Dreams, undoubtedly, sometimes bring no less, if not more pleasant...
Many have heard the famous words of Friedrich Nietzsche: “God is dead.” But not many people know what exactly Nietzsche wanted to say with this skepticism and extreme pessimism.
Below I will give a fragment from his book “The Gay Science”, in the context of which the above famous phrase is mentioned.
"Mad Man"
“Have you heard about that crazy man who lit a lantern on a bright afternoon, ran out to the market and kept shouting: “I am looking for God!” I'm looking for God! - Since many of those who did not believe in God had gathered there, laughter rang out around him. Has he disappeared? - said one. “He’s lost like a child,” said another. Or hid? Is he afraid of us? Did he set sail? Emigrated? - they shouted and laughed intermittently. Then the madman ran into the crowd and pierced them with his gaze. “Where is God? - he exclaimed. - I want to tell you this! We killed him - You and I! We are all his killers! But how did we do this? ...Where are we heading? ...Aren't we constantly falling? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still up and down? Are we not wandering as if in an endless Nothing? Is empty space breathing on us? Hasn't it gotten colder? Isn't it getting darker and darker? Do you have to light a lantern in broad daylight? Don't we still hear the noise of the gravediggers burying God? Isn't the smell of divine decay reaching us? - and the Gods decay! God is dead! God will not rise again! And we killed him! How comforted will we be, murderers of murderers! The most holy and powerful Being that ever existed in the world bled to death under our knives - who will wash this blood from us? What water can we cleanse ourselves with? What redemptive festivals, what sacred games will need to be invented? Is not the greatness of this work too great for us? Shouldn't we ourselves turn into gods in order to be worthy of him? Never has a greater deed been accomplished, and whoever is born after us will, thanks to this deed, belong to a history higher than all previous history!” - Here the mad man fell silent and again began to look at his listeners; They too were silent, looking at him in surprise. Finally, he threw his lantern to the ground, so that it broke into pieces and went out. “I came too early,” he said then, “my hour has not yet struck. This monstrous event is still on the way and is coming to us - the news of it has not yet reached human ears. ...This act is still further from you than the most distant luminaries, - and yet you did it!” - They also say that on the same day a mad man went to various churches and sang in them his Requiem aeternam deo (Eternal rest in God). They kicked him out and called him to account, but he kept saying the same thing: “What else are these churches if not the graves and tombstones of God?”
At the end of the 19th century, these words were the words of a madman, the world around was developing, people were experiencing the peak of inspiration from scientific progress, from industrialization, from constant new discoveries. The world believed that it was religious and for the most part people considered themselves believers, and Europe was Christian. But Nietzsche discerned behind the outer gloss and progress the death and cadaverous smell of an inauthentic faith and spirit. It is not my intention to defend Nietzsche and his views, but his intuition was correct.
Nietzsche is not an atheist, but he speaks on behalf of many people of that time that God died because people killed Him, they no longer need Him, He is even bothering them. His laws and commandments are observed, but this is external, and internally everyone has long been tired of them and dreams of being freed from their burden, because for them true freedom is permissiveness. The time is coming to get rid of Him, because people have decided that His time is over, it’s time for Him to go into history, into the archives.
He states the fact of a murder that has already happened, but outwardly it is not yet visible. You can see how people talk about God, use the word “God” in their vocabulary, go to Church, practice ritualism and virtue, but this not only does not make them better, but even moves them away from God. “...Aren't we constantly falling? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? - says Nietzsche. Even in his ascent upward, experiencing progress, growth of well-being and external development, a person can rapidly fall continuously, moving away from God.
Stating the fact of the “death” of God, and even realizing personal guilt, Nietzsche does not call for repentance, does not lament the loss, he is frightened by the future, because it is dark and empty. But he nevertheless calls man to take the place of God.
I think that salvation for us will be our authentic inner life, living faith and intimacy with Christ, which will be most important to us. This will definitely cost us a lot. Most likely, in order to have a lot inside we will have to have a little outside.
