Nietzsche's The Anti-Christ

Power and self-interest have led many throughout history to the wrong decision for the greater good of society. In “The Anti-Christ”, Nietzsche describes how he believes that power and the will to gain power brings happiness to man. He believes that in order for one to achieve happiness you must increase one’s power to the point where resistance is overcome and the weak will be non-existent. When discussing the weak, Nietzsche believes that those who show pity towards those who are inferior are most harmful to society. These views can correlate to Creon’s views from Sophocles’ Antigone, Athens as a tyrannical empire in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War and Aeneas from Virgil’s Aeneid. In each of these novels we can see how certain …show more content…
In contrast, we see Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid make the decision to leave his lover Dido to fulfill the Roman prophecy. We must consider what is morally right when making decisions for society instead of hindering the weak and acting on power and self-interests to bring happiness onto oneself. In the selection provided from Nietzsche’s “The Anti-Christ”, we see how one can depict happiness as being a result of a person growing and enforcing his/her power upon the weak to achieve a goal. Creon from Sophocles’ Antigone is a prime example of someone whose decisions and use of power leads to his ultimate unhappiness. After claiming himself as the heir to the throne of Thebes, Creon’s first order of business dealt with the burial of Polynices and Eteocles. Creon decided that as his first ruling only Eteocles would receive the proper burial due to the fact that Polynices started the battle between the two. We see here how the will to power, although at times may seem to bring happiness, could also result in one being unhappy and in this case resulted in both brothers dying. Creon declares this ruling thinking that it would unite the people of Thebes when in reality it does the exact opposite. Antigone sees Creon’s act