Beyond good and evil, Nietzsche is the atheist version of the Christian ascetic

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24193/diakrisis.2021.6

Keywords:

Friedrich Nietzsche, Christian values, Christian ascetic, overman, morality, values

Abstract

Nietzsche is one of the most controversial and disputed philosophers, especially because of his association with Hitler and Nazism, but also through his upsetting philosophical decisions that deny the possibility of any morality centered on good and evil as absolute values in themselves. As for his association with Hitler, the sources prove that Nietzsche’s philosophy has nothing to do with the justification or support of the nationalist-socialist dictatorship. In addition, any connoisseur of his work can easily see that Hitler does not fit at all with the description of the overman that Nietzsche conceptualizes and identifies with. As for morality, it seems to support a relativization of the values of good and evil until their dissolution, but a closer look can see that the morality of the masters accredited by Nietzsche is one of austerity, balance, respect, honor, dignity, of preferring loneliness to the amusement of the crowd. All these are values that even Christianity proposes. Lonely and incomprehensible, the master, Nietzsche lives a lifestyle similar to Christian ascetics. And just as the philosopher claims that the life of the masters should not be passed through the sieve of ordinary moral evaluations, who could judge in terms of “good” or “bad” the way the austere ones lived?

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Published

05/31/2021

How to Cite

Turcescu, A. (2021). Beyond good and evil, Nietzsche is the atheist version of the Christian ascetic. Diakrisis Yearbook of Theology and Philosophy, 4(1), 79–90. https://doi.org/10.24193/diakrisis.2021.6