What did Nietzsche mean by 'God is

dead' in The Gay Science?

By: Saravanan Kumararajan
Student No: C3194438

Introduction.
"Gott ist tot", which translates to "God is dead" is one of the most widely known
statement of German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche which first made its
appearance in one of Nietzsche's 1882 collection of books Die Frhliche
Wissenschaft (The Gay Science) but was made famous with Nietzsche's classic
work Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) (source :3).. An excerpt
of this idea is stated below from the chapter "The Madman" in The Gay Science:
"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort
ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all
that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe
this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of
atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of
this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear
worthy of it?" (source :1)
The question does arise what did Nietzsche mean by "God is dead" and the
statement "we have killed him", Does Nietzsche believe that a god does exist
and god was killed by the hands of us, mortal humans? Has the "madman" truly
become "mad" or does Nietzsche want to convey a different message by stating
such a statement in a time where god is deeply ingrained in the lives of the
people living at the time. This essay will try to answer those questions and
explain Nietzsche's reasoning.

Brief Explanation
"God is Dead" is not meant to be taken in the literal sense of the phrase. If there
were such a thing as a god then he would have to be immortal, which meant that
the statement made by Nietzsche would have been counterintuitive. Rather
Nietzsche conveys that god is no longer a credible source of absolute morality.
He also views his "death" as a problem for humanity. Which is made clear in "The
Madman" from the line "The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them
with his glances" (source :1). We shall dwell into thin further in the coming
paragraphs.

Explanation.
Humans throughout history have always been curious animals. We have always
wondered how our existence came to be, how babies can be born, what creates
lightning, why the universe follows a definite structure and rules of physics and
who created such structure. These questions were hard to answer. Thus, as we

continued to expand our knowledge in the sciences, some questions just

remained unexplained. This is where God comes in, an all-knowing, omnipresent,
immortal and powerful being that had created the universe and all that are
present in it. At the time it made sense, as we started to observe structures that
the universe seems to follow and abide by and since science was in its infancy at
that time, we weren't able to explain these observations. God (in this context)
was used as a universal axiom (truth) used to fill in the gaps in our
understanding of the universe. Therefore, the first function of god was to provide
a form of framework where knowledge and wisdom can be attained. (source :3).
The second function of god was to provide moral judgement. This function of god
was introduced by the many prophets that had become popular in that period,
where they would connect the aforementioned framework with moral judgment.
In essence, god wasn't only the one who created the lightning but he could also
direct lightning to fall on anyone who was (in his eyes) immoral. Therefore, the
function of god was twofold, he was the creator of our world and also the one
that provided morals in which we behave ourselves around (objective morals).
(source :3).
As time passed, came scientific advancement, with the introduction of Newtonian
physics and great works of Kepler, Copernicus and Galilei (which will eventually
lead to modern science) led to the understanding that god would no longer be a
credible source of knowledge and that research and scientific study would be a
more reliable source for not, just regarding the functioning of the universe but
also the creation of morals and ethics. Therefore, with the people thinking about
new morals and ethical behaviour led to us not needing an all-knowing being
such as god to define our morals for us. Thus, in the philosophical sense of the
phrase, "God is now truly dead". (source :3)
This is made very clear in chapter "The Madman "in the gay science from the
lines "he provoked much laughter" and "Thus they yelled and laughed" (source :
1)., as no one rebukes the madman' for his blasphemous statements or attempt
to help him in the search for god, instead he is being laughed at by his audience.
This tells us that Nietzsche now perceives the idea of a god to have become
impotent. Thus he helps create this sociologist movement for not taking god
seriously as the "death of god". Nietzsche accredits this degradation to both
Christianity and reason influenced humanism.
Why does Nietzsche blame Christianity for the cause of "Gods death"? Nietzsche
is widely known for denouncing the Christian faith and monotheism in general. A
good example of this is seen in his book Birth of Tragedy where he states:
"Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's
nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up
as, faith in "another" or "better" life." (source :5).
This is due to the fact during the medieval ages the church tried to get a hold on
the "monopoly of god". They did so by disrupting and destroying any noteworthy
work of philosophers and eliminating people who did not share their views.
Therefore, this period was typically referred to as the Dark ages. Thus the lines
"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him" in "The Madman" can
also be understood as Nietzsche's way of accusing the church for their acts. He
also claims that the church had ruined the credibility of anyone that tries to

