Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Friedrich Nietzsche: A Man with a Toxic Life

  • Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher and classical philologist. [1
  • Nietzsche was the prime architect and preacher of the "death of God" gospel. Nietzsche's insistence that the decay of religion requires that humanity take responsibility for setting its own moral standards.[1] [2] He was an atheist.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche called himself "the Anti-Christ," and he wrote a book by that title.
  • Nietzsche, along with Michael Foucault, founded postmodern thought. Postmodernism argues that truth and reality are created by man and not by God, that something is true “if it works for you.” Truth is neither absolute nor binding over the entire globe, but merely situational and subjective. [3]
  • Both Mussolini, Charles de Gaulle, and Hitler read Nietzsche, and were profoundly influenced by him.  They admired his fascist philosophy. [4] Nietzsche helped to develop racism and then Naziism, which was used to foment WW I and II.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche made a gradual shift from religion to nihilism. Nihilismis is the philosophical belief that all values are baseless. [5]
  • Nietzsche detested Christians. [6
  • Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, was influenced by Nietzsche, as he would often quote from him. [7] Some believe that Nietzsche was not a Satanist, but his philosophy did influence them.
  • At the age of 24 he was appointed to the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel (the youngest individual to have held this position), but resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life. In 1889, he became mentally ill. Some sources say that he had a mental breakdown that led to insanity. This is possibly due to atypical general paralysis attributed to tertiary syphilis. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897, then under the care of his sister until his death in 1900.
 Ravi Zacharias reads from 'Parable of the Madman' by Friedrich Nietzsche.

(YouTube link)

What a pathetic life he led without Christ, defying Him at every opportunity.