Nietzsche and “God is Dead”
1. Introduction “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” (The Gay Science 120) When first being introduced to Nietzsche, a person may infer that his idea, the “death of God,” is literal. The phrase does not mean there was an actual God who existed at one point and then died in a literal sense. When Nietzsche said this, he was implying that God died in modern society, the values of religion lost their dominance, and religion no longer fulfills the role of providing peoples’ lives with purpose and meaning as it once did. Nietzsche also believed there could be positive possibilities for humans without God. Without God standing in the way, he believed that people would be able to see the value of the
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One of the quotes that Nietzsche is most famous for is “God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!” (The Gay Science, 120) When Nietzsche states that the people have killed God, he does not mean that the people had literally killed God. “The death of God has to deal with the fact that Christianity was no longer the single comforting factor in people’s lives” (Joseph). People have been discovering various and more modernistic values, therefore pushing God aside. During this time, many people also directed their attention to the church instead of having a genuine relationship with God. As the perfect picture of God began to fall apart, Nietzsche thought that everyone would eventually realize the death of God. This is a respectable argument because in a way, people “killed God” by replacing the thought of him with something else, such as discoveries in …show more content…
“Nietzsche believed that to have faith means, necessarily, to lack freedom, and to be free means, necessarily, to reject faith” (Lackey). This is untrue because God grants everyone free will. “Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). God created man in his own image so, like God, people have free will. Since He grants this free will, people are not forced to obey His word. People have a choice to do evil things and to disobey God.
“Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” (The Gay Science) Nietzsche concludes that since the deed of killing God is so great, then it takes a person worthy of doing this great deed. Since God was killed, then the only person that would be worthy enough of having killed him would be another god, so the people of society must be gods.
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However, Nietzsche’s idea of the powerful forcing their will on common people resonates with me. It is something we see in our modern society, wealthy people seem to have a higher influence over the average American. Examples of powerful people controlling others are found in politics, economy, media, and religion. Common people are lead to think in certain ways that the powerful need them to. Nietzsche said that people will only be equal as long as they are equal in force and talent, people who have a higher social group are more influential in decisions because average people look to them for information. The thing I do not agree with Nietzsche on his view as Christianity as a weakness because religion is a main cause of people’s decision
In BGE 21 Nietzsche says, “the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and … to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness.” Causa sui requires
Friedrich Nietzsche was a brilliant and outspoken man who uses ideas of what he believe in what life is about. He did not believe in what is right and wrong because if who opposed the power. Nietzsche was against Democracy because how they depend on other people to make some different or change, while Nietzsche believe they should of just pick the ones that were gifted and talent to choose what to change. Nietzsche also does not believe in Aristocracy because how they depend on an individual person to create the rules or change those benefits for him. As you see Nietzsche did not like how they depend on one person to decide instead of each person to decide for himself for their own benefits.
The first reason for this would be because Nietzsche believes that Socrates and philosophy have killed art, and he also believes we do not need the truth because we have art and music. In “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” Nietzsche says that science is part of the “columbarium of concepts” (Pg. 150), this meaning simply that concepts kill, and since Nietzsche believes the truth is a concept, and then in turn he is saying the truth kills.
In philosophy “Nihilism” is a position of radical skepticism. It is the belief that all values are baseless and nothing is known. The word “Nihilism” itself conveys a sense of abolishing or destroying (IEP). Nietzsche’s work and writings are mostly associated with nihilism in general, and moral nihilism especially. Moral nihilism questions the reality and the foundation of moral values. Nietzsche supported his view on morality by many arguments and discussions on the true nature of our inner self. Through my paper on Moral Nihilism, I will explain 5 major arguments and then try to construct a deductive argument for each, relying on Nietzsche’s book II “Daybreak”.
Fridreich Nietzsche writes in The Gay Science "God is dead....And we have killed him," (99, Existentialist Philosophy) referr...
...e. Because what we choose in life determines the degree to which we live. And at the very core of every person lies the drive to live. As humans with a high degree of cognitive intelligence, we are a part of nature, not above it; our high intellect should serve as a tool to understand this fact. To Nietzsche, humans must destroy everything, so that a new and more pure humanity centered on life can rise. I do agree that we must abandon the traditional illusions that have prevented humans from embracing life, but living in pursuit of destruction is not necessarily the answer. I believe that we must not let human made and human imposed notions of right or wrong control how we live, but living for the sake of destruction is not living. We must live to find an inner and individual satisfaction. Therefore, all life choices should be made with the intent of embracing life.
