1.2—
The "Death of God" as the Turning Point of European Thought

The notion of "the death of God" first appears in 1882, in Book Three of The Gay Science . In the following few years, it finds its way into several passages of Thus Spoke Zarathustra . But it is not until 1887, with the composition of Book Five of The Gay Science, On the Genealogy of Morals, and the Nachlaß^[1] from this period, that Nietzsche makes clear the full significance of the madman's cry: "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him" (GS 125).

In Gay Science §343, which opens Book Five, we discover that Nietzsche's announcement of the "death of God" is not at all a personal confession of atheism or loss of faith; nor is it so for the various characters who make this proclamation (the madman, Zarathustra, the last pope, the ugliest man, etc.).^[2] Rather, it becomes evident that, for Nietzsche, the "death of God" is a cultural and historical event ("a generally Eu-

[1] See, for example, The Will to Power, Book I, titled "European Nihilism," which collects a group of notes written primarily from late 1886-early 1888. Nietzsche refers to this set of notes in GM III: 27, where, discussing the "death of God" as "Europe's longest and bravest self-overcoming," he announces a future project that "shall probe these things more thoroughly and severely [ . . . ] (under the title 'On the History of European Nihilism' [ . . . ] contained in a work in progress: The Will To Power: Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values )." Though this project was later abandoned, it was still very much alive as the Genealogy and Book Five of the Gay Science were being composed; and the conception of "European nihilism" that Nietzsche presents in the notes from this period clearly informs these published texts. On the history of Nietzsche's Will to Power project, see Mazzino Montinari, "Nietzsche's Nachlaß 1885–1888 und der 'Wille zur Macht,'" KSA 14: 383 – 400; Bernd Magnus, "Nietzsche's Philosophy in 1888: The Will to Power and the Übermensch," Journal of the History of Philosophy 24 (1986): 85–93; and Wayne Klein, Nietzsche and the Promise of Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 181–99.

[2] This has been stressed by a number of Nietzsche's commentators. See, e.g., Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity, trans. Charles F. Walraff and Frederick J. Schmitz (South Bend, Ind.: Regnery Gateway, 1979), 242; Martin Heidegger, "The Word of Nietzsche: 'God is Dead,'" in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 57ff.; George A. Morgan, What Nietzsche Means (New York: Harper and Row, 1941), 37ff.; Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Anti-Christ, 4th ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 99ff.; and Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation, trans. Susan Hanson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 144–46.

ropean event," he calls it in §357). Thus the passage begins, "The greatest recent event—that 'God is dead,' that the belief in the Christian god has become unbelievable—is already beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe."

Furthermore, it becomes clear that this event concerns far more than theology and religion; that it is an intellectual event, a crucial moment in the history of European thinking in general. Thus, reiterating the madman's conclusion, Nietzsche goes on to write:

The event is far too great, too distant, too remote from the multitude's capacity for comprehension even for the tidings of it to be thought of as having arrived as yet. Much less may one suppose that many people know as yet what this event really means—and how much must collapse now that this faith has been undermined because it was built upon this faith, propped up by it, grown into it; for example, the whole of our European morality. This long plenitude and sequence of breakdown, destruction, ruin, and cataclysm that is now impending—who could guess enough of it today to be compelled to play the teacher and advance proclaimer of this monstrous logic of terror, the prophet of a gloom and an eclipse of the sun whose like has probably never yet occurred on earth?

Here, we get an inkling of what Nietzsche will later make clear: that the "death of God" involves nothing less than a dismantling of the basic structures of belief and value upon which European thought has been founded. Moreover, we soon learn that this event is not brought about from the outside, by some external cataclysm; nor is it some chance occurrence. Rather, the "monstrous logic of terror" set in motion by the "death of God" is brought about from the inside, through a critique necessitated by the very presuppositions of European thought. In short, for Nietzsche, the "death of God" marks the beginning of a self -over-coming of the foundational structures of European thought.^[3]

These themes are more thoroughly elaborated in §357 of The Gay Science, where Nietzsche writes:

[T]he decline of the faith in the Christian god, the triumph of scientific atheism, is a generally European event in which all races had their share and for which all deserve credit and honor.[ . . . U]nconditional and honest atheism [ . . . is] a triumph achieved finally and with great difficulty by the European conscience, being the most fateful act of two thousand years of discipline

[3] Recall Nietzsche's description of nihilism: "what does nihilism mean?—that the highest values devaluate themselves " (WP 2). This notion of "self-overcoming" appears frequently in the texts of 1887–88. See, e.g., GS 357; GM II: 10, III: 27; EH "Destiny" 3; WP P, 3, 5, 404–5.

for truth that in the end forbids itself the lie in faith in God. . . . You see what has really triumphed over the Christian god: Christian morality itself, the concept of truthfulness that was understood ever more rigorously, the father confessor's refinement of the Christian conscience, translated and sublimated into a scientific conscience, into intellectual cleanliness at any price. Looking at nature as if it were proof of the goodness and governance of a god; interpreting history in honor of some divine reason, as a continual testimony of a moral world order and ultimate moral purposes; interpreting one's own experiences as pious people have long enough interpreted theirs, as if everything were providential, a hint, designed and ordained for the sake of the salvation of the soul: that is all over now, that has man's conscience against it, that is considered indecent and dishonest by every more refined conscience—mendaciousness, feminism, weakness, and cowardice. In this severity, if anywhere, we are good Europeans and heirs of Europe's longest and most courageous self-overcoming [Selbstüberwindung ].

After quoting this passage in the penultimate section of the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche continues:

All great things bring about their own destruction through an act of self-overcoming [Selbstaufhebung ]: thus the law of life will have it, the law of the necessity of "self-overcoming" [Selbstüberwindung ] in the nature of life—the lawgiver himself eventually receives the call: "patere legem, quam ipse tulisti " [submit to the law you yourself proposed]. In this way Christianity as a dogma was destroyed by its own morality; in the same way Christianity as morality must now perish too: we stand on the threshold of this event. After Christian truthfulness has drawn one inference after another, it must end by drawing its most striking inference, its inference against itself; this will happen, however, when it poses the question, "what is the meaning of all will to truth? " . . . And here I again touch on my problem, on our problem [ . . . ]: what meaning would our whole being possess if it were not this, that in us the will to truth becomes conscious of itself as a problem?  . . . As the will to truth thus gains self-consciousness, from now on—there is no doubt about it—morality will go to ruin [geht . . . zu Gründe ]: this is the great spectacle in a hundred acts reserved for the next two centuries in Europe—the most terrible, most questionable, and perhaps also the most hopeful of spectacles. . . . (GM III: 27)

Taken together, these passages present a genealogy that is of utmost importance for understanding Nietzsche's later thought. In these passages, he attempts to explain both the sequence of events leading to the "death of God" and its inevitable consequences. This account is highly condensed and elusive, to be sure. But, fortunately, these passages do not stand alone. They form part of a network of texts, written in 1887 and constantly cross-referenced by Nietzsche. Following the various strands of this network, we can piece together a genealogy that

links "God" and "morality" with "truth" and shows that a "refinement" of the "European conscience" eventually leads to the "self-overcoming" of metaphysics, theology, morality, and science and to a "revaluation" of "truth."