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:
“Through searching out origins, one becomes a crab. The historian looks backwards, and finally he also believes backwards.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The lack of closeness among friends is a fault that cannot be reprimanded without becoming incurable.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“What makes us heroic?—Confronting simultaneously our supreme suffering and our supreme hope.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“When you have a lot to put into them, the day has a hundred pockets.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Forgetting: that is a divine capacity. And whoever aspires to the heights and wants to fly must cast off much that is heavy and make himself light—I call it a divine capacity for lightness.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)