In the 20th century, Nietzsche’s premonition was fully confirmed, but there is hope that in the 21st century more than one generation of people and Churches will rise up who will burn for God, who will be alive in their faith, who will know God. And we will be those in whom God will rise, come to life and appear to the world in order to save it from emptiness, madness and the fall into oblivion.
~ by klimenkoigor on July 6, 2013.
Heidegger M.
Nietzsche's words "God is dead"
The following explanation is an attempt to point in the direction from which the question of the essence of nihilism can someday be raised. This explanation has its origins in thinking that is beginning to gain clarity for the first time regarding Nietzsche's position in the history of Western metaphysics. To indicate means to clarify one of the stages of Western metaphysics, presumably its last stage, because other possibilities of metaphysics can no longer become visible insofar as metaphysics, through the medium of Nietzsche, in a certain sense takes away from itself its own essential possibilities. Thanks to Nietzsche's conversion, metaphysics remains only a perversion into its own essence. The supersensible becomes an untenable product of the sensory. And the sensual, together with such a decrease in its opposite, changes its own essence. The subversion of the supersensible eliminates what is simply sensible, and at the same time eliminates their difference. The deposition of the supersensible ends with "neither... nor...", as regards the distinction between the sensible (aistenon) and the insensible (noeton). The deposition ends in meaninglessness. And yet it remains an unthought-out, irresistible premise of blinded attempts to escape the meaningless simply by making sense.
In what follows, metaphysics is everywhere understood as the truth of existence as such as a whole, not as the teaching of such and such a thinker. Every thinker has his own special philosophical position within metaphysics. Therefore, metaphysics can be called by his name. However, in accordance with the way metaphysics is thought here, this will by no means mean that such and such metaphysics is the creation and property of the thinker as an individual within the public boundaries of cultural creativity. In each phase of metaphysics, a corresponding part of the path is visible, which the fate of being makes through existence in the suddenly erupting epochs of truth. Nietzsche himself interprets the progress of Western historical progress metaphysically, namely as the ascent and unfolding of nihilism. Thinking through Nietzsche's metaphysics becomes a comprehension of the situation and location of today's man, whose fate, as far as his truth is concerned, is still little known. But unless comprehension of this kind remains an empty report and repetition, it rises above what is actually being comprehended. To rise above something does not necessarily mean to exceed or surpass something, nor does it mean to overcome. If we comprehend Nietzsche's metaphysics, this does not mean that, along with his ethics, epistemology and aesthetics, we now primarily take into account his metaphysics, but this means only one thing: we are trying to take Nietzsche the thinker seriously. To think, for Nietzsche too, means to represent being as being. All metaphysical thinking is ontology or nothing at all. As for our attempt at comprehension, the whole point is to prepare a simple and inconspicuous step of thinking. It is extremely important for preparatory thinking to thin out and clarify those spaces within which being could again accept a person - in relation to his essence - into some kind of original conjugation with him. Being a preparer is the essence of this kind of thinking.
