* I'm taking a class on Friedrich Nietzsche and we do a 2-page essay on our weekly readings. This is one of my essays.
· Sections 108, 109, 125 of The Gay Science introduce the death of God. Explain what Nietzsche means by this phrase and how it plays into his work.
Nietzsche is famous for his concept of the “death of God.” Keith Pearson and Duncan Large helpfully explain what this means:
The death of God can be interpreted in two senses: it can mean the death of the “symbolic God,” that is, the death of the very specific and particular God of Christianity that has held European humanity in bondage for two millennia. It can also mean the death of the God of theologians, philosophers, and some scientists, that is, the “God” that serves as a guarantor of order, structure, and purpose in the universe. We think it is clear that for Nietzsche God is now dead for us in both of these senses.[1]
To speak even more concisely, we might call distinguish between (1) Christian theism and (2) a transcendent realm for which “God” is often the foundation. Both of these ideas are important for Nietzsche as concepts to be overcome.[2]
Once the existence of God is done away with there is still the question of the “shadow of God” which must be vanquished. This shadow is the conventional morality
Section 125 in The Gay Science is, thus, not an argument against God. It is, rather, about the implications of the loss of belief in God for a culture. Although German culture had rejected orthodox Christian theism—at least its cultural elites as represented by David Strauss—it had, by and large, retained traditional Christian morality. There was a kind of cultural inertia in which, although the engine of objective morality had disappeared, the effects of it continued. Or, to use Nietzsche’s metaphor, the substance which sustained objective morality was gone and only the shadow was left—and many were content with merely the shadow.
Nietzsche’s “madman” appears in the midst of a collection of people who do not realize the implications of dispensing with God. The haunting questions of the madman reveal this dynamic:
“Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder?
The silence and the astonishment at the madman speak of a people who do not understand the implications of their philosophical ideas. Christopher Janaway poignantly speaks of the madman and his “double pain of facing both a disorienting vacuum of values and the alienation of sensing the vacuum when others do not.”[3]
It is not hard to see a connection between Nietzsche and the madman. Nietzsche is calling out for those few with
But as we shall see, neither complacent unthinking atheism nor the “heavy” desperation of the madman can be a final resting place for Nietzsche, the would-be light-hearted investigator.[4]
Nietzsche will go on to a more joyful response as he seeks to create values for himself.
[1]Keith Ansell Pearson and Duncan Large, “General Introduction” in The Nietzsche Reader(Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2006), xxxv.
[2]Stephen Williams perceptively explains, “Nietzsche rather assumes than argues the intellectual case against God. His is more interested in examining the damage done by its content than in revisiting an intellectually familiar closed case against God.” The Shadow of the Antichrist: Nietzsche’s Critique of Christianity(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2006), 92.
