Nietzsche has done as much as anyone in undermining the Traditional spiritual roots of Western man in his division of religion into life-denying as exemplified in Christianity and life-affirming as exemplified in Paganism. The destruction of Christianity has not led to a life-affirming paganism, but rather to a paganism that limits itself to the satisfaction of biological needs. As was shown in a previous post, there was much less difference between the Christian and the Pagan elites (whatever the masses may have believed). The dichotomy proposed by Nietzsche is useless; the spirituality of the elite has always been life-transcending.

It is likely that Nietzsche borrowed this concept from his “educator” Arthur Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer took the opposite position from Nietzsche; within the context of his philosophical pessimism, Schopenhauer praised the life-denying religions at the expense of the life-affirming. Among the former, he included the religion of the Upanishads, Buddhism, and Christian mysticism, particularly in its Neoplatonic form. Clearly, this not only ties Christianity to the Eastern religions, but also to the most advanced manifestations of Classical Greek and Roman paganism. I believe that in this matter, Schopenhauer is a better psychologist than Nietzsche.

Furthermore, Schopenhauer criticizes Judaism as a life-affirming religion. This is hard to deny, since Judaism does not have all those other-worldly elements that Nietzsche attributes to Christianity. It is also more interested in material benefits than is Christianity. So all the anti-Semites who lean on Nietzsche for their anti-Christian attitudes are inadvertently promoting Judaism, and are totally missing the continuity between the Classical Pagan civilization and the Christian Middle Ages.