Such essential, and therefore in everything and in all aspects, only preparatory thinking moves in inconspicuousness. Here, any co-thinking, even the most inept and awkward, will provide significant help. The activity of co-thinking does not catch the eye in any way, it cannot be justified by either significance or usefulness - this is sowing, and the sowers are those who, perhaps, will not see either shoots or ripe grains, and will not recognize the harvest and harvest . They serve sowing, and even before that, preparation for sowing. Sowing is preceded by plowing. And it is necessary to make fertile that field, which, due to the inevitable domination of the land of metaphysics, had to remain abandoned and unknown to anyone. You must first of all feel, anticipate this field, and then find and cultivate it. You need to take the road leading to this field for the very first time. There are still many unknown paths in the world leading to the fields. And yet, every thinker is allotted only one path, and this is his path - and, paving it, he is obliged to walk back and forth along it, until he finally learns to maintain the direction and recognizes as his own that path, which, however, never will not belong to him until he finally learns to say what can only be experienced on this and no other path. Perhaps the title of the book Genesis and Time is a milestone on such a path. In accordance with the essential intertwining of metaphysics with the sciences - metaphysics itself demands it and strives for it again and again, and science is an outgrowth of metaphysics itself - preparing thinking must sometimes itself revolve in the circle of sciences, because sciences in their diverse guises are sometimes consciously, then, in the way of their significance and effectiveness, they still claim to set the fundamental form of knowledge, as well as everything that is accessible to knowledge. The more unambiguously sciences strive towards the technical existence predetermined by it with all its imprints, the more decisively the question becomes clearer about the possibility of knowledge that is claimed in technology, about its methods, limits, about its competence. Preparatory thinking and its implementation are impossible without education - it is necessary to teach one to think right in the middle of the sciences. The most difficult thing is to find an appropriate form for this, so that the education of thinking does not fall victim to its confusion with scientific research and scholarship. Such an intention is first of all endangered when this thinking at the same time constantly has to find its own location. To think directly in the midst of sciences means to pass by them without contempt for them. We do not know what opportunities the fate of Western history has in store for our people and the entire West. External folding and arrangement of such possibilities is not the most pressing thing. It is only important that, while learning to think, and at the same time co-teaching thinking in our own way, we stay on the path and find ourselves in place at the right moment. The following explanation, in its goals and meaning, remains within the circle of the very experience on the basis of which Being and time were thought through. One ongoing event constantly affects thinking, giving it no rest - the fact that although in the history of Western thinking, beings are thought from the very beginning in the aspect of being, nevertheless, the truth of being remains unthought through and, as a possible experience, is not only denied to thinking, but also itself Western thinking, precisely in the guise of metaphysics, even if unknowingly, hides this impending impossibility from view.
Preparatory thinking therefore necessarily remains in the area of understanding the historical event. History for such thinking is not a series of eras, but all the same proximity of the same thing - this same thing endlessly affects thinking in ways of fate that are not subject to any calculation, changing the degree of its immediacy. Now our understanding is aimed at Nietzsche’s metaphysics. His thinking is under the sign of nihilism. This is what the historical movement recognized by Nietzsche is called - it powerfully permeates previous centuries and determines the present century. Nietzsche summarizes his interpretation of this movement in a short phrase: “God is dead.”
One could assume that these words - “God is dead” - express the opinion of the atheist Nietzsche, purely personal, and therefore one-sided - then it is not difficult to refute it by citing the fact that in our time many people visit temples, enduring their troubles and hardships based on the belief in God defined by Christianity. However, the question remains, is it true that the above words of Nietzsche are just an exalted view of a thinker, about whom they will not fail to remind you that he finally went crazy? One can also ask: is Nietzsche not uttering here the very word that has been silently and incessantly heard all the time, while only the historical accomplishment of the West was determined metaphysically? Therefore, in any case, we should not rush to make our judgment about these words, but we should try to think of them as they were intended. Therefore, it is very appropriate to put aside any hasty opinions, which, as soon as these terrible words are uttered, rush to quickly take a place in front.
In what follows we try, through reasoning, to clarify Nietzsche’s words in some of their essential aspects. And let us remind you once again with all poignancy: Nietzsche’s words describe the fate of the West over the course of two thousand years of its history. We, however unprepared we all may be, should not think that as soon as we read a report on these words of Nietzsche, this fate will immediately change or, at worst, we will truly experience it. Nevertheless, we now urgently need one thing - to perceive a certain lesson from our comprehension, and by perceiving the lesson, learn to comprehend.
However, no explanation should be content with extracting the essence of the matter from the text - without boasting, it must also add something of its own here. An uninitiated person, taking this and that as the content of the text, always feels such an addition as something read into the text by the interpreter and, claiming his right to judge, subjects it to criticism. However, a real explanation never understands the text better than the author - but only understands it differently. And it is only necessary that this other thing touches on the same thing, and does not miss what the text being explained follows in its thought.
