"God is dead"

[BreadBros]

I'm sure at one point or another most of us have heard of Nietzsche's famous assertation that "God is dead". Up until now I had never really thought about the meaning of the quote. Here is Nietzsche's full quote from The Gay Science:


Originally posted by "Nietzsche"+--> ("Nietzsche") God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it?
— Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125, tr. Walter Kaufmann
[/b]

Here, from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_is_dead), is a primary explanation of the quote:


"Wikipedia"
Explanation

"God is dead" is not meant literally, as in "God is now physically dead"; rather, it is Nietzsche's way of saying that the idea of God is no longer capable of acting as a source of any moral code or teleology. Nietzsche recognises 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 one's 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 one's hands."[1] This is why in "The Madman", the madman addresses not believers, but 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 what Nietzsche worked to find a solution for by re-evaluating the foundations of human values. This meant, to Nietzsche, looking for foundations that went deeper than the Christian values most Christians refuse to look beyond.

Nietzsche believed that the majority of men did not recognize (or refused to acknowledge) 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, as well as the relativistic belief that human will is a law unto itself—anything goes and all is permitted. This is partly why Nietzsche saw Christianity as nihilistic. To Nietzsche, nihilism is the consequence of any idealistic philosophical system, because all idealisms suffer from the same weakness as Christian morality—that there is no "foundation" to build on. He therefore describes himself as "a 'subterranean man' at work, one who tunnels and mines and undermines."

New possibilities

Nietzsche believed there could be positive possibilities for humans without God. Relinquishing the belief in God opens the way for human's creative abilities to fully develop. The Christian God, with his arbitrary commands and prohibitions, 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. The recognition that "God is dead" would be like a blank canvas. It is a freedom to become something new, different, creative — a freedom to be something without being forced to accept the baggage of the past. 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. The 'death of God' is the motivation for Nietzsche's last (uncompleted) philosophical project, the 'revaluation of all values'.

I've always dismissed Nietzsche as a conservative philosopher because, as I learned in school, his ideas of the Ubermensch influenced fascism and Naziism. More importantly he seems to be seeking a restoration of some moral order to society in contrast to nihilism. Many individuals equate nihilism with some sort of anarchical society, and therefore see Nietzsche as being a reactionary.

However, I was recently talking to a friend of mine who argued something to the opposite. He argued that Nietzsche was not mourning the death of belief in spiritual order. Rather Nietzsche was criticizing idealist views of the world, because as society becomes more conscious and intelligent about the world, it comes to reject belief in supernatural order in the world. This leads to nihilism. My friend argued that nihilism in Nietzsche's view is not the rejection of supernatural order and the belief in material order, but rather simply a state where traditional moral codes are still widely accepted as guiding the world but where true belief in them on the part of individuals no longer exists. Religion (especially Christianity, with its emphasis on the afterlife) strips the material world of any meaning, but the increasing disbelief in supernatural meaning means the world is left without any meaning whatsoever. What Nietzsche is calling for then is not the restoration of traditional order, but rather for a society that creates value in actual material existence and creates an order to existence that derives from material existence and not from idealistic concepts.

So while I know Nietzsche is often pegged as a reactionary or proto-fascist philosopher, the conception posited above portrays him differently, almost as a materialist philosopher, or even as an existentialist (albeit with less emphasis on subjectivity). So Im wondering what everyone thinks about these ideas? Interpretation of the quote? On nihilism versus meaning?

[MrDoom]

Very good interpretation, I agree fully.

As I understand the Nazi's and Fascists did a lot of cherry-picking with his writings and used it for purely political purposes.

[Bretty123]

Yeah it's a legitimate interpretation, same interpretation I got from it. I would argue against anyone who says Nietzsche would sponsor nazism or fascism. He even says in Beyond Good and Evil that Europe should throw the anti-semites out.

[rouchambeau]

One quote that would be good to make note of is the one about the camel, the lion, and the baby from Thus Spake Zarathustra. It sums up pretty well what your friend was getting at.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

The 'pro-Nazi' passages were put together by his sister (Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche) who was an open follower of Hitler:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche

[JimFar]

One can say a lot about Nietzsche and his philosophical views, so I will say a few things.

