14.4.25

Court of appeal

 

Nietzsche in the Antichrist voiced the strongest argument not merely against theology but against metaphysics, that hope is mistaken for truth; that the impossibility of living happily, or even living at all, without the thought of an absolute, does not vouch for the legitimacy of that thought. He refutes the christian "proof by efficacy", that faith is true because it brings felicity.

Is it not the same false inference that leads from the existence of stubborn facts to their erection as the highest value, as he criticizes in the leap from hope to truth? If he consigns "happiness through an idée fixe" to the lunatic asylum, the origin of amor fori might be sought in a prison. Love of stone walls and barred windows is the last resort of someone who sees and has nothing else to love.

In one of the most powerful passages of his critique he charges christianity with mythology: "The guilt sacrifice, in its most repulsive and most barbaric form: the sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What appalling paganism!"


Theodor W. Adorno
1903 - 1969