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God is dead" (German: Gott ist tot [ɡɔt ɪst toːt] ⓘ; also known as the death of God) is a statement made by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The first instance of this statement in Nietzsche's writings is in his 1882 The Gay Science , where it appears three times.
Zarathustra marvels that the saint has not yet heard that "God is dead". Arriving at the nearest town, Zarathustra addresses a crowd which has gathered to watch a tightrope walker . He tells them that mankind's goal must be to create something superior to itself – a new type of human, the Übermensch .
The Gay Science (German: Die fröhliche Wissenschaft; sometimes translated as The Joyful Wisdom or The Joyous Science) is a book by Friedrich Nietzsche published in 1882, and followed by a second edition in 1887 after the completion of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil.
The statement "God is dead," occurring in several of Nietzsche's works (notably in The Gay Science), has become one of his best-known remarks. On the basis of it, many commentators [ 174 ] regard Nietzsche as an atheist ; others (such as Kaufmann) suggest that this statement might reflect a more subtle understanding of divinity.
Zarathustra ties the Übermensch to the death of God. While the concept of God was the ultimate expression of other-worldly values and their underlying instincts, belief in God nevertheless did give meaning to life for a time. "God is dead" means that the idea of God can no longer provide values.
Nietzsche conceptualizes his diagnostic with the statement "God is dead", which first appeared in his work in section 108 of The Gay Science, again in section 125 with the parable of "The Madman", and even more famously in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
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." [23] Nietzsche expanded upon this concept in the philosophical novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra, later writing that eternal return was "the fundamental idea of the work". [19]
Christianity's expedient, its "stroke of genius" in the shadow of this looming eternal nightmare, was to proclaim that God himself, in the person of Jesus, sacrificed himself for the guilt of mankind. God pays the unpayable debt, the new religion teaches, out of love—love for his debtor. Thus guilt, which originally merely signified debt in a ...