Nietzsche Versus Paul

14. Arnold defends Paul, against Nietzsche’s attack, in rejecting the idea of Paul’s decadence: see Eberhard Arnold, Unchristliches und Antichristliche im Werdeweg Friedrich Nietzsches (Eilenberg: B. Beckers, 1910). Jesinghaus outlines Nietzsche’s image of Paul briefly without intensive analysis: see Walter Jesinghaus, Nietzsche und Christus (Berlin: W. Summer, 1913), 34–36. Jaspers locates Jesus at the center of Nietzsche’s criticism of Christianity, whereas Paul hardly appears within his account of the Nietzschean criticism of Christianity’s (Jewish) falsification of Jesus: see Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche and Christianity (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1961), 26–36. And Kaufmann does not go further than acknowledging that “Paul is for Nietzsche ‘the first Christian’; the discoverer of faith as a remedy against the incapacity of what one deems to be right action”: Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 4th ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 344. As for Benz, Paul is nothing more than Nietzsche’s most hated Christian: see Ernst Benz, Nietzsches Ideen zur Geschichte des Christentums und der Kirche (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1956), 36.

15. Jacob Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).

16. Taubes reaffirms that, for Nietzsche, Paul is the man who determined the values of the Occident, and that Nietzsche’s transvaluation of values is an attempt to occupy Paul’s place (ibid., 79). Taubes understands this inversion in terms of truth being the possession of “the few” and of the tragic meaning of suffering being the opposition of the Christian meaning of suffering (ibid., 80–84). He further considers Nietzsche’s relationship with Paul in terms of envy and jealousy (ibid., 79, 86), and claims that Nietzsche’s thinking of the possibility of transcending the laws of the Pauline world rests on the assumption of the possibility of the exception as miracle: see ibid., 84–85. In this connection, see also Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985). In this work, I will rather consider and defend the proposition that Nietzsche’s idea of the possibility of exception is not that of the miracle but that of the origin, which is, at one and the same time, a Pauline idea. See also Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003); for Badiou, Paul was an antidialectician (ibid., chap. 6), the same as Deleuze’s Nietzsche was an antidialectician (Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 195), and thus “Nietzsche is Paul’s rival far more than his opponent” (Badiou, Saint Paul, 72). Further in this series, see Georgio Agamben, The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005); Slavoj Žižek, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003); Slavoj Žižek, Eric L. Santner, and Kenneth Reinhard, eds., The Noughber: Three Inquiries in Political Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Dominik Finkelde, Politische Eschatologie nach Paulus: Badiou—Agamben—Žižek—Santner (Vienna: Verlag Turia + Kant, 2007); John Caputo and Linda Martín Alcoff, eds., St. Paul Among the Philosophers (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).

17. See Ernst Bertram, Nietzsche: Versuch einer Mythologie (Bonn: H. Bouvier, 1965), 62–71. Bertram, along with Fritz Wenzel after him, does not delve further into an analysis of the various aspects and significance of this relationship. See Fritz Wenzel, Das Paulusbild bei Lagarrde, Nietzsche und Rosenberg: Ein Beitrag zum Jesus-Paulus-Problem (Breslau: R. Nischkowsky, 1937), 37–41. Carl Bernoulli, however, who also follows Bertram, explores the Nietzsche-Paul relationship through a discussion of Nietzsche’s criticism of Paul: Carl A. Bernoulli, Franz Overbeck und Friedrich Nietzsche: Eine Freundschaft (Jena: E. Diederichs, 1908); quoted in Jörg Salaquarda, “Dionysus Versus the Crucified One: Nietzsche’s Understanding of the Apostle Paul,” in Studies in Nietzsche and the Judeo-Christian Tradition, ed. James C. O’Flaherty, Timothy F. Sellner, and Robert M. Helm (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 103. Bernoulli establishes “love” as the common and deciding factor of this relationship and the intimate connection between Paul’s vision on the way to Damascus and Nietzsche’s “vision” of the idea of the eternal recurrence of the same in Sils-Maria (see ibid.).

18. See ibid., 102–103. This paper is a slightly modified version of Jörg Salaquarda, “Dionysos gegen den Gekreuzigten: Nietzsches Verständnis des Apostels Paulus,” Zeitschrift für Religion und Geistesgeschichte 26 (1974): 97–124. And this German version was again published in Jörg Salaquarda, ed., Nietzsche (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1980); see also Havemann, Apostel der Rache, 11.

19. Salaquarda, “Dionysus Versus the Crucified,” 106, 116, 127, 124–125.

20. Havemann adds that Nietzsche’s own understanding of his criticism renders this criticism a part of the Judeo-Christian tradition; See Havemann, Apostel der Rache, 257. And through this location of Nietzsche within theology, Havemann (guided by Nietzsche’s criticism) turns to his primary object, which is the systematic-theological examination of the Pauline doctrine of justification: see ibid., 261–283.

21. See Salaquarda, “Dionysus Versus the Crucified,” 103–110; Havemann, Apostel der Rache, 2 and 3.

22. It is important that I add two more methodological notes. First, this work focuses on Nietzsche’s published works, and shall be using the Nachlaß to clarify, supplement, and expand upon the interpretation of Nietzsche’s published works. Nietzsche’s Nachlaß consists of notes that he decided not to publish. And this includes the posthumously published Will to Power, of which three-quarters is notes that were never intended to be published. See Bernd Magnus, “Nietzsche’s Philosophy in 1888: The Will to Power and the ‘Übermensch,’” Journal of the History of Philosophy 24 (1986): 79–98. Second, to accentuate what the reader should have already noted, this inquiry is one about Nietzsche and Nietzsche’s Paul. It is not about Paul (as it is not about Socrates, Plato, or Jesus). Further, my interests are not meant to be a postsecular revision of Paul (à la Badiou, Agamben, Žižek, and the like). Throughout this work, Paul shall appear through, and only through, a Nietzschean lens. Besides, this study may have theological implications, yet my interests are by no means theological (as appears to be the case in Havemann’s study). In this respect, and from the viewpoint of Catholic theology, see Urlich Willers, Friedrich Nietzsches Antichristliche Christologie: Eine Theologische Rekonstruktion (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1988). See further Craig Hovey, Nietzsche and Theology (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 2008).

23. For views in this direction, see, for example, Julian Young, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Tyler T. Roberts, Contesting Spirit: Nietzsche, Affirmation, Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Tim Murphy, Nietzsche, Metaphor, Religion (New York: State University of New York Press, 2001).

24. See BGE, 47; GM, 3:17. See also my discussion of reason and religion toward the end of the third chapter.

1. “Sinn der Religion: die Mißrathenen und Unglücklichen sollen erhalten werden, und durch Verbesserung der Stimmung (Hoffnung und Furcht) vom Selbstmord abgehalten werden. Oder bei den Vornehmen: ein Überschuß von Dank und Erhebung, welcher zu groß ist, als daß er einem Menschen dargebracht werden könnte.” KGW, 7.2:25 [300].

3. GS, preface for the second edition, 3.

4. Karl Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), 3.

5. Francesca Cauchi, “Nietzsche and Pessimism: The Metaphysics Hypostatised,” History of European Ideas 13 (1991): 254.

6. See Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche and Christianity (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1961), 46–62.