Nietzsche first uttered the words “God is dead” in the third book of his essay The Gay Science, published in 1882. With this essay, the path to the formation of Nietzsche’s basic, metaphysical position begins. This work of Nietzsche and his futile torment in constructing the planned main work of his life are separated by the publication of the book Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The planned main work was never completed. At one time, Nietzsche intended to call it that - The Will to Power - with the subtitle "An Experience in the Revaluation of All Values."
The overwhelming thought of the death of God, the death of the Gods, was familiar to Nietzsche already in his youth. In one of the entries dating back to the time he was working on his first work, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche says (1870): “I believe in the ancient Germanic: all Gods will have to die.” The young Hegel, at the end of his treatise Faith and Knowledge (1802), writes about “the feeling on which all religion of modern times is based, the feeling: God himself is dead...”. In Hegel's words there is a thought about something different from that of Nietzsche. And yet there is an essential relationship between them, Hegel and Nietzsche, hidden in the essence of any metaphysics. The words of Pascal, borrowed from Plutarch: “Le grand Pan est mort” also belong here, in this same area. (Pensees, 695). First, let's listen to the full text of excerpt 125 from the book The Gay Science. The passage is entitled: Madman; it reads:
Madman. - How, you haven’t heard anything about that crazy person who lit a lantern in broad daylight, went to the square and shouted there without a break: “I’m looking for God! I’m looking for God!”?!.. And there were just a lot of unbelievers crowding there, who, having heard his cries began to laugh loudly. "Is he lost?" - said one. “Isn’t he lost like a little child?” - said another. “Or did he hide in the bushes? Or is he afraid of us? Or did he go to the galley? Said overseas?” - they made noise and cackled incessantly. And the madman rushed into the very crowd, piercing them with his gaze. “Where has God gone?” he cried. “Now I’ll tell you! We killed him - you and me! We are all his murderers! But how did we kill him? How did we manage to exhaust the depths of the sea? Who gave us a sponge to wipe away all the sky? What did we do, uncoupling the Earth from the Sun? Where is it now flying? Away from the Sun, from the suns? Are we falling continuously, and backwards, and forwards? all sides? And is there still a top and a bottom? And aren’t we wandering in the endless Nothing? And isn’t the emptiness yawning in our faces? Isn’t it getting colder every moment? light the lanterns in broad daylight? And don’t we hear the grave-digger’s pickaxe burying God? And don’t our noses smell the stench of a rotting God? - After all, God is dead! And we killed him! Can we, the murderers of murderers, console ourselves? The most sacred and strong thing that the world has possessed until now - it bled to death under the blows of our knives - who will wipe the blood from us? What water will we cleanse ourselves with? What redemptive festivals, what sacred games will we not have to invent? Isn't the greatness of this feat too great for us? Will we have to become gods ourselves in order to be worthy of it? Never before has such a great deed been accomplished - thanks to it, whoever is born after us will enter into a history more sublime than everything that happened in the past! They were also silent and looked at him in disbelief. Finally, he threw the lantern to the ground, so that it broke and went out. “I came too early,” he said, after a pause, “it’s not my time yet.” A monstrous event - it is still on the way, it wanders its way - it has not yet reached human ears. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of stars requires time, deeds require time for people to hear about them, for people to see them already accomplished. And this deed is still farther than the farthest stars from people - and yet they did it! "... They also say that on this day a madman burst into the Churches and began to drag out the Requiem aeternam. When they took him out by the hands, demanding an answer, he answered every time with the same words: “What are all these churches now, if not the tombs and gravestones of God?”
Four years later (1886), Nietzsche added a fifth to the four books of The Gay Science, entitled We, the Fearless. Its first passage (aphorism 343) is titled: What is our joy here? It begins like this: “The greatest of the events of modern times - “God is dead,” belief in the Christian God has become implausible - it is now beginning to cast its shadow over the whole of Europe.”
