Nietzsche and the Renaissance: The Tragedy of a Missed Revolution

Humans as Measure of All Things. AI art

 

Introduction

Although Nietzsche is often perceived as a philosopher of destruction—of values, of gods, of illusions—his project is, in fact, animated by the search for something worthy of a resounding “Yes.” This affirmation is not presented as a mere return to the past, but as an opening toward what is possible. In the Renaissance, Nietzsche finds one of the most provocative historical embodiments of this affirmative will. He does not regard it as a nostalgic golden age, but as a moment of radical subversion—a cultural insurrection against centuries of Christian moral domination.

We might then ask: if Nietzsche opposes Christian morality, what kind of ethos does he affirm? The answer points toward a vitalist, worldly ethic—one that rejects asceticism, the denial of the body, and the internalization of guilt. From this perspective, the Renaissance is not simply a cultural episode; it is a symbolic act of war against a value system that had long placed earthly life under the sign of sin.

The Renaissance as Reversal

Nietzsche’s The Antichrist calls for a systematic inversion of ecclesiastical morality. In this context, the Renaissance becomes more than a revival of antiquity—it becomes a strategic assault on the very seat of ecclesiastical power. He saw the Renaissance papacy, based in Rome, as a paradoxical eruption of anti-Christian vitality at the center of the religious world. These Popes did not merely tolerate worldly pleasures; they embodied them. They indulged in politics, luxury, art patronage, and sensuality.

For Nietzsche, what believers condemned as ecclesiastical corruption—the conduct of Popes like Alexander VI—was in fact a regenerative force. These were worldly men who appropriated the most “heavenly” office in the religious imagination and bent it to their own will, reversing the value system it stood for.

Cesare Borgia as Anti-Messiah

Among the figures Nietzsche most admired was Cesare Borgia, the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI. A military commander and strategist, Borgia exemplified the qualities Nietzsche prized: strength, cunning, and an unapologetic will to power. Nietzsche speculates:
“Cesare Borgia as pope: do you understand? Well then, that would have been the kind of victory I am longing for today.”¹

This line, tinged with irony and longing, casts Borgia as a kind of anti-Messiah—one who might have dismantled Christian morality from within. Nietzsche believed that, under such leadership, canonical ethics might have been swept away entirely.² In both Borgia and Machiavelli, he saw incarnations of a Renaissance ideal diametrically opposed to religious meekness—a robust aristocratic ethos rooted in mastery, action, and the affirmation of life.

The German Betrayal: Luther and the Restoration of Piety

Yet this insurgent reversal was short-lived. Martin Luther, the German monk who Nietzsche sees as driven by all the vengeful instincts of an unsuccessful priest,³ reintroduced ascetic guilt and moral rigidity to the heart of European culture. Ironically, Nietzsche argues, Luther’s attack on the Church ended up saving Christianity by re-energizing its moral seriousness. He writes: “Ah, these Germans! What they have cost us already!”⁴

Nietzsche’s disdain for the German spirit is palpable throughout his later works. Sober, moralistic, and philosophically idealistic, the German temperament, in his view, worked to re-establish ecclesiastical dominance just as it was unraveling.

He portrays the Reformation not as a victory of conscience but as a regression—a revolt against the Renaissance that rendered it, in Nietzsche’s words, “an event without meaning, a great futility.”⁵ Instead of opening the way for new values, Luther's movement gave Christian morality a renewed grip on Europe.

Affirmation, Not Nostalgia

Still, Nietzsche is no Romantic longing for the past. He does not yearn for a return to Florence or Athens. His philosophy is forward-facing, prophetic rather than retrospective. The Renaissance and pre-Socratic Greece serve not as models for replication but as imaginative ruptures that illuminate what a future beyond Christian morality might entail.

He calls himself “dynamite”⁶ not to celebrate destruction for its own sake, but to make space for something new. That newness—the still-undefined ethos beyond good and evil—is embodied in the figure of the Übermensch, the Overman who creates values and affirms life without recourse to metaphysical consolation or inherited dogma.

Prophecy and Silence

Nietzsche did not offer a blueprint for this future. He saw himself as a herald, not a lawgiver. Like a prophet, he announced a transformation without fully describing it. The Übermensch, introduced in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, remains deliberately vague—a sketch of what comes after the death of God. Nietzsche invites us to envision this future creatively rather than analytically.

In this light, Cesare Borgia is not held up as a saint or moral exemplar, but as a historical figure whose fearlessness and audacity offered a fleeting glimpse of a world no longer governed by guilt, meekness, or metaphysical lies. With him, Nietzsche suggests, the Renaissance might serve less as a chapter in the past than as a vision of the future.

Conclusion: A Rupture, Not a Model

Nietzsche’s admiration for the Renaissance is ultimately strategic. It is a site of resistance, not a doctrinal template. The Renaissance Popes did not preach new ethics, but their very worldliness undermined the old ones. In turning the most sacred office of Christendom into a platform for power and aesthetics, they demonstrated the plasticity—and fragility—of inherited values.

The tragedy, for Nietzsche, is not that the Renaissance failed to be moral, but that it failed to triumph. It paused at the threshold of transvaluation and was dragged back by the weight of Protestant reaction. Yet in that brief moment of reversal, Nietzsche found a spark—a sign that other values are possible, that life might yet escape the yoke of redemption.

Footnotes

1. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, §61, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1976), p. 204.
2. Ibid. Nietzsche writes that had the Renaissance not been interrupted, it “might have destroyed the Church.”
3. Nietzsche, The Antichrist, §51, ibid., pp. 191–192.
4. Nietzsche, The Antichrist, §61, ibid., p. 205.
5. Ibid. Nietzsche claims that “the Renaissance, an event without meaning, a great futility,” was ruined by Luther’s rebellion.
6. Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is, “Why I Am a Destiny,” §1, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1967), p. 326.

Bibliography

• Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Antichrist. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage, 1976.
• Nietzsche, Friedrich. Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage, 1967.
• Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin Books, 1961.
• Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage, 1966.
• Hatab, Lawrence J. Nietzsche’s Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence. London: Routledge, 2005.
• “Why Nietzsche Loved the Renaissance.” YouTube, uploaded by Philosophy in Motion, 18 March 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oi4NIYPzmQ. Accessed 23 June 2025.