7. TI, “What I Owe to the Ancients,” 5.

8. See Ivan Soll, “Pessimism and the Tragic View of Life: Reconsiderations of Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy,” in Reading Nietzsche, ed. Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 104–131.

9. BT, “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” 1. Underline mine. Italics in original.

10. EH, “Why I Write Such Good Books, The Birth of Tragedy,” 1.

11. See also EH, “Why I Write Such Good Books, The Birth of Tragedy,” 1; BT, “Attempt at a Self-Criticism.”

12. Julian Young, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Art (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 109.

14. Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 4th ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 129.

15. See TI, “What I Owe to the Ancients,” 5.

16. BT, “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” 4.

17. This also corresponds to Nietzsche’s definition of the noble’s other as “bad” in noble-morality. Further analysis of the relation of tragedy (as evil, reality, illusion, and so on) to Platonism, Christianity, and their intersection follows in this chapter and the next.

19. TI, “How the ‘Real World’ at Last Became a Myth,” 6.

21. See next section below.

22. There are two further questions to add to this one. First, what is the relationship between this turning point and Jesus as a turning point from Judaism to Paul’s Christianity? And second, what is its relationship to Nietzsche’s modern Antichrist as another turning point marking the end of the history of Christianity? In the following, I attend to Socrates as standing between the Dionysian and Platonism, and offer an extensive analysis of Socrates, Jesus, and Nietzsche as turning points in chapter 3.

23. Kaufmann, Nietzsche, 391; also see Werner Dannhauser, Nietzsche’s View of Socrates (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974). For a criticism of Kaufmann’s one-sided view of Nietzsche’s admiration of Socrates, see Thomas Jovanovski, “Critique of Walter Kaufmann’s ‘Nietzsche’s Attitude Towards Socrates,’ “Nietzsche Studien 20 (1991): 329–358. For an alternative reading to Kaufmann’s, see E. Sandvoss, Sokrates und Nietzsche (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966): If Kaufmann’s motives were to introduce to the English reader a humanistic view of Nietzsche (as an alternative to the Nazi one), Sandvoss identifies what he calls Nietzsche’s tragic ideology (together with Marxist and Freudian ideologies) with Nazism.

24. On Nietzsche’s treatment of Socrates as the best exemplar of the philosophical rationalist, see Daw-Nay Evans, “Socrates as Nietzsche’s Decadent in Twilight of the Idols,” Philosophy and Literature 34 (2010): 340–347.

25. TI, “Maxims and Arrows,” 11.

26. See BT, 12–15.

27. TI, “The Problem of Socrates,” 2.

28. Za, I, “On Reading and Writing.”

30. See Kaufmann, Nietzsche, 393–396.

31. In anticipation of my discussion in the third and the forth chapters, I want to note here that such a characterization of Nietzsche’s Socrates is comparable to that of Nietzsche’s Jesus: Socrates the man, his life and his death, is structurally identical to Jesus the man, his life and his death, as two signs for two interpretations—Plato’s interpretation of Socrates and Paul’s interpretation of Jesus. This is the gap between Socrates the man and his successors, a gap that is structurally similar to the gap between Jesus and Christ, or, between the only Christian and his successor Christians, starting with Paul, the first Christian.

32. TI, “The Problem of Socrates,” 11; see also GS, 340; TI, “The Problem of Socrates,” 1. Against this Nietzschean interpretation of Socrates’s last words—“Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius; make this offering to him and do not forget”—see Laurel A. Madison, “Have We Been Careless with Socrates’ Last Words?: A Rereading of the Phaedo,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 40 (2002): 421–436.

34. TI, “The Problem of Socrates,” 12.

36. Martha K. Woodruff, “The Music-Making Socrates: Plato and Nietzsche Revisited, Philosophy and Tragedy Rejoined,” International Studies in Philosophy 34 (2002): 182; Reginald J. Hollingdale, Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965), 95.

37. BT, “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” 1.

39. TI, “The Problem of Socrates,” 12.

42. Jovanovski, “Critique of Kaufmann,” 330.

45. For more on Nietzsche’s conception of Socrates’s idea of the instrumentality of reason, see chapter 3.

48. BGE, 46. This discussion concerns Platonism and not Christianity itself. And yet, Nietzsche’s conception of the Christian faith is needed here in order to examine its identity with Platonism. This conception shall be examined at length in chapter 3.

49. TI, “The Problem of Socrates,” 2.

51. See Hermann Josef Schmidt, Nietzsche und Sokrates: Philosophische Untersuchungen zu Nietzsches Sokratesbild (Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain, 1969), 360.

52. TI, “The Problem of Socrates,” 1–2.

53. TI, “How the ‘Real World’ at Last Became a Myth,” 1.

54. In a similar manner, Nietzsche also demands that Early Judaism should have admitted the death of its God, after this God had lost his vitality, instead of opting for its later, decadent, pre-Christian form. See AC, 16–17. Further, see chapter 2.

55. Plato, “Phaedo,” in Plato Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 71.

58. KGW, 4.2:19 [99].

59. Plato, “The Republic,” in Complete Works, 1210.

60. Ibid., 1211, 1206.

61. EH, “Why I Am a Destiny,” 9.

62. TI, “How the ‘Real World’ at Last Became a Myth,” 1–2.

64. TI, “‘Reason’ in Philosophy,” 1.

1. In Nietzsche’s writings, the distinction between Early Judaism as Dionysian life-affirmation and Priestly Judaism as Christian life-negation is projected in “the discerning distinction between the terms ‘Israel’ and ‘the Jews’ or “Judaism.’” Israel Eldad, “Nietzsche and the Old Testament,” in Studies in Nietzsche and the Judeo-Christian Tradition, ed. James C. O’Flaherty, Timothy F. Sellner, and Robert M. Helm (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 48.

2. On this division, see, for example, Michael F. Duffy and Willard Mittelman, “Nietzsche’s Attitude Towards the Jews,” Journal of the History of Ideas 49 (1988): 302. And on its expression of Wellhausen’s influence on Nietzsche and the historical imprecision involved in it, see Yirmi-yahu Yovel, Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews (Cambridge: Polity, 1998), 152–163. See also Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (Berlin: Reimer, 1883).

3. Yovel, Dark Riddle, 124.

4. On the young Nietzsche’s explicit anti-Semitism, see Duffy and Mittelman, “Nietzsche’s Attitude,” 302–303. On how Nietzsche became the “Godfather of fascism” and on his nineteenth-century “race language” together with his metaphorical language in relation to Nazi anti-Semitic interpretation, see, respectively, Jacob Golomb and Robert S. Wistrich, “Nietzsche’s Politics, Fascism and the Jews,” Nietzsche Studien 30 (2001): 305–321; and Peter Putz, “Nietzsche und der Antisemitismus,” Nietzsche Studien 30 (2001): 295–304. Indeed, “the threefold distinction of Jews is a necessary weapon as Nietzsche becomes more politically involved. Affirming ancient Hebrews and contemporary Jews, while deriding Judeo-Christianity as that tradition rooted in ressentiment, serves two primary functions. First, it flips anti-Semitic Christian theology on its head (in Nietzsche’s scheme, Christians are “not the true people of Israel”; Jesus is a Jew but not a Christian). Second, it opposes anti-Christian anti-Semitism which derided original Israel (and the entire Judeo-Christian tradition as well). In a word, one could say that if one was to oppose anti-Semitism in nineteenth-century Germany in both its Christian and anti-Christian forms, one would end up with the exact position that Nietzsche has.” Weaver Santaniello, Nietzsche, God, and the Jews: His Critique of Judeo-Christianity in Relation to the Nazi Myth (New York: State University of New York Press, 1994), 140–141.

