Not so long ago, atheists were disappointed. Even denying the existence of God, they recognized that the world with God would be better than without Him. They still find various arguments and arguments that refute the existence of God - such as the problem of evil and the apparent ability of the natural sciences to explain the structure of the universe. Although it is now recognized that God has no place in space, many still find it difficult to reconcile the fact of His existence with evil and suffering. But the sad thing is that most atheists were extremely concerned about this. By their own admission, they reluctantly came to disbelief.
However, the situation is different with the so-called "New Atheists" - people like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. These courageous thinkers saw in the statement about the absence of God not a reason for regret, but, on the contrary, a reason for joy. Yet their enthusiasm and sarcastic attacks on religious beliefs find analogies in the past, namely in the writings of the 19th century philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.
Starting point, not ending point
While the movement is widespread, the most interesting feature of New Atheism is its evangelical fervor and bellicose eloquence — none of which originated from Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. In fact, only the weakness of their arguments is unprecedented. Astute readers will find that compelling arguments and weighty arguments have no place in Dawkins' God Delusional, Hitchens's God Is Not Love, or Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation. On the contrary, their arguments are surprisingly weak. If you are looking for an excuse to take the New Atheists' views seriously, their work will seem weak to you.
However, this does not mean that Nietzsche represents the best arguments in favor of their disbelief; he does nothing of the sort. Unlike Dawkins and company, he sees no need for it. Nietzsche sees atheism not as a conclusion to be presented, but as a postulate to be developed. In other words, he argues not per atheism, but rather repelling from him; disbelief is a starting point for him, not an end point. When he publicly proclaimed the death of God, for example, he did not do it to show - he did not even try to show it - that God does not exist. Rather, he considered it a given, because, in his opinion, critics of the second half of the 19th century, like himself, could no longer take faith in God seriously. He stated that such a belief "became incredible."
Joyful knowledge
Nietzsche made this statement in his work Gay Science ( The Gay Science), whose name deserves special attention. Here the word “gay” has a completely different meaning than it has acquired over the past 50 years, but rather its traditional meaning of “joyful”. Moreover, the term “science” comes from the Latin word scientia, which means knowledge. So " Gay Science"Means" joyful knowledge "- such knowledge that brings joy to the one who knows. From Nietzsche's perspective, joyful knowledge is the knowledge that God is dead.
In proclaiming the death of God, Nietzsche did not imply the literal meaning of this phrase. In his opinion, God never existed from the beginning, and therefore talk about His “death” refers rather to the human than to the divine. We humans, Nietzsche suggests, find the existence of God both unprovable and undesirable. Consequently, he rather assumes rather than states the unprovability of faith in God, even when he explains its undesirability.
Why is faith in God undesirable? Because the death of God allows us to become gods ourselves.
God does not die alone
In simple terms, God does not die alone. When He dies, meaning, morality, and reason die with Him.
First, if God does not exist, then life does not have meaning... When there is no author, the story has no meaning; moreover, when there is no author, there is no history itself. In addition, if God does not exist, morality is biased and moral judgment becomes just an interpretation, having nothing but personal preference under it.
Second, Nietzsche shows artificial nature morality inviting us to reflect on the birds of prey and the sheep they hunt. When birds feed on sheep, their actions are neither good nor bad morally. Birds simply act according to their nature; morality has nothing to do with it.
So, while sheep's "condemnation" of birds does not surprise anyone - other than, perhaps, the birds themselves - their judgment has nothing to do with morality, but rather their understandable desire not to become bird food. Of course, as Nietzsche points out, birds see things differently. But in neither case, nor in the other case, can moral categories be applied - and if this applies to birds and sheep, then it also applies to us. Moral judgment expresses our own preferences; they do not reflect objective reality.
Finally, the death of God shows the importance mind. When it comes to human origins, uncontrollable evolutionary processes turn out to be the best argument for atheists. Given the fact that evolution selects the fittest for survival, the intelligence that emerges as a result of these processes must adapt well to survival. But, according to Nietzsche, there is no necessary connection between survival and truth; as far as we know, he draws our attention to the fact that the naturalistic universe will be one in which knowledge of the truth will hinder rather than facilitate survival. In his own opinion, then the atheist has no reason to trust his own mind.
Liberation leading to slavery
For Nietzsche, the death of God leads to the end of meaning, morality, and reason - which means that he sees the potential consequences of his unbelief more clearly than his other atheist contemporaries such as Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. Although, it is noteworthy that Nietzsche sees these possible consequences as liberating, not destructive. Neither God, nor meaning, nor morality, nor reason hold us back, he exclaims. We are free to live as we please and to do with our lives what satisfies us.
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It is only in this radically human-centered form that Nietzsche proclaims life - and thereby scratches curious ears. But, of course, this approach of Nietzsche does not lead to blessing, peace and life, but to sorrow, pain and death. May God give our friends and neighbors eyes to see this truth.
Douglas Blount- Professor of Christian Philosophy and Ethics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, NY. Kentucky.
Many of the researchers and thinkers speak of the time beginning at the end of the twentieth century as the beginning of a new, or at least as the end and decline of the old era in the history of the development of Western culture. Indeed, over the past two centuries, tremendous changes have taken place in almost all spheres of culture: many of the ideas that for centuries have founded and determined the thinking of European people have undergone a radical reassessment, many of the worldview, moral, religious, moral and social strongholds on which Western civilization rested have collapsed. ... Over the course of the twentieth century, the most various "decays", "ends" and "deaths" have been proclaimed more than once: "the end of metaphysics," "the end of philosophy," "the death of the Author," "the death of the subject," "the death of man," etc. The view of modernity as one of the turning points in historical moments has become familiar and even commonplace for us. However, with all this, we still do not have a clear idea of the origins and causes of the changes taking place around us.
