Firstly I would say Nietzsche's writings show a deep ambivalence toward the Gods.. The introduction to The Birth of Tragedy , for example, which Nietzsche wrote years after its first publication talks about the "offensively Hegelian" character of his initial formulation of the 'opposition' between Apollo and Dionysus, taken together assuming the form of an "irrisponsible God"; the chaotic, suffering unity whose redemption is found in individuation, illusion, limit, masks, the 'dream work' of Apollo, with a synthesis of the two reaching a crescendo in Attic tragedy.
I note this only as a single small example, and to point out that Nietzsche's work contains a world more than is ordinarily attributed to him in relation to his attitude toward God, the term encompasses a lot more in his work than his views on the Christian God. Off the top of my head, and just in brief, see aphorism from Beyond Good and Evil , which Heidegger takes as the "guiding thought" of his second book on Nietzsche:.
Everything in the hero's sphere turns to tragedy; everything in the demi-god's sphere turns to satyr-play; and everything in God's sphere turns to Having said that, the quote you cite is clearly satirical. One of the main things which Nietzsche's work emphasises is that the conditions of life also include error. Deleuze has a beautiful phrase in his Nietzsche and philosophy - "the affirmative power of falsity".. In your quote he is ridiculing attempts to disprove God because, as Joseph Weissman notes to him the death of God, among other things, implies the absence of any transcendent guarantor of truth.
The logic is egregiously unsound, as is the assumption that logic can be used to prove such a thing. For a comparison reason for Descartes was "the natural light", a divinely endowed capacity to perceive truth.
Nietzsche did not believe this. One passage which illustrates his attitude toward reason is aphorism 11 from Human, all too Human. The significance of language for the evolution of culture lies in this, that mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world, a place it took to be so firmly set that, standing upon it, it could lift the rest of the world off its hinges and make itself master of it. To the extent that man has for long ages believed in the concepts and names of things as in aeternae veritates he has appropriated to himself that pride by which he raised himself above the animal: The sculptor of language was not so modest as to believe that he was only giving things designations, he conceived rather that with words he was expressing supreame knowledge of things; language is, in fact, the first stage of occupation with science.
Here, too, it is the belief that the truth has been found out of which the mightiest sources of energy have flowed. A great deal later - only now - it dawns on men that in their belief in language they have propagated a tremendous error. Happily, it is too late for the evolution of reason, which depends on this belief, to be put back.
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It is the same with mathematics, which would certainly not have come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no exactly straight line, no real circle, no absolute magnitude. Recall that religions usually defer major decisions to God or gods, to which many proverbs attest.
The political message of Nietzsche's 'God is dead'
Nietzsche, on the other hand, was strongly opposed to humbleness. Existence of omnipotent God would put severe limits on Nietzsche, beyond limits of the natural laws. Thus he refused to submit to being God's underling, an Untergott, so to speak. Now, according to Nietzsche, God is a product of a human mind, like in "What is it: I think this a clear example of inductive reasoning wherein the unstated premise is that the God is omnipresent or "All is God's Manifestation".
Hence, if God is omnipresent, how is it possible that the subject that is questioning the existence of God is not a god, and ergo there are no gods. This is my idea about this quote. An analogy here can also be drawn from the Epicurean's paradox , the first logical refutation of the existence of God, wherein he uses one premise as "God is omnipresent, so where from comes the evil? Another analogy can be drawn from the Black Swan Theory, wherein a Black swan thinks that since he is black , none of the white swan exists. Nietszche doesnt wastes time in disproving god , he knows a truly inquisitive and truthfull bound character will be an atheist and trying to convince anyone of it is unnecessary.
He even says he is an atheist by "instinct". He admits to denying any god, but as to "proof the non existance of him" he simply dismisses such a time wasting enterprise, let the people obsessed with universals convince the mob, his books are meant to be read and understood not really to establish a system upon one single universal truth, to convince a madman of his madness is not worthy of him, he has bigger goals in mind, and if he ever does it he does it playfully and with a sense of humour not as such awful characters as dawkins who ravel in bathing in the stupidity of the mob who cannot comprehend such simple concepts as atheism.
