Friedrich Nietzsche
The 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche gives prominent focus to what he terms "the Brotherhood of Assassins", in section 24 of On the Genealogy of Morality. Nietzsche's signature work is to attempt the transvaluation of values, that is, to transcend the inherited Jewish and Christian politics, psychology and ethics of ressentiment and guilt. Nietzsche points to the Assassins as anti-ascetic 'free spirits' who no longer believe in metaphysical truth.
Importantly, Nietzsche attacks the false spirits who are the host of self-describing "unbelievers" of modern times who claim to reject religious deception as scholars and philosophers and yet retain the traditional refusal to question the value of truth. Nietzsche compares genuine free spirits with the Assassins: "When the Christian crusaders in the Orient came across that invincible order of Assassins – that order of free spirits par excellence whose lowest order received, through some channel or other, a hint about that symbol and spell reserved for the uppermost echelons alone, as their secret: "nothing is true, everything is permitted". Now that was freedom of the spirit, with that, belief in truth itself was renounced."
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Famous quotes by friedrich nietzsche:
“Lift up your hearts, my brothers, high, higher! And don’t forget about your legs either! Lift up your legs as well, you good dancers, and better yet—stand also on your heads!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Those who show pity and are always ready to help during times of trouble are seldom the same ones who rejoice in our joy: when others are happy they have nothing to do, they become superfluous and lose their feeling of superiority, and so they easily show their displeasure.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Desire is happiness: satisfaction as happiness is merely the ultimate moment of desire. To be wish and wish alone is happiness, and a new wish over and over again.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Cows sometimes wear an expression resembling wonderment arrested on its way to becoming a question. In the eye of superior intelligence, on the other hand, lies the nil admirari spread out like the monotony of a cloudless sky.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Knowing things halfway is a greater success than knowing things completely: it takes things to be simpler than they really are and so makes its opinions more easily understandable and persuasive.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)