convey the message of "what's the right thing to do ". Ever since this incident
people seem to have a natural distrust of anyone that talks about morality and
what it is to be morally just. Therefore, in the eyes of Nietzsche, Christianity had
caused this. So it was the church and thus man who killed god and moral
credibility. By stating that he thought people distrusted anyone that wants to talk
about morality, he has been seen to have been mirroring Max Stirner, who said
atheists had merely replaced the fear of a god, with the fear of man in his book
The ego and its own:
"But, because Man represents only another Supreme Being, nothing, in fact, has
taken place but a metamorphosis in the Supreme Being and the fear of Man is
merely an altered form of the fear of God." (source :4).
Now this leads to Nietzsche argument that he sees the death of god be a
problem, this was made clear in the aforementioned lines in "The Madmen "that
Nietzsche uses to present the problem: "The madman sprang into their midst
and pierced them with his glances". Nietzsche tries to convey that this event is
wiping away the horizon of what we hold meaningful. He also presents God's
death as our world losing its centre of gravity. (source : 2) Thus, it can be
deduced that god's death can be perceived as a crisis of direction by Nietzsche,
as if we were sent into an infinite free fall where we would lose our sense of
purpose and meaning of our lives, which Nietzsche portrays as "Are we not
straying, as through an infinite nothing?"(source :1).
In essence, what Nietzsche tries to say is that we have killed god, so we have
also lost our source of objective morality. So it's now up to us humankind to take
the responsibilities that were assigned to god, thus finding ways to live a morally
responsible life on our own and by our own terms that is morally acceptable for
everyone involved. Therefore, we have essentially become gods ourselves. This
worries Nietzsche as we have taken one of the greatest powers known to
mankind, the power of moral judgement, and what he tries to convey is that with
this great power come great responsibility. (source :3).
In summary, Nietzsche sees god's death lead to disenchantment (giving our lives
a sense of purpose) which was previously gained through our beliefs in god
which has been replaced by essentially Nihilism (reality means essentially
nothing) or basically an insignificant world.
Now the question of Genealogy of Nihilism arises. Nietzsche here adopts a
psychological approach to truth claims. He isn't interested in how valid or how
much empirical support a particular theory or religion achieves but is more
interested in how people attempt to defend such theories or religious notions.
This motivating drive to defend our religious beliefs according to Nietzsche is a
form of escapism from the drives of life. In essence, the escape from what makes
us human, our unquenchable thirst for knowledge and or our will to seek the
truth. Therefore, we might term such a critique in god as a psychological
reductionism, which in essence means the identification of truths is brought
down to the psychological process of identifying. In simpler terms a belief in god
in reducible to the process in which came to the conclusions to believe in such a
god. (source :2).
Psychological reductionism leads to Nietzsche's third argument against God. The
third argument is Nietzsche belief in Pantheism. Pantheism is when a person

belief is centred around nature basically stating that nature is divine and
everything has some purpose in this divine reality. Therefore, god is critiqued on
the grounds that we undermine the source of value in nature for the sake of a
fictionist afterlife. (source :2).
In summary, then, Nietzsche views the world we live in as a god in all its beauty
and we all play a crucial role in it and he views that to be blindsided of all this
beauty for the sake of a fiction to be a form of a sickness. (source :2).

Conclusion
In conclusion, the death of god poses a challenge for humanity, God is seen as
both a symptom and the cause of the worlds disenchantment. It is described in
this way because the belief in god leads to projecting meaning beyond our
involvement in our world (the afterlife, heaven, and hell), because of the fact
that we don't draw enough sense of purpose in the real world we live in.So by
projecting this meaning or sense of purpose beyond our world, we then
essentially undermine the meaning of that involvement, since now meaning have
been infused to events by their being referred to God. There we can conclude
that god himself can be seen as vicious cycle of meaninglessness.
Whatever limitations Nietzsche's theories may have in terms of the death of god,
we can't disagree that his remains to be a great thinker in the problem of the
worlds disenchantment. Therefore, theists reading Nietzsche need to identify the
problems he highlights and the answer he gives to those problems.

Bibliography:
1.Friedrich Nietzsche, The Parable of the Madman (1882)." The Hustory Guide.
April 13, 2012. Accessed September 19, 2016.
http://www.historyguide.org/europe/madman.html.
2.Samuel, Adrian. "Nietzsche and God (Part I)." Richmond Journal of Philosophy.
March 14, 2007. Accessed September 19, 2016. http://www.richmondphilosophy.net/rjp/back_issues/rjp14_samuel.pdf.
3. What Did Nietzsche Mean by "God Is Dead"?" QUARA. April 13, 2013. Accessed
September 19, 2016. https://www.quora.com/What-did-Nietzsche-mean-by-Godis-dead.
4. By the Manure of Their Corpses the Nation Comes to. "The Ego and His Own."
Library Torrent (January 2016). Accessed September 19, 2016.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-stirner-the-ego-and-his-own.
5.Guess, Ramound, and Ronald Spiers. "The Birth of Tragedy." The Birth of
Tragedy. January 01, 1999. Accessed September 19, 2016.
http://seas3.elte.hu/coursematerial/TimarAndrea/Nietzsche__The_Birth_of_Traged
y_and_Other_Writings__Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy_.pdf.