In this context, the task of finding a certain model that would give us the opportunity to present all the changes that took place in the bosom of European culture as the consequences and manifestations of a certain single event becomes very urgent. The author of this work believes that it is possible to use the idea of the death of God Nietzsche as such a model. The basis for this assumption is the fact of the presence of the following phenomena in the context of the culture of the 20th century: first, the crisis of Christianity, the total loss of faith, the disintegration of spirituality and the devaluation of "old" values; secondly, the transformation of this idea in the work of such thinkers who played a decisive role in shaping the spiritual situation of the 20th century, such as M. Heidegger, J. Deleuze, M. Foucault; finally, the emergence in our time of the so-called "theology of the death of God."
Chapter 1.
General characteristics of the idea of the death of God Nietzsche
Apparently, the work of any of the thinkers did not cause as many controversies, misinterpretations and misconceptions as the legacy of Nietzsche. And the "blame" for this should not so much Förster-Nietzsche, fascist ideologues or any other "distortions", as the philosopher himself. Works, books, style of thinking and writing serve, probably, the best illustration of the worldview of the apologist of formation, fragmentation and diversity of "points of view", criticism of Identity and Unity. Aphorism, as the main means of expression, "implying a new concept of philosophy, a new image of both a thinker and thought" and relating to systematized thinking "as vectorial geometry to metric, like a labyrinth to an arrow with the inscription" exit "", turns reading into a "paleontology of thought , where one found "tooth" has to recreate an unknown whole at your own risk "[ibid.].
If we add to this also a whole string of masks and a gallery of characters (romantic pessimist, Wagnerian, skeptic positivist, nihilist, Antichrist, Zarathustra, Ariadne, Dionysus, Crucified and, finally, "disease as a point of view on health" and "health as point of view of illness ") through which he brings his philosophy to the readers and behind which Nietzsche is at the same time hiding, then the variety of misunderstandings and mistakes that develops around Nietzsche's main ideas, including his words about the death of God, becomes unsurprising and even natural.
Indeed, it is difficult to avoid misinterpretations where, instead of a certain integral concept with a system of argumentation and proofs so "natural" for European philosophy, we are dealing with only a few allegorical aphorisms scattered throughout the thinker's work that say that God is dead.
Misunderstandings arise at the very beginning when trying to attribute Nietzsche to one camp or another, "to evaluate the proclamation of the" death of God "from diametrically opposite, but ideologically stable positions [...] of orthodox Christianity and equally orthodox atheism." It is clear that for a Christian we can only talk about atheism here, but on the other hand it will be difficult to find or even imagine an atheist capable of accepting such atheism.
The source of such misunderstandings, apparently, is precisely the fact that we are trying to see in the words about the death of God the personal position of Nietzsche, and we forget Heidegger's parting words: "It is necessary to read Nietzsche, constantly questioning the history of the West." In this “historical” perspective, the thesis “God is dead” is no longer the point of view of a thinker on the issue of religion, but an attempt to point out a certain threshold state, a certain turning point in the fate of the West. The words "God is dead" "are here only a diagnosis and a prognosis", "a seismograph needle that records the deep situation of the epoch [...]". Thus, Nietzsche's "atheism" is of a special kind, it is not an enlightenment whim, or a "scientific" conviction, it has nothing to do with the "free-thinking of our masters, physiologists and natural scientists," test tube. If, nevertheless, try to give some name to Nietzsche's position, then he should apparently be called "godless": having caught the main melody of his epoch with a sensitive ear, he tried to "see the fateful one close, moreover, survive it on himself ", to carry out the act of" self-identification, voluntary assimilation of the disease. " For a correct understanding of Nietzsche, we must bear in mind his deep personal involvement in this issue, the desire not to discuss and evaluate the reality revealed to him from the point of view of existing norms and criteria (for, on the contrary, it is this reality that sets the norms and criteria), but to accept it such as it is, and practically, experimentally, on oneself and by oneself, to experience it. In general, Nietzsche was characterized by a biased personal attitude to all the most important problems of his time: “he completely gave himself up to be devoured by gnawing anxiety for the fate of man and his being: what will happen to him tomorrow, already today? [...] He looked closely at the greatest people of his time, and he was struck by their calm equanimity and self-confidence: it means that it seemed to him that they did not penetrate the essence of the matter, did not feel the inexorable course of modern history. Of course, they could not help but notice what was happening. They often foresaw the future, but they did not let the monstrous that they saw inside themselves, did not penetrate it to the bone ... "
However, if Nietzsche does not express his personal opinion, but speaks on behalf of a certain historical reality, and his words should affect the entire European culture, then why, in our time, do many remain believers, many continue to rely on Christian God in their lives? Maybe Nietzsche's prophecy turned out to be false, maybe there was no turning point?