5. Santaniello, Nietzsche and the Jews, 4.

7. See Thomas H. Brobjer, “Nietzsche’s Changing Relation with Christianity: Nietzsche as Christian, Atheist, and Antichrist,” in Nietzsche and the Gods, ed. Weaver Santaniello (New York: State University of New York Press, 2001), 148.

8. In view of its correspondence to post-Christian era, my discussion shall neglect the third Diaspora phase. For a further discussion of Nietzsche and Diaspora Judaism, see Harry Neumann, “The Case Against Apolitical Morality: Nietzsche’s Interpretation of the Jewish Instinct,” in O’Flaherty, Sellner, and Helm, Nietzsche and the Judeo-Christian Tradition, 29–46; Sander L. Gilman, “Heine, Nietzsche and the Idea of the Jew,” in Nietzsche and Jewish Culture, ed. Jacob Golomb (London: Routledge, 1997), 76–100; Josef Simon, “Nietzsche on Judaism and Europe,” in Golomb, Nietzsche and Jewish Culture, 101–116.

9. Jacob Golomb, “Nietzsche on Jews and Judaism,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 67 (1985): 139; see also Duffy and Mittelman, “Nietzsche’s Attitude,” 301.

10. See Yovel, Dark Riddle, 153–154; Golomb, “Nietzsche on Jews and Judaism,” 157–160.

12. See, for example, HH, 111.

15. TI, “‘Reason” in Philosophy,” 1.

16. Further, see chapter 3.

20. KGW, 3.3:5 [30]; WP, 427.

26. GM, 1:2; BGE, 257.

35. See ibid., 1:3–5.

42. See ibid., 1:10.

43. Further, see chapter 3.

44. For an alternative view of the priest as “masses-communicator” or mediator, see Daniel Havemann, “Evangelische Polemik: Nietzsches Paulusdeutung,” Nietzsche Studien 30 (2001): 177.

47. See Adi Ophir, The Order of Evil: Towards an Ontology of Morals (New York: Zone Books, 2005), 444–445.

48. Further, see chapter 3.

50. Further, see chapter 5.

52. Jacob Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 77.

59. I treat this point more extensively in chapter 6.

60. TI, “Morality as Anti-Nature,” 3.

61. BT, “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” 5.

62. Adrian Del Caro, “Nietzschean Self-Transformation and the Transformation of the Dionysian,” in Nietzsche, Philosophy and the Arts, ed. Salim Kemal, Ivan Gaskell, and Daniel W. Conway (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 89.

63. See Jörg Salaquarda, “Der Antichrist,” Nietzsche Studien 2 (1973): 99–103, 127–131.

64. For an alternative view, see Reto Winteler, “Nietzsches Antichrist Als (Ganze) Umwertung Aller Werte: Bemerkungen zum ‘Scheitern’ Eines ‘Hauptwerks,’” Nietzsche Studien 38 (2009): 229–245.

65. GM, 3:13. Underline mine. Italics in original.

66. In the same manner, Agamben notes that “Nietzsche, in cloaking himself in the garments of the Antimessiah, is actually only reciting a script written by Paul.” Thus, Agamben suggests that The Antichrist can be read as harboring a parodic intention to become an ironic reading of the Pauline Katechon (unless one admits that the calling of the Antichrist is in fact the calling of Christ). I rather put forward the claim that Nietzsche’s Antichrist is, historically, Nietzsche’s, or Christianity’s, hermeneutical destiny, after Nietzsche’s Katechon (Hegel) has been “taken out of the way” of the Antichrist (and not necessarily before the advent of Christ). See Giorgio Agamben, The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 111–112. For more on Nietzsche’s Katechon, see chapter 6.

67. Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 77.

71. Alternatively, for a criticism of Nietzsche’s idea of erotic origin, see William Desmond, “Rethinking the Origin: Nietzsche and Hegel,” in Hegel, History, and Interpretation, ed. Shaun Gallagher (New York: State University of New York Press, 1997).

72. For more on this issue, see chapter 3.

73. I emphasize again that I am delivering Paul’s argumentation in order to render the figure of Nietzsche’s Paul clearer and more understandable. The theses I am conveying to the reader relate in no way to Paul directly. Consequently, the present construction of the figure of Abraham as origin is valid for the figure of Nietzsche’s Paul alone. There are theological exegeses of the Pauline text that render such views of Nietzsche’s Paul possible; see, for example, the interesting work of Benjamin Schliesser, Abraham’s Faith in Romans 4 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007). See also Nancy Calvert-Koyzis, Paul, Monotheism and the People of God (London: T and T Clark, 2004). At the same time, I am absolutely aware of the strong echoes of Protestantism in the figure of Nietzsche’s Paul (for example, sola fide and sola gratia). Although such a Protestant background for Nietzsche strengthens my claims at this stage and later, it does not yet present the totality of sources that contributed to the formation of Nietzsche’s view of Paul, as will become clearer in subsequent chapters.

74. See, for example, Romans 3:21.

75. 2 Corinthians 11:22.

76. See, for example, Galatians 3:28.

79. Romans 3:30–31.

80. Galatians 3:7–8.

9. See Romans 13:8–10.

10. For a collection of theological perspectives on this issue, see, for example, James D. G. Dunn, ed., Paul and the Mosaic Law (Tübingen: Mohr Sieback, 1996).

11. Romans 11:28. For an alternative view, see Jacob Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 51.

13. See, for example, Romans 7:7–13.

14. See Romans 5:13–14.

15. TI, “What I Owe to the Ancients,” 2; see also WP, 143, 202.

17. For a view of Pyrrhonian skepticism as a kind of negative nihilism, see Andrea Christian Bertino, “Nietzsche und die Hellenistische Philosophie: Der Übermensche und der Weise,” Nietzsche Studien 36 (2007): 95–130.

19. See the discussion on Jesus hereafter.

20. WP, 437. Underline mine. Italics in original.

21. See KGW, 8.3:14 [87].

22. See AC, 12; see also Leslie Paul Thiele, “Out from the Shadows of God: Nietzschean Scepticism and Political Practice,” International Studies in Philosophy 27 (1995): 55–72; Robert Hull, “Skepticism, Enigma and Integrity: Horizons of Affirmation in Nietzsche’s Philosophy,” Man and World 23 (1990): 375–391; Glen T. Martin, “A Critique of Nietzsche’s Metaphysical Scepticism,” International Studies in Philosophy 19 (1987): 51–59; Philip J. Kain, “Nietzsche, Skepticism, and Eternal Recurrence,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 13 (1983): 365–388; Bernd Magnus, “Nietzsche’s Mitigated Skepticism,” Nietzsche Studien 9 (1980): 260–267; Adi Parush, “Nietzsche on the Skeptic’s Life,” Review of Metaphysics 29 (1976): 523–542.

23. See Richard Bett, “Nietzsche on the Skeptics and Nietzsche as Skeptic,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 82 (2000): 80.

