Nietzsche’s Critique of Religion: A Liberationist Perspective

Abstract

Engaging Nietzsche’s genealogy of religion from a liberationist perspective, the author argues that despite Nietzsche’s valuable insights on theology’s potential for limiting human freedom, a Christian theological anthropology is preferable to Nietzsche’s naturalistic view of humanity. The author offers a challenge to Nietzsche scholarship by demonstrating how Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity as a morality of ressentiment is grounded in 19th-century theories of racial inequality that equate religious belief with racial identity, and are opposed to the political liberation of all people.