From this it is clear that Nietzsche's words imply the death of the Christian God. However, it is no less certain, and one should know this from the very beginning, that in Nietzsche, in his thought, the words “God” and “Christian God” serve to designate the supersensible world in general. God is the name of the sphere of ideas and ideals. This area of the supersensible, starting with Plato, and more precisely, with the late Greek and Christian interpretation of Platonic philosophy, is considered the authentic and, in the proper sense of the word, the real world. In contrast, the sensory world is only this-worldly and changeable - therefore it is apparent and unreal. This world is a vale of sadness, in contrast to the heavenly world of eternal bliss on the other side of things. If, like Kant, we call the sensory world the physical world in a broader sense, then the supersensible world will be a metaphysical world.
The words “God is dead” mean: the supersensible world has lost its effective power. He no longer gives life. The end of metaphysics has come - for Nietzsche this is all Western philosophy, understood as Platonism. Nietzsche understands his own philosophy as a movement against metaphysics - for him this means against Platonism. However, any counter-movement, like any “anti-” in general, necessarily gets stuck in the essence of what it opposes. The movement against metaphysics, being merely turning it inside out, remains hopelessly entangled in Nietzsche, so that metaphysics is fenced off from its own essence like a stone wall, and therefore is unable to think of its essence. Therefore, for metaphysics and through it, it is still hidden what happens in it and what, in fact, happens as metaphysics.
Once God as the supersensible basis, as the goal of everything real, is dead, and the supersensible world of ideas has lost its binding force and, above all, has lost the power to awaken and create, there is nothing left at all that man could hold on to, on which he could rely and with which he could be guided. That is why in the passage we read it says: “And are we not wandering in the infinite Nothing?” The words “God is dead” contain the statement: Nothing expands to all ends. “Nothing” here means the absence of a supersensible, obligatory world. Nihilism, “the most unwelcome of guests,” is at the door.
An attempt to explain Nietzsche’s words “God is dead” is identical to the task of explaining what Nietzsche understands by nihilism, and thereby showing in what relation he himself stands to nihilism. Since, however, the word “nihilism” is often used just to make more noise and shake the air, and sometimes as a swear word, it is necessary to know what it means. Not all of those who refer to their Christian faith and metaphysical beliefs are thereby already outside nihilism. And, conversely, not every one of those who care about thoughts about Nothing and its essence is a nihilist.
They like to pronounce the word “nihilist” in such a tone, as if this very name, even if you don’t think anything while pronouncing it, was already enough to prove that the mere comprehension of Nothing inevitably leads to a fall into Nothing and marks the establishment of the dictatorship of Nothing .
In general, we will have to ask whether only the nihilistic meaning, that is, the negative one leading to the annihilation of Nothing, is inherent in “nihilism,” if we take it strictly in the sense that is conceived in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Given the vagueness and arbitrariness with which this word is used, it is very necessary, without even starting to discuss exactly what Nietzsche himself says about nihilism, to find the correct view of it, and only then can we ask what it is nihilism.
Nihilism is a movement in historical accomplishment, and not any view, not any doctrine, which anyone shared or adhered to. Nihilism is driven by historical accomplishment, just as it can be driven by an as yet almost unrecognized fundamental process within the fate of the peoples of the West. For this same reason, nihilism is not only a historical phenomenon along with others, not only a spiritual movement that would be found in the history of the West along with others, along with Christianity, humanism, and enlightenment.