24. Ibid., 86. See also Jessica N. Berry, Nietzsche and the Ancient Skeptical Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

25. Further, see the discussion of Jesus below and the discussion of Schopenhauer in chapter 6.

26. For an alternative view of it (as a return), see Michael Skowron, “Nietzsches Weltliche Religiosität und ihre Paradoxen,” Nietzsche Studien 31 (2002): 1–39.

31. TI, “‘Reason’ in Philosophy,” 1.

33. In this context, what becomes important with respect to showing Nietzsche’s anti-anti-Semitic spirit in addition to his negative view of Priestly Judaism is the distinction of Nietzsche’s concept of Jewish decadence as “a product of tragically adverse political circumstances over which Jews historically had no control [from] … the physiological form of degeneration Nietzsche finds at the origin of Christianity and Buddhism.” Tim Murphy, “Nietzsche’s Narrative of the ‘Retroactive Confiscation’ of Judaism,” in Nietzsche and the Gods, ed. Weaver Santaniello (New York: State University of New York Press, 2001), 16.

37. AC, 31. In relation to the problem of the Buddhism of Jesus as a historical problem, Schweitzer, in his reading of the histories of Jesus from the end of the nineteenth century (before and after Nietzsche’s Antichrist), denies the claim that Buddhism influenced Jesus: “But it is unproved, unprovable, and unthinkable, that Jesus derived the suggestions of the new and creative ideas which emerge in His teaching from Buddhism. The most that can be done in this direction is to point to certain analogies. For the parables of Jesus, Buddhist parallels were suggested by Renan and Havet.” Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 291. Renan himself writes: “[Jesus’s preaching on the lake] was gentle and pleasing. … His style had nothing of the Grecian in it. … Nothing in Judaism had given him the model of this delightful style. He created it. It is true that we find in the Buddhist books parables of exactly the same tone and the same character as the Gospel parables; but it is difficult to admit that a Buddhist influence has been exercised in these. The spirit of gentleness and the depth of feeling which equally animate infant Christianity and Buddhism suffice perhaps to explain these analogies.” Ernest Renan, The Life of Jesus (New York: Prometheus, 1991), 99.

39. See David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (Norwich, UK: SCM Press, 1973); Hans Frei, “David Friedrich Strauss,” in Nineteenth Century Religious Thought in the West, ed. Ninian Smart, John Clayton, Steven Katz, and Patrick Sherry, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 1:215–260; Jörg Lauster, “Aufgeklärtes Christentum? Nietzsches Kritik der theologischen Aufklärungsrezeption,” Nietzscheforschung 11 (2004): 359–365.

46. Ibid. See also Morgan Rempel, Nietzsche, Psychohistory, and the Birth of Christianity (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002).

51. Salaquarda, “Dionysus Versus the Crucified: Nietzsche’s Understanding of the Apostle Paul,” in Studies in Nietzsche and the Judeo-Christian Tradition, ed. James C. O’Flaherty, Timothy F. Sellner, and Robert M. Helm (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 107. Before this enlightening interpretation of Salaquarda, other interpreters related Nietzsche’s idiot Jesus to Dostoevsky’s The Idiot; see Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 4th ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 340–341; Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche and Christianity (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1961), 22; Paolo Stellino, “Jesus als ‘Idiot’—ein Vergleich zwischen Nietzsches Der Antichrist und Dostojewskijs Der Idiot,” Nietzscheforschung 14 (2007): 203–210. For more on the Nietzsche-Dostoevsky relationship, see, for example, Havemann, Der “Apostel der Rache”: Nietzsches Paulusdeutung (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002), 165–170; Anton Uhl, “Suffering from God and Man: Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky,” in Nietzsche and Christianity, ed. Claude Geffré and Jean-Pierre Jossua (Edinburgh: T and T Clark; New York: Seabury Press, 1981), 32–41.

53. Jaspers, Nietzsche and Christianity, 25.

62. 1 Corinthians 1:22–23.

67. See, for example, GM, preface, 5.

68. See Elvira Burgos, “Jesus y ‘El Cruficado’ en la filosofia de Nietzsche,” Revista de Filosofia 6 (1993): 79–87. Alternatively, for views on Jesus (or his unconditional love) as tragic-Dionysian, semi-Dionysian, or sharing with Dionysus a common religious dimension on the basis of understanding the tragic in terms of (self-)sacrifice, see Robin A. Roth, “Verily, Nietzsche’s Judgment of Jesus,” Philosophy Today 34 (1990): 364–376; Nobert Schiffers, “Analyzing Nietzsche’s ‘God is Dead,’” in Geffré and Jossua, Nietzsche and Christianity, 65–77; Yirmiahu Yovel, Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews (Cambridge: Polity, 1998); Paul Valadier, “Dionysus Versus the Crucified,” in The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation, ed. David B. Allison (New York: Dell, 1977), 247–261.

69. On Nietzsche’s contra positioning of historical Christianity with Jesus’s religion as a salutary provocative challenge for Christians, see Hans Küng, “Nietzsche: What Christians and Non-Christians Can Learn,” in O’Flaherty, Sellner, and Helm, Nietzsche and the Judeo-Christian Tradition, 341–352. And on the relationship between Nietzsche and Jesus in terms of identification or imitation, see Johann Figl, “‘Dionysos und der Gekreuzigte”—Nietzsches Identifikation und Konfrontation mit zentralen religiosen ‘Figuren,’” Nietzscheforschung 9 (2002): 147–162; Eugen Biser, “The Critical Imitator of Jesus: A Contribution to the Interpretation of Nietzsche on the Basis of a Comparison,” in O’Flaherty, Sellner, and Helm, Nietzsche and the Judeo-Christian Tradition, 86–99; Biser, “Nietzsche’s Relation to Jesus: A Literary and Psychological Comparison,” in O’Flaherty, Sellner, and Helm, Nietzsche and Christianity, 58–64.

70. See BGE, 48. On Nietzsche contra Renan’s historical objectivity, priesthood, and declined French taste, see GM, 3:26; TI, “Expeditions of an Untimely Man,” 2, 6. About Nietzsche’s criticism of Renan’s historical method, see Gary Shapiro, “Nietzsche Contra Renan,” History and Theory 21 (1982): 193–222.

71. See AC, 17, 29, 31.

72. Ibid., 34. Renan writes: “His [Jesus’s] exquisite irony, his arch and provoking remarks, always struck home. They were everlasting stigmas, and have remained festering in the wound. … A god alone knows how to kill after this fashion. Socrates and Moliére only touched the skin. He carried fire and rage to the very marrow. But it was also just that this great master of irony should pay for his triumph with his life. … He ran into danger of his own free will.” Renan, Life of Jesus, 172–173; see also ibid., 62, 156. In comparison, Strauss writes (against Schleiermacher): “Thus to surpass the historical appearance of Christ, is to rise nearer, not to his nature, but to the idea of humanity in general; and if we are to suppose that it is still Christ whose nature is more truly expressed, when with the rejection of the temporal and national, the essential elements of his doctrine and life are further developed: it would not be difficult, by a similar abstraction, to represent Socrates, as the one who in this manner cannot be surpassed. As neither an individual in general, nor, in particular, the commencing point in an historical series, can present the perfect ideal.” David Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (Norwich, UK: SCM Press, 1973), 885.

