Friedrich NIETZSCHE

If it is in “purple”

then it is a quote…

GOD IS DEAD.God remains dead. And we have killed him.

How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?What festivals, what sacred games of atonement shall we have toinvent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must weourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125

GOD IS DEAD.God remains dead. And we have killed him.

Nietzsche’s philosophy is that we must reject actions, values and meaning that people subscribe

to the name of ‘God’.

Nihilist Believer

I say God is dead.

I say God is alive.

Prove that God is alive.

I cannot. Prove that God is dead.

I cannot.

If you cannot provide proof of God’s death, then you cannot use

his absence as a justification for your actions.

But if I cannot use his absence as ajustification for my actions, then by the same logic youcannot use his existence as a justification for your actions.

JUST BECAUSE WE DELCARE SOMETHING TO EXIST DOES NOT

PROVE ITS EXISTENCE.

We have invented “lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content”. However, just because humans have invented these “conditions of life”, this does

not prove their existence and we need to be aware that the world we have created “might include error”.

Nietzsche’s theory therefore cautions against any decisions or actions that are based on belief.

Nietzsche ejects all actions done in the name of God

(i.e. faith or belief).

The death of god “unchained the earth from the sun” and means

that it is now time to “move beyond good and evil”.

What is the result of this?

MORALITY IS A CONSTRUCT. IT DOES NOT INHERENTLY EXIST.

WE HAVE CREATED IT.

THEREFORE YOU CANNOT USE BELIEF IN GOD AS A JUSTIFICATION FOR YOUR ACTIONS.

YOU MUST OWN YOUR OWN (IM)MORALITY.

YOU MUST OWN YOUR OWN ACTIONS.

YOU MUST OWN YOUR OWN SIN.

THERE IS NO EXTERNAL FORCE.

THERE IS ONLY YOU.

“GOD IS DEAD”

• Nietzsche believed that we must face up to our true desires.

• Nietzsche disliked Christianity because he believed it kept people from their true desires –from realising and using their ENVY.

• He believed that Christianity was merely a means of providing an extrinsic justification for those things that we are too weak to claim for ourselves. It makes a virtue of weakness (“slave morality”).

Nietzsche denounced Christianity as hypocritical – it made a sin of what people wanted but were too weak to fight for, and a virtue of what people

didn’t want but had anyway.

Suffering Devotion

Weakness Goodness

Sexlessness Purity

Submission Obedience

Inability to achieve revenge Forgiveness

OUR NOTIONS OF MORALITY AND TRUTH, AS FAR AS THEY ARE BASED ON RELIGION

AND BELIEF, ARE THEREFORE FALSE.

What was needed instead was

A GAY SCIENCEa science of the SELF which views

“truth as experiment”

Historically, we have not been interested in actual ‘TRUTH’.

What made something ‘TRUE’ was how many people believe it and

how long they have believed in it.

Truth was not about proof, evidence or experiment, but rather a case of following the herd.

“STRENGTH OF KNOWLEDGE”

=

LENGTH OF TIME SOMETHING HAS BEEN BELIEVED (“AGE” OF INCORPORATION)

X

THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE IT (“DEGREE” OF INCORPORATION)

BELIEF BASED ON RELIGION

V

“TRUTH AS EXPERIMENT”

“TRUTH AS EXPERIMENT”

• Truths are created by society and, as a result, tend to reflect collective norms.

• However, truth must be allowed to change in accordance with our observations and understandings of the world.

• Truth is not a fixed concept. It needs to be based on our perceptions, and therefore can change if we gain new ways of seeing the world or discover new evidence.

LINK THIS TO ‘ENCOUNTERING CONFLICT’

GREEDEnvy and desire

Perpetual pursuit of POWER

Relinquishing ETHICS and MORALS in pursuit

of that power

???

DOES IT CONNECT HERE?

FEARFear of an other

SWIFT reactions

EMOTIONAL responses

Marginalisation of minorities

???

DOES IT CONNECT HERE?

IGNORANCEInability/unwillingness to recognise new views

or need for change

Locked into a sense of RIGHTEOUSNESS

Feels SECURITY from not being challenged

???

DOES IT CONNECT HERE?

LINK THIS TO LIFE OF GALILEO

THE CHURCH

WHAT IS THEIR ‘TRUTH’?

HOW DO THEY JUSTIFY THIS ‘TRUTH’?

