self-reference, after conversation with German Herr Adler , a Christian who claimed man is evil and fallible and needs to bow to Gods law as the only means of preserving morality, discussion led to natural law and countered natural order is Tao is the East, requires no king or central leadership, and that mans nature is inherently good and harmonious, but has been corrupted by greed in modern dysfunctional societies. Herr Adler agreed, citing the harmony he found in a small village in Bavaria where he grew up, and the butcher, baker, doctors were all honest people who knew their community, but that this broke down after the war and exists in the big cities as self-centered chaos ruled only by mans law, a dim shadow of Gods law: God is dead does not mean Nietzsche believed in an actual God who first existed and then died in a literal sense. It may be more appropriate[according to whom?] to consider the statement as Nietzsches way of saying that he saw the Christian God as no longer a viable source of any absolute moral principles, but that is his own personal opinion and not a stated fact. Nietzsche recognizes the crisis which the death of God represents for existing moral considerations, because When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under ones feet. This morality is by no means self-evident... By breaking one main concept out of Christianity, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in ones hands.[1] This is why in The Madman, a passage which primarily addresses nontheists (especially atheists), the problem is to retain any system of values in the absence of a divine order. The death of God is a way of saying that humans are no longer able to believe in any such cosmic order since they themselves no longer recognize it. The death of God will lead, Nietzsche says, not only to the rejection of a belief of cosmic or physical order but also to a rejection of absolute values themselves — to the rejection of belief in an objective and universal moral law, binding upon all individuals. In this manner, the loss of an absolute basis for morality leads to nihilism. This nihilism is that for which Nietzsche worked to find a solution by re-evaluating the foundations of human values. This meant, to Nietzsche, looking for foundations that went deeper than Christian values. He would find a basis in the will to power that he described as the essence of reality. Nietzsche believed that the majority of people did not recognize this death out of the deepest-seated fear or angst. Therefore, when the death did begin to become widely acknowledged, people would despair and nihilism would become rampant. This is partly why Nietzsche saw Christianity as nihilistic. He may have seen himself as a historical figure like Zarathustra, Socrates or Jesus, giving a new philosophical orientation to future generations to overcome the impending nihilism. Misunderstandings of the death of God[edit] When first being introduced to Nietzsche, a person can infer the “death of God” as literal. To Nietzsche, the concept of God only exists in the minds of his followers; therefore, the believers would ultimately be accountable for his life and death. Holub goes on to state that “God has been the victim of murder, and we, as human beings, are the murderers” (36). Another purpose of Nietzsche’s death of God is to “unmask the hypocrisies and illusion of outworn value systems” (Pfeffer 18). People do not fully comprehend that they killed God through their hypocrisy and lack of morality. Due to hypocrisy “God has lost whatever function he once had because of the actions taken by those who believe in him” (Welshon 40). A god is merely a mirrored reflection of its people and the “Christian God is so ridiculous a God that even were he to have existed, he would have no right to exist” (Welshon 39). Religious people start going against their beliefs and start coinciding with the beliefs of mainstream society. “[Moral thinking] is debased and poisoned by the influence of society’s weakest and most ignoble elements, the herd” (Welshon 16). Humanity depreciates traditional ethics and beliefs and this leads to another misunderstanding of the death of God. During the era of Nietzsche, traditional beliefs within Christianity became almost nonexistent due to the vast expansion of education and the rise of modern science. “Belief in God is no longer possible due to such nineteenth-century factors as the dominance of the historical-critical method of reading Scripture, the rise of incredulity toward anything miraculous . . . and the idea that God is the creation of wish projection (Benson 31). Nietzsche believed that man was useless without a God and “no longer possesses ideals and absolute goals toward which to strive. He has lost all direction and purpose” (Pfeffer 76). Nietzsche believes that in order to overcome our current state of depreciated values that a “strong classic pessimism” like that of the Greeks is “needed to overcome the dilemmas and anxieties of modern man” (Pfeffer 65). “Either we died because of our religion or our religion dies because of us” (Pfeffer 73). This quote summarizes what Nietzsche was trying to say in his concept of the death of God- that the God of Christianity has died off because of its people and their beliefs. Far too often do people translate the death of God into a literal sense, do not take responsibility for the death of God, and depreciate the value of traditional Christian beliefs - all leading to the misunderstandings of Nietzsche’s philosophy of God’s death. Now in a world where God is dead we can only hope that technology and science does not take control and “be treated as the new religion, serving as a basis for retaining the same damaging psychological habit that the Christian religion developed” (Magnus 36). Nietzsche and Heidegger[edit] Martin Heidegger understood this part of Nietzsches philosophy by looking at it as death of metaphysics. In his view, Nietzsches words can only be understood as referring not to a particular theological or anthropological view but rather to the end of philosophy itself. Philosophy has, in Heideggers words, reached its maximum potential as metaphysics and Nietzsches words warn of its demise and that of any metaphysical world view. If metaphysics is dead, Heidegger warns, that is because from its inception that was its fate.[2] New possibilities[edit] Nietzsche believed there could be positive possibilities for humans without God. Relinquishing the belief in God opens the way for human creative abilities to fully develop. The Christian God, he wrote, would no longer stand in the way, so human beings might stop turning their eyes toward a supernatural realm and begin to acknowledge the value of this world. Nietzsche uses the metaphor of an open sea, which can be both exhilarating and terrifying. The people who eventually learn to create their lives anew will represent a new stage in human existence, the Übermensch — i.e. the personal archetype who, through the conquest of their own nihilism, themselves become a sort of mythical hero. The death of God is the motivation for Nietzsches last (uncompleted) philosophical project, the revaluation of all values.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 23:16:15 +0000
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