The most widely known words of Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th-century German philosopher, are, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” What did Nietzsche mean by such a statement, and what relevance do those jarring words have for us today?
What Nietzsche Wrote
Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844 in Leipzig,
(now) in the eastern German state of Saxony. His father was a Lutheran pastor,
and before his 20th birthday, Friedrich began studying theology at the
University of Bonn with the intention of following in his father’s footsteps.
After one semester, however, Nietzsche lost
his faith and stopped his theological studies. He wrote to his deeply-religious
sister Elisabeth (b. 1846), ”. . . if you wish to strive for peace of soul and
pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.”
(Sadly, Nietzsche was seemingly unable to
grasp the fact that believing and inquiring are not mutually exclusive.)
Many years later, 140 years ago in 1882,
Nietzsche authored a book published under the title Die fröhliche Wissenschaft,
first translated into English as The Joyful Wisdom, but now, unfortunately, it is generally known by the title The Gay Science.
In that book, the “madman” spoke the above-cited
words about God being dead. (They can be read in context on this website.)
Later in Thus Spake Zarathustra (which
Nietzsche published in parts over several years, beginning in 1883), the
central character exclaims the same words, “God is dead!”
But what did Nietzsche mean by having the “madman”
and Zarathustra utter that shocking (at that time, if not now) expression?
What Nietzsche Meant
It seems quite clear that Nietzsche was not writing
about the ontological existence (or lack thereof) of a supernatural being commonly
called God in Western society.
Rather, Nietzsche was expressing his
observation that the Age of Enlightenment had ended the centrality of the concept
of God in Western European civilization and that the belief in the pivotal role
of God in human affairs had ceased to exist (=been killed).
In other words, we might say that Nietzsche was
one of the earliest thinkers to assert that secularism had become victorious
over the Christian religion.
He was also a primary progenitor of
postmodernism. Since God was now “dead,” he thought that there is no longer any
basis for believing in a divinely ordained moral order. There are no absolute
moral values. There is no objective truth.
Thus, Nietzsche’s thought led to nihilism, which
he sought to counter with an emphasis on the importance of the subjectivity of
individual persons. This is why he is also considered one of the most significant
early proponents of what came to be called existentialism.
Why Nietzsche was Right/Wrong
In many ways, in his day as well as in this
present day, God as the ultimate Being and ultimate concern seems to be “dead”
to so many people who were reared in Christian homes and/or in an ostensibly
Christian society.
There are many today, as in Nietzsche’s day,
who give intellectual assent to the idea of God’s reality, but who live as if
God does not exist. So in that sense, God is “dead” to them. This situation is what
is sometimes called practical atheism.
There are distinct similarities—and vast
differences—between Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard. (Some refer to the two
seminal thinkers as if they were contemporaries, but Nietzsche was born the
year Kierkegaard published one of his most important books, Philosophical Fragments.)
“Practical atheism” was certainly an apt description
for many Danes in the 1840s and Germans in the 1880s—but perhaps no more so
than for many North Americans and Western Europeans now. For many, there is religious
form with little or no substance.
In the midst of rampant practical atheism,
people can choose to follow Nietzsche’s proposal for creation of the Übermensch (Overman), who creates their own future without reference to traditional
religious and/or moral beliefs.
Or we can choose, as
one scholar wisely wrote, to see the “problem of religious downfall as . .
. a chance to embrace the New Testament’s original teaching and return to a dynamic
and living faith.”
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This is a most interesting blog on Nietzsche and the "God is dead" issue. Thank you. As I'm sure you expected, I'm going to quibble with it a bit. You write: "Since God was now 'dead,' he thought that there is no longer any basis for believing in a divinely ordained moral order. There are no absolute moral values. There is no objective truth." It is right on target that Nietzsche believed there was "no basis for believing in a divinely ordained moral order." But this would be because Nietzsche himself didn't believe in such a deity ("ontological existence"), which follows logically, and not because the culture of his time had lost their own religious moorings and religious moral guidance, although he was making that observation as well. But it's quite misleading, in my view, to say that Nietzsche (and postmodernists following) argue that "There are no absolute moral values,' or "There is no objective truth." I wouldn't doubt that some postmodernists have made their claims with such absolutist language (notice the self-contradiction) because postmodernists are all over the map in their claims about the contemporary world, but I don't know of any.
