Description

The Antichrist is a German philosophy classic by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, originally published in 1895. Although it was written in 1888, its controversial content made Franz Overbeck and Heinrich Köselitz delay its publication, along with Ecce Homo. The German title can be translated into English as both ‘The Anti-Christ’ and ‘The Anti-Christian’.

The book, however, is a polemic against institutionalized Christianity, not against Christ. Nietzsche claimed in the Foreword to have written the book for a very limited readership. In order to understand the book, he asserted that the reader ‘… must be honest in intellectual matters to the point of hardness to so much as endure my seriousness, my passion.’ The reader should be above politics and nationalism. Also, the usefulness or harmfulness of truth should not be a concern. Characteristics such as ‘Strength which prefers questions for which no one today is sufficiently daring; courage for the forbidden’ are also needed. He disdained all other readers.