Such objections can be answered by pointing out that the "event" of the death of God has a completely different scale than just one or two centuries: on the one hand, "the words of Nietzsche name the fate of the West during two millennia of its history", and, on the other, On the side "the event itself is still too great, too inaccessible to the perception of the majority, so that the rumors about it themselves could be considered to have come down - not to mention how few people still know what actually happened here ...". In other words, we belong only to the beginning of the era, penetrated and determined by this "event". “It is possible that they will believe in this God for a long time and consider his world to be“ real, ”“ effective, ”and“ determining. ”This is similar to the phenomenon when the light of an extinguished star thousands of years ago is still visible, but with all its glow it turns out to be pure "visibility" ". And yet, from now on, the history of the West will be determined, according to Nietzsche, by a slow but steady movement along the path of an increasingly clear realization of the death of God. It is possible that such phenomena of the twentieth century as the crisis of Christianity and the total loss of faith are just the first symptoms of this realization.
Moreover, Nietzsche's idea of the death of God is not simply a crisis of religion. The uniqueness of the position of the philosopher, the great importance of his work for understanding modern culture and the destinies awaiting it lies in the fact that he tried, with his characteristic radicalism, to comprehend all the possible consequences of rejecting the idea of God. And therefore, this event through the eyes of its discoverer is much larger than the prevailing ideas about it not only in time, but also in the "spatial" dimension, in the sense of the number of cultural spheres affected by it: "[...] with the burial of this faith, everything erected on it, leaning on it, growing into it [...] will have a long abundance of landslides, destruction, deaths, collapses ... ". Thus, Nietzsche is talking about a reassessment and rethinking of all values, all ideological attitudes of the West, in one way or another associated with the idea of God.
First of all, such a fundamental event as the death of God should affect the most universal of the worldview teachings - metaphysics. If we recall that Nietzsche considered Christianity as "Platonism for the people" [see. eg: 10, p.58], and "God" here simultaneously serves as a leading representation for the "supersensible" in general and its various interpretations, for "ideals" and "norms", for "principles" and "rules", for " goals "and" values ", which are established" over "existence, in order to give the existence as a whole a goal, order and - as they briefly say -" meaning "", then the death of God turns out to be inextricably linked with the collapse of the binary disposition of the otherworldly and this worldly, material and ideal , created by Plato and for thousands of years it has been founding, defining and dominating the thinking of Western man. The fact that for Nietzsche the words "God is dead" mean, among other things, also the release of our ideas about existence from the yoke of the metaphysical teachings of Plato, proves the constant presence of the theme of "darkening and solar eclipse" in all the fragments devoted to this event. So, for example, in one of the most famous - "Mad Man", the author asks through the mouth of the herald of the death of God: "Who gave us a sponge to erase the paint from the entire horizon? What did we do, tearing this earth from its sun?" [ibid, p. 446]. If we recall the parable of Plato, where the Sun acted as a metaphor for the sphere of the supersensible, the ideal - a sphere that formed and limited the "horizon" of Western man's thinking only within the "light" , what is its "view" (idea), then the death of God, indeed, appears as "erasure of paint from the entire horizon", because from now on "the sphere of the supersensible no longer stands above the heads of people as the light that sets the measure."
At the same time, the death of God appears for Nietzsche as the opening of a new horizon - the "infinite horizon", as the widest openness that we can only experience. "The world has once again become infinite for us", for the supersensible sphere that enclosed and limited it disappears, for becoming and diversity are liberated from the dominion of the "One" and "Being", the death of God makes it impossible for the strategy of reducing all world diversity to a single supreme principle and reveals all the diversity and pluralism of the universe. "Being and the One do not just lose their meaning, they acquire a different meaning, a new one. For henceforth, the One is called diversity as such (fragments and parts), becoming is called Being [...] the unity of diversity is affirmed, the Being of becoming."
The world has once again become infinite for us, also because from now on it appears before us as a kingdom of chance and chance, as a "divine table for divine dice", containing an infinite variety of possibilities. With the death of the Divine Logos, who created the universe "in his own image and likeness", one more postulate fundamental for metaphysics and European culture, proclaiming the identity of Being and thinking, inevitably collapses. The "deified" Universe, freed from the dictate of obedience to the goal, from the "eternal spider-mind and its web", appears in all its alienation to "Truth", "consistency", "orderliness", whatever the universal cause-and-effect laws, in all its "eternal chaos". From now on, Being is an endless variety of self-developing particles and fragments, which have their own unique paths, not reducible to a single linear history and not closed by the "highest and only Limit".
But, first of all, “the world has once again become infinite for us, since we are unable to dismiss the possibilities of what it contains infinite interpretations”: the death of God means the loss of faith in the very possibility of building a unified and systematic conceptual model of the world, radical rejection of the claim to a comprehensive description and explanation, for the source of the universal generalizing interpretation of the Universe has disappeared. The possibility of an infinite variety of interpretations of being from the most diverse points of view and positions, equally legitimate and not reducible to one, opens up. If we use the terminology of postmodern philosophy, then the death of God is, in fact, the “death of the Author” of the “work” - the world, the meaning of which is now generated by any of its “readers”, and any of the “readings” of which is now legitimate.
A radical change in our ideas about the world after the death of God presupposes a transformation of the methods and ideals of his knowledge. Diversity and formation require not a search for the "Absolute Truth", but interpretation and evaluation: an interpretation that always fixes only a partial and fragmentary "meaning" for a certain phenomenon and an evaluation that determines the hierarchical "value" of meanings, without diminishing or abolishing their diversity.
