Eileen Jakeway Instructor: Malcolm Campbell English 1103 11/6/13 God is Dead. Or is He?

Nietzsches famous declaration that God is dead, has echoed to all corners of modern, Western thought. Countless philosophers and thinkers have read The Parable of the Madman and concluded that Nietzsche was an atheist, condemning Christian morality and thereby disbelieving in God. I would like to separate these two and dissect Nietzsches work a bit further to explore what I consider the human attempt to understand the good and evil of this world through rationality. I find this wrestling to be inescapable and I feel that I must address these questions to uncover more about Friedrich Nietzsche, but also in order to learn more about my worldview and myself. Rather than dispelling belief in a God, Nietzsche criticizes the herd mentality that has taken over the Christian church as an institution or rather, the mindless acceptance of what one is told. Congregations are following whatever has been handed down to them because they believe it is the rational thing to do. At the same time, critics such as Steven Kreis argue in Lecture 3: Nietzsche, Freud and the Thrust Towards Modernism that Nietzsche realized that man must understand that life is not governed by rational principlesThere are no absolute standards of good and evil which can be demonstrated by human Reason. (Kreis) Building on this statement, it is necessary to take a look at what Nietzsche defined as God and the implications this has on the way humans understand truth. In his The

Gay Science, Nietzsche writes that, God is the creator, the source of Being and of all things...Yet such a God is also the God of truth the philosophical pattern of rationality and intelligibility[found] reflected and incarnated everywhere throughout the universe (Allison 91). This definition of God, which Nietzsche claims to be at the root of humanitys beliefs, complicates our comprehension of the world. If God is the source of rationality are any advances we make using reason and by extension, science and technology, not moving us closer to God in our modern day and age? This is not what Nietzsche suggests. He argues that we are killing God, in a sense, exchanging him for a new idol, deity to worship. In the following quote from the Introduction to The Gay Science, this exchange is highlighted quite clearly: There was no longer felt to be a need for the Old God. His function as creator, confessor, balm, judge, and accountant was replaced by another agency, namely, by science and by another faith- the faith and belief in an omnipotent technology. The Judeo-Christian God eventually comes to be replaced by the new marvel of a universal scientific order of creation, production, and rationally consistent explanation. (Allison 92) The Old God was, in a sense, pushed out by a consensus reached by general populations. In The Parable of the Madman, the churches are called the tombs and sepulchers of God. (Nietzsche 125) God was locked out by the very people who claimed to worship Him. They still attended church, still went through their routine, but the intention in it was not to find truth. I myself have witnessed amongst my peers this delusional and aptly masked apathy. Their truth existed outside, in the world, in the patterns and theories presented by science. If they prescribed to Nietzsches philosophy,
Eileen Jakeway! 11/25/13 8:32 PM Deleted: .

they would see this truth indeed reiterated everywhere, but accept it as flowing from God. When critics claim that Nietzsche shunned the idea of a God, I cannot accept that he would accept Him as the source of truth, without accepting him as the source of morality. And in his writings, he is very focused in the everyday decisions we make that create what we perceive as truth. And he believes that truth has to be fought for every step of the way. (Williams xvii). When exploring these assumptions, questions about the fundamental characteristics of our universe arise. Is it chaotic or rational to begin with? Can we even claim to understand it? We want to exchange one belief system for another, but is this just a different manifestation of the same weaknesses and fears that have always been present amongst human populations? It is important that these questions plague us. Not so much that we answer them, as long as we address them and are conscious of their relevance. One theory that Nietzsche proposed is religion as a power struggle. Our definition of God changes based on how we feel we need to perceive the world. Weakness and metaphysical illusions came into existence as a psychological compensation for the weakness of people who were powerless, and this outlook triumphed over the conventionally strong and their view of the world (Williams x). The death of God is presented as the result of a power struggle: the weak control what they can. It was thought that fear and weakness generated a need for God, the old God but really it is the new God of science and technology that is the manifestation of a fear of humans role in the universe. The more we are afraid of our own insignificance, the more we seek to understand and control through science, making it the center of our lives and worship.

In his quest for truth, Nietzsche admits the source of Being is also the source of value and truth. This truth is universal and concrete; despite our advances in science and technology, we cannot replace the truth that has always been. He does not doubt the beliefs of the old Christians who worshipped in churches; rather, he attacks contemporary Christians for their lack of true belief, their doubt in an old truth. In Book III of On Geneaology of Morality, he wrote: You will have gathered what I am getting at, namely, that it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests-that even we knowers of today, we godless anti-metaphysicians, still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by the thousand-year-old faith, the Christian faith which was also Platos faith, that God is truth, that truth is divine. (xviii) In my personal opinion, there do exist fundamental truths that we must fight to uncover. It is a lifetime challenge and struggle; the quintessential meaning of life we are all looking for. I believe that Nietzsche was doing exactly that in his work, in a manner not pledged to any one school of thought. However, just because his expression was radical and unconventional, does not mean he did not reach any meaningful conclusions. Just by virtue of dedicating his life to the pursuit of the divine, Nietzsche was a deeply spiritual person, per my definition of the word. Spirituality, to me, is to associate meaning to life other than the immediate. It is the acceptance of the value of aesthetics, the emotion evoked by language and the impact we have on each other. I believe that living is a spiritual experience, but not everyone is aware of the metaphysical journey each day represents. Nietzsche was spiritual because he was awake. He was very conscious of his existence and that of othershe looked for truth and for meaning. He chose to uncover
Eileen Jakeway! 11/25/13 8:35 PM Deleted: .