WHY ARE THE BASES OF THEIR BELIEF SO FLAWED (ACCORDING TO NIETZSCHE’S PHILOSOPHY)?

WHAT WOULD NIETZSCHE SAY ABOUT THE CHURCH IN THIS

PLAY?

GALILEO

WHAT DOES GALILEO BELIEVE THE REAL BASIS OF TRUTH SHOULD

BE?

WHY DOES EXPERIMENTATION AS THE BASIS FOR TRUTH CAUSE

SUCH CONFLICT WITH THE CHURCH?

WHAT WOULD NIETZSCHE SAY ABOUT GALILEO AND HIS ACTIONS IN THIS PLAY?

In his work The Gay Science, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argued that “we have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live.” He concluded that we have invented “lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content” and that without these “articles of faith nobody now could endure life”. However, Nietzsche claimed that just because these “conditions of life” have been invented by humans does not prove their existence and that we need to be aware that the categories that we rely on “might include error”. Nietzsche concluded that, throughout history, the “strength of knowledge” has not depended on its degree of truth but rather on its “age and the degree to which it has been incorporated” into the fabric of human thought systems and societal norms. Therefore, at the core of Nietzsche’s examination was a warning bout making decisions and taking action based on a belief that what you hold to be true is true. In this sense, Nietzsche examined the role of religion in our lives and concluded that the idea of religion functioned by creating a “form of optimism” for us that the world was created by an “omnipotent and all benevolent God”.

Moreover, in The Gay Science, Nietzsche declared that “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” Nietzsche’s statement was not simply about God being dead, and he recognised that if you cannot prove God’s existence then you cannot prove God’s death.

Nietzsche’s declaration, at its core, objects to the illusion of a tangible and provable system that a belief in God offers. His statement rejects a set of actions, values and meanings that people subscribe to in the name of ‘God’. Nietzsche proclaimed that we need to discard the acceptance of “suffrage” in “this” life for some promise of eternal life in the “after” life. Nietzsche’s statement is a rejection of the belief in transcendental existence that is at the core of religion, be it Christianity, Judaism, Islam or any other belief system. His decree rejects the eternal law of God and religion in the modern era. Nietzsche begs the modern person to find a system of values and meaning within themselves, for people to re-evaluate all values and all systems. He suggested that “the death of God” “unchained the earth from the sun” and that it was time to move beyond contractions of “good and evil”. In the absence of God, Nietzsche calls for “a Gay Science” – a science of the self, which views “truth as experiment”.

PARALLELS

Nietzsche The virtues of religion are just hypocrisies invented to convince people to endure their own suffering. There is no “virtue” in denying human desires: rather, this is a “slave morality” that promote weakness and compliance and deprives us of what we truly value. We must “move beyond good and evil” and such dichotomous notions of morality that built on un-provable beliefs and blind faith.

Life of Galileo

Galileo: “Virtue is not bound up with misery, my friend. If your people were prosperous and happy, they could develop the virtues of prosperity and happiness. But today the virtues of exhausted people derive from exhausted fields, and I reject those virtues.” p66

PARALLELS

Nietzsche

“God is dead…And we have killed him.”

God is a construct used to justify morality, subdue desires and maintain power: a construct invented by society.

Life of GalileoGalileo: “Today mankind can write in its diary: Got rid of Heaven.” p24

Sagredo: “So were is God?”

Galileo: “Within ourselves, or nowhere.” p28

Barbarini: “If God didn’t exist then we would have to invent him.” p61

The Pope: “they have placed their faith in a brass ball they call a compass, not in God…God anyhow is no longer necessary to them…” p92

PARALLELS

Nietzsche Throughout history, the “strength of knowledge” has not depended on its degree of truth but rather on its “age and the degree to which it has been incorporated” into the fabric of human through systems and societal norms.

Unshackled from belief and blind adherence to authority, we need “a Gay Science”: a science of the self, which views “truth as experiment”.