The rejection of the idea of "a view from the side of God", that is, from "the experience of super-historical observation, from a gaze-over-or-over, from a gaze that calmly ascends and soars above the Past", presupposes a rejection of the ideal of "disinterested contemplation" defined by it. ", a neutral gaze in which" should be paralyzed, there should be no active and interpretive forces that only make sight ". Instead of the old epistemology, Nietzsche offers his own concept of "perspectivism": each need, drive, each "for" and "against" is a new perspective, a new point of view, and the more affects we give the floor in the discussion of a subject, the more complete will turn out to be our idea of it, our objectivity. The place of the absolute, hovering above, disinterested, serene "eye without a gaze" is taken by the gaze, as a moving center of plastic forces interpreting being, for which the will to power is the main element of discrimination.
The death of God, as an absolute subject and absolute mind, on the idea of which the final subject previously relied on and, in essence, duplicated its properties, should lead to the fact that in man, on the one hand, his dichotomy into "body" and "soul" is overcome, "material" and "spiritual", but at the same time, on the other hand, there is a splitting of the individual "I" - that which will later be called in postmodern philosophy "the death of the subject". In the situation of the death of God, the centuries-old strategy of suppressing some of his properties ("bodily", "natural") in man, considering them as "not truly human", at the expense of bringing others into the sphere of extra-natural Being, becomes impossible. The "Other" in man - the "Self", the unconscious - breaks out from under the dominance of the human mind. After the death of God, the entire dependence of the "I" on this sphere becomes obvious, and thus its multidimensionality is revealed, the myth of its monolithicity is destroyed. Along with Christianity, "the fatal atomism, which Christianity taught most successfully and longest of all, the atomism of souls," should also disappear, the soul must henceforth be considered as "the plurality of the subject" and "the social structure of affects and instincts" [ibid.].
But the death of God means not only "the death of the subject", man himself must "die". If the normative and ideal model of a person ceases to exist, the idea of his eternal and unchanging nature disappears, then a person turns out to be subject to evolution, can be considered as "something that must surpass". "[...] Nietzsche reached the point where man and God belong to each other, where the death of God is synonymous with the disappearance of man and where the promised coming of the superman means from the very beginning and, above all, the inevitability of man's death."
Unfortunately, the scope of this work and its tasks do not allow us to consider in detail the key topics of modern philosophy, however, it can be noted that its main ideas, such as "post-metaphysical thinking", "acentrism", "death of the Author", "death of the subject", " death of a person ", her criticism of binarism and logocentrism, are, in fact, a continuation of Nietzsche's idea of the death of God.
So, Nietzsche's words about the death of God are not an expression of the personal convictions of a thinker, but an attempt to give a name to some historical event seen in the depths of European culture, powerfully penetrating the past and determining the present and subsequent centuries, which should lead to radical changes in our ideas about the world. about the ways of knowing it and about a person.
Chapter 2.
The main causes and consequences of the "death of God" event in the context of European culture
"God died" - the incredible and unimaginable happened, but the whole enormity of this event is not yet fully clear to us, for God not just "left his living presence", but was killed, killed by people: "we killed him, [...] a holy and mighty Being that the world has just bled to death under our knives. "
But how did this become possible? "But how did we do it? How did we manage to drink the sea? Who gave us a sponge to wipe the paint from the entire horizon?" [ibid.]. The answer, according to Nietzsche, lies in Christianity itself, in European morality itself, the death of God is "the fully thought out logic of our great values and ideals", European culture has "been moving for a long time in some kind of torture of tension, growing from century to century to disaster "[ibid., p. 35]. God died because we, today, killed him, consigning him to oblivion, but, on the other hand, “necessity itself had a hand in the matter here” [ibid.], Since the inevitability of this event was predetermined at the very beginning of European history. What in the history of the West, according to Nietzsche, predetermined the death of God? To answer this question, we must understand the specifics of Nietzsche's view of history.
World history, according to Nietzsche, is an eternal dualism, antagonism and confrontation between two types of forces - "active" and "reactive". The first are creative forces, constructive, creative, affirming difference and life. While for the second, denial, resistance to everything that is different, the desire to limit, suppress everything else turn out to be primary. Active ones constantly assert themselves by transforming their surroundings, reactive ones are only able to respond and react to external impulses.
These two types of forces correspond to two types of morality - "the morality of the masters" and "the morality of the slaves." However, we will distort the meaning that Nietzsche put into the concepts of "master" and "slave" if we assume that the criterion for distinguishing them is the relationship of "domination" and "power", because this is the ability to generate new values and assessments - Will zu Macht (where "Macht" should be translated not as "power", but as "the ability for self-fulfillment, for self-realization, for creativity"). The "master" establishes and creates values, the "slave" is forced to accept them: whether he wants to preserve or overthrow the "master's" values, all the same, the "slave" directs his power to what has already been created, and in either case he only reacts for life, instead of creating yourself.
"The morality of the masters" is created as an affirmation and a grateful hymn to life, life in its diversity.
"The morality of slaves" arises when hidden anger, hatred, vengefulness and envy, stemming from powerlessness and humiliation, - the sense of the slave's ressentiment becomes a creative force that engenders its own values. It begins with denial, “from the very beginning it says No to the external, the other, the improper,” and only later does it create a kind of affirmation, affirming universally binding, “absolute” and “only true” values that burden and devalue life.
The history of Christianity and Western culture, if viewed through the prism of Nietzsche's doctrine of two types of forces and two types of morality, turns out to be the history of the revolt of denial and "reactive" man.
Already in Judaism and Platonism - the historical origins of Christianity - denial and the feeling of ressentiment play a decisive role. Judaism, according to Nietzsche, when faced with the question to be or not to be, preferred to be "at any cost," and that price turned out to be "a deliberate perversion of its nature" [ibid.]: Denial of life, affirmation of all decadent, decadent instincts ... Judaism removed from the concept of deity "all the prerequisites for an increasing life, everything strong, courageous, commanding, proud" [ibid.].
