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“God is dead.” – Nietzsche

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“God is dead.”

This well-known quote appears first in Jean Paul’s 1797 novel under a chapter named “The Dead Christ Proclaims That There Is No God.” Later, it is found in a poem by Gérard de Nerval, and then Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables. But the person this phrase was best known for is the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It was first seen in his collection The Gay Science published in 1882. The paragraph goes:

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

(Anderson)

For further investigation, it is needed to define the phrase “god is dead.” And yet, Nietzsche has been so vague in his various mentions that what he meant by it remains greatly controversial even today. The most accepted theory, though, is that the God referred to the Christian God. This theory states that the phrase referred to the enlightenment and the triumph of scientific rationality it brought is making the dominant beliefs of the Christian God no longer needed. This is a representation of the great moral collapse of the western world in Nietzsche’s theory, where all the moral values that was rooted in Christian culture will also collapse. (Anderson) Indeed, in the quote he said, “What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?” This means the process of building up a new set of moral values which he evidently thinks is too great for humans. He argued that what awaits them is a huge project of breaking down what can no longer stand after God has “bled to death under our knives” and build a whole new system of morality, all while keeping the society stable and working, taking the roll God had previously. “Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” His view that this current moral system needs such a major reformation also shows how much criticism he felt against it, thinking that it is destined to collapse.

Nietzsche’s Life

Nietzsche has his first experience of death very early in his life when his father died when he was five. This caused him to grow up in an all-woman household made of his mother, grandmother, two aunts, and his younger sister. When he was 24, he was called to a chair in classical philosophy at Basel, being the youngest ever to be appointed to that post. It was also around 1870 where one of Nietzsche’s greatest friendships, his friendship with Wagner ended, also giving inspiration to the work The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music published in 1872. Then he continued to produce essays about Strauss, Schopenhauer, and Wagner, known collectively as the Untimely Meditations. In 1876-1877, Nietzsche’s poor health conditions forced him to take a break, eventually forcing him to resign his professorship. After that, Nietzsche focused on writing the literature that he is best known for, almost publishing a book every year. In his later years, he traveled the world in search of a climate that would improve his health, but eventually died of a stroke in 1900. (Anderson)

Nietzsche on death in “The Gay Science”

Being one of his best-known works, Nietzsche’s “The Gay Science” included his thoughts on a great variety of subjects, including death. In summary, he described “The thought of death” as “the only things certain and common to all in this future.” This argument is obviously true, and is also very shallow, but his next point follows that people “are the furthest from regarding themselves as the brotherhood of death!” He points out two very interesting psychological phenomenon we very well understand but are not very aware of.  The first is that “men do not want to think at all of the idea of death!” It just happens that everyone is so afraid of the idea of death that we forget about it for most of our life, only remembering it when it arrives. The second is that it is always the last moment before an eternal departure where “people have more than ever to say to one another.” In the text, Nietzsche used an example of the departure of an emigrant-ship, stressing the ocean “with its lonely silence” being “so greedy” and “so certain of its prey,” making it obvious that the ocean symbolizes death. On each of these phenomena, Nietzsche says it gives him “melancholy happiness” and it “makes me happy,” evidently amused and happy about how humans cope with the shadow, the predator always following them in death.

Democritus: The Atomist

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Democritus is a Greek philosopher who lived in about 460-370 BCE. He was also one of the two founders of ancient atomist theory, the theory that explains his understanding of death.

Democritus’ atomist theory was about the world being made of “indivisible” atoms that causes changes in the world when they break apart and regroup. In his version of the theory, atoms can change objects when they are in different shapes, different arrangements, and different positional orientation. Using letters as a representation of different atoms, different shapes are like the letter A and the letter N. Different arrangement would be like how “AN” is different than “NA.” Positional orientation would be like N and Z, where a rotation makes a different letter. Therefore, in this theory, atoms differ in size and shape. (Berryman)

Then Democritus goes on to explain why he thinks the atoms behave in the way they do. He proposed a force of a tendency of the “like and like.” This could be understood as the force that causes similar animals to cluster and pebbles of similar shape and size tend to cluster in a flowing current. But this theory remains controversial in whether Democritus actually meant it or he was just trying to prove orderly effects can be produced from a random force without purpose. (Berryman)

Democritus also denied that atoms had any other properties other than shape and size such as taste, color, or temperature. Instead, he argues that all of those are caused by the basic changes in arrangement. The argument is that because the same object can become a different color, change in taste, and change in temperature without adding or taking away anything, so all of these properties must not be what the atom carried, but what the atoms made when they are clustered in a certain way. (Berryman)

Then there is the problem of an ill person tasting or seeing different than others. He explains this by stating every object has atoms creating every kind of properties in them, but when properties contradict only the one stronger one will be perceived. Illnesses, on the other hand, may make people more sensitive to certain properties and less others, so they would perceive different properties from the same object than normal people. (Berryman)

His theory about living things and souls is also based on the atomist theory. He believed that souls are composed of one specific type of atoms, the fire atoms, and exists in every part of the body. There are two reasons behind this. First, animals often produce heat, and it was understood as the soul that gives the heat, so it makes sense that fire atoms make up the soul. Second, animals can move on their own, while other things can’t. This was also believed to be caused by the soul. As the soul is mobile, and fire is one of the only other mobile things in nature, so the fire atoms are what made souls. In his dedication to this theory, he also believes that thought is also caused by the physical movement of atoms. (Taylor, 78)

His theory on reproduction is equally interesting with his theory on souls. He believed that both parents contribute a seed that all parts of the body contribute to creating, and then the predominant characteristics are inherited. This theory is strikingly similar to the how science discovered the genes to work. He is also one of the first people to claim that the existence of particular species is not eternal. He also held the idea that human beings arose from the earth. (Berryman)

On death, Democritus defined it as the point where the being loses too much of its soul atoms that it ceases psychic functions, or stop thinking. He believes that in the process of one’s life, they are constantly losing soul atoms, therefore the move from life to death is a continuous event instead of an instant event, or a cutoff. There is not a moment where someone died, but that they were dying for a long time already. This also means that the soul does not survive after a person’s death, and that each person has his own unique soul that he has not and will not share with anyone else. Pushing the issue even further, he claims that soul atoms are not just in every part of a living being’s body, but in every part of the world, where objects that are not alive just doesn’t contain enough soul atoms to have psychic functions. This also ties together all his other theories about perception. Now in this theory perceptions are caused by soul atoms in different objects interacting with each other. That is also why some objects such as rocks may seem “less alive” than objects like water or corpses, because they have less soul atoms. (Taylor, 78)

In conclusion, Democritus’ philosophical discussions and view on death are all part of his large atomist theory, making it a very complete and fascinating view of the world.