Nihilism, if we think of it in its essence, is rather a fundamental movement in the historical development of the West. And such is the depth of this movement that its unfolding can only lead to global catastrophes. Nihilism is a world-historical movement of those peoples of the earth who are involved in the sphere of influence of modern times. Therefore, it is neither a phenomenon only of the modern era, nor a product of the 19th century, when, however, attention to nihilism intensified and the word itself came into use. In the same way, nihilism is not the product of individual nations, whose thinkers and writers talk about nihilism. It may also happen that those who imagine themselves unaffected by it most thoroughly contribute to its unfolding. The guest is sinister and unpleasant, the most unpleasant of all, and he is also sinister because he cannot name his source. And nihilism reigns not only when they begin to deny the Christian God, fight Christianity or, say, free-thinkingly preach simple atheism. As long as we limit our gaze solely to such unbelief, which turns away from Christianity, and its manifestations, our gaze lingers on the external, pathetic façade of nihilism. The speeches of a madman directly indicate that the words “God is dead” have nothing in common with the opinions of idle onlookers who “don’t believe in God” and who speak all at once. Nihilism, the fate of their own unfolding history, has not yet reached such people without faith.
As long as we comprehend the words “God is dead” only as a formula of unbelief, we will continue to understand them in the theological and apologetic sense, dissociating ourselves from everything that was most important for Nietzsche, namely from the kind of understanding that would follow by thought behind what has already happened with the truth of the supersensible world and its relation to the essence of man. Therefore, nihilism, as Nietzsche understood it, is not covered by that purely negatively imagined state when people can no longer believe in the Christian God of biblical revelation - just as by Christianity Nietzsche does not mean the life of Christians that existed only once for a very short time until the Gospels were compiled and Paul's missionary work began. For Nietzsche, Christianity is a phenomenon of the church with its claims to power, a historical phenomenon, a phenomenon of secular politics within the framework of the formation of Western humanity and the culture of modern times. In this sense, Christianity so understood and the Christian spirit of the New Testament faith are not the same thing. And a life that is far from Christian can affirm Christianity, using it as a factor of strength, and, conversely, a Christian life does not necessarily need Christianity. Therefore, a dispute with Christianity should not necessarily entail a struggle with the Christian spirit - after all, criticism of theology does not yet mean criticism of faith, the interpretation of which theology is intended to serve. As long as these essential differences are neglected, they remain at the level of a base struggle of worldviews.
“God” in the words “God is dead,” if thought through in its essence, replaces the supersensible world of ideals that contain the purpose of life, which rises above earthly life itself, and thereby determine it from above and, in a certain sense, from the outside. When the unclouded faith in God, defined by the church, begins to disappear, and in particular the doctrine of faith and theology in its role of setting the measure of explanation of existence as a whole is limited and pushed into the background, then as a result of this the fundamental structure according to which the earthly, sensual life is governed by goal-setting, which goes into the sphere of the supersensible.
The authority of God, the authority of the church with its teaching mission disappears, but its place is taken by the authority of conscience, the authority of reason rushing here. Social instinct rebels against them. Flight from the world into the sphere of the supersensible is replaced by historical progress. The otherworldly goal of eternal bliss is transformed into earthly happiness for the majority. Concern for the religious cult is replaced by the inspired creation of culture or the spread of civilization. Creativity, which was once the hallmark of the biblical God, now marks human activity. Human creativity is finally turning into business and gamble.
