163NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICHthe sin of pride manifested in the use of
political power. He perpetually aimed a
critical eye at too lofty characterizations
of human morality in the personal and
social realms. Yet, he was an activist by
nature, criticizing both his brother H.
Richard Niebuhr as well as Swiss theolo-
gian Karl Barth (with whom he was often
grouped under the category of neoortho-
doxy) for their hesitance to engage in
political activism. For Niebuhr, love had
to bear fruit in justice. In the Cold War
world, he believed the U.S. should take a
leading role, however doing so with the
humble and self-critical awareness of the
inevitable temptations to overreach by
the powerful.
Among the hundreds of articles and
sermons, as well as the dozens of books
penned by Reinhold Niebuhr, the follow-
ing are of particular significance: Does
Civilization Need Religion? (1927), Moral
Man and Immoral Society (1932), The
Nature and Destiny of Man (1941–1943),
The Children of Light and the Children of
Darkness (1944), The Irony of American
History (1952), The Structure of Nations
and Empires (1959), and Man’s Nature
and His Communities (1965).
NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH (1844–1900).
In philosophy of religion, Nietzsche is
most noted for his critique of Christian
monotheism. He argued that Christian
virtues such as compassion arose out
of resentment when the weak devised
an ethic that may restrain the strong.
Nietzsche sought a restoration of heroic,
pre-Christian virtues but not recourse
to a Platonism that shuns change and
seeks consolation in a realm of abstract
forms. Nietzsche’s view of moral values
has sometimes been seen as nihilistic, but
this is a mistake. Running throughout
his work is the thesis that life itself (what
may be called vitality) is good. Nietzsche’s
aim to bring about a transvaluation of
values was part of his case that we should
subordinate virtues like empathy to a life-
enhancing code of values. The primacy
he gave to life itself is evident in an early
essay The Use and Abuse of History in Life
(1874), in which he argued that analytic
and monumental approaches to the his-
torical past should be evaluated in terms
of whether they are life-enhancing.
Linked to his critique of monotheism,
but of more wide ranging importance, is
Nietzsche’s shunning the idea of truth
as being objective or free-standing apart
from human perspectives. Truth, rather,
is a matter of shifting, contingent points
of view. Nietzsche’s works include
The Birth of Tragedy (1872), Untimely
Meditations (1873–1876), Human, All
too Human (2 vols., 1878, 1880), The
Wanderer and His Shadow (1880), The
Dawn: Reflections on Moral Prejudices
(1881), The Gay Science (1882), Thus
Spake Zarathrustra (1883–1885), Beyond
Good and Evil (1887), The Genealogy of
Morals (1887), The Case of Wagner (1888),
Twilight of the Idols (1888), The Antichrist
(1888), Nietzsche contra Wagner (1888),
Ecce Homo (1888), and The Will to