The Antichrist (Combray Media Edition)

By: Friedrich Nietzsche

Narrated by: Joseph Kent

Length: 2 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

The Antichrist is a book by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, originally published in 1895. The reference to the Antichrist is not intended to refer to the biblical Antichrist but is rather an attack on the slave morality and apathy of Western Christianity.

Nietzsche's basic claim is that Christianity is a poisoner of western culture and perversion of the words of and practice of Jesus. In this light, the provocative title is mainly expressing Nietzsche's animus toward Christianity, as such.

In this book, Nietzsche is very critical of institutionalized religion and its priest class, from which he himself was descended. The majority of the book is a systematic, logical, and detailed attack upon the interpretations of Christ's words by St. Paul and those who followed him.

Public Domain (P)2018 Combray Media

Interesting take, but was difficult for me...

I'm a Christian, and I went into this being 100% objective and willing to fairly and objectively hear more about this man and his ideas/ideals. In that respect, I found it interesting, but as a Christian, I just don't believe any of it. I do appreciate and respect his opinion, which although different from mine, is interesting, but I think it's off base. I thought the narrator did a great job, and I'm glad I listened to this book. While it may not be for me, I think it was definitely interesting and I know some will find it up their alley. :)
I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

An Interesting Listen

I grew up hearing about Friedrich Nietzsche but never really knew much about him, just that either you liked him or you didn't. It seemed there was no in between. So when this audio book came up I jumped at the opportunity to see what the deal was with Nietzsche. Now I know why you either like his writings or you don't. He is very much "in your face" about his ideals. He pulls no punches when stating how he feels about religion in general. I found myself enjoying listening to this book and would warn others that if you are a religious person then you may not want to hear this book. The narrator did a great job with this book. He reads at an excellent pace and also reads with a passion in his voice allowing you to feel the conviction of Nietzsche.

I was given this free review copy audio book at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Wonderful book!

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

I've been trying to read my way through Nietzche's works for a while now, and audiobooks have been the perfect format through which to do so. The Antichrist is one of Nietzche's best works, and I very much enjoyed this rendition of it.

One minor qualm is the narrator's tonal inflections. He consistently ends every sentence with a high note. That said, I adapted quickly and enjoyed the clear narration and excellent content.

great

a great well origin book I loved it quite much a very good narrator for a classic like this thumbs up for this one
I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review

Bad recording

The narrator cannot pronounce simple words such as “theologian” or “nay”…at one point about an hour and a half in, he literally stops and says out loud, “I lost my place,” and starts the sentence over. The contents of this book are excellent and great food for thought, delivered by the mouth of some boring, robotic toned man. I recommend getting a different recording, and listen to the sample first!

I expected more from Nietzsche

Nietzsche's 'Antichrist' is not a reference to the Biblical figure that is the opposite of Christ, but a meta name for the book - it is 'against Christ' or against Christianity. Here he puts out his reasons for not believing in Christianity, and his problem with the Church. There is an overall structure to the book and it’s chapters, but once he gets down into his arguments I found them to be rather unsubstantiated. I expected to find some structured, well-reasoned arguments here, but that isn’t what I found at all. It is more of angry ranting and a whole lot of strawman statements. He makes a whole lot of statements, but fails to really back up any of the premises with details or logic or facts. He doesn’t prove his premises. He bases his arguments on emotion, not on fact.

He makes some arguments against the Church that may have some validity at the time (although I think some of them might have been issues at writing that aren’t now) but then translates those issues to be issues with Christianity. He confused the Church of flawed people with the doctrine of Christianity. He misrepresents the beliefs, history, teaching of Christianity and then knocks down those wrong beliefs with his unfounded statements.

Her states 'Divine Providence, which every third man in 'educated Germany' still believes in, is so strong an argument against God that it would be impossible to think of a stronger. And in any case it is an argument against Germans!'. Prior to this he gives some extreme examples (but even with examples he doesn't actually reason out how they are 'wrong', just that he thinks it is silly) that were either very strange beliefs/teaching of the times, or they are complete misunderstandings of what Christianity believes. So the statement is either very dated or a poor strawman,

I'll give one more example of issues in the writing: the claim that Christianity was ‘mortally hostile to the 'wisdom of this world', which means science’. Basically saying that Christianity is anti-science. This is one claim that gets trotted out even now, with no understanding of Christian belief (which is not anti-science at all) or history (where the belief in the ordered nature of the world – ordered by God – was the basis for much of the scientific revolution of the enlightenment period. It was only because people believed God has made an ordered, logical, understandable world was things like the scientific method believed to actually produce ordered, logical, repeatable results). Not to mention that he hasn’t understood the original verse from Paul about ‘wisdom of the world’ correctly anyway – it is not talking about science to begin with. So the whole ‘anti-science’ argument here is a strawman to begin with.

Oh, and just to add to the ick factor a lot of Nietzsche’s problems and claims against Christianity come from the whole ‘Jewishness’ of it. The text here (as a product of its time) is rather anti-Semitic.

Maybe the scrambled, disjointed, unsupported arguments in this book have something to do with the fact that this was his last work produced before he had a psychotic break and spent the rest of his life in an asylum.

Narration by Joseph Kent is good. It is a little quicker paced, but not too much so. He is highly energetic in his reading, almost over-annunciating some words, which may actually be a good thing as it keeps your attention. Generally he is easy to listen to and follow. A good reading.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

well

nothing but angry rhetoric from a brilliant man who had to throw away his intellect to write this book