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:
“Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: ‘I seek God! I seek God!’”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“He who will one day teach men to fly will have displaced all boundary stones; the boundary stones themselves will fly up into the air to him, and he will rebaptize the earth—as ‘the weightless.’”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Sometimes it just takes stronger eyeglasses to cure those who are in love—and someone with the ability to imagine a face or a figure twenty years older might perhaps pass through life quite undisturbed.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The gilded sheath of pity sometimes covers the dagger of envy.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence ... and loathing seizes him.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)