The Antichrist

Written in 1888 but held back from publication by Franz Overbeck and Heinrich Koselitz because of its content, Friedrich Nietzsche's polemic attacks Christianity as hostile to life. He defines the good as whatever increases the feeling of power, and accuses Christianity of siding with the weak and casting strong, higher types as villains, citing Blaise Pascal as a strong mind ruined by the doctrine of original sin. Against Schopenhauer, who based morality on compassion, he treats pity as a drain on vitality that preserves what should perish. He also calls humanity's highest values decadent. Nietzsche had planned it as the first volume of a larger work, The Will to Power.

UploadCare chief executive Igor Debatur included it in an interview on the books he would suggest to young people drawn to his line of work.