Life of GalileoGalileo: “…to believe in the authority of Aristotle is one thing, tangible facts are another…I ask you to go by the evidence of your eyes…

Truth is born of the times, not of authority…

Such people [tradesmen] showed me a lot of new approaches. They don’t read much, but rely on the evidence of their five sense, without all that much fear as to where such evidence is going to lead them…” pp41-43

CONFLICT IS CAUSED BY IGNORANCE Sense of righteousness

Security from not being challenged

LIFE OF GALILEO: AUTHORITY VS EXPERIMENT Belief in “the authority of Aristotle” and the “holy scriptures” Belief that “truth is born of the times” and the “evidence of

[the] five senses” Security: “the creator’s eye rests upon me along” What is needed is the “triumph of reason”

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE “Strength of knowledge”

Dangers of basing actions on religious belief “God is dead”

“Truth as experiment”

START WITH THIS

PARAGRAPH’S

KEY IDEA

RELATING TO

CONFLICT

LINK TO A

RELEVANT IDEA

FROM A

PHILOSOPHER

LINK TO

RELEVANT

EXAMPLES FROM

LoG THAT

ILLUSTRATE

THIS IDEA

The roots of many conflicts can be traced to systematic ignorance and an inability or unwillingness to adapt past beliefs to respond to new ways of perceiving the world and the discovery of new evidence. The ignorant often become locked into an inviolable sense of righteousness, with security achieved only when their views are unchallenged, unquestioned and blindly accepted.

The effects of this ignorance and its role as a root cause of conflict is made clear in Bertolt Brecht’s play Life of Galileo. Galileo comes into conflict with the church through their different views of the proper authority for truth. Whereas the church vehemently believes that truth comes from “the authority of Aristotle” and the “holy scriptures”, Galileo instead advocates that “truth is born of the times” and must be based upon the “evidence of their five senses”. The church find comfort in its ignorance of the true state of the universe, choosing instead to cling to the notion that “the creator’s eye rests upon” the earth and the church “alone”. Ultimately both Galileo and Nietzsche reject such justifications that based upon pure religious belief, and the result of this is an inescapable conflict that is incapable of resolution until either the ignorance of the aggressor is overcome by the “triumph of reason”, or the challenge to their authority is removed and the security of tradition is returned.

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche explores this concept in his work The Gay Science, where he asserts that the “strength of knowledge” as historically been dependent upon “age and the degree to which it has been incorporated” into the fabric of human thought systems and societal norms. Seeing religion as central to this idea of knowledge stemming from authority instead of evidence, Nietzsche rejected unsubstantiated belief in authority as a basis for truth and morality, leading him to famously declare that “God is dead”. At its core, this statement objects to the illusion of a tangible and provable system that a belief in God offers, and hence rejects those actions, values and meanings that people subscribe to in the name of ‘God’. Instead, Nietzsche advocated for “a Gay Science”: a science of the self, which views “truth as experiment”.

START WITH THIS

PARAGRAPH’S

KEY IDEA

RELATING TO

CONFLICT

LINK TO A

RELEVANT IDEA

FROM A

PHILOSOPHER

LINK TO

RELEVANT

EXAMPLES FROM

LoG THAT

ILLUSTRATE

THIS IDEA

CONFLICT: GREED and POWER

• The Catholic Church’s power has been “enthroned for a thousand years”, allowing them unfretted dominion over much of society.

• The church is therefore able to brutally burn at the stake the supposed “heretic” Giordano Bruno, simply because he was “propagating the ideas of Copernicus”.

• Driven by a desire to maintain power, the Church employs violence and the threat of violence to subdue anyone who challenges their assertion that God placed the world “at the centre of the universe”.

• The church finds security in the belief that the “eye of the creator” falls upon earth “alone”, and where the “See of St Peter” has positioned itself as “the centre of the world”, and thus the universe at large.

CONFLICT: GREED and POWER

• Galileo challenges the leaders of the church, seeing them as “self-interested rulers” who “know the truth” but “call it a lie”.

• The church actively “disapproves” of any “such doctrines as run counter to the Scriptures”, and when faced with a scientific challenge to their beliefs, the church chooses not to put its faith in “reason”, but instead call upon “the theologians to see how they can straighten out the…heavens”.

CONFLICT: GREED and POWER

• Ultimately Galileo himself becomes a victim of this unfettered brutality in the quest to maintain power, as he it brought before “the instruments” of the inquisition and, having failed to defeat his “facts”and “reason”, the church instead resort to the threat of “physical pain” to force Galileo’s recantation.

CONFLICT: GREED and POWER

• Nietzsche’s philosophies, when practised properly, emphasise how people must be willing to modify their beliefs when faced with new, unequivocal facts.

• Openness in evidence and argument is necessary to ensure advancement in the world and to prevent people becoming enslaved to archaic and static notions of morality.