Nietzsche, Friedrich - Thomas J. J. Altizer (essay date 1977)
Thomas J. J. Altizer (essay date 1977)
[An American critic and educator, Altizer has described himself as an atheistic Christian theologian. Altizer was deeply influenced by Nietzsche's critique of Christianity, and has authored such books as Radical Theology and the Death of God (1966), Toward a New Christianity (1967), and Total Presence: The Language of Jesus and the Language of Today (1980). In the following essay Altizer argues that Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal recurrence of the same expands on a teaching of Jesus Christ that was subsequently obscured by orthodox Christianity.]
Nietzsche's Zarathustra is a product of the Second Innocence of atheism, the new historical destiny created by the death of God. Man has been surpassed in Zarathustra, for Zarathustra has negated all previous history, and this negation is but the obverse of the deepest affirmation. As Nietzsche declares in Ecce Homo:
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