Jeffrey Velez

12/15/10

Phil 080 - Steven Yamamoto

The Death of God

No philosophical statement of Friedrich Nietzsche has come under the same level of

scrutiny, misunderstanding, and criticism as his exclamation that “God is dead”. Often dismissed

prematurely as a sacrilegious war cry of atheism, there is more to this statement when examined in

the complete context of Nietzsche’s works and his personal beliefs. In this paper I consider, not just

the statement itself, but his disagreements with religion and Christianity in general, attempting to

uncover where the sentiments for such a statement may have originated.

These are important considerations for someone seeking to understand completely what

Nietzsche means by “God is dead”. Contrary to popular belief, he does not just make this assertion

without leaving the reader a solution; his ideas present the way to live a life outside the context of

what he saw as stringent religious dogmas. Although some consider Nietzsche’s statement to be a

radical proclamation of atheistic outrage, his insistence that “God is dead” attempts to lay the

foundation for a new era of human existence, one that recognizes man’s ability to live wholly

without the concept of a supreme, omnipresent God.

I. Nietzsche’s qualms with Christianity

Although raised in a pious, religious household, Nietzsche fell out of touch with his

religious roots, becoming a critic of the religion that he believed was a hindrance to human

progress. He often differentiated between his issues with the Christian Church and his admiration

for the man Jesus. He felt that the Church misrepresented the ideals that Christ lived by while he

was living, thus preventing humans from attaining what Nietzsche sees as truly valuable in the

world. He expounded upon this in The Will to Power when he said:

It is an unprecedented abuse of names to identify such manifestations of decay and such abortions as the "Christian Church," "Christian belief," and "Christian life" with that Holy Name. What did Christ deny? Everything which today is called "Christian."" (Nietzsche 132)

This theme, the separation of the Church’s “manifestations of decay” from Christ, runs rampant

throughout Nietzsche’s works. He considered Jesus to be a “free spirit”, and Nietzsche's belief that

humans should take responsibility for their own moral course was manifested in the life Jesus led.

Nevertheless, Nietzsche saw this transformation of Christ’s lifestyle into a faith for others to follow

as “the essential error of Christianity" (Hazelton 67). He believed that, on some levels, it was cruel

of Jesus to encourage the idea of living in his footsteps into the minds of men and women who were

simply imperfect, unlettered and ordinary. For Nietzsche, the Church was a proponent of moral

slavery, not an advocate of a theology worthy of reverence.

His criticism of the Church transcended the seemingly erroneous representation of Christ’s

ideals. Nietzsche believed the pious persona to which people were expected to match their lives

limited a person’s ability to grow as a human being. He disagreed with the emphasis on using one’s

earthly life as a mere path to the afterlife, feeling that the Christian view of morality sacrificed

human potential for fear, guilt, and a dogmatic system of moral slavery. In his opinion, the focus of

Christianity was solely that which is prohibited, which only “oppressed man and crushed him

utterly, sinking him...then into the feeling of absolute depravity it suddenly threw the light of divine

mercy, so that the surprised man, dazzled by forgiveness, gave a cry of joy and for a moment

believed that he bore all heaven within himself" (Hazelton 67). He believed this system of teetering

and tottering in between the realm of sin and righteousness did not liberate people or keep them

truly happy. Nietzsche was a proponent of the exact opposite, and from critiques such as these

stemmed the intellectual and logical underpinnings of his most controversial statement: “God is

dead”.

II. The Death of God

Nietzsche first made the claim that God had died in section 108 of his book The Gay

Science. There are numerous ways of interpreting these three words. One could regard his statement

as an atheistic affirmation, implying that God literally no longer exists. Does this explanation agree

with the rest of Nietzsche’s works though? For him to postulate that God is dead, in the sense that

he has literally perished, would be an acknowledgement of his existence in the past. This outlook

contradicts with his atheist viewpoints, though.

On the contrary, Nietzsche’s proposition is not literal. Rather, he is referring, in general, to

the domineering grip that the concept of God held over the world, the “shadow” that still influences

the actions of humans who choose to obey it. According to Nietzsche in section 343 of The Gay

Science, “the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable” (Nietzsche 279). Indeed, “God

is dead” is a much different sentiment from “there is no God”, and “the distinction must be

made...between God's own death and the death of our faith in God." (Von Der Luft 270). For

Nietzsche though, God’s death, or the death of the belief in God, has long lasting and grand

implications for mankind, and he outlines these as well.