ReplyDeleteWhat Nietzsche and postmodernists are, as Nietzsche himself claims, perspectivalists, meaning that, whatever objective reality is, we human beings always view it through perspectives shaped by the time and place in which we live. This is quite undeniable and, in a sense, not new. It was simply bringing Hume's and Kant's claims about ultimate reality down to earth; i.e, applying their insights regarding regarding knowing ultimate reality to the empirical, natural world, too.
It seems to me that Western religions (Xty, Islam, Judaism) should welcome that insight because it keeps us rooted in our own finite humanity, without the privilege of claiming we have godlike knowledge. Western faiths are grounded in the idea that God is God, the creator, and humans are humans, the created, and thus not God or godlike--a major issue in the first eleven chapters of Genesis.
Anton, thanks for your (expected) perceptive (and perspectivalistic) comments. Let me respond briefly, from the bottom up.
DeleteYour concluding statement is, I think, certainly true—but that is the very thing that Nietzsche was denying as still being true in the “enlightened” German society of his time. Many educated people then—and that seems to be increasingly true now for the “practical atheists”—seem not to recognize/accept/believe in a dichotomy of Creator and creation. Regard of his own belief, Nietzsche perceived that belief in that sort of God was dead for sophisticated German and other Western intellectuals. The “death of God” was/is largely, it seems to me, to be a loss of transcendence—and from the 1960s until the present there seems to have been an increasing emphasis only upon immanence, and that is a major problem I have with Michael Dowd, about whom I first wrote on Jan. 25.
Then about perspectivism: I consider Michael Polanyi’s book “Personal Knowledge” (1958) one of the most important books I read during my graduate school years—and in my lifetime. I can’t remember if he used that term, but that concept was central to his main point. Also, I have high regard for “The Social Construction of Reality” (1966) by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, a book that I’m sure you know well. Thus, I used the words “conceptual lenses” in my previous two blog posts, which I assume agrees with what you wrote about perspectivism—and with what Nietzsche thought.
With regard to my statements that for Nietzsche and those who agree with him, "There are no absolute moral values,' or "There is no objective truth," may not be words that they used (or would use), but I think those statements accurately describe their basic beliefs, their “perspective.” And while it is true that Nietzsche had lost his own personal faith in a transcendent God, as I understand him, he was not writing about his own perspective about God; rather he was writing about the loss of faith in a transcendent God by many in the “cultured” society of his day. It was in that regard he had the “madman” exclaim, “God is dead.”
The first comments received this morning were about an hour ago in an email from Thinking Friend Bob Hanson in Wisconsin. He wrote,
ReplyDelete"Thanks again Leroy for an excellent article. I was trying to remember some of the thinkers during the 60s that brought up the same theme and in fact I think it made time magazine at one point."
Thank you, Bob, for bringing up the "God is dead" issue of the 1960s. I consider Thomas J.J. Altizer (1927~2018) the most important death of God theologian of the '60s. Here is what Wikipedia says (correctly, I think) about him:
Delete"Thomas J.J. Altizer offered a radical theology of the death of God that drew upon William Blake, Hegelian thought and Nietzschean ideas. He conceived of theology as a form of poetry in which the immanence (presence) of God could be encountered in faith communities. However, he no longer accepted the possibility of affirming belief in a transcendent God. Altizer concluded that God had incarnated in Christ and imparted his immanent spirit which remained in the world even though Jesus was dead. Unlike Nietzsche, Altizer believed that God truly died. He was considered to be the leading exponent of the Death of God movement."