But when Zarathustra was alone, he spoke thus to his heart: This old saint has not heard in his forest that God is dead! Nietzsche used the phrase to sum up the effect and consequence that the Age of Enlightenment had had on the centrality of the concept of God within Western European civilization , which had been essentially Christian in character since the later Roman Empire. The Enlightenment had brought about the triumph of scientific rationality over sacred revelation; the rise of philosophical materialism and Naturalism that to all intents and purposes had dispensed with the belief in or role of God in human affairs and the destiny of the world.
Nietzsche recognized the crisis that this "Death of God" represented for existing moral assumptions in Europe as they existed within the context of traditional Christian belief. This morality is by no means self-evident By breaking one main concept out of Christianity , the faith in God, one breaks the whole: The Enlightenment's conclusion of the "Death of God" gave rise to the proposition that humans - and Western Civilization as a whole - could no longer believe in a divinely ordained moral order.
This death of God will lead, Nietzsche said, not only to the rejection of a belief of cosmic or physical order but also to a rejection of absolute values themselves — to the rejection of belief in an objective and universal moral law , binding upon all individuals. In this manner, the loss of an absolute basis for morality leads to nihilism. This nihilism is that for which Nietzsche worked to find a solution by re-evaluating the foundations of human values.
Nietzsche believed that the majority of people did not recognize this death out of the deepest-seated fear or angst. Therefore, when the death did begin to become widely acknowledged, people would despair and nihilism would become rampant. Martin Heidegger understood this part of Nietzsche's philosophy by looking at it as death of metaphysics. In his view, Nietzsche's words can only be understood as referring not to a particular theological or anthropological view but rather to the end of philosophy itself.
Philosophy has, in Heidegger's words, reached its maximum potential as metaphysics and Nietzsche's words warn of its demise and that of any metaphysical world view. If metaphysics is dead, Heidegger warns, that is because from its inception that was its fate.
Paul Tillich as well as Richard Schacht were influenced by the writings of Nietzsche and especially of his phrase "God is dead. William Hamilton wrote the following about Nietzsche's view:. For the most part Altizer prefers mystical to ethical language in solving the problem of the death of God, or, as he puts it, in mapping out the way from the profane to the sacred. This combination of Kierkegaard and Eliade makes rather rough reading, but his position at the end is a relatively simple one. Here is an important summary statement of his views: If theology must now accept a dialectical vocation, it must learn the full meaning of Yes-saying and No-saying; it must sense the possibility of a Yes which can become a No, and of a No which can become a Yes; in short, it must look forward to a dialectical coincidentia oppositorum.
But liberation must finally be effected by affirmation. See "Theology and the Death of God," in this volume, pp. Nietzsche believed there could be positive possibilities for humans without God. Relinquishing the belief in God opens the way for human creative abilities to fully develop.
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The Christian God, he wrote, would no longer stand in the way, so human beings might stop turning their eyes toward a supernatural realm and begin to acknowledge the value of this world. Nietzsche uses the metaphor of an open sea, which can be both exhilarating and terrifying. The "death of God" is the motivation for Nietzsche's last uncompleted philosophical project, the "revaluation of all values".
Although Nietzsche puts the statement "God is Dead" into the mouth of a "madman" [16] in The Gay Science , he also uses the phrase in his own voice in sections and of the same book.
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In the madman's passage, the man is described as running through a marketplace shouting, "I seek God! Maybe he took an ocean voyage?
God is dead - Wikiquote
Lost his way like a little child? Maybe he's afraid of us non-believers and is hiding? Frustrated, the madman smashes his lantern on the ground, crying out that "God is dead, and we have killed him, you and I! He goes on to say:. This prodigious event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard.
The Parable of the Madman
This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars — and yet they have done it themselves. Earlier in the book section , Nietzsche wrote "God is Dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. And we — we still have to vanquish his shadow, too. What is more, Zarathustra later refers not only to the death of God, but states: The cover of the April 8, edition of Time and the accompanying article concerned a movement in American theology that arose in the s known as the "death of God".
Although theologians since Nietzsche had occasionally used the phrase "God is dead" to reflect increasing unbelief in God , the concept rose to prominence in the late s and s, before waning again. Altizer and John D. Caputo , and the rabbi Richard L.