Platonism, for its part, consigning to oblivion the pre-Socratic unity of thought and life, split man into two parts, forced the thought to curb and cripple life, measuring and limiting it in accordance with "higher values." Starting with Plato, thought becomes denying, and life is depreciated, reduced to more and more painful forms. The philosopher, legislator and creator of new values and perspectives, turns into a novice and guardian of existing ones.
Platonism split into two parts not only man, but the whole world, everywhere condemning and devaluing one for the other. The "this-worldly" world loses its meaning, beauty, truth, since from now on they can only belong to the "other-worldly"; diversity and becoming are condemned in the name of "Being" and "One".
Christianity, on the one hand, being "the last logical conclusion of Judaism", on the other hand, incorporates the concept of two worlds of Plato. It continues and intensifies the tendency of its predecessors to reject the world.
The Christian God, obeying the creative power of ressentiment "a, turns into a picky" judge "and" exaltation "," degenerates into a contradiction with life. " "" [ibid.], his "killing" begins.
It would seem that the death of God should finally free life from the yoke of values that deny it, to mark the victory of "active" forces over "reactive" ones. However, this does not happen.
God died, but there remained an empty place of his residence - the supersensible world, the orientation and criteria of positing, the definition of the essence of values remained the same. The authority of God and the authority of the church disappear, but the authority of conscience and reason takes their place, the "divine" values are replaced by "human, too human." Otherworldly eternal bliss turns into earthly happiness for the majority. The place of god is replaced by "Progress", "Fatherland" and "State". The old Christian man is being replaced by the "most despicable being" - the "last man." He still continues to shoulder the burden of values that deny, cripple life, but now he is latently aware of all their insignificance, and therefore there is no longer "chaos in him that can give birth to a dancing star" [ibid., P. 12], in him there are no longer any aspirations, he strives only for "his little pleasure" [ibid.].
"General progress" and "State" are not capable of truly replacing God, unable to hide people from the impending Nothing, and therefore they try to forget themselves in vain efficiency, in pursuit of profit and thrill. But the collapse of all previous values is inevitable ...
When a Western person finally realizes that the other world of ideals is dead and lifeless, then the stage of "nihilism" will have to come in European culture. For people, not being able to find a supersensible sphere in the world - the sphere where they placed its meaning, truth, beauty and value - will condemn it as devoid of any meaning, purpose and value at all: "the reality of becoming is recognized as the only reality and everyone is prohibited kind of roundabout ways to hidden worlds and false deities - but, on the other hand, this world, which no longer want to deny, becomes unbearable. "
But the era of nihilistic crisis, according to Nietzsche, not only harbors the greatest danger, but also the greatest opportunity of our time. For after the collapse of the previous values and criteria for their establishment, reality, the real world, of course, depreciate, but at the same time they do not disappear, but for the first time only achieve significance. A person must realize the true source of values - his own will to power, reject and destroy the very "place" of former values - "top", "height", "transcendence" - and create new life-affirming, exalting people: "probably from there, man will begin to rise higher and higher, where it will cease to pour out into God. "
Thus, the reasons for the death of God, according to Nietzsche, lie in Christianity itself, in the former "higher" values, which were the product of "reactive" forces and the feeling of ressentimet. After the death of God, European culture will try to put in its place the human values of "Progress", "State", etc. However, the collapse of all previous values is inevitable and after it the stage of "European nihilism" should come. This stage will lead to the disappearance of the previous goals and meanings of the world, created on the basis of ideas about the supersensible sphere, towering above him, but, at the same time, the opportunity will open for a new true setting of values.
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24. Heidegger M. Nietzsche's words "God is dead" // Questions of philosophy. 1990. No. 7. P.143 - 176
25. Shestov L. Good in the teachings of gr. Tolstoy and F. Nietzsche // Problems of Philosophy. 1990. No. 7 P.59 - 132
26. Shestov L. Dostoevsky and Nietzsche: philosophy of tragedy // World of art. 1902. No. 2. P.69-88; No. 4. P.230-246; No. 5/6. S.321-351. No. 7. P.7-44; No. 8. P.97-113. No. 9/10. S.219-239.
27. Jaspers K. Nietzsche and Christianity. M., 1994, 114 p.
Friedrich Nietzsche. Geniuses and Villains
Philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche and the eternal return
Lecture by Mikhail Shilman "On the benefits and dangers of Nietzsche for life"
We meet with Mikhail Shilman again to turn to philosophy. In this program, we will not talk about her categories, but about her personalities, namely, about the well-known Friedrich Nietzsche to all of us. Let us try to really understand what he said was heard, what he passed over in silence, and why modern philosophy demonstrates an eternal return to Nietzsche.
Nietzsche and Stirner. Alina Samoilova
"What to do?"
Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and the theory of the superman today
[Object 22]. Friedrich Nietzsche and Nietzscheism
We talk about Friedrich Nietzsche and Nietzscheism with Igor Ebanoidze, Candidate of Philology, Editor-in-Chief of the Cultural Revolution publishing house.
Philosophical readings. What is culture
Will culture disappear as an exhausted phenomenon that arose only 300 years ago? What is lack of culture? And how does the first differ from the second? This is a conversation with Vadim Mikhailovich Mezhuev, Doctor of Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
eternal return, God died
intuition and understanding
culture and civilization
masses, elite, superman
God is dead: but such is the nature of people that for thousands of years, perhaps, there will be caves in which his shadow is shown. - And we - we must also defeat his shadow!
