D. Neuser answers “what exactly does "God is dead" mean, and...”

Timothy Morrison asked this question about The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs:

what exactly does "God is dead" mean, and what exactly is the role of the mad man in this book?

D. Neuser "God is dead" is not actually a statement about God per se, but rather a comment on the state of religion in society.

Nietzsche thought that modern so…more"God is dead" is not actually a statement about God per se, but rather a comment on the state of religion in society.

Nietzsche thought that modern society in his day had already moved on from traditional Christianity. Even though most people continued to identify as Christians, the reality was that modern science had already replaced traditional theological beliefs at the center of the educated person's worldview. However, most people did not yet recognize this. We see this in the parable of the Madman: when the Madman cries to the people in the marketplace that "I seek God!" they only laugh and do not take his spiritual quest seriously. But with the declaration that "God is dead!" they are suddenly jolted out of complacency, and do not know what to make of him.

The Madman is ahead of his time. People are not ready for his declaration. They continue to believe in Christian moral ideas - despite the fact that the theological justification for this morality had disappeared. Nietzsche considered doctrines such as liberalism, nationalism and socialism to be secularized versions of Christian morality - and thoroughly disapproved of how these ideologies dominated society in his time.

Nietzsche's mature view, expressed in later writings such as Beyond Good and Evil and the Genealogy of Morals, was that the normal view of the relationship between faith and morality was actually backwards. The morality came first; the theology came later, to justify it. Nietzsche thought that modern secular ideologies were actually, so to speak, more Christian than Christianity: atheism itself is traceable to Christian motives. Ultimately, Nietzsche thought that those motives had their deepest roots in "ressentiment": the impulse of the weak to get revenge on the strong. (less)

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