73. See Ernst Behler, “Nietzsche’s Conception of Irony,” in Nietzsche, Philosophy and the Arts, ed. Salim Kemal, Ivan Gaskell, and Daniel W. Conway (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 13–17.

74. AC, 31. Underline mine.

76. See TI, “The Problem of Socrates,” 10.

80. Eric Blondel, “The Question of Genealogy,” in Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche’s “On the Genealogy of Morals,” ed. Richard Schacht (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 310–311.

16. For an alternative view, see Hermann Josef Schmidt, Nietzsche und Sokrates: Philosophische Untersuchungen zu Nietzsches Sokratesbild (Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain, 1969), 369.

18. See Salaquarda, “Dionysus Versus the Crucified: Nietzsche’s Understanding of the Apostle Paul,” in Studies in Nietzsche and the Judeo-Christian Tradition, ed. James C. O’Flaherty, Timothy F. Sellner, and Robert M. Helm (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 103n15.

20. EH, “Why I Am a Destiny,” 1. For an alternative view, see Werner Stegmeier, “Schicksal Nietzsche?: Zu Nietzsches Selbsteinschätzung Als Schicksal der Philosophie und der Menschheit (Ecce Homo, Warum Ich ein Schicksal Bin),” Nietzsche Studien 37 (2008): 62–114.

21. EH, “Why I Am a Destiny,” 1. See also TI, “The Problem of Socrates,” 5. Such contextualization shows Nietzsche’s deep awareness of the unity Paul-Socrates-Nietzsche, which implies further that my interpretation here is not one doing “mischief with” Nietzsche. EH, “Why I Am a Destiny,” 1. Alternatively, on Nietzsche as a religious reformer, see Alan Watt, “Nietzsche’s Theodicy,” New Nietzsche Studies 4 (2000): 45–54. My view is that the case is not that Nietzsche did not desire the destruction of Christianity on the basis of the claim that the pessimism and decadence of Christianity provide the counterforce necessary to maintain the vitality of the Dionysian. See Georges Goedert, “The Dionysian Theodicy,” in O’Flaherty, Sellner, and Helm, Studies in Nietzsche and the Judeo-Christian Tradition, 319–340. I argue here that the Dionysian, once it has transcended the history of Christianity, does not necessarily need Christianity. Besides that, insofar as destruction constitutes the essence of the Dionysian, the latter does not need Christianity to maintain its vitality. And, after all, Nietzsche relates to Christianity as already destroyed by Modernity. See, for example, AC, 38; BGE, 58. From this viewpoint, it is also not the case that Nietzsche’s “opposition to Christianity as a reality is inseparable from his tie to Christianity as a postulate.” Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche and Christianity (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1961), 6. In his reading of Nietzsche, Jaspers, like Goedert, goes as far as to say that through his enmity to Christianity, Nietzsche “want[s] … even Christianity to endure.” Ibid., 91. Jaspers in the main has Nietzsche’s Jesus as the so-called Nietzsche’s Christian postulate. I have already shown that this is no postulate: Nietzsche’s Jesus reflects the idea of the instrumentality of Buddhism for the overcoming of the history of Christianity.

23. See EH, “Why I Write Such Good Books, Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” 3.

25. EH, “Why I Am a Destiny,” 8. As Grau says, the view that reduces Nietzsche’s dissolution of Christianity and the significance of its rejection to the personality of the thinker whose vehement attack on traditional values could easily be explained psychologically by the course of his life and suffering expressed often enough by defenders of the faith overlooks the fact that the philosopher felt his own destiny to be the consequence of a thoroughly disastrous development of the Western spirit. Gerd-Günther Grau, “Nietzsche and Kierkegaard,” in O’Flaherty, Sellner, and Helm, Nietzsche and the Judeo-Christian Tradition, 226. In these terms, my elaboration of the Nietzsche-Paul relationship is meant to disclose Nietzsche’s concept of atheism as Christian insofar as Nietzsche’s criticism of Christianity could be defined in terms of self-destruction and self-overcoming. It is indeed “ironic to see Nietzsche come so close to the strategy of Protestant reformers who also raise Jesus above whatever degenerate practices were later adopted in his name. This is another instance of Nietzsche’s revolution being both informed and constrained by the religion he rejects. The arch-enemy of Christianity is a very Christian (and even Protestant) heretic.” Yirmiahu Yovel, Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews (Cambridge: Polity, 1998), 166.

26. Za, III, “The Convalescent,” 2; see also TI, “What I Owe to the Ancients,” 5.

27. See Ernst Benz, Nietzsches Ideen zur Geschichte des Christentums und der Kirche (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1956), 36.

28. See Daniel Havemann, “Evangelische Polemik: Nietzsches Paulusdeutung,” Nietzsche-Studien 30 (2001): 175–186. From a methodological point of view, Nietzsche here (1881) is directly connected to the later Nietzsche. In The Antichrist, as in this aphorism (D, 68) and in opposition to his other writings (for example, GS, 353), Nietzsche distinguishes between Jesus and Paul. This means that it is not only “until The Antichrist that Nietzsche achieves an unequivocal differentiation of the roles of Jesus and Paul in the origin of Christianity.” Salaquarda, “Dionysus Versus the Crucified,” 104; see also, Havemann, “Evangelische Polemik,” 182.

29. See GM, preface, 5; EH, “Why I Write Such Good Books, Beyond Good and Evil.” Havemann claims that in The Antichrist, Nietzsche attacks the Christian-priest morality through his attack on Paul insofar as Paul is the “Typus Paulus,” representing the priest type. Havemann, “Evangelische Polemik,” 179. Havemann’s general thesis is that Nietzsche locates himself, consciously, in the position of the sinner inside Christian morality so as to create a polemic through which he can bring his moral criticism to language. See ibid., 177, 179, 186.

30. Actually, Havemann adds to Salaquarda’s argument (Salaquarda, “Der Antichrist,” Nietzsche Studien 2 [1973]: 130–131) in attributing to the Antichrist that polemical character which endows Nietzsche’s criticism with the positive character it sought. This way, Havemann reaches the conclusion that “the attack, the polemic itself is the revaluation.” Havemann, “Evangelische Polemik,” 186. See also Günter Figal, “Aesthetically Limited Reason: On Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy,” in Philosophy and Tragedy, ed. Miguel de Beistegui and Simon Sparks (London: Routledge, 2000), 139–151; Willie Esterhuyse, “Nietzsche’s ‘Death of God’: A Nihilistic Consequence of Christianity,” International Studies in Philosophy 29 (1997): 89–108.

31. For Havemann such a positive standpoint would rather be justice (Gerechtigkeit) since it is a relation-concept (Verhältnisbegriff) rather than a moral virtue, see Havemann, “Evangelische Polemik,” 183.

32. Salaquarda, “Dionysus Versus the Crucified,” 126.

34. Ibid., 120, 127.

35. EH, “Why I Am a Destiny,” 9.

36. For an alternative view that sees Nietzschean dialectics as one taking place between Christ and the (plebeian) Socrates, see Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 4th ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 407.

37. Salaquarda, “Dionysus Versus the Crucified,” 120–126.

39. See BGE, 46, 195; GM, 1:7–8.

40. See, for example, GM, 3:27.

41. Salaquarda, “Dionysus Versus the Crucified,” 124–125.

42. As Salaquarda adds: “The first two impulses, return to the thesis and negation of the antithesis, are undisputed by Nietzsche scholars and have been examined continuously. Simultaneously problematic and interesting is the third impulse, however—that of “overcoming preservation.” Ibid.

