What happens when a society bases its moral code entirely on religious beliefs? How can outdated value systems prevent human progress?
According to Friedrich Nietzsche, Christianity is holding humanity back because its moral framework is stagnant and nihilistic. His philosophical work challenges traditional religious values and their impact on human potential, suggesting that Christian morality holds people back from achieving greatness.
Keep reading to discover why Nietzsche believed we need a complete overhaul of Western moral systems.
Friedrich Nietzsche on Christianity
According to Friedrich Nietzsche, Christianity’s brand of morality (which he categorizes as a type of herd morality) suffers from two fundamental flaws: stagnation and nihilism. It’s stagnant because its emphasis on equality and restraint promotes mediocrity—the uniquely strong and capable are often considered evil if they dominate others or embrace worldly pleasures in their pursuit of greatness. As a result, society actively works to prevent these exceptional individuals from pursuing greatness in the first place. Moreover, Nietzsche believes Christian morality is nihilistic because it views everything that happens in the material world as insignificant, instead focusing on a hypothetical afterlife.
(Shortform note: Not all religious thinkers agree with this assessment. Twentieth-century German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer argued that a truly just Christianity is not and cannot be nihilistic about worldly affairs. While he acknowledged that earthly affairs might be less important than salvation and the afterlife, he maintained they’re important nonetheless. His reasoning was that when the church abandons worldly affairs, they essentially give up on salvation too—leaving people to their own fates instead of intervening to help them find God and save their souls. Therefore, he believed Christians must reject the kind of nihilism Nietzsche discusses in favor of active participation in and concern for worldly affairs.)
The Call to Action
In light of these criticisms, Nietzsche closes out his argument by calling for his readers to uncover and challenge old, flawed prejudices and values in both philosophy and morality. He believes that Western society is on the cusp of a new morality, arguing that Christian morality can’t keep up with modern social and technological advances. Therefore, he argues, society must create a new morality that will allow humanity to advance and improve—in other words, move beyond existing conceptions of good and evil. While he doesn’t provide a specific template for this new morality, believing it’s up to open-minded individuals to create it, he does expand on these ideas in his later works.
(Shortform note: In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche argues that people must live in a way that contributes the most to human evolution—developing their unique strengths and talents and then passing them on to the next generation so they can become greater and greater. To accomplish this, he explains that people must act in self-interest, not concerning themselves with what might be bad or undesirable for other people. They also must become self-sufficient, never allowing others to do things they could do for themselves.)
| Changes to Western Morality Since Beyond Good and Evil In the modern world, has Western society replaced Christian morality? Studies show that over the past century, the number of self-identified Christians in Europe and the US has declined significantly, while secularism has grown more popular. However, some thinkers argue that even secular values in the West like democracy, rule of law, and social welfare have their roots in Christianity. This suggests that Nietzsche would likely argue that, despite the rise in secularism, the dominant Christian morality of the 19th century hasn’t been fully replaced. |