God is dead! God will not rise again! And we killed him! How we will be comforted, murderers from murderers! The most holy and powerful Being that there was in the world bled to death under our knives - who can wash this blood from us?
The greatest of new developments - that “God is dead” and that faith in a Christian God has become something untrustworthy - is already beginning to cast its first shadows on Europe.
Before Nietzsche
In Nietzscheanism
Nietzsche did not believe that a personal God ever lived and then literally died. The death of God should be understood as a moral crisis of humanity, during which there is a loss of faith in absolute moral laws, cosmic order. Nietzsche proposes to reevaluate values and reveal deeper layers of the human soul than those on which Christianity is based. The book "Limoniana or Unknown Limonov" cites Dugin's first publication in the newspaper "Novy Vzglyad" (1993), in which the author noted:
| “God is dead” - the oblivion of this very formula was revealed by the postmodernists. The “new” here is precisely in the fact that people have forgotten not only about God, but also about his death, that the suggestions of possible answers overshadowed the question itself, and the passionate process of overcoming the tragedy made them forget what it was all about .. |
Heidegger's
Heidegger, like Nietzsche, addressed the theme of "the death of God." For Heidegger, it is the end of metaphysics and the decline of philosophy itself. God is "the goal of life, which rises above the very same earthly life, and thereby determining it from above and in a certain sense from the outside."
In theology
In the 1960s, a movement of “theotanatologists” was formed, which included Christians G. Vakhanyan, P. van Buren, T. Altizer (author of the book Death of God. The Gospel of Christian Atheism) and the Jew R. Rubenstein. Some of them demanded a new experience of divinity, others believed that God died in the literal sense or was dissolved at the creation of the world.
Notes (edit)
Links
- Nietzsche F. Gay Science
- Selivanov Y. Theology of the death of God
- Heidegger M. Nietzsche's Words "God is Dead"
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See what "God is dead" is in other dictionaries:
- “it is very difficult and, perhaps, impossible, to give such a definition of the word“ God ”, which would include all the meanings of this word and its equivalents in other languages. Even if we define God in the most general way, as “superhuman or ... ... Philosophical Encyclopedia
THE GOD- an object of faith and cult among people. The existence of God. There are two types of theoretical evidence in favor of the existence of God: 1) the so-called cosmological evidence (from the Greek. Kosmos world), which through a chain of reasons go back to ... ... Philosophical Dictionary
Blessed someone with what. Narodn. Who has l. everything is going well in some area, sphere of life. DP, 36. God [in, on] help (help)! to whom. Spread. Obsolete .; Bashk., Psk. Greetings to workers, wishes of success in work. FSRYa, 39; SRGB 1, 47, ... ... A large dictionary of Russian sayings
Noun., M., Uptr. cf. often Morphology: (no) who? God to whom? God, (see) whom? God by whom? God, about whom? about God; pl. who? gods, (no) who? gods to whom? gods, (see) whom? gods by whom? gods, about whom? about gods 1. The Creator is called God, ... ... Dmitriev's Explanatory Dictionary
THE GOD- 1. (God - in monotheistic religions - a single supreme being, who created the world and governs it; also as part of a combination of interjection and evaluative type; see also GOD FATHER, GOD, RAVEN GOD, SHOUTING GOD, OVERGIVE GOD, FATHER, FATHER , OHLAST GOD, MIDNIGHT HITS ... Proper name in Russian poetry of the XX century: a dictionary of personal names
THE GOD- [Greek. θεός; lat. deus; glory. a relative of ancient ind. lord, dispenser, endows, divides, ancient Persian. lord, the name of the deity; one of the derivatives of common slavs. rich]. The concept of God is inextricably linked with the concept of Revelation. The subject of ... ... Orthodox encyclopedia
Lost Series Title in Russian = God from the Machine Original Title = Deus Ex Machina Photo: Episode number = Season 1, Episode 19 Memories of a Hero = John Locke A Day on the Island = 39 - 41 Scriptwriter = Carlton Cuse Damon Lindlof ... ... Wikipedia
God cleaned up- whom. Outdated. Someone has died, died. Forty years ago, Afanasy Yegorovich was the head of the house ... The first mistress gave him a bunch of children, but God took them all away (Melnikov Pechersky. Balakhontsevs) ... Phraseological dictionary of the Russian literary language
What does the jungle conceal? Deus Ex Machina Lost TV Series Episode Number Season 1 Episode 19 Director Robert Mandel Scriptwriter Carlton Cuse Damon Lindelof Locke's Memories Day on the Island 39 - 41 ... Wikipedia
"God is dead"
This saying first appeared in 1882 in Nietzsche's book Gay Science. It marked a loss of confidence in the supersensible foundations of value orientations. This statement should not be taken as a personal position of Nietzsche. Heidegger said that "it is necessary to read Nietzsche, constantly questioning the history of the West." From this perspective, the thesis "God is dead" is no longer seen as a philosopher's point of view on the question of religion, but as an attempt to point out a certain turning point, a threshold, a transitional state in which the people of the West, according to Nietzsche, were at that moment. The words "God is dead" "are here only a diagnosis and a prognosis."