44. See further chapter 6. See also Schmidt, Nietzsche und Sokrates, 367.

45. Weaver Santaniello, Nietzsche, God, and the Jews: His Critique of Judeo-Christianity in Relation to the Nazi Myth (New York: State University of New York Press, 1994), 1.

46. EH, “Why I Am a Destiny,” 3. Underline mine.

49. See Ken Gemes, “Freud and Nietzsche on Sublimation,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 38 (2009): 38–59.

51. BGE, 47; see also HH, WS, 85.

52. AC, 42. Underline mine. Italics in original.

53. Ibid.; see also D, 68.

57. Aaron Ridley, “What Is the Meaning of Aesthetic Ideals?,” in Nietzsche, Philosophy and the Arts, ed. Salim Kemal, Ivan Gaskell, and Daniel W. Conway (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 146.

58. BGE, 225. Further see chapter 5.

63. BT, 3. For an analysis of Nietzsche’s conception of the naive in relation to Schiller’s aesthetics, see Brent Kalar, “The Naive and the Natural: Schiller’s Influence on Nietzsche’s Early Aesthetics,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 25 (2008): 359–377.

67. Romans 4:4–5. Underline mine.

68. Adi Ophir, The Order of Evil: Towards an Ontology of Morals (New York: Zone Books, 2005), 394–397.

69. See TI, “The Problem of Socrates,” 5.

71. In this same line of interpreting Nietzsche, see Ken Gemes, “Postmodernism’s Use and Abuse of Nietzsche,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (2001): 337–360.

72. Martha C. Nussbaum, “The Transfigurations of Intoxication: Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Dionysus,” in Kemal, Gaskell, and Conway, Nietzsche, Philosophy and the Arts, 63.

73. See Thomas H. Brobjer, “Nietzsche’s Changing Relation with Christianity: Nietzsche as Christian, Atheist, and Antichrist,” in Nietzsche and the Gods, ed. Weaver Santaniello (New York: State University of New York Press, 2001), 137–158.

74. Yves Ledure, “The Christian Response to Nietzsche’s Critique of Christianity,” in Nietzsche and Christianity, ed. Claude Geffré and JeanPierre Jossua (Edinburgh: T and T Clark; New York: Seabury Press, 1981), 46.

75. Julian Young, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Art (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 29.

76. David C. Hoy, “Nietzsche, Hume, and the Genealogical Method,” in Nietzsche as Affirmative Thinker, ed. Yirimiahu Yovel (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986), 33.

80. See Behler, “Conception of Irony,” in Kemal, Gaskell, and Conway, Nietzsche, Philosophy and the Arts, 17–18.

81. See GM, 2:6–17.

82. See Romans 2:12–15.

83. See Romans 3:21–31.

84. See Roland Haves, “Socratism and the Question of Aesthetic Justification,” Kemal, Gaskell, and Conway, Nietzsche, Philosophy and the Arts, 92–127.

85. UM, HL, 7. Underline mine. Italics in original.

87. Robert Scharff, “Nietzsche and the ‘Use’ of History,” Continental Philosophy Review 7 (1974): 76.

1. See, for example, GM, 3:27.

3. Ibid. Underline mine.

6. See Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 4th ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 96–100.

7. See Charles Bambach, “Nietzsche’s Madman Parable: A Cynical Reading,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 84 (2010): 441–456. See further R. Bracht Branham, “Nietzsche’s Cynicism: Uppercase or Lowercase?,” in Nietzsche and Antiquity, ed. Paul Bishop (New York: Camden House, 2004), 170–181; Anthony K. Jensen, “Nietzsche’s Unpublished Fragments on Ancient Cynicism: The First Night of Diogenes,” in Bishop, Nietzsche and Antiquity, 182–191.

10. Michael Skowron, “Nietzsches Weltliche Religiosität und ihre Paradoxen,” Nietzsche Studien 31 (2002): 5. For further on the development of the modern historical, vis-à-vis the logical, criticism of religion, see Elizabeth Heinrich, Religionskritik der Neuzeit: Hume, Feuerbach, Nietzsche (Freiburg: Alber Thesen, 2001). For an alternative view seeing the death of God as polemical, see Edith Dusing, “Die Tod Gottes: Problematik bei Nietzsche und Hegel,” Perspektiven der Philosophie 29 (2003): 229–282.

11. See GS, 343; see also Georges Goedert, “Nietzsches Antichrist als Überwindung der moralischen Weltordnung,” Perspektiven der Philosophie, 27 (2001): 197–221.

12. Za, IV, “Retired.”

13. Ibid., IV, “The Ugliest Man.”

17. TI, “Morality as Anti-Nature,” 1.

20. TI, “Morality as Anti-Nature,” 1.

21. Za, IV, “Retired.”

22. Ibid.; see also BGE, 53.

23. See Johann Figl, “‘Tod Gottes’ und die Möglichkeit ‘neuer Götter,’” Nietzsche Studien 29 (2000): 82–101; Karl Löwith, “Der Atheismus Als Philosophisches Problem—1960,” in Sämtliche Schriften, ed. Klaus Stichweh and Marc B. de Launay (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1981–1986), 3:303–304.

25. See Za, I V, “The Awakening,” “The Ass Festival.”

27. Za, IV, “The Ugliest Man.”

31. Za, IV, “The Ugliest Man.”

32. Nietzsche’s explicit reference to the noble origin of the ugliest man contradicts, in principle, the possibility of interpreting Zarathustra’s Ugliest Murderer of God as Socrates. For such an interpretation compels the interpreter to dismiss two facts: that the murderer of God is a noble man together with Nietzsche’s emphasis on the plebeian origin of Socrates. See Weaver Santaniello, “Socrates as the Ugliest Murderer of God,” in Nietzsche and the Gods, ed. Weaver Santaniello (New York: State University of New York Press, 2001), 73–84. I do not find it to possible to identify the “higher men” (höhere Menschen), whom Zarathustra meets in the fourth part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, with any historical personalities whatsoever. See ibid., and W. Wiley Richards, The Bible and Christian Tradition: Keys to Understanding the Allegorical Subplot of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (New York: Peter Lang, 1991). On the other hand, such an aspect cannot just be ignored. See, for example, Kathleen M. Higgins, “Reading Zarathustra,” in Reading Nietzsche, ed. Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 132–151; Higgins, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987); Martin Heidegger, “The Word of Nietzsche: ‘God Is Dead,’” in The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1977), 53–112; Heidegger, Nietzsche, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 1:151–161. I suggest that these “men” are explicitly modern figurative personalities. Indeed, the fourth part of Zarathustra represents through the figures of the higher men many masks of decadence. Giuliano Campioni, “Der höhere Mensch nach dem Tod Gottes,” Nietzsche Studien 28 (1999): 337. And I would further note only that a careful reading reveals the identities of these personalities as follows: the soothsayer represents modern nihilism (see Za, II, “The Soothsayer”; IV, “The Cry of Distress”); the two kings represent the remains of aristocracy in modern times (see Za, IV, 3; BGE, 258); the conscientious in spirit represents modern science (see Za, IV, “The Magician,” “The Song of Melancholy,” “On Science”); the magician represents modern art (see Za, IV, “The Leech,” “On Science”); the voluntary beggar represents modern Buddhism (see Za, IV, “The Voluntary Beggar”); the shadow represents the wandering free spirit (see Za, IV, “The Shadow”); and, in addition, and as the above analysis has already made clear, the retired old pope represents the remains of (dogmatic) Christianity in Modernity, where the ugliest man represents modern pessimism.

