Date: 	Sun, 1 Nov 1998 16:13:09 -0500 (EST)
From: Jason Ingram <jwingram-AT-email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: god (proofread)


Fritz writes:

"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."
--------------------------------
I agree that Zarathustra's statement was ironic.  My argument is that the
statement "God is dead" is also impossible to reconcile with the
metaphysics dominating that time: for god to die, god could not be the
same god that underpins all that exists and is good.  So, understood as
using conventional understandings of god, the statement "god is dead" is
impossible.  Clearly, Nietzsche thought that god's death was more than
merely possible.  What reads to many as impossible is also fact.  That's
the sense in which zarathustra's annunciation is paradoxical (as para
doxa, rather than as flat out self-contradiction).  

I don't know that I disagree with Fritz on this; we are probably refering
to different conceptions of paradox 




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