Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most misunderstood and confusing philosophers of modernity. A rebel against historicism and Hegelianism, he was nevertheless a radical historicist and Hegelian in his own right. A critic of Christianity (specifically the Catholic version), his own metaphysics and philosophy mirror that of traditional forms of Catholicism. A humanist and anti-nihilist, he is often mischaracterized and appropriated by anti-humanist and nihilist groups as having been precisely what he was not. While we shall explore the finer details of Nietzscheās broader philosophy, we turn to examine what Nietzsche meant when he proclaimed that āGod is dead.ā
The idea of the Death of God predates Nietzsche and goes back to Hegel. Nietzscheās death of God, in comparison to Hegel, is far more haunting and severe ā in part ā because Nietzscheās understanding of the role of God and theology is far different than Hegelās transcendent God coming into the world and leaving the residue of the egalitarian community of the Holy Spirit that acts in the world. Rather, Nietzsche understood God as more a divine law, or that āhigher idealā that human action is subject too. Where Hegelās God abounds in love leading to his sublation on the Cross, Nietzscheās God is a stern judge whose existence haunts humans for their failures and shortcomings.
The Christian conception of the relationship between humanity and divinity is complex and complicated. The basic reading, however, is that humanity and divinity ā despite the gulf between them for either failing to faithful to God (in Judaism) or from the residue of the Fall (in Christianity) ā are not in competition with one another. Instead, humanity and divinity are separated from each other, but humanity is called to be in union with divinity. āGod became man so that man might become like godā is the famous Christian dictum from St. Athanasius, or from St. Irenaeus and St. Augustine who affirm that āthe glory of God is a human being fully aliveā or having become divinized. While Nietzsche also understood religion as providing a great source of meaning to many people his understanding of what āmodern manā thought about God was that humanity-God were in conflict with each other is very important and influential (but completely misunderstood).
Rather than a theology of harmonization between humanity and God, Nietzsche understood the relationship as top-down in which God was always ālooking over humanityā so to speak, and this unsettled āenlightenedā man. (Note: Nietzsche himself didnāt hold to any of these views, this is how he understood the people of his day thought about the relationship between humanity and God, which is why, although influential, has been misunderstood by most āNew Atheistsā as the essence between āscienceā vs. āfaithā or āhuman freedomā vs. āGod.ā)
But unlike the āNew Atheists,ā Nietzscheās understanding of religion is predicated on his anthropology along with his views on the mistakes of modern thinking about man, life, and his place in the world. Nietzsche was no āprogressive optimistā per the Whig idealization of history that was common in 19th century Europe at the time. Far from becoming āmore moralā and āhistory becoming betterā or āmore progressive,ā Nietzsche saw the opposite occurring. European man was becoming Hegelās āvictim of history,ā which Nietzsche contextualized as the ālast man.ā Humans were no longer struggling for life ā instead, they were giving themselves over to material pleasure and all life was about was the achievement of material contentment and security. Humanity was devolving into an ant-like and parasitic civilization sucking the planet dry for its resources for hedonistic comforts, consumerist indulgences, and āprogressā through the form of capitalism and industrialization.
The other aspect to Nietzscheās anthropology is that he very much still carried with him the residue of the Christian understanding of the Fall. Nietzsche knew that humans were appetitive creatures. Humans instinctively have an appetite for something more than themselves. They desire, in a way, God. That is to say Nietzsche understood the craving for God as a result of humanityās āugly side.ā The blood shed by manās hand, the rape of the planet, war, death, and so on, made humans seek something more than what ālife had to offerā in of itself.
What happened in Nietzscheās reading of the unfolding of history was that humanity deceived itself into accepting the narrative of progress, liberation, and freedom (itself a Christian heresy in Nietzscheās eyes). The result of this was a fundamental shift in consciousness in our worldviews. Rather than humans being guilt-ridden, ugly, and barbaric, constantly having within themselves the capacity to āturn uglyā and shed pools of blood simply because man is a warring animal, humans were now benign, kind-hearted, compassionate, libertine, and so forth.
However, this idea of ourselves doesnāt jive with the reality of ourselves from Nietzscheās perspective. The result was, as Nietzsche explains in several of his works, but most notably in Ecce Home, was that man killed God because man could not stomach the possibility of being subject to a higher law or higher power (which is God). God, for Nietzsche, is essentially the moral law that all humans have a basic awareness of but are haunted to commune with because we can never be āworthy in the eyes of such high standards.ā In order, then, for humans to be free and prosperous, God had to die. And kill God modern man has in order to live his free hedonistic and meaningless life without any higher calling.
What Nietzsche meant by ādeath of Godā was not that people were becoming less religious per se (i.e. the view that everyone was becoming an āenlightenedā atheist). Instead, Nietzscheās death of God is the death of the God of judgment ā it is the death of the moral judge who āspeaks to usā when weāve done something wrong and calls us to repent. As William Barrett explained, ā[For Nietzsche] man must cease to feel guilt, he goes on; and yet one senses an enormous hidden guilt and feeling of inferiority behind his own frantic boasts.ā To be āfreeā means to be āguiltless.ā In order to be free, which is to never feel guilt for oneās actions, the God of just judgment had to die. So man killed that version of God and replaced God with a more amenable God that was never angry with our actions. That is what the ādeath of Godā really means in Nietzscheās outlook. We killed the age-old understanding of God as the moral arbiter who holds us accountable for our actions and replaced it with a God that was never going to hold us accountable for our actions. In this āswap,ā which is the ādeath of God,ā humans could finally be free!
Except weāre not. Nietzsche does not celebrate the ādeath of Godā as most illiterate readers of Nietzsche think when they buy those consumerist posters that read: āGod is Deadā (Nietzsche), āNietzsche is Deadā (God). And neither is Nietzscheās āAtheismā the triumph of āscienceā and ārationalityā writ large. Nietzscheās point is that humans were stupid, by and large, and had fallen prey to false beliefs and ideals. The worst of these false beliefs and ideals were the Enlightenment ideals of the past 200 or so years. Humans still felt guilt despite killing of God to be able to do anything, and everything, they wanted without consequences. But consequences will inevitably happen. And now, with God dead, and no means of atonement, sacrifice, or reconciliation with the Cosmos, humans are lost in the Cosmos ā adrift, unmoored, no longer knowing who and what they are. As a result of this humanity was now degenerating into the catatonic insect-like civilization that Western Man had become.
Nietzsche knew that man was essentially a warring animal (that is a struggling animal). The idea of God allowed us to struggle for some higher ideal. While God certainly did not exist for Nietzsche, the idea of God and the essence of the saintly life of overcoming to come into union with God was superior to the materialistic, weasel-like, and libertine lifestyles that had resulted from the Whig idea of progress and killing off of God so that we could degenerate ourselves and āchoose the way of deathā instead of āchoosing the way of lifeā as the God of Exodus tells the Israelites. But, in another sense (because of Nietzscheās radical historicist understanding of the unfolding of History), God had to die in order for the true understanding of life ā life as pure struggle and the will to power (which is the will to live) could emerge. And to this end Nietzsche understood himself as the Prophet paving the way out of our nihilistic age. His followers, or more accurately those who would understand the secret of life ā āLife itself told me this secret: āBehold,ā it said, āIām that which must overcome itself again and againāā ā would be the Overman.
We may have killed God, as Nietzsche said, but, paradoxically, Nietzsche doesn’t believe this is a good thing. We still need something to strive for. In having killed God, Nietzsche offers his modern substitue: The struggle to overcome life itself.
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