Altizer's important books on this subject were published in 1966: "Radical Theology and the Death of God" (co-authored with William Hamilton) and "The Gospel of Christian Atheism," both of which I read in my final year in graduate school.
The cover of the April 8, 1966, edition of Time magazine asked the question "Is God Dead?" and the accompanying article addressed growing atheism in America at the time, as well as the growing popularity of Death of God theology.
Next were these comments from Thinking friend Michael Olmsted in Springfield, Mo.:
ReplyDelete"Thanks for an understandable handling of the 'God is dead' argument. We are living in such a self-absorbed period that our society/politics does in fact ignore the existence of God, substituting a theology/philosophy that either denies any idea of God or Christ with a religious construct that is
selfish and blasphemous. I wonder how dark this world must become before human religious ideas can be replaced with the incredible truth of the cross and resurrection. God ... we make 'god' into a shallow cultural idea that fits our politics ... and reject the cross as a cruel human invention. Anyone interested in the true meaning of grace or God's love?"
Then Thinking Friend Glenn Hinson in Kentucky went these brief comments:
ReplyDelete"An illuminating essay, Leroy. Giving the fuller quotation helps to clarify what he meant. It also throws some light on 'God is dead' theology’s variations."
I simply have to add my favorite quotation from Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra regarding the death of God:
ReplyDelete“For the old gods, after all, things came to an end long ago; and verily, they had a good gay godlike end. They did not end in a ‘twilight,’ though this lie is told. Instead: one day they laughed themselves to death. That happened when the most godless word issued from one of the gods themselves—the word: ‘There is one god. Thou shalt have no other god before me!’ An old grim-beard of a god, a jealous one, thus forgot himself. And then all the gods laughed and rocked on their chairs and cried, ‘Is not just this godlike that there are gods but no God?’”
It has been a long time since I last read Nietzsche, so I did a quick refresher course by reading his Wikipedia page. The point that jumped out to me was his contrast between slave morality and master morality. He considered Christianity and Judaism as slave moralities. He loved the movers and shakers of master morality. I suspect he would love our billionaires juggling for supremacy in space. How boring to feed the hungry or save the environment!
ReplyDeleteAs for "God is dead," I suspect he was speaking on several levels. He had lost his own faith, and I am sure part of it was just an expression of his own belief that there is no god. However, I doubt that was his main point. I agree with the point in the main blog that he was expressing his opinion on the general flow of intellectual ferment in his time. Actually, any time Nietzsche speaks, it is wise to think of late-night comedians, who love to turn a phrase that explodes on two or even three levels. I would love to see him interviewed by Stephen Colbert!
We live in a post-Newtonian world. The simple materialism of a billiard ball world is behind us. Now we are trying to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics, decipher the mysteries of deep psychology, and figure out if there is a way to live in a sustainable yet flourishing way. Nietzsche sensed we were trapped in a box, and was trying feverishly to slash his way out of it. We owe him a debt, even if we are not satisfied with his specific answers.
Also last night after I had gone to bed, I received the following comments by email from local Thinking Friend Debra Sapp-Yarwood:
ReplyDelete"Thanks, Leroy. I am happy to learn more about Nietzsche from your perspective.
"There is one sentence you use, however, that is unapologetically Leroy, not Nietzsche, that pushes against my experience of reality. You say of contemporary society: 'For many, there is religious form with little or no substance.' In my experience as a hospital chaplain, more people express all kinds of substance and engage in complex and (I would say) holy speculation, but have rejected organized religion (form). Sometimes, they call themselves 'spiritual but not religious,' or they say, 'I find God in nature' or 'I know in my heart there is something bigger, but not the God I learned in Sunday school' or they use some other language of their own making. And that is only the beginning of the conversation. At root, they love some form of an Agape Logos, but they are disgusted with religious people who, arguably, have destroyed God's reputation if not killed him outright."