He was one of the great critics of metaphysics, something that was picked up on by a number of leading twentieth century philosophers of otherwise diverse views: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Carnap. Having said that, he wasn't entirely successful in freeing himself of metaphysics. His famous notion of the "will to power" as used by him in his various writings looks pretty metaphysical. On the other hand he made a great contribution to social science with his studies of the geneology of morals, something which was considered to be very daring and shocking at the time. BTW his analysis of the geneology of morals fits in rather well with Marxists' analyses of ideology IMO.

For a long time many analytical philosophers in the Anglophone world tended to be rather disparaging of Nietzsche as a philosopher. This was true particularly of such figures as Bertrand Russell and A.J. Ayer (who dismissed him as "wooly minded"). On the other hand Ludwig Wittgenstein was a great admirer as was the logical positivist Rudolf Carnap. Thus concerning Nietzsche, it is interesting to note that while Carnap let loose against Heidegger in his essay. "The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language," he had nothing but praise for Nietzsche. There, Carnap discerned similarities between Nietzsche's critique of metaphysics as found in say Human, All too Human and his own. He seems to have regarded Nietzsche as a "metaphyscian" who had the good sense to avoid the errors for which he reproached other metaphysicians. He admired the "empirical content" of Nietzsche's work, including especially its "historical analyses of specific artistic phenomena, or a historical-psychological analysis of morals." And he praised Nietzsche for having chosen the medium of poetry in such works as Thus Spake Zarathustra for presenting his ideas rather attempting to present them in a theoretical treatise. The fact that Carnap found much to praise in the work of Nietzsche is significant since in "The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language," Carnap went on the attack against Heidegger, whose metaphysical statements, Carnap dismissed as meaningless. Apparently for Carnap, part of Nietzsche's greatness was the fact that he used poetic means for expressing himself. This fit in with Carnap's view that metaphysics fails because it makes meaningless statements. For Carnap, language had a variety of functions to perform. One of those is the making cognitively meaningful statements. Other functions include the making of what Carnap described as emotive statements. Such language can express Lebensgefühl. Metaphysics attempts to express Lebensgefühl too but fails because it can only issue meaningless statements. The appropriate means for expressing Lebensgefühl is art rather than metaphysics, and Nietzsche was praised by Carnap for realizing that. For Carnap, Nietzsche was the metaphysician who had the greatest artistic talent.

BTW I have recently read Arthur Danto's Nietzsche book. There Danto makes the point that Nietzsche in his work anticipated some of the central ideas of 20th century philosophical movements such as logical positivism and existentialism. Curiously, enough, I could find no reference in Danto's book to Carnap. I wonder what was up with that. Anyway, Danto's 1965 book was, I belive, the first full-length study of Nietzsche by an analytical philosopher. Since then quite a number of analytical philosophers have written studies of Nietzsche's work, so that it is no longer the case that the field of Nietzschean studies is a monopoly of continental philosophers as had been the case before Danto's book.

It is also important to point out that while Nietzsche was politically a kind of reactionary and that his writings had a great appeal to certain kinds of reactionaries including the Nazis, his work also had a great appeal to many leftwing intellectuals. As early as the 1890s, there were discussions underway within the German SPD as to how his thought could be used to promote socialism. During the twentieth century, Nietzsche was taken up by many leftists starting with such folk as Lunacharsky, Bogdanov,Trotsky and a number of other Bolsheviks. He was a major influence on the young Lukacs (who later became a great critic of him). Nietzsche was greatly admired by the Frankfurt School (i.e. Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse), as well as by Sartre. And of course people like Foucault and his disciples styled themselves as "Nietzscheans."

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Thanks for those comments Jim; I have to say that I was prejudiced against Nietzsche because of the way that he had been appropriated by certain Nazis, and by nihilists, among others, until I began to read him.

And I can only agree with Carnap, and W, that he is certainly one of the most important thinkers of the 19th century (second perhaps behind Frege) -- I exclude Marx, since he was not a Philosopher.

[Bretty123]

Rosa was your readings recent of Nietzsche? Because for awhile when I spoke to you about him, you certainly seemed prejudiced against him. What ideas made you change your mind slightly?

