Nietzsche's The Joyous Wisdom

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” The words are as sensational today as they were on their first day of print in The Gay Science, also called The Joyous Wisdom, by Friedrich Nietzsche. It would therefore follow that such sensational words would have a sensational meaning, and Nietzsche does not disappoint. In his quote, Nietzsche questions the perception of God among a continually more secular population who increasingly depend upon reason and logic instead of faith. These words, of course, must be taken with a grain of salt as they were almost forcibly ambiguous in their presentation from a madman. The entire quote went as follows: God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has

This, and his fathers death when he was young, could have turned Nietzsche off of religion altogether, even from a young age (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Nietzsche was also growing up in a post- Enlightenment age, when the ideas of Enlightenment philosophers, and also ideas from the Scientific Revolution, had lead thinkers of the age to question age-old authority, especially religion and government (Scientific Revolution). Nietzsche was right in stating “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him” because it refers to the continued secularization of thought until humans came to rely far more on reason and logic than faith in any religion or God. This secularization has occurred through the Scientific Revolution, was furthered by the Enlightenment, and was acted upon within the French and American Revolutions. This has created a more secular society, with people who ascribe to logic, or logic and faith, instead of faith