Nietzsche's Philosophy of Religion

In this book, Julian Young argues that Nietzsche's early religious communitarianism persists through all his published works.

Julian Young (Author)

9780521854221, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 April 2006

244 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.5 kg

'In Nietzsche's Philosophy of Religion, Young presents a scandalously unscandalous version of the author who dreamed of dividing world history in two. politically, Young's Nietzsche was neither a proto-anarchist nor a proto-Nazi, but a mainstream one-nation conservative who, though not much of a democrat, would have favoured something like 'twentieth-century Scandinavian social democracy.' New Humanist

In his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche observes that Greek tragedy gathered people together as a community in the sight of their gods, and argues that modernity can be rescued from 'nihilism' only through the revival of such a festival. This is commonly thought to be a view which did not survive the termination of Nietzsche's early Wagnerianism, but Julian Young argues, on the basis of an examination of all of Nietzsche's published works, that his religious communitarianism in fact persists through all his writings. What follows, it is argued, is that the mature Nietzsche is neither an 'atheist', an 'individualist', nor an 'immoralist': he is a German philosopher belonging to a German tradition of conservative communitarianism - though to claim him as a proto-Nazi is radically mistaken. This important reassessment will be of interest to all Nietzsche scholars and to a wide range of readers in German philosophy.

Introduction
1. Schopenhauer: on man's need for metaphysics
2. The birth of tragedy
3. Untimely meditations
4. Human, all too human
5. The gay science
6. Zarathustra
7. Beyond good and evil
8. The genealogy of morals
9. The Wagner case
10. Twilight of the idols
11. The antichrist
12. Ecce homo
Epilogue: Nietzsche in history.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Agnosticism & atheism [HRQA5], Philosophy of religion [HRAB], History of Western philosophy [HPC]