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."
Read more about this topic: Assassins
Famous quotes by friedrich nietzsche:
“Those people have no real interest in a science who only begin to get excited about it when they themselves have made discoveries in it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Enjoying praise is in some people merely a civility of the heart—and just the opposite of a vanity of the spirit.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“But extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones but rather by equally extreme, but inverted, positions.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“A matter that becomes clear ceases to concern us.—What was that god thinking who counseled, ‘Know thyself!’ Did he perhaps mean, ‘Cease to concern yourself! Become objective!’—And Socrates?—And ‘scientific men’?”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The word ‘Christianity’ is already a misunderstanding—in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)