Thanks as always, Debra, for your thought-provoking comments, and here is my brief response. (I often wish we had the time and opportunity to sit down and discuss things at greater length.)
DeleteI stand by what I said that both for "many" in Nietzsche's day as well in the present day, there are, indeed, in my observation from what I see and read, "many" who seem to possess religious form with little or no substance. If I were writing about a different person and mainly about the present time, though, I could also say that there are "many" who possess little form but who exhibit considerable religious/spiritual substance. You gave examples of the latter, and I am certainly happy that there are such people. And, sadly, many of those people have little religious form because of the toxic nature of fundamentalistic religion they had experienced. But those were not the kind of people Nietzsche was referencing in Germany in the 1880s. And, yes, I think there are many people today who still maintain some form of religious practice but who are living lives mainly formed by secular, hedonistic society rather than by faith in God.
And then these comments from Thinking Friend Greg Hadley in Niigata, Japan.
ReplyDelete"Thank you for the blog posting on Nietzsche. I had recently watched a lecture on Nietzsche, so it was good timing. I was surprised how Nietzsche called himself the Antichrist, and felt that in deconstructing Christianity as a morality used by the weak and enslaved to limit the freedom of the superior men in society, he would be part of a new age of progress for humanity. His belief that the superior men should be allowed to follow their nature as predators and not be hampered by the protestations of the weak, as well as his view of priests, who while maintaining their own private amorality, galvanize the weak with myths in order to challenge the power of the superior men, reminded me of our years with Trump and the Media.
"Trump will not have read Nietzsche, but his ‘laws are for losers’ lifestyle fits well with Nietzsche’s notion of ‘Good and Bad’ (in terms of what is good and bad for those who are strong) as supplanting the notion of “Good and Evil”. There is no evil for Nietzsche, only what is bad for someone in their certain situation. It seems to me that the media has taken the role of a secular priesthood – one that calls society to continue to aspire to certain values while also crafting narratives about how the world is supposed to be working. They oppose the ‘superior men’ because they threaten their power and freedom to live off of the weak.
"Nietzsche is a huge figure in the history of Western thought, but with his misogyny, anti-Semitism, anti-Christian, and strident atheist notions, he certainly is not my cup of tea."
This afternoon I received the following comments from Thinking Friend Eric Dollard in Chicago, who perhaps more than anyone else from whom I have heard understands and affirms what I was trying to say about Nietzsche. Here is what he wrote:
ReplyDelete"Thanks, Leroy, for your comments about the philosophy of Nietzsche. I read 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' when I was in college. It struck me as a rather strange book, and I still find Nietzsche’s views somewhat enigmatic.
"The sentence, 'God is dead,' while dramatic and shocking, should not be understood in metaphysical terms, but rather cultural ones, as you point out, and as I believe Nietzsche meant it. But Nietzsche’s views are nonetheless different from those of the later 20th century God-is-dead theologians such as Altizer, Hamilton, and Vahanian, among others. They also understood the term from a cultural perspective, although their cultural (and moral) values are certainly different from those of Nietzsche, at least as I understand them.
“'Practical atheism' has indeed become very widespread, especially in Europe and some Asian countries."
In 1992 radicals within the BJP party destroyed the Babri Mosque (Babari Masjid) in Ayodhya, causing mass Hindu-Muslim riots killing over 2,000 people nationwide. The BJP Hindu nationalists today control India through Prime Minister Modi. Modi was BJP head in Ayodhya during the 1992 mass killings. I was Visiting Professor at Bishops College (seminary)in Calcutta at the time. The seminary gates were chain locked for a week until we all ran out of food.
ReplyDeleteMissionaries kicked out of China and Japan during WW2 came to Hawaii to convert Chinese, Korean, and Japanese heathen. We were all Buddhists. We had a large Buddha altar in our living room. We were condemned to hell if we did not convert to Jesus, they said. A young missionary told me to destroy the Buddha altar in our living room.