One way in which he presents the idea that God has died is through a story about a

madman: he enters the town shouting desperately that he is seeking God. All the man is met with,

though, is laughter and mocking questions from the non-believers that he encounters. Derisively,

they ask, “Has he got lost?...Did he lose his way like a child?” (Nietzsche 181). When this happens,

he lashes out at the people around him, exclaiming that God can’t be found because humans have

murdered him. According to Nietzsche, the death of God in the world is comparable to

“[unchaining] the earth from its sun”, a cosmic event that no doubt would usher in confusion, angst,

and eventual death. It would be a seemingly hopeless situation that had no chance of being

rectified. To him, the world has become (or will become, as the realization of God’s death gathers

momentum) darker, colder, with “night continually closing in on us” (Nietzsche 181).

If this is the case, then why is the death of God a beneficial thing for Nietzsche? Speaking

vicariously through the madman to his readers, Nietzsche, at this juncture in the book, has not

specified yet just what the death of God implies for mankind. He simply is a madman, one who

realizes that “[he has] come too early”, and that “this tremendous event is still on its way, still

wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men...this deed is still more distant from them than the

most distant stars -- and yet they have done it themselves (Nietzsche 182). He knows that God is

already dead - the people simply cannot realize it yet. A crucial mistake that leads to

misrepresentation of Nietzsche’s ideas is the tendency to interpret individual aphorisms separate

from the context of the entire work. In between the section entitled “The Madman” and section 343,

“the meaning of our cheerfulness”, Nietzsche further develops ideas and presents to the reader a

more complete idea of how to interpret the divine murder that he outlined in section 125.

The final section in The Gay Science that references the death of God is in the section

entitled, “The meaning of our cheerfulness”. Unlike previous sections where his reasoning for

preaching the death of God may have been unclear and seemingly mad, section 334 summarizes

what the results of God’s death will be once realized by the rest of mankind. For some, he notes,

the death of mankind’s faith in God is apparent; however, this grand “event itself is far too great,

too distant, too remote from the multitude’s capacity for comprehension even for the tidings of it

to be thought of as having arrived as yet” (Nietzsche 279).

Even if people could understand that God is dead, it would be difficult to imagine just

what that death entails -- Nietzsche’s statement called for an overhaul of the entire Western

concept of spirituality and morality, and, if one can imagine, that thought may not necessarily

conjure images of excitement in the minds of those who have only known one way of living for

their entire lives. For those who still found themselves stuck in the shadow of what Nietzsche

called “the old god”, there was an unquestionable, impending “sequence of breakdown,

destruction, ruin, and cataclysm” (Nietzsche 279). Some might argue that, based on the extreme

influence that religion had over the minds and actions of people, such a realization could only be

a harbinger for catastrophe. It is only natural to assume that, rather than come to grips with the

notion that the old religious foundation of society was defunct, people would panic and cling

tighter to their ideals. Either they would take that route or become overwhelmed by a sense of

hopeless nihilism, having come to the conclusion that in their godless world, nothing is worth

living for any longer.

According to Nietzsche, the opposite reaction is possible. In the eyes of the privileged

“philosophers and ‘free spirits’” who could see that the scene of the world was transforming, the

collective death of faith in God was not a gloomy or catastrophic revelation. Rather, Nietzsche

maintains a grand vision of optimism and freedom for the godless future that he foresees,

likening it to sailing on the open sea with no fear of danger - one with endless possibilities for

mankind.

In a world where God is dead, there is no longer a need to shape one’s life around the values

of any religious doctrine; perhaps this is the freedom Nietzsche was referring to in the final

paragraph of “The meaning of our cheerfulness”. No longer bound by suffocating, dogmatic moral

restrictions, human beings would be free to “venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all

the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again” (Nietzsche 280). Out of the chaos would

arise, at long last, the opportunity for man to be creator of his own values, and only this release

from the constraints of “the old god” could provide the unprecedented freedom that Nietzsche

craved so desperately.

Works Cited

Hazelton, Roger. "Was Nietzsche an Anti-Christian?" The Journal of Religion, Vol. 22,

No. 1 (Jan., 1942), pp. 63-88

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power, in The Authorized English Translation of

Nietzsche's Works, ed. Levy. London, I924

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science: with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of

Songs. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage-Random House, 1974. Print.

Von Der Luft, Eric. "Sources of Nietzsche's "God is Dead!" and its Meaning for

Heidegger" Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1984), pp.

263-276