[Bretty123]

Also Jim I agree with you on your thoughts about his will to power, but sometimes I feel like it could of been a social and spiritual criticism of history. He says in one of his passages, that as one nation becomes spiritually shallower, another becomes deeper. It's the will to power, and I somewhat agree with his concept. He definitely influenced alot of scholars, and influenced me greatly if not for ideas then for the spirit!

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

Marx was in every way a philosopher. You can't pick and choose what facts you accept because they don't agree with your political/philosophical views, Rosa.

As for Nietzsche, his quote is summed up quite nicely by wikipedia. I agree what that interpretation. People need a new source for morality because God no longer unifies them. As for Nietzsche and nihilism, he was extremely critical of it, and I share his criticisms. Many people mistake him for being nihilist.

When it comes to the Ubermensch, I think it is one of Nietzsche's most important ideas. It is more about self-empowerment than Nazism.

[phragit]

God is dead was Martin Luther's claim, it was modernized by Hegel and Nietzsche first used it in Also Spracht Zarathustra............

[Tatarin]

A sideline, but Nietzsche is a perfect propaganda tool for the US. His sister was a nazi, and he himself was a nihilist, thus he was also an anarchist (which means that he was a communist too). Oh, and he also thought that god was dead.

:D :rolleyes:

[YSR]

thus he was also an anarchist (which means that he was a communist too).

Huh? Nietzsche was many things, but anarchist or communist were neither of them.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Bretty, I cannot think why you thought I was prejudiced against Nietzsche. The very worst I said about him was that he wimped out, and developed his own metaphysical theory. Otherwise, I think I only said positive things about him -- or at least those parts of his work that are relevant to my own project.

My reading of Nietzsche goes back to spring 1980.

[Demogorgon]

I am no fan of him. Even if his philosophy was not the opposite of mine, his writing style is awful. And to make matters worse he has influenced all these idiots on the internet who think to make themselves seem clever they have to use use long rambling and over-dramatic prose to make simple (and often rather poorly thought out) points.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Dooga:


Marx was in every way a philosopher. You can't pick and choose what facts you accept because they don't agree with your political/philosophical views, Rosa.

Well, if I could be bothered with a closed mind like yours, I'd prove otherwise.

But since you are lost in dialectical hell, I think I will leave you to stew.

[phragit]

Originally posted by Young Stupid [email protected] 16 2006, 12:10 AM

thus he was also an anarchist (which means that he was a communist too).

Huh? Nietzsche was many things, but anarchist or communist were neither of them.
Nietzsche supported monarchy

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 15 2006, 05:23 PM
Dooga:


Marx was in every way a philosopher. You can't pick and choose what facts you accept because they don't agree with your political/philosophical views, Rosa.

Well, if I could be bothered with a closed mind like yours, I'd prove otherwise.

But since you are lost in dialectical hell, I think I will leave you to stew.
Excuses excuses. If you cared so much, you would at least explain yourself. Otherwise everyone else is going to take my side ... and you don't want people believing the crazy idea that Marx was a philosopher ... lol. Why don't we just let people look it up for themselves? Perhaps they can ask an expert? Or look it up in a library? Or are all institutions of learning that reach a consensus based on reality just spewing some metaphysical nonsense?

Most people take the fact that barely anyone agrees with them, especially experts in the field they profess knowledge in, as a sign that their views may be incorrect. And you call me closed minded.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Dooga:


If you cared so much, you would at least explain yourself.

No to you. You are a professional waste of time.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 16 2006, 02:43 AM
Dooga:


If you cared so much, you would at least explain yourself.

No to you. You are a professional waste of time.
I was appealing to your sense of obligation, if you have one, to the truth and convincing others of it. I simply pointed out that when person X sees you say Marx is not a philosopher and an academic source says otherwise, they are goint to disagree with you. If anything, I was being generous when I told you this. I could have easily just let everyone dismiss what you wrote as simply your lack of knowledge. If you are going to say something as radical as Karl Marx is not a philosopher, on a whim, people are just going to think your misinformed or, if they know you believe it on philosophical grounds, arrogant for not explaining yourself.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Dooga, moan all you like, I am happy to leave you to stew in your self-imposed mystical state of aporia.

