Nietzsche is perhaps most famous for writing that "God is dead" in The Gay Science (though the phrase was also spoken by the madman in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra and is perhaps better known from that work). Despite one's initial inclinations when reading such a phrase, I believe that this statement of Nietzsche's has by and large been misinterpreted as a claim to atheism when it is in fact nothing of the sort.
Before I begin, a quick note and question: While this phrase is most often attributed to Nietzsche, it was also used by Hegel in his Phenomenology of Spirit (which predates Nietzsche), and Hegel there attributes the statement to Martin Luther. Does anyone have any further insight into the historical origin of this term?
Nietzsche's statement that God is dead is quickly followed by affirming that "we have killed him." One should perhaps first note that it would seem odd for a true atheist to claim that something nonexistent to be "killed" or "dead". But who is the "we" that has killed God? Nietzsche does not directly specify, but the specific "who" is of little importance. However, given the presentation of the phrase in Zarathustra, it is clear that Nietzsche does not only mean to refer to like-minded individuals; he is not presenting us with a triumphant cheer of victory for those who would want to kill God. It would be more appropriate to interpret either everyone in Nietzsche's age or his fellow scholars and intellectuals as the "we" of which he speaks.
The "how" of the death of God is the much more significant issue here. For Nietzsche it was the rationality of the thinkers of his time that killed God. Utilitarian ethics had just started to gain notice in Great Britain - an ethics which claimed to be without the need for a God, but (so claims Nietzsche) nonetheless relied on and espoused primarily Christian values. The scholars of his time (Nietzsche included, certainly) attempted to describe things in such a way that no God was necessary for the explanation. This is what "killed God" for Nietzsche.
However, as noted above, many of these philosophies nonetheless held firm to what Nietzsche saw as basic Christian principles: preventing suffering, pity, putting value on the common man, etc. Nietzsche thus wrote that the shadows of God were still all around us and that we lived in those shadows.
Nietzsche believed that the Christian interpretation of God would not hold under the critical eye of scholarship to come. However, this was not simply a good thing for Nietzsche. While it is true that Nietzsche contested many of the common Christian values, it is not true that Nietzsche sought a meaningless world without any value at all - he saw that world approaching in the wake of the death of God and he feared it. Nietzsche described nihilism as the great unseen enemy that would need to be fought against, not as somehting to be embraced. Nietzsche believed that the remnants of the Christian value system would not be enough to fight against nihilism, and so he attempted to clear out our "shadows" of Christianity so that they might be replaced by a new system of values - perhaps a new God or a new religion even?
Before I begin, a quick note and question: While this phrase is most often attributed to Nietzsche, it was also used by Hegel in his Phenomenology of Spirit (which predates Nietzsche), and Hegel there attributes the statement to Martin Luther. Does anyone have any further insight into the historical origin of this term?
Nietzsche's statement that God is dead is quickly followed by affirming that "we have killed him." One should perhaps first note that it would seem odd for a true atheist to claim that something nonexistent to be "killed" or "dead". But who is the "we" that has killed God? Nietzsche does not directly specify, but the specific "who" is of little importance. However, given the presentation of the phrase in Zarathustra, it is clear that Nietzsche does not only mean to refer to like-minded individuals; he is not presenting us with a triumphant cheer of victory for those who would want to kill God. It would be more appropriate to interpret either everyone in Nietzsche's age or his fellow scholars and intellectuals as the "we" of which he speaks.
The "how" of the death of God is the much more significant issue here. For Nietzsche it was the rationality of the thinkers of his time that killed God. Utilitarian ethics had just started to gain notice in Great Britain - an ethics which claimed to be without the need for a God, but (so claims Nietzsche) nonetheless relied on and espoused primarily Christian values. The scholars of his time (Nietzsche included, certainly) attempted to describe things in such a way that no God was necessary for the explanation. This is what "killed God" for Nietzsche.
However, as noted above, many of these philosophies nonetheless held firm to what Nietzsche saw as basic Christian principles: preventing suffering, pity, putting value on the common man, etc. Nietzsche thus wrote that the shadows of God were still all around us and that we lived in those shadows.
Nietzsche believed that the Christian interpretation of God would not hold under the critical eye of scholarship to come. However, this was not simply a good thing for Nietzsche. While it is true that Nietzsche contested many of the common Christian values, it is not true that Nietzsche sought a meaningless world without any value at all - he saw that world approaching in the wake of the death of God and he feared it. Nietzsche described nihilism as the great unseen enemy that would need to be fought against, not as somehting to be embraced. Nietzsche believed that the remnants of the Christian value system would not be enough to fight against nihilism, and so he attempted to clear out our "shadows" of Christianity so that they might be replaced by a new system of values - perhaps a new God or a new religion even?
) - the death of deism as a moral ideology.
