File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1998/nietzsche.9811, message 7


From: Tristich-AT-aol.com
Date: Sun, 1 Nov 1998 11:30:47 EST
Subject: Re: god (proofread)


Paul Rhodes writes:

> I think the question most people are ignoring is why, if Nietzsche meant to
>  claim that God never ever existed, did he take recourse to cryptic
>  poetry to say this?  He could have easily written, say, God does not exist,
>  as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
>  That would have had the tripple merit of being poetic, being precise at the
>  same time, and mocking a traditional Christian prayer.  But the Madman does
>  not
>  say that, of course.  The Atheists who laugh at him would, but not the
>  Madman.  I don't know about you all, but I still think this is significant.
>  Sure, Nietzsche liked to be poetic but he insisted upon precision as well.
>  Therefore, I don't think we should jump the gun and say that "God is Dead"
>  means "God never ever existed", because the two sentences mean two
>  diffferent things.   You may object that this difference is merely
>  superficial.  I would like to remind my gentle reader of Nietzsche's praise
>  of the superficial in the preface to Die Froehliche Wissenschaft.

And Wayne King responded:

> Any idea that N believed God never existed is absurd.

Surely Nietzsche turned his phrase for a purpose, and I think Paul's inquiry
is a fascinating one.  I wonder, though, how Wayne can say it's absurd to
think Nietzsche believed that God never existed.  Perhaps Wayne meant to say
that it's wrong, even "absurd," to suppose that Nietzsche never believed in
God.  That would be a true statement supported by the evidence Wayne has
noted.  But in countless places Nietzsche wrote of the "lie" that is the
existence of God and of the mendaciousness and folly in ideals and in
religious (especially Christian) systems.  Nietzsche was not making a
theological argument for the one-time existence of God and his subsequent
demise.  I think Nietzsche would turn over in his grave at the thought that
his writings were being taken for such a theology.  No, when Nietzsche
abandoned his Christian heritage, he did it for good and all, and he did not
believe that the God his father and grandfather had worshipped and to whom he
had written his youthful devotions had existed then but had ceased to exist
now.

Nietzsche's turn of phrase probably had multiple stylistic and rhetorical
purposes, and I don't suppose that I begin to comprehend them.  But, at least
stylistically, one cannot dispute its effectiveness.  After all, if Nietzsche
had said "God does not exist," as Paul suggests he should have said for the
sake of precision, would we be discussing it now?  Nietzsche may have had a
concern for precision, but I think he had a much greater concern and
appreciation for the importance of style.  The simple negation of God would
have been an unimportant and unoriginal statement, and I think that Nietzsche
was well aware of that.  Moreover, Nietzsche's death of God carries many
connotations that are central to, or maybe a lead-in to, the rest of
Nietzsche's thought.  For instance, the irony of the death of God (and it is
an irony, not a paradox) permits Nietzsche to raise the question: what about
morality in our modern god-less world?  As I mentioned before when Paul first
raised this topic, I think Nietzsche was observing a modern fact of life that
people don't believe anymore in the God of their fathers, and this fact, if
there has to be one, is the central fact conveyed by the words, "God is dead."

Fritz


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