[chimx]

"god is dead" is a denunciation of dead morality. Nietzsche's morality instead focused around the eternal return.

"What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' " -The Gay Science

of course it wasn't meant to be exchanging one supernatural belief for another. Nietzsche felt that if the matter in the universe was finite, but time infinite, eternal return was a material inevitability.

[RevolverNo9]

God is dead was Martin Luther's claim

Er, was it?


His sister was a nazi, and he himself was a nihilist, thus he was also an anarchist (which means that he was a communist too).

Er, is that the worse piece of deductive reasoning I've ever witnessed?


Marx was in every way a philosopher.

In every way a philosopher? Why do you think this?

[Bretty123]

Ah yea Rosa I think I remember you saying something like that. I recently wrote a paper on deconstructing the will to power and the feminist approach to his works. Check it out in my sig(front page of my site). Also, I ordered wittgensteins tractatus, his blue and brown books and investigations :D wish me luck and maybe ill start a thread on it when i start reading it next week.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Good luck with the W; I can see from that essay you are badly in need of his work. :)

[Bretty123]

What you don't think its any good?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Not the least, it is just stuck in the tradition we have seen in Philosophy for 2400 years (for example the Saussurean reference to signifiers (etc.) gives it away).

I am not qualified to judge on the content, since I know too little Nietzsche (at least in the areas you write about).

[Bretty123]

True about Saussere, I do refer to his work alot.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Oh dear....

[Bretty123]

I meant in that particular paper.. If i dont go through the motions of learning then how will I get to a point where I can critisize like you? I need to study as much as possible, and that includes those I dont agree with.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

I have to sympathise with you then.

[phragit]

God is dead was Martin Luther's claim

Er, was it?[/Quote]
Yes, it was




His sister was a nazi, and he himself was a nihilist, thus he was also an anarchist (which means that he was a communist too).

Er, is that the worse piece of deductive reasoning I've ever witnessed?
Nietzsche was not a nihilist in any way, he condescended upon all nihilists, especially Socrates.

[gauchisme]

at the beginning of the will to power, Nietzsche writes that nihilism is but a transitional phase. recall he's diagnosing the nihilism he sees Europe as heading toward; he's not advocating it - only arguing that we can't turn away from it. with this in mind, we can understand Nietzsche's beliefs as life-affirming, embracing the creative energy of the exceptions to the rule of nihilism.

for a thorough reading of Nietzsche, i recommend Pierre Klossowski's... following up on one of Jim's comment ("And of course people like Foucault and his disciples styled themselves as 'Nietzscheans.'"), Michel Foucault called 'Nietzsche & the Vicious Circle' "the greatest book of philosophy i have ever read". here's a recent post of mine that draws heavily upon it: http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic...st&p=1292361090 (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=63760&view=findpost&p=1292361090)

finally, a poem by Charles Bukowski that explains the underlying thrust of Nietzsche's 'god is dead'-statement quite nicely...


turmoil is the god
madness is the god

permanent living peace is
permanent living death.

agony can kill
or
agony can sustain life
but peace is always horrifying
peace is the worst thing
walking
talking
smiling,
seeming to be.

don't forget the sidewalks
the whores,
betrayal,
the worm in the apple,
the bars, the jails,
the suicides of lovers.

here in America
we have assassinated a president and his brother,
another president has quit office.

people who believe in politics
are like people who believe in god:
they are sucking wind through bent straws.

there is no god
there are no politics
there is no peace
there is no love
there is no control
there is no plan

stay away from god
remain disturbed

slide.

[Sacrificed]

Nietzsche was not, in any way, a fascist, and not even reactionary. He was almost entirely apolitical, and prided himself on being the "last apolitical German"..

From Zarathustra:


"A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: "I, the state, am the people."

It is a lie! Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life.

Destroyers are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.

Where there is still a people, there the state is not understood, but hated as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs.

This sign I give unto you: every people speaketh its language of good and evil: this its neighbour understandeth not. Its language hath it devised for itself in laws and customs.

But the state lieth in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it saith it lieth; and whatever it hath it hath stolen."


