Nietzsche’s Challenge to Christianity Series (3)
November 14th 2007 19:53
Having undermined Christianity’s creationism, its belief system as a mere invention and the ‘weeds of error’ overgrowing the 10 Commandments, Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols and the Antichrist now proffers the English race as a metaphorical vessel of Christian morality. As opposed to the German philosopher’s ‘with us it’s different’ (Hollingdale 1968: 5). Nietzsche then systematically breaks this ‘vessel’ apart. The first blow a devastating one. He states that if the belief in God is removed, the whole system of Christian morality crumbles into an inconsequential heap. This claim has an element of truth, for remember God is the judge. The final blow is a jibe at the English themselves, posing the question that if they really know the difference between ‘what is good and evil’ (1968: 5), then they will no longer have the need for Christian morality. As a people, they will have risen above the confines of a belief system that in reality, Nietzsche claims, they had no need of in the first place: ‘For the Englishman morality is not yet a problem…’ (1968: 5).
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