his spirit and understand that of humankind. That is what makes a spiritual person; religion is just one vehicle for undertaking said journey. I agree with author David B. Allison that, [Nietzsche] saw the unraveling of Christianity as part of the phenomenon that he called European nihilism, the loss of any sense of depth or significance to life. (Allison xx ) Since humans could explain a lot about the world, they did not bother to look any deeper. They accepted still rather rudimentary, though scientifically accurate, perceptions of the world. If something did not check out logically, like a faith or religion, it was dropped by the wayside, left behind. However, this blocked people from seeing the interconnectivity of the universe as a whole and disregards belief systems that people have held for thousands of years. To me, there is something very beautiful about the same truth being passed down to us throughout history by our ancestors. It is as if we are somehow connected to those who came before us. I believe that the human struggle is as real today as it was in the times before technology and civilization. Rather than being devastating, to me, this is sacred. In order to understand Nietzsches goals for combatting nihilism, it is important to know what this concept entails and what various scholars of the time thought in regards to this doctrine. According to Alan Pratt: Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. While few philosophers would claim to be nihilists, nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy

all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history. (Pratt) As a young philosopher, Nietzsche was influenced by several older mentors, including Arthur Schopenhauer. Interestingly, Nietzsche became a huge proponent of his when he first read the work of the prominent German philosopher. Throughout the course of his career, however, Nietzsche discovered several incongruences between his personal beliefs and the notions entertained by Schopenhauer. A major one of these includes the prospect of human suffering and its implications for humanity. There has also been some contention over Nietzsches view on suffering. While some suggest that Nietzsche views suffering as a sign of weakness that is ultimately eliminable from human existence, (Conway) others maintain that Nietzsche possessed a hyper-sensitivity to suffering.linked to a total refusal to forget, not only the existence of suffering but the fact that suffering was necessary to everything that he and anyone else valued (Allison xvi). In my personal opinion, we as humans must remain of our suffering so that we might fully embrace our conquests of this pain, no matter how fleeting. In order to appreciate intense joy, one must have felt extreme sorrow. This explains how even the tragedies of Shakespeare can be almost agonizingly beautiful. Many scholars read Nietzsches work and see it as a challenge to the Christian Church. And that is very true. One might even consider him an atheist and be right, because it is very likely he would not believe in religion, as it exists today. However, one would be wrong in discarding his belief in God. He believed in morality and truth and fought very hard to discover it in the course of his lifetime. The fact that he explored such a variety of subjects in a very critical way: morality, truth, the divine, religion as a power

struggle, the will to power and the eternal recurrence to name a few, made it very easy for other philosophers to impose their own value systems on his work and interpret them through that lens. Writer David B. Allison agrees. The deeply radical spirit of his work was combined with a lack of effective political and social ideas, leaving a blank on which many different aspirations could be projected (Allison xii). Nietzsche did not believe in a traditional God or the God that is currently worshipped in temples and churches. Nor is this the God that has always held that position. But Friedrich Nietzsche believed in Truth. And he believed that it is the responsibility of people to hold themself to this truth, to make the decision to seek it out and to find morality in that pursuit: At any price: we understand this well enough once we have slaughtered one faith after another on this altar! Consequently, will to truth does not mean I do not want to let myself be deceived but there is no alternative- I will not deceive, not even myself; and with that we stand on moral ground. (Nietzsche xvii) Humans use Reason to try to make sense of the world. However, the morality that flows from God and Nature, the inherent Good and Evil, is thereby blocked out by trying to explain it. Any attempts to reason and to rationalize the extent of a world simply outside of our grasp, are a spiritual step away from God. With every rational decision we make, Nietzsche argues that we move one step further away from the morality stemming from God or Nature. Nietzsche is so vehemently opposed to Christianity, not because he is against God, but because he detests our position in the world as we currently exist. We

are simply drifting unawares away from all sunsplunging continuallybackward, sideward, foreward, in all directions (Nietzsche, The Parable of the Madman). In these arguments, Nietzsche is attacking humanity, not God. There is a God, he says in his writings, but we refuse his morality without accepting our own. This is what Nietzsche is combatting: the mindless followings of an institution that is not truly Godly. Really, this does not make Nietzsche an atheist. It makes him a more conscious, curious Christian than most. In a way, he argues that we can have it one way or have it the other. But instead, we are just joining a mindless herd mentality and avoiding the choice. This is what Nietzsche abhors, why this tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men (Parable).
Eileen Jakeway! 11/25/13 8:38 PM Formatted: Font:Not Italic

Eileen Jakeway! 11/25/13 8:40 PM Deleted:

Works Cited Allison, David B. Reading the New Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy, the Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and on the Genealogy of Morals. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. Print.
Eileen Jakeway! 11/25/13 8:41 PM Formatted: Line spacing: double

Conway, David. Nietzsches Revaluation of Schopenhauer as Educator. BU. N.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2013

Dolson, Grace Neal. The Influence of Schopenhauer on Friedrich Nietzsche. Duke University Press. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.

Nietzsche, Friedrich W, Bernard Williams, Josefine Nauckhoof, and Caro A. Del. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Print.

Pratt, Alan. Nihilism. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 23 April, 2013. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.

Eileen Jakeway! 11/25/13 8:40 PM Deleted: TO DO: Work in my personal opinion, transition between paragraphs and write strong conclusion, include examples of people whom Nietzsche looked up to whom did he admire?
... [1]

Eileen Jakeway! 11/25/13 9:00 PM Deleted:

... [2]