It seems to me that it would be wrong to assume that Nietzsche reached this idea only by 1882. Do not forget that until 1879, due to his constant work at the university, he had little time to study philosophy. So it is possible that this idea originated in him a long time ago, but it was finally formed and was able to express itself in words only in 1882. Probably, the first impetus for the emergence of this thought for the philosopher was the war of 1870, in which Nietzsche took part as a medic. Terrible weapons, pain, blood, constant human suffering and death could have prompted him to think that "something is wrong with this world." His further illnesses helped to establish and develop this idea. However, all this is only at the level of assumptions.
F.M. Dostoevsky did not make such loud and catchy statements as Nietzsche. Fyodor Mikhailovich had in general other methods of conveying his thoughts to the reader. After all, it is known that F.V. Nietzsche was an excellent stylist and preferred to express his main ideas using aphorisms, "throwing" them "in the face" of the reader. Dostoevsky, on the other hand, communicated his thoughts through the dialogues of the heroes of his novels. However, all this does not deny the fact that in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky, one can also find an attempt to point out a certain turning point, a transitional state in which the people were at that moment. It would be logical to assume that this idea arose and developed in him during the same period, the importance of which has already been noted above.
In the life of both philosophers at different times, important events took place that became turning points in their lives, forcing the writers to look at the world in a new way, to rethink it.
It is widely believed that the spiritual searches of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky are opposite. And at first glance, the idea of uniting these two thinkers within the framework of one ideological trend seems strange. In fact, if you take a deeper look, then between the views of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche there is more in common than different, despite the apparent opposition on a superficial examination. Both of them laid the foundations for a new worldview.
Dostoevsky in his work tried to substantiate the system of ideas, according to which the human personality is perceived as something primary, irreducible to any higher, divine essence. Dostoevsky's heroes and he himself say a lot about the fact that without God, man has neither existential nor moral foundations of life. However, the traditional concept of God does not triple the writer, and he tries to understand God himself as a certain part of being, "additional" in relation to man. For Dostoevsky, God is the potential fullness of the vital manifestations of the personality, which every personality must try to realize. This explains the importance of the image of Jesus Christ for the philosopher. For him, Christ is a person who has proved the possibility of realizing this fullness of life, which is inherent in each of us and which everyone can at least partially reveal in himself.
An analysis of the stories of Dostoevsky's most significant heroes helps to confirm and clarify the formulated position. Among these heroes, in my opinion, Kirillov from the novel "Demons" occupies the most important place.
From two theses - "There is no God" and "God must be" - Kirillov drew a paradoxical conclusion: "So, I am God." In the novel, he was declared insane for this statement, but this idea, so important to Dostoevsky, is much more complicated than it seems at first glance.
Expressing the opinion that “there is no God,” Kirillov speaks of God as a force external to man, and it is precisely such a God that he denies. But since “God must be” in the world, it means that he can exist as something inherent in man, therefore Kirillov concludes that he is God. Thus, he affirms the presence of a divine principle in every person. Only one person was able to come closer in his life to the realization of this beginning completely and thereby gave an example and model for us - Jesus Christ.
However, the most important problem arising in connection with the formulated interpretation of Kirillov's story is how permissible it is to identify the views of Dostoevsky's heroes with his own position. Unfortunately, it is impossible to give an unambiguous answer to this question.
In articles from the cycle "Untimely Reflections" (one of the early works) one can find an expression of the most important conviction of F.V. Nietzsche, who formed the basis of his entire philosophy, - the belief in the absolute uniqueness and uniqueness of each person. At the same time, the philosopher believes that this uniqueness is not given to us from birth, but is a kind of ideal limit, the goal of the life efforts of every person, and each person should try to reach this limit. However, Nietzsche states that the task he formulated is too difficult for a modern person who is so strongly committed to traditions and prejudices, therefore the philosopher clarifies it, making it more real - each person should at least have this goal in mind and should devote his whole life to achieving it, hoping that if he himself cannot fully realize it, then it will be attainable for the next generations.
In addition, Nietzsche also speaks of the possibility for a person of two paths in life, true and false. The second of them does not allow the disclosure of the uniqueness of a person due to the imposition on him from birth of the idea that he is important only in serving the goals of historical progress, and at the same time is absolutely insignificant in his own, separate being. Nietzsche connects the true let life with a very important ability - to feel not historically, to be able to take a supra-historical position (this is the position, for example, of his Zarathustra).
In the mature works of F.V. Nietzsche's idea of identifying the uniqueness of each personality as the highest goal of human existence fades into the background, is obscured by other, brighter and more "urgent" ideas and requirements. However, the latter make sense and have such significance only because they serve to achieve that very ultimate goal. In this light, one can understand and justify the severity and irreconcilability of Nietzsche's struggle with the negative (in his opinion) elements of European civilization - he looked at them as an obstacle to the realization of this goal.
“… The instrument and the toy are the feeling and the mind: behind them still lies the Self. It also seeks with the eyes of the senses; it also listens with the ears of the spirit. It dominates and is even a master over I. Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a more powerful ruler, an unknown sage - he is called Himself. He lives in your body; he is your body "(FV Nietzsche," Thus Spoke Zarathustra "). This mysterious "Self" is a subconscious, deep fullness of personality, in which there is no distinction between soul and body, and which completely determines all aspirations of soul and body. It is “Self” that is the driving force that re-creates a person and leads him to the “Superman”. Although Nietzsche says that man must be “overcome” and that he is “just a bridge,” these words can be understood as a metaphor for overcoming a person within the person himself. The formation of a superman occurs within each personality and due to its deep creative energy, rooted in its "Self" - in the potential infinity of being, which does not know any limitations.
