By CHARLES REICHHARDT
Los Alamos
In a recent article in the Los Almos Daily Post, Rev. Mary Ann Hill claimed that Friedrich Nietzsche despised Christianity and Judaism and its influence on the Western world. She also implies that Nietzsche was somehow influential in the rise of fascism. Neither point is accurate, nor are they what current scholars adhere to about Nietzsche [1,2,3,4,5]. Unfortunately, the general public has sometimes made such assertions about his work.
Nietzsche was very pro-human dignity, and his criticism of some aspects of Christianity as it is practiced is that it promotes nihilism and denies life’s inherent value. From reading his work, it is clear that Nietzsche took Christ as an example of how one should live and agreed with his message; however, he did not agree with where the Apostle Paul took the church. Although Nietzsche had disagreements with organized Christianity, he certainly did not hate Christ, Christians or Jews and certainly appreciated and understood the role of religion and its importance for humans.
Scholars are almost universally in agreement that Nietzsche’s philosophy has little overlap with fascism and is antithetical to it in many ways [1,2,5]. Nietzsche promoted individualism and was contemptuous of nationalism.
It is likely that Nazis or people who make claims about connections between Nietzsche and fascism never actually read the works of Nietzsche and certainty did not understand them [2,5]. While scholars have been debating since the 50s the philological question of the Hitler Archive, with many blaming the nefarious influence of Nietzsche’s Pan-Germanist, antisemitic sister in crystallizing the Nazi interpretation of Nietzsche,
it has been clear for decades that the roots of National Socialism are to be found elsewhere.
People may think Nietzsche’s statement “God is dead” belies some extreme antipathy toward Christianity or religion in general, when it is, in fact, a warning about the rise of nihilism, which he felt would be the natural consequence of the Enlightenment. In his time, he could see the rapid decline of religion as a way for humans to understand the world due to the rise of rationalism and science. The death of God is a metaphor for the changing worldview. Heidegger refined this further by saying it is the death of metaphysics in general [6]. I see it as the rise of a scientific worldview that leaves humanity or life meaningless beyond the physical world.
However, as humans have evolved, they have developed an innate need to impart a higher meaning to the world, and will do this no matter how irrational or authoritarian such possible meanings might be. Nietzsche worried that in the absence of “God”, humans would sink into nihilism and be susceptible to replacing religion with authoritarian philosophies, which is why many scholars believe that Nietzsche anticipated the rise of fascism, communism, and other far-right or far-left movements of the 20th century. Due to Nietzsche’s writing style and heavy use of metaphor and symbolism, it is easy to make inaccurate claims about his philosophy, particularly if one chooses some statement of his, imposes an interpretation on it, and ignores other relevant quotes of Nietzsche.
[1] Leiter, B. (2014). Nietzsche on Morality (2nd ed.). Routledge.
[2] Illing. S (2018, Dec 30)
“The alt-right is drunk on bad readings of Nietzsche. The Nazis were too.” Vox,https://www.vox.com/2017/8/17/16140846/
[3] Anderson, R. Lanier (March 17, 2017). Friedrich Nietzsche. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University – via plato.stanford.edu.
[4] Jack Maden, (2022, Jan 27) The Philosophy Break
God is Dead: Nietzsche’s Most Famous Statement Explained
https://philosophybreak.com/articles/god-is-dead-nietzsche-famous-statement-explained/
[5] Lieter. B (2014, Jan 6 )
The Recurring Myth About Nietzsche and Fascism
Huffington Post,
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nietzsche-and-fascism_b_5458843
[6] Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time. Translated by J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson. Harper & Row [or HarperCollins].