Nietzsche worked towards giving the purest form and psychology of Christ(ianity) back to the people, in a secularized format, in a world after the "death of God."
Fyi that's not a literal claim either. The death of God is a metaphor... — DifferentiatingEgg
The most careful ask to-day: “How is man to be maintained?” Zarathustra however asketh, as the first and only one: “How is man to be SURPASSED?”
The Superman, I have at heart; THAT is the first and only thing to me—and NOT man — Zarathustra
Zarathustra defines as strictly as possible what to him alone "man" can be,—not a subject for love nor yet for pity—Zarathustra became master even of his loathing of man: man is to him a thing unshaped, raw material, an ugly stone that needs the sculptor's chisel... — Nietzsche, Ecce Homo
Away from God and Gods did this will allure me; what would there be to create if there were—Gods!
But to man doth it ever impel me anew, my fervent creative will; thus impelleth it the hammer to the stone.
Ah, ye men, within the stone slumbereth an image for me, the image of my visions! Ah, that it should slumber in the hardest, ugliest stone!
Now rageth my hammer ruthlessly against its prison. From the stone fly the fragments: what’s that to me?
I will complete it: for a shadow came unto me—the stillest and lightest of all things once came unto me!
The beauty of the Superman came unto me as a shadow. Ah, my brethren! Of what account now are—the Gods to me!— — Zarathustra
See how Zarathustra goes down from the mountain and speaks the kindest words to every one! See with what delicate fingers he touches his very adversaries, the priests, and how he suffers with them from themselves! Here, at every moment, man is overcome, and the concept "Superman" becomes the greatest reality,—out of sight, almost far away beneath him, lies all that which heretofore has been called great in man. — Nietzsche, Ecce Homo
And verily, what I saw, the like had I never seen. A young shepherd did I see, writhing, choking, quivering, with distorted countenance, and with a heavy black serpent hanging out of his mouth.
Had I ever seen so much loathing and pale horror on one countenance? He had perhaps gone to sleep? Then had the serpent crawled into his throat—there had it bitten itself fast.
My hand pulled at the serpent, and pulled:—in vain! I failed to pull the serpent out of his throat. Then there cried out of me: “Bite! Bite!
Its head off! Bite!”—so cried it out of me; my horror, my hatred, my loathing, my pity, all my good and my bad cried with one voice out of me.—
Ye daring ones around me! Ye venturers and adventurers, and whoever of you have embarked with cunning sails on unexplored seas! Ye enigma-enjoyers!
Solve unto me the enigma that I then beheld, interpret unto me the vision of the lonesomest one!
For it was a vision and a foresight:—WHAT did I then behold in parable? And WHO is it that must come some day?
WHO is the shepherd into whose throat the serpent thus crawled? WHO is the man into whose throat all the heaviest and blackest will thus crawl?
—The shepherd however bit as my cry had admonished him; he bit with a strong bite! Far away did he spit the head of the serpent—: and sprang up.—
No longer shepherd, no longer man—a transfigured being, a light-surrounded being, that LAUGHED! Never on earth laughed a man as HE laughed! — Zarathustra
A light hath dawned upon me. Not to the people is Zarathustra to speak, but to companions! Zarathustra shall not be the herd’s herdsman and hound! — Zarathustra
People have never asked me as they should have done, what the name of Zarathustra precisely meant in my mouth, in the mouth of the first immoralist... Have I made myself clear? ... The overcoming of morality by itself, through truthfulness, the moralist's overcoming of himself in his opposite—in me—that is what the name Zarathustra means in my mouth. — Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, Fatality § 3
The reactive life strives for a long time to secrete its own values, the reactive man takes the place of God: adaptation, evolution, progress, happiness for all and the good of the community; the God-man, the moral man, the truthful man and the social man. These are the new values that are recommended in place of higher values, these are the new characters proposed in place of God. The last men still say: "We have invented happiness" (Z Prologue 5). Why would man have killed God, if not to take his still warm seat?
Heidegger remarks, commenting on Nietzsche, "if God . . . has disappeared from his authoritative position in the suprasensory world, then this authoritative place itself is still always preserved, even though as that which has become empty. The now-empty authoritative realm of the suprasensory and the ideal world can still be adhered to. What is more, the empty place demands to be occupied anew and to have the god now vanished from it replaced by something else".
Moreover it is always the same type of life which benefits from the depreciation of the whole of life in the first place, the type of life which took advantage of the will to nothingness in order to obtain its victory, the type of life which triumphed in the temples of God, in the shadow of higher values. Then, secondly, the type of life which puts itself in God's place, which turns against the principle of its own triumph and no longer recognises values other than its own. Finally, the exhausted life which prefers to not will, to fade away passively, rather than being animated by a will which goes beyond it.
This still is and always remains the same type of life; life depreciated, reduced to its reactive form. Values can change, be renewed or even disappear. What does not change and does not disappear is the nihilistic perspective which governs this history from beginning to end and from which all these values (as well as their absence) arise. This is why Nietzsche can think that nihilism is not an event in history but the motor of the history of man as universal history. Negative, reactive and passive nihilism: for Nietzsche one and the same history is marked out by Judaism, Christianity, the reformation, free thought, democratic and socialist ideology etc. Up until the last man.
Nietzsche became Zarathustra's Opposite to act as a saoshyant. This was part of his chosen purpose in life. To become the Anti-Saoshyant aka the "Anti-Christ."
And certainly not because he hated Christ, he modeled the Ubermensch based off his psychological evaluation of the account of the life of Christ based off the Gospels. (AC 33 & 39) — DifferentiatingEgg
He gave passive nihilism a certain nobility where men were still at the stage of negative nihilism, when reactive nihilism had hardly begun. Beyond bad conscience and ressentiment Jesus gave the reactive man a lesson: he taught him to die. He was the gentlest of the decadents, the most interesting (AC 31). Christ was neither Jew nor Christian but Buddhist; nearer the Dalai Lama than the Pope.
if God . . . has disappeared from his authoritative position in the suprasensory world, then this authoritative place itself is still always preserved, even though as that which has become empty.
—I shall go back a bit, and tell you the authentic history of Christianity.—The very word “Christianity” is a misunderstanding—at bottom there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross. The “Gospels” died on the cross. What, from that moment onward, was called the “Gospels” was the very reverse of what he had lived: “bad tidings,” a Dysangelium. It is an error amounting to nonsensicality to see in “faith,” and particularly in faith in salvation through Christ, the distinguishing mark of the Christian: only the Christian way of life, the life lived by him who died on the cross, is Christian.... To this day such a life is still possible, and for certain men even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will remain possible in all ages.... Not faith, but acts; above all, an avoidance of acts, a different state of being.... States of consciousness, faith of a sort, the acceptance, for example, of anything as true— — Nietzsche, AC 39
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.