Strong belief in God, whether ISIS Muslim fighters, militant Zionists in Israel, anti-Rohingya Buddhist monks/military in Myanmar, or anti-Muslim BJP radicals in India--strong belief in God is a danger to all peaceful humans.
God is an atheist. God loves all humans, all animals, all plants, the Earth and the whole universe. But God doesn't care about God. God might be an atheist. Forget God and love everything that God loves. God save us from strong religion and theists.
Dickson, thanks for posting comments again.
DeleteIt seems what you consider to be "strong" faith/belief is quite different from how I have been using that word. By a strong faith I am thinking of a faith that is unwavering, resolute, ardent, and/or devout. I certainly do not consider a strong faith to be one that harms other people.
You mention (now) PM Modi and the BJP in India. I wrote about the BJP as an example of Hindu fundamentalism in my book "Fed Up with Fundamentalism." That is an example of a religion being used for political power. But who, really, is the stronger (= more devout) Hindu believer, Modi or Gandhi?
You mentioned the Buddhist monks/military in Myanmar. But who is the stronger (=more devout) Buddhist believer, the militant Buddhists of Myanmar or Thích Nhất Hạnh, the venerable Buddhist monk who died a month ago today?
You mention the militant Zionists in Israel, but who is the stronger (=more devout), those who are using the Jewish religion as the basis for oppressing the Palestinians, or a Jewish rabbi such as Abraham Heschel.
And then I find your last paragraph problematic. Since a theist is a person who believes in God, what does it mean to pray "God save us from . . . theists"?
Here are comments by Thinking Friend Ken Sehested in North Carolina, perceptive insights posted this afternoon on Facebook (where I had linked to this blog article):
ReplyDelete"All of us (maybe excepting sociopaths) have at the core of our convictions a transcendent vision of how life is to be lived (even if we sometimes violate that vision). It is transcendent in the sense that it is a hunch, a risk, a gamble—which cannot be empirically verified. (In academic life, it is called a 'heuristic' or 'telos.') It is, in fact, a 'faith,' though for each individual the particular shape and contour of that faith will likely shift over time, based on life experiences and reflection. People who in some way identify as religious use the word 'God' (or 'Nature' or 'conscience' or 'rationality'--though rationalists cannot be independently establish such a claim), as the portal of this vision, though parameters of who/what/how God 'is' can be profoundly different and endlessly diverse.
"Though postmodernism stirred a host of unnecessary confusions, its great and enduring insight is that every assertion of “truth” is simultaneously an assertion of the will-to-power. Which is why I, as a professed Christian, believe that a commitment to nonviolence marks the boundaries (not always precise) of the will-to-power—that evil cannot cast out evil—and that the 'grain of the universe' (Yoder) is the true and proper means by which Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection point to God’s purpose in the creation, sustenance, and redemption of creation.
"Parenthetically, this same conviction is what requires of me to live in community with, and respect for, people of differing convictions. And at the same time bids me resist—without resort to violence, at the risk of my well-being—any and all determined to use the power of coercion and violence to maintain injustice."
Last night, Thinking Friend Mike Greer posted the following comments on Facebook, where I had posted a link to this article:
ReplyDeleteMost of the practical atheists, and worst human beings I have known have been lifelong church members. Some have been pastors. I know it is jarring to hear, but one can be a Christian and the worst kind of practicing atheist at the same time. In this culture it is easy. Adversely, some of the most moral and loving people I have known openly identify as atheists. The most influential book I ever read was [H. Richard] Niebuhr's 'Christ and Culture.' It taught me to recognize a Christless Christianity that replaces model of Jesus with a cultural form that is as anti-Christ as any ideology or existence can be, and then call it Christianity. That is what I also love about Kierkegaard 's brutal honesty about the great void between our proclamations and our practices. I think of his quote about the 'child's hobby horse' that we love to ride."