And more:


"Espirit: quality of late races: Jews, Frenchmen, Chinese. (The anti-Semites do not forgive the Jews for possessing "spirit"- and money. Anti-Semites -- another name for the "underprivileged".)"



"... Even in the case of the anti-Semites it is still the same artifice: to visit condemnatory judgments upon one's opponent and to reserve to oneself the role of retributive justice."


"...I have heard every kind of confession of "beautiful souls" about Wagner. A kingdom for one sensible word!-In truth, a hair-raising company! Nohl, Pohl, Kohl-droll with charm, in infinitum! Not a single abortion is missing among them, not even the anti-Semite."


"Ultimately, an attack on a subtler "unknown one," whom nobody else is likely to guess, is part of the meaning and the way of my task-oh, I can uncover "unknown ones" who are in an altogether different category from a Cagliostro of music-even more, to be sure, an attack on the German nation which is becoming even lazier and more impoverished in its instincts, ever more honest, and which continues with an enviable appetite to feed on opposites, gobbling down without any digestive troubles: "faith" as well as scientific manners, "Christian love" as well as anti-Semitism, the will to power (to the Reich) as well as the évangile des humbles."


"What differentiates a Jew from an anti-Semite: if a Jew lies, he knows he is lying; the anti-Semite does not know that he is always lying."

And so forth. Nietzsche repudiated pan-Germanism and anti-Semitism to the extent that he went out of his way to claim a fictitious Polish ancestry for himself, to distance himself from precisely the proto-fascism so en vogue at the time.

What does Nietzsche want to say? From Will to Power 692:


""Is "will to power" a kind of "will" or identical with the concept "will"? Is it the same thing as desiring? Or commanding? Is it that "will" of which Schopenhauer said it was the "in-itself of things"?

My proposition is: that the will of psychology hitherto is an unjustified generalization, that this will does not exist at all, that instead of grasping the idea of the development of one definite will into many forms, one has eliminated the character of the will by subtracting from it its content, its "wither?" - this is in the highest degree the case with Schopenhauer: what he calls "will" is a mere empty word. It is even less a question of a "will to life"; for life is merely a special case of the will to power - it is quite arbitrary to assert that everything strives to enter into this form of the will to power."

Nietzsche is not an individualist, first and foremost. The man who said of the ego that it "does not exist" has very little to do with the existentialists who appropriated him after his death. Rather the individual for Nietzsche is a collection of competing forces, and the Will to Power a Will to Multiplicity. This grounds his ontology in Becoming. From Will to Power 708:


"If the motion of the world aimed at a final state, that state would have been reached. The sole fundamental fact, however, is that it does not aim at a final state; and every philosophy and scientific hypothesis (e.g. mechanistic theory) which necessitates such a final state is refuted by this fundamental fact.

I seek a conception of the world that takes this fact into account. Becoming must be explained without recourse to final intentions; becoming must appear justified at every moment (or incapable of being evaluated; which amounts to the same thing); the present must absolutely not be justified by reference to a future, nor the past by reference to the present. "Necessity" not in the shape of an overreaching, dominating total force, or that of a prime mover; even less as a necessary condition for something valuable. To this end it is necessary to deny a total consciousness of becoming, a "God," to avoid bringing all events under the aegis of a being who feels and knows but does not will: "God" is useless if he does not want anything, and moreover this means positing a total value of "becoming." Fortunately such a summarizing power is missing (- a suffering and all-seeing God, a "total sensorium" and "cosmic spirit", would be the greatest objection to being).

Nietzsche is not a materialist, influenced as he was by Lange. Rather his philosophy seems to anticipate quantum mechanics; he speaks often of "power-quanta" as the fundamental building-blocks of existence, and takes great issue with mechanistic or atomistic philosophies.

It became easy for Marxists to label Nietzsche a "proto-fascist" because he was a danger to them: this man killed the dialectic. But he is not in any sense prone to fascism.

More later.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Sacrificed, thanks for that; we have discussed this before; for example, beginning here:

http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic...st&p=1292214819 (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=59132&view=findpost&p=1292214819)

And you are right about him and the Nazis.

His sister was responsible for starting that lie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nie...ished_notebooks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche#The_unpublished_notebooks)