33. Za, IV, “The Ugliest Man.”

35. Paul Tillich, “The Escape from God,” in Santaniello, Nietzsche and the Gods, 177.

36. For an alternative view of the death of God as resulting in the fulfillment of modern man’s need of love, see Robert Pippin, “Love and Death in Nietzsche,” in Religion After Metaphysics, ed. Mark A. Wrathall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 7–28.

37. Za, IV, “The Awakining,” 1. Underline mine.

38. Kaufmann, Nietzsche, 253.

39. Löwith, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same, trans. J. Harvey Lomax (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 47.

48. Ibid., 345, 344.

49. See Gianni Vattimo, “After Onto-Theology: Philosophy Between Science and Religion,” in Wrathall, Religion After Metaphysics, 29–36; Richard Rorty, “Anti-Clericalism and Atheism,” in Wrathall, Religion After Metaphysics, 37–46.

53. See Za, I V, “The Ugliest Man.”

57. See Za, IV; see also Adi Ophir, The Order of Evil: Towards an Ontology of Morals (New York: Zone Books, 2005), 249–250; David Cartwright, “The Last Temptation of Zarathustra,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 31 (1993): 49–69.

58. See, for example, BGE, 225.

59. See, for example, ibid., 19, 200.

60. Za, II, “On the Pitying.”

61. Ibid. See also BGE, 225; D, 134.

63. Za, II, “On the Pitying.”

64. KGW, 5.1:7 [26].

66. See Ophir, Order of Evil, 272–273.

69. Such a dismissal can be explained by Nietzsche’s antisocialism, which he joins to his criticism of the modern bourgeois averaging of man expressed in his criticism of pity; see, for example, BGE, 202.

70. Za, II, “On the Pitying.”

71. Ibid., III, “On Old and New Tablets.”

72. See TI, “Morality as Anti-Nature,” 1.

74. Ibid., 3:25. See also Babette Babich, Nietzsches Wissenschaftsphilosophie: “Die Wissenschaft unter der Optik des Künstlers zu sehen, die Kunst unter der des Lebens” (Bern: Peter Lang, 2011).

75. Za, III, “On Old and New Tablets.”

77. Ibid., 3:6. Otherwise, on Nietzsche’s (and Schopenhauer’s) “misunderstanding” of Kant’s “disinterested delight,” see Heidegger, Nietzsche, 1:107–114.

88. Za, III, “On Old and New Tablets.”

91. Za, III, “On Old and New Tablets.”

2. On the continuum of the Spinoza-Nietzsche immanent “will to life,” see Hans-Jurgen Gawoll, “Nietzsche und der Geist Spinozas: Die existentielle Umwandlung einer affirmativen Ontologie,” Nietzsche Studien 30 (2001): 44–61; Yirimiahu Yovel, “Nietzsche and Spinoza: ‘Amor Fati’ and ‘Amor Dei,’” in Nietzsche as Affirmative Thinker, ed. Yirimiahu Yovel (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986). And on the Nietzsche-Darwin relationship, see, for example, Dirk Robert Johnson, “Nietzsche’s Early Darwinism: The ‘David Strauss’ Essay of 1873,” Nietzsche Studien 30 (2001): 62–79; Patrick Forber, “Nietzsche Was No Darwinian,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (2007): 369–382.

3. See, for example, GS, 349.

4. See, for example, WP, 684.

6. “Progress in my sense.—I too speak of a ‘return to nature,’ although it is really not a going-back but a going-up—up into a high, free, even frightful nature and naturalness, such as plays with great tasks, is permitted to plays with them. … To speak in a parable: Napoleon was a piece of ‘return to nature’ as I understand it. … But Rousseau. … I see only one who experienced it [the French Revolution] as it had to be experienced—with disgust. … Goethe … not a German event but a European one: a grand attempt to overcome the eighteenth century through a return to nature, through a going-up to the naturalness of the Renaissance. … A spirit thus emancipated stands in the midst of the universe with a joyful and trusting fatalism, in a faith that only what is separate and individual may be rejected, that in the totality everything is redeemed and affirmed—he no longer denies. … But such a faith is the highest of all possible faiths: I have baptized it with the name Dionysus.” TI, “Expeditions of an Untimely Man,” 48–49.

13. TI, “Expeditions of an Untimely Man,” 49.

14. EH, “Why I Am So Clever,” 10.

17. See, for example, ibid., 12.

18. TI, “‘Reason’ in Philosophy,” 5.

19. GM, 2:20; see also Michael Lackey, “Killing God, Liberating the ‘Subject’: Nietzsche and Post-God Freedom,” Journal of the History of Ideas 60 (1999): 737–754.

20. “Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness. Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” 2 Thessalonians 2:1–12.

21. Among the many theological interpretation of the concealed identity of the Katechon, see, for example, Paul Metzger, Katechon: II Thess 2,1–12 im Horizont Apokalyptischen Denkens (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005); Charles E. Powell, “The Identity of the ‘Restrainer’ in 2 Thessalonians 2:6–7,” Bibliotheca Sacra 154 (1997): 320–332; Martin Berger, “Die Katechon-Vorstellung 2 Thess 2,6f: Dietrich Bonhoefers Interpretation im Kontext der Rezeptionsgeschichte,” Protokolle zur Bibel 5 (1996): 33–56; Paul S. Dixon, “The Evil Restraint in 2 Thess 2:6,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 33 (1990): 445–449; Roger D. Aus, “God’s Plan and God’s Power: Isaiah 66 and the Restraining Factors of 2 Thess 2:6–7,” Journal of Biblical Literature 96 (1977): 537–553. And for a brief account of the history of the Katechon interpretations (until Schmitt), see Felix Grossheutschi, Carl Schmitt und die Lehre vom Katechon (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1996), 30–56.

22. See also Mark 12:13–17; Romans 13:1–7.

24. UM, WB, 3. With respect to Nietzsche’s relation to the Germans in general, see Andreas Rupschus, “Nietzsche und sein Problem mit den Deutschen,” Nietzsche Studien 40 (2011): 72–105.

26. GM, 1:10. Underline mine.

29. For an alternative emphasis, see Werner Stegmaier, “Ohne Hegel kein Darwin”—Kontextuelle Interpretation des Aphorismus 357 aus dem V. Buch der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft,” Nietzscheforschung 17 (2010): 65–82.

31. CW, “Postscript.”

35. See also BGE, preface; AC, 61.

37. So far, research has neglected Nietzsche’s view of Hegel as Katechon. With respect to the study of Carl Schmitt, Meuter reports that Schmitt’s reception of Nietzsche’s conception of Hegel as the Katechon of atheism was ambivalent; see Günter Meuter, Der Katechon: Zu Carl Schmitts fundamentalistischer Kritik der Zeit (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1994), 330; see also Metzger, Katechon, 24. Besides that, Nietzsche’s thesis that German Hegelianism is the Katechon in the way of atheism had been adopted by (Schmitt’s friend) Hans Freyer; see Hans Freyer, Weltgeschichte Europas (Wiesbaden: Dieterich, 1948); Grossheutschi, Carl Schmitt und Lehre vom Katechon, 98–102.

