Nietzsche

10 Pages 2488 Words

In Nietzsche’s philosophy he made no room for God, let alone religion itself. Nietzsche saw religion, especially Christianity, as a weakness. A Burden put on man to cloud the mind with thoughts of another world in order to justify their meager existence in this one. When used as a tool of education or cultivation, religion could be useful just as politics or economics (Cowan72). The problem arises when religions do not want to be used as a tool for education, “but insist on having their own sovereign way”. They believe that they are not the means to any kind of end, but rather the end itself. Religion can be an intellectual journey, but it cannot be allowed to become the destination to which we are all struggling to arrive. (Cowan 74). This can only serve to downplay the role of man in the universe, a role that is already dangerously insignificant. In the eyes of Nietzsche Christianity has many sacrifices, these sacrifices are made for someone or something that only exists in the man- written accounts of the Bible.
Nietzsche saw Christianity as an endless cycle of sacrifice. Not by any means sacrifice for the better good, nor for any kind of enlightenment, but rather sacrifice for the pure sake of sacrifice. What good could possibly come of this? I believe he would be quick to answer the question. With the exception of a somewhat Hobbesean premise of being “one more means for overcoming resistances, for the ability to rule” (Cowan 72) and giving “some of the ruled the instruction and opportunity to prepare themselves for future ruling and obeying” (Cowan 73), no good can come of this. Nietzsche makes his dislike for Christianity quite evident, and I believe rightly so, for it serves as a lifelong scapegoat for the man who knows worldly failure. This same man who may fail to hold on to employment in the temporal world, for it seems that economic prosperity is anti-Christian, or who can’t ‘turn the other ch...