values of Europe but at the same time destroyed the truthful values, by which men had been living in the pre-Christian times. He considered the church as ‘an institution nobler than the state’ but also called it a ‘mortal foe of everything noble on earth.’ He praised Jesus as the ‘bringer of glad tidings’ but also disgraced him calling ‘the destroyer of morality.’ He exalted priests as the exquisite figures of human society, Christianity has carved out but at the same time called them the ‘insidious dwarfs’, ‘venomous spiders of life’, ‘cleverest of conscious hypocrites’ and yet he could pay homage to priestly characters.

Thus making a cursive study on Nietzschean critique of Christianity, one could easily conclude that he is inconsistent in his positions on Christianity. As Karl Jaspers remarks, “a detailed study of Nietzsche’s remarks on the subject of Christianity would uncover such contradictions everywhere” (Nietzsche with Christianity, 2).