41. GS, 357. Underline mine. Italics in original.

43. See also ibid., 108.

44. AC, 4; see also TI, “Expeditions of an Untimely Man,” 37; EH, “Why I Write Such Good Books, The Birth of Tragedy,” 1; EH, “Why I Write Such Good Books, Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” 6; EH, “Why I Write Such Good Books, Why I Am a Destiny,” 5.

45. Za, IV, “On the Higher Man,” 2.

46. Ibid., III, “On Old and New Tablets,” 3.

47. See ibid., IV, “On the Higher Man,” 1, 5.

48. See ibid., I, “Zarathustra’s Prologue,” 3–5. This is of course an interpretation inner to Zarathustra. Alternatively, Higgins chooses to refer Zarathustra IV to Lucian and to Apuleius: Lucian, “Lucius; or, The Ass,” in Lucian, trans. M. D. MacLeod, vol. 8 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967); Apuleius, The Transformations of Lucius, Otherwise Known as the Golden Ass (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951). See Kathleen M. Higgins Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), chap. 7; Higgins, “Zarathustra” IV and Apuleius: Who Is ‘Zarathustra’s’ Ass?,” International Studies in Philosophy 20 (1988): 29–53.

49. Za, IV, “On the Higher Man,” 6.

50. Bernd Magnus, “Nietzsche and the Project of Bringing Philosophy to an End,” in Yovel, Affirmative Thinker, 54. I want to note here that Magnus understands such a duality as one between man (sublimation) as such and animal (instinct) as such. From my perspective, such a duality should be primarily formulated as one between one man and another man, insofar as this formulation encompasses the duality between sublimations and instincts.

51. See, for example, Romans 2:14–15.

52. In this line of interpretation, see Erik D. Lindberg, “Nietzsche Contra Hegel: The Death of Tragedy and the Birth of the Unconscious,” Symposium 2 (1998): 77–100.

54. See Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche and Christianity (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1961), 51–55.

55. 2 Thessalonians 2:13; see also HH, WS, 85.

56. 2 Thessalonians 3:2.

57. 2 Thessalonians 2:10.

58. See 2 Thessalonians 2:9–10; Revelation 13. For more on the Antichrist as deceiver, see Gregory C. Jenks, The Origins and Early Development of the Antichrist Myth (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991), chap. 4; W. Bell Dawson, “The Meaning of the Antichrist in the Greek of the New Testament,” Evangelical Quarterly 16 (1944): 53–71.

59. See BGE, 295; Walter Brogan, “Zarathustra: The Tragic Figure of the Last Philosopher,” in Philosophy and Tragedy, ed. Miguel de Beistegui and Simon Sparks (London: Routledge, 2000), 152–168. See also Riedel’s (uncritical) article: Manfred Riedel, “Europe’s Origin: Nietzsche and the Greeks,” New Nietzsche Studies 4 (2000): 141–155.

60. See Jacob Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 4–5.

61. See, for example, Karl Löwith, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same, trans. J. Harvey Lomax (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 82–107.

62. Nietzsche sought to prove the idea of the eternal recurrence even scientifically; see, for example, Arthur Danto, “The Eternal Recurrence,” in Nietzsche: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Robert C. Solomon (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973), 316–321. For views on the idea of the eternal recurrence and the will to power as “poetic symbols,” see, for example, Gregory B. Smith, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Transition to Postmodernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), chap. 9. In this line of interpretation, see also Eric Blondel, “Nietzsche: Life as a Metaphor,” in The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation, ed. David B. Allison (New York: Dell, 1977), 142–149; Jacques Derrida, “The Question of Style,” in Allison, New Nietzsche, 150–175; and Sarah Kofman, “Metaphor, Symbol, Metamorphosis,” in Allison, New Nietzsche, 201–214. For a criticism of reading Postmodernity into Nietzsche, see Robert B. Pippin, “Nietzsche’s Alleged Farewell: The Premodern, Modern, and Postmodern Nietzsche,” in The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, ed. Bernd Magnus and Kathleen M. Higgins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 252–277.

63. Löwith, Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence. See also Zeynep Talay, “A Dialogue with Nietzsche: Blumenberg and Lowith on History and Progress,” History of European Ideas 37 (2011): 376–381.

64. See Löwith, Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence, 82–107.

66. “At the end of an exhausted Christianity, he [Nietzsche] sought ‘new sources of the future,’ and found them in recollection of that ancient world as it was before Christianity. … If one compares Nietzsche’s arguments with those of Celsus and Porphyry, it is not difficult to notice how little has been added to the ancient arguments against Christianity, with the exception of the Christian pathos that caused Nietzsche to speak as an ‘Antichrist’ and no longer as a philosopher. … He was through and through so Christian and anti-Christian, so Protestant and protesting, so demanding and hoping, that only one question drove him on: his yearning for the future and his will to create it. … No Greek philosopher thought so exclusively in the horizon of the future, and none took himself to be a historical destiny. … The will to power is equally un -Greek. … For the Greeks the visible circular motion of heavenly spheres revealed a cosmic logos and a divine perfection. For Nietzsche the eternal recurrence is ‘most terrible’ idea and the ‘greatest gravity,’ because it contradicts his will to a future redemption. Nietzsche wanted to ‘overcome’ the temporality of time in favor of the eternity of the eternal recurrence. … All these superlatives of ‘highest’ and ‘last’ willing and willing back, creating, and re-creating, are just as antinatural as they are un-Greek. They derive from the Judeo-Christian tradition. … Nietzsche lived and thought to the end the metamorphosis of the biblical ‘Thou shalt’ into the modern ‘I will,’ but he did not accomplish the decisive step from the ‘I will’ to the ‘I am’ of the cosmic child of the world, which is innocence and forgetting. As a modern man, he was so hopelessly separated from an original ‘loyalty to the earth’ and from the feeling of an eternal security under the vault of heaven, that his effort to ‘translate’ man ‘back’ into nature was condemned to failure from the outset.” Ibid., 119–121. Underline mine. Italics in original.

67. See also Karl Löwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth Century Thought, trans. David E. Green (New York: Anchor, 1967), 365–369.

68. Karl Löwith, “Der Atheismus Als Philosophisches Problem—1960,” in Sämtliche Schriften, ed. Klaus Stichweh and Marc B. de Launay (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1981–1986), 3:299.

71. Karl Löwith, “Atheismus als Philosophisches Problem—1967,” in Sämtliche Schriften, 3:332.

72. See Martin Heidegger, “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking,” in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1993), 427–449. For a sympathetic view of the idea of origin by Heidegger and Löwith, see Roberto de Amorim Almeida, Natur und Geschichte: Zur Frage nach der Ursprünglichen Dimension Abendländischen Denkens vor dem Hintergrund der Auseinandersitzung zwischen Martin Heidegger und Karl Löwith (Meisenheim am Glan: Verlag Anton Hain, 1976). For a similar incorporation of Christianity as a second source beside the Greek one, and within the same Heideggerian paradigm, see Didier Franck, Nietzsche and the Shadow of God, trans. Bettina Bergo and Philippe Farah (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2012).