Nietzsche’s philosophy relied on the idea of the growth of the individual. He rejoiced the divinity of humanity rather than one of a higher power. He is most famous for his statement “God is dead,” which rejects Christianity and forces humanity to find purpose within itself. His concept of the Übermensch, a super-human or superman, is the finest execution of this belief, presented in his novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Nietzsche’s dramatis personae “…is different than the actor of this drama” (Science 241). The preparatory human being is one who sees the world as Nietzsche does, and so his characterization is Nietzsche, and people who he sees stick out from the rest of society. The preparatory human being is one that is fit for the transition that Nietzsche sees the world around him going through. This is the destruction of the belief in God. Nietzsche proposes that the belief has receded and questions how people will be able to cope with this (Science 181). Mentioned, also, by Nietzsche in The Gay Science is his view that monotheism stifles and directs the individual towards a normative sense of mora...
“Has he got lost? Did he lose his way like a child? Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? Emigrated?” No the madman says; “we have killed him – you and I. All of us are his murderers” This exchange encapsulates the aphorism that underpins much of Nietzsche’s thought; that “God is dead”. But what does this mean - What is Nietzsche telling us by claiming that we have murdered God? This essay is going to attempt to try and understand what Nietzsche argues has changed and what hasn’t with the death of God and to examine his critique of 19th century morality in the context of the 21st century politics and see if he offers a constructive alternative to the way we engage in political discourse.
Neither a systematic philosopher nor a rigid thinker, Nietzsche offers his own nihilistic spin on the topic of free will. The three different approaches to free will by Nietzsche, Hume, and Descartes all obtain their strong suits as well as their pitfalls. Nietzsche insists free will is created by theologians and therefore denies its existence, while Descartes embraces free will, and Hume individualizes the meaning of free will. With the “Design Argument” in Meditations on First Philosophy to ignite his proclamation on the topic of free will, Descartes summons free will to be given entirely through the creator, God. With his robust belief in God, Descartes concludes that free will is attributed to God’s creation of a person.
God is someone who encompasses all good things which means he must be a good God, and a good God would not want evil in our world. Humans having free will is a claim brought up by Stump to show Plantinga’s “Free will defense,” to possibly answer the problem of evil. Plantinga believes the response to the logical problem of evil is, the possibility of having free will and using it for good rather than evil, is a value that has the potential to outweigh all the evil in the world. Stump revises this claim because it leaves the existence of evil mysterious and does not fulfill the entirety of the response to the evidential problem of
Wagner’s newfound focus on redemption rather than overcoming, yes, would have upset Nietzsche. But as most can relate, seeing poppy boy bands remain on the top of the charts over true artists; Nietzsche in that what he considered to be Wagner’s weakest moment become his most shining, must have been infuriating for him. The wrath is not focused solely on Wagner however, but as well at the masses that gathered to worship at his alter; Wagner himself was a slave to Wagnerianism and European decadence. Nietzsche recalls a story of Goethe reflecting on what dangers romanticism the most, to which he though ““suffocating of the rumination of moral and religious absurdities.” In brief: Parsifal.” (EH, “The Case of Wagner, 3). The performance so intertwined with the symbolism of a moral-religious world that it distracts from its content. Nietzsche almost asks us to strip these connotations and motifs away to see what stands. In a non-Christian light, does Parsifal even exist? Deconstructed and without the pieces, the many props and abundant imagery, could the opera even be written? “The musician now becomes an actor” Nietzsche says of Wagner; more performer than composer. European decadence has burdened music by forcing it away from its focus on life to the escape from living.
But he objects to the values of the New Testament that shouldn't be linked to the Old Testament. They demote power. He sees religion as intensely nihilistic - it's all about denying life and being negative. Nietzsche feels that the New Testament is also like that. We have to go beyond this.
He believed that the human body wasn’t done with evolving and we aren’t fully developed into what we are fully capable of. He says, “The death of God must be followed by a long twilight of piety and nihilism. Zarathustra 's gift of the overman is given to a mankind not aware of the problem to which the overman is the solution” (Nietzsche). People aren’t aware of the superman because they are too caught up in religion and democracy. This prevents people from thinking above the “herd” that Nietzsche talked about when describing the Christian faith. The superman is one who has complete free will and thinking, he does not look for what other find enjoyable instead seeks for what he or she wants. Nietzsche compares apes to men and asked the question of whether we are a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. “What is ape to man? A laughing stock or painful embarrassment. And man shall be that to overman: a laughingstock or painful embarrassment” (Nietzsche). He is saying that we might be just as underdeveloped as an ape to what we are today as compared to us as the superman. This way of thinking shows that he felt that the human body could achieve so much more that what people think it is capable of, that art and culture are needed to continue development of the