Nietzsche as a Christian Thinker

Abstract

The aims of this paper are threefold: (i) to develop and defend a reading of Nietzsche that ascribes to him a pervasive concern with the problem of theodicy; (ii) to argue that it follows from Nietzsche’s interest in theodicy that he is complicit with the putatively life-denying presuppositions of Christianity, which he attacks and from which he seeks fully to detach himself; and (iii) to assess Nietzsche’s later attempts to move away from the project of theodicy in the direction of a notion of life-affirmation that is free from the negative valuation of life inherent in his earlier approach. According to the interpretation of this later view that advanced here, Nietzsche comes to adopt a deflationary position in respect of the whole question of theodicy.