However, a natural question arises: is it possible to understand the superman as a category applicable only to the future state of man and in no way suitable to him in his current state? If in the future a person will be able to reveal his meaning as the absolute center of Being, then, obviously, this meaning will not be able to come to him from the outside. It must always be present in it. It turns out that the difference between the state of man in which he is now, he of the state of a superman consists "only" in the fact that in the last state he reveals his true meaning, transforms it from the form of potentiality into the form of actuality.
With such an interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy, it is easy to see its closeness to the philosophy of F.M. Dostoevsky. The coincidence of the views of the two thinkers becomes especially noticeable in the work of Nietzsche, which, not without reason, is considered to have been written under the impression of Dostoevsky's images - in The Antichrist. On the one hand, we find here the assertions, usual for the most famous works of Nietzsche, forcing us to speak of his "anti-humanism." On the other hand, the culmination of Nietzsche's work is his appeal to the person of Jesus Christ, and here we find a surprising change in the tone of his judgments. Instead of condemnation, Nietzsche exalts him and, in fact, turns him into the embodiment of the very "Superman" about which he spoke in his earlier works. The philosopher separates Jesus from Christianity and, condemning the second, says that no one could understand the true meaning of Christ's sermons. The influence of Dostoevsky's work on Nietzsche becomes apparent when Nietzsche calls Jesus "an idiot." It is clear that this word is used here not in a negative, but in a positive sense, most likely as a direct reference to Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot, where he deduced the image of the “earthly Christ,” the “idiot” of Prince Myshkin.
Everything that Nietzsche still writes about the image of Jesus Christ further confirms this assumption - he interprets it in the same way as Dostoevsky does in the stories of his heroes - Myshkin and Kirillov. For Nietzsche, it is not the unification of God and man that is fundamental, but the recognition by “God” of the inner state of the personality itself, revealing its infinite content (having reached the highest, final goal formulated by FV Nietzsche in his early works). In this state of attained, acquired inner perfection, the revealed absoluteness of his being, a person comes to the understanding that he is not subject to natural being, but that it is a “symbol” and expression of the absoluteness of the being of a person.
Considering that Nietzsche not only read Dostoevsky's novels before starting work on The Antichrist, but also outlined some of its fragments, it is logical to assume that the above thoughts were inspired by Nietzsche precisely by the images of the main characters of Dostoevsky's works.
nietzsche dostoevsky philosophy religion
GOD IS DIED
There is not enough religion in the world to destroy religions ...
Oh woe! Now he repeats: "I know everything." And he himself is blind and deaf. All the gods disappeared everywhere. There are no gods. Man became a king, Became a god. But love has already died out in him.
Somewhere in Nietzsche it is said: "Whoever has parted with God, the more firmly he holds on to faith in morality." The irony of the spirit: he himself parted with God, he renounced the old morality in order to create new gods - supermen and a new moralism - immoralism.
Religious atheist. Something like you and me.
Deeply religious as a child - "little pastor"! - in his autobiography, he writes:
God, the immortality of the soul, deliverance, the other world - all these are concepts to which I have never given either attention or time. I know atheism not as a result, even less as an event; it comes from my instinct.
"The Greeks remained the first cultural event in history - they knew, they did what was necessary; Christianity, which despised the body, was still the greatest misfortune of mankind."
The death of God in his mouth sounded like a waste of slavery and the gospel of the final return of the individual to himself. Unlike his proselytes, Nietzsche understood that this meant the loss of consolation, grace, and, finally, the ability to shift the burden of "damned questions" onto a higher mind. Metaphysically, such a refusal led a direct path to the superman, who was to replace God and solve all the painful problems of life himself.
Could he have foreseen that "God is dead" in some thirty - fifty years will turn out even more ominous: "there are no ideals!"
In creating his Zarathustra, he envied Christ, tormented by a vain passion to transcend the Gospel. Therefore, I resorted to the genre of commandments. In the Esse of Homo, he already quite feels himself a victorious opponent of the one whose teaching he decided to discard and replace with his own.
In the old philosophy, God was transformed from a person into space, nature; in Nietzsche, on the contrary, from space, nature, into the essence of a human, into a superman, a Person.
Yes, the evangelical tone of Zarathustra is far from accidental: Zarathustra is a new God-man who goes "to the smallest and most humble" and proclaims that "only love should be the judge." A passionate fighter against the grinding of man, Nietzsche announced to Zarathustra the rebirth of human strength on the eve of the era of the masses.
Immoralism is the wrong side of the death of God. Since there is no God, therefore, everything is permitted: evil, deception, murder.
If there is no truth, if the world is disordered, nothing is forbidden: in order to forbid any action, one must have values and a goal.
The pagan mindset aroused in him a fiery protest i against Christianity, but he also demanded a different religion, and, consequently, faith. Before him, the world was ruled by fate, spirit, matter, evolution, nature. He introduced something new - will, life: "The world is the Leviathan of power, in which life is concentrated."
Like religion, his teaching acted on emotions, subconsciousness, insides, that is, it worked according to the mechanism of faith. As a belief denying otherwise, it turned out to be religiously intolerant. The essence of immoralism is indistinguishable from the Christian ethics it denies - the same prescriptions, orders, the absolutization of moral categories. Like all authors of new religions, Nietzsche suffered from the demiurgical syndrome. This is not an unfounded statement. There is an undeniable confirmation of this - the signature under the Esse Homo - Crucified.