In this essay we will embrace Nietzsche’s philosophy for the sake of the fact that he proposed that God is dead, life is worthless, and fate ultimately surpasses faith. In the end, he provided for many, an alternative philosophy of life that became life affirming. On the other end, the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche has many diversions, for a countless number of reasons. Undoubtedly, most of those in disagreement to Nietzsche’s philosophy base their objections on a misperceived threat to their unwavering doctrine of religious faith. To make this evident, we begin with one of philosophy’s most argumentative, yet widely misunderstood quotes.
It was in 1882 when Nietzsche first suggested that God is dead in his book The Gay Science. “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”¹ It is by this statement that the philosopher infers that society no longer has a need for the notion of God; for it does not help the progression of our species rather it hinders it. Obviously we cannot claim Nietzsche is alone responsible for God’s death, he is only a mere messenger with an attempt to make a clear statement. Mostly, he meant that the idea of God has lost all of its power and imaginative force.
It must be noted that during Nietzsche’s lifetime, he watched the world transform from a great rural agra...
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...is destroying persons and the environment….What I am suggesting is that it might be the only chance for the turning of human beings from a course leading to the deterioration and perhaps the end of life on this planet.” ³
Since God is dead, life is meaningless, and destiny undermines faith, it is clear that another philosophy of life should be necessary, and Nietzsche provided an alternate philosophy of life that is life affirming. He calls for a new spirituality which involves rebirth of our nations, where we have an appreciation of earthly life and nature. When God is taken for a metaphor for the transcendent expierence of awe and wonder, it is revealed to be, not an answer but an invitation into that existential mystery that sits at the center of our life, breathing us and everything we know into being. God as a sign is dead, but God as a symbol is indispensable.
In Frederick Nietzsche’s The Death of God, his madman cries, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?”(The Madman) To Nietzsche, the phrase "God is dead" is not to be take literally in the sense that he believed in an actual God who existed and then died. Rather, he is implying that the Christian God is no longer the go to for absolute moral principles. In a way, Nietzsche’s The Death of God is explaining that because people are starting to no longer believe in god, their morality isn't tied up in the idea of some imaginary being. It seems that Nietzsche's intended purpose was to do away with the traditional idea of “Christian” morality as he believed that because people were evolving to a place where they could create their own morality, God was unnecessary and irrelevant.
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...
Fridreich Nietzsche writes in The Gay Science "God is dead....And we have killed him," (99, Existentialist Philosophy) referr...
Throughout the course Nietzsche’s lifespan his attitude towards truth and religion has shifted various times. He first left his Christian beliefs and changed his major from theology to Philology in order to search for truth. He did not want to have faith without knowing what he was having faith in beforehand. By his thirties Nietzsche started to interpret that people were making up myths and stories in order to keep themselves in denial from the truth of life, thus giving a different meaning. When Nietzsche starts writing “Beyond Good and Evil” Nietzsche again changes his views and describes truth as a woman and philosophers are truth’s unwanted men in her life who are going about her in all the wrong ways, asserting and
We have grown weary of man. Nietzsche wants something better, to believe in human ability once again. Nietzsche’s weariness is based almost entirely in the culmination of ressentiment, the dissolution of Nietzsche’s concept of morality and the prevailing priestly morality. Nietzsche wants to move beyond simple concepts of good and evil, abandon the assessment of individuals through ressentiment, and restore men to their former wonderful ability.
The consequences for the death of god are far reaching and and many in Nietzsche's work. Christianity sparked the death of God as most of us know him through the actions of Martin Luther. Luther's desire to give the common man the ability to understand and read the bible brought a end to the churches monopoly on morality and brought the "divine" to the common man making the common man "divine".
The aim of this paper is to provide a detailed explanation on Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence, and then proceeds to determine whether such a concept results in the betterment of a free spirit’s life, or whether this is not the case. Before determining whether the concept has a positive outcome or not, it is important to provide a detailed...
Hitchens, Christopher. God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. New York: Twelve, 2007. Print.
“There are no truths,” states one. “Well, if so, then is your statement true?” asks another. This statement and following question go a long way in demonstrating the crucial problem that any investigator of Nietzsche’s conceptions of perspectivism and truth encounters. How can one who believes that one’s conception of truth depends on the perspective from which one writes (as Nietzsche seems to believe) also posit anything resembling a universal truth (as Nietzsche seems to present the will to power, eternal recurrence, and the Übermensch)? Given this idea that there is no truth outside of a perspective, a transcendent truth, how can a philosopher make any claims at all which are valid outside his personal perspective? This is the question that Maudemarie Clark declares Nietzsche commentators from Heidegger and Kaufmann to Derrida and even herself have been trying to answer. The sheer amount of material that has been written and continues to be written on this conundrum demonstrates that this question will not be satisfactorily resolved here, but I will try to show that a resolution can be found. And this resolution need not sacrifice Nietzsche’s idea of perspectivism for finding some “truth” in his philosophy, or vice versa. One, however, ought to look at Nietzsche’s philosophical “truths” not in a metaphysical manner but as, when taken collectively, the best way to live one’s life in the absence of an absolute truth.
The phrase "God is dead" does not mean that Nietzsche believed in an actual God who has actually died, but the idea of him is gone in the modern world. Rather, it conveys his view that the Christian God is no longer a credible source of everyone’s daily lives and values. Year by year there are less believers in the Christian faith and I believe that this is what Nietzsche is referring to. Nietzsche recognizes the crisis that the death of God represents for existing moral assumptions. When someone gives up the Christian faith, it does not only affect that person but everyone around them. By breaking one main concept out of Christianity, the faith in God, one breaks the whole. This is why in "The Madman", a passage which primarily addresses the
What follows is a detailed exegesis on a passage from Friedrich Nietzsche’s writing, “The Birth of Tragedy”. The main purpose of this passage is to challenge the idea of truth through a series of metaphors and vivid interpretations of such. Nietzsche’s goal in this excerpt is to expound on a specific issue using reasoning in a metaphoric way to justify his argument. To help the reader further understand this higher thinking passage, I will be tearing apart and reconstructing it line by line.
All of Friedrich Nietzsche quotes were made before the age of 44. For the last 11 years of his life, he had no use of his mental capabilities. While many of Friedrich Nietzsche quotes were focused on religion, or the fallacy of it, it would be interesting to see what he would have written about later in his life and if his opinion would have changed. Although, the statement 'God is dead' did come from him, so there would likely have been no change in how he viewed religion. Many of his quotes are focused on human behavior and existence, and following are some that moved me.
Nietzsche wrote a piece called “God Is Dead”. Nietzsche wrote this piece based upon his view point of Christianity. Nietzsche rejected the Christian morality and believed that Christianity in Western Europe was heading into the wrong direction. “Christianity is Platonism for the people” was said by Nietzsche because, Plato believed that there was a better or pure world and could be accomplished by going back to the world we used to live. In another sense, Plato focused on a past life and ideas that came from that life to have a successful pure life. Nietzsche’s view of religion, he believed that by focusing on the scientism part of the religion, religion all together was moving from bad to worse. By saying “God Is Dead” which can be judged
In his book, The Gay Science, Friedrich Nietzsche famously states that God is dead. Passages 108 (New battles), 125 (The madman), 153 (Homo poeta) and 343 (How to understand our cheerfulness) all deal with a particular aspect of this assertion. Passage 108 states that God is dead but that it may be a long time before we acknowledge this. Passage 125 reiterates that God is dead and then goes on to say that we have killed him. Passage 153 shows homo poeta taking culpable responsibility for the death of God. Passage 343 deals with the aftermath of the death of God and questions what will change. Through critical analysis and examination of these four passages, while extending upon in-class discussion, a more complete understanding of this quote is possible.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s, “God is dead” idea is not exactly what is sounds, or appears to be at first. Although it may seem to be a very “antichrist”, or a “anti religious” statement it actually pertains to the dependency our society has on religion, and “how the idea of God has lost it’s full creative force, its full power”(5). The main argument that Friedrich Nietzsche has with this idea is that ...