So, the place of the supersensible world is hastening to be taken by derivatives of the church-Christian and theological interpretation of the world: it borrowed its scheme of ordo, the hierarchical order of existence, from the Hellenistic-Jewish world, and its fundamental structure was established by Plato in the early days of Western metaphysics. The area where the essence takes place and the event of nihilism unfolds is metaphysics itself, with the indispensable condition, however, that when we use this word - “metaphysics”, we will not mean by it a philosophical doctrine, and especially not some separate discipline of philosophy , but let us think about the fundamental structure of existence as a whole, about that structure in which the sensory and supersensible worlds are distinguished and the first relies on the second and is determined by it. Metaphysics is the space of historical accomplishment, the space in which it becomes fate that the supersensible world, ideas, God, moral law, the authority of reason, progress, the happiness of the majority, culture, civilization lose their inherent power of creation and begin to become insignificant. We call this essential disintegration of everything supersensible oblivion, decay, decay. Therefore, unbelief in the sense of falling away from Christian teaching is never the essence and foundation of nihilism - it is always only its consequence; It may also happen that Christianity itself is a consequence and a certain expression of nihilism. Now, from here, we can recognize the latest deviation, the latest delusion to which people are subject when they try to comprehend and, as they imagine, refute nihilism. Without comprehending nihilism as a movement within a historical event, which has been going on for a long time and whose essential basis rests in metaphysics itself, people indulge in the disastrous addiction of taking for nihilism itself phenomena that are only its consequences, and for the causes of nihilism - its consequences and influences. Mindlessly adapting to this way of presenting things, people over the course of decades become accustomed to citing the dominance of technology or the uprising of the masses as the causes of the historical situation of an era, tirelessly dividing the spiritual situation of the time in accordance with such aspects. However, no matter how knowledgeable, insightful and witty the analysis of man and his position within all things is, it continues to remain thoughtless, giving rise only to the appearance of comprehension until they forget to think about the location of the existing person, until they comprehend his location in the truth of existence.
Until we stop mistaking the phenomena of nihilism for nihilism itself, our attitude towards nihilism will remain superficial. It will not be able to budge even the slightest bit, even if it draws a certain passion for the resistance it offers, either from general dissatisfaction with the world situation, or from despair, which it does not dare to fully admit to itself, or from moral indignation or the arrogant superiority of the believer over others. In contrast to all this, one thing is necessary - for us to begin to comprehend. Therefore, let us now ask Nietzsche himself what he means by nihilism, and at first let it remain open whether Nietzsche grasps the essence of nihilism and whether he can grasp it by understanding nihilism in this way. In one of his entries from 1887, Nietzsche poses the question (Will to Power, Aphorism 2): “What does nihilism mean?” And he answers: “That the highest values are devalued.” This answer is underlined and provided with an explanation: “There is no goal, there is no answer to the question - why?”
If we follow this account, Nietzsche understands nihilism as a process in historical completion. He interprets this process as a depreciation of higher values that existed before. God, the supersensible world as the world that truly exists and determines everything, ideals and ideas, goals and foundations that determine and bear all that exists and human life in everything special - everything here is presented in the sense of the highest values. According to an opinion that is still widespread today, the highest values mean truth, goodness and beauty: the true, that is, what actually exists; good, which is what it’s all about; beauty, that is, the order and unity of existence as a whole. However, the highest values begin to depreciate due to the fact that people gradually realize: the ideal world is unrealizable, it will never be possible to realize it within the real world. The obligation of higher values is thereby shaken. The question arises: what are these highest values for if they do not provide guarantees, means and ways to achieve the goals that go along with them?
If we, however, wished to understand quite literally Nietzsche's definition of the essence of nihilism - it consists in the fact that the highest values lose all value - then we would end up with the same comprehension of the essence of nihilism, which meanwhile has spread widely and the prevalence of which is supported by itself the same name is “nihilism”: the depreciation of higher values means a clear decline. However, for Nietzsche, nihilism is by no means only a phenomenon of decline - nihilism as a fundamental process of Western history is at the same time and first of all a pattern of this history. Therefore, in thinking about Nietzsche’s nihilism, it is important not so much to describe how the process of depreciation of higher values occurs historically, which would then make it possible to calculate the decline of Europe - no, Nietzsche thinks of nihilism as the “internal logic” of the historical development of the West. At the same time, Nietzsche understands that as the former highest values depreciate for the world, the world itself still does not cease to exist and that it is this world, deprived of values, that will inevitably insist on the establishment of new values. Once the previous highest values have collapsed, then the new position of values inevitably becomes in relation to them a “revaluation of all values.” "No". to old values stems from “yes” to new values. Since, according to Nietzsche, for this “yes” there is neither the possibility of mediation nor the possibility of compromise with previous values, such an unconditional “no” is included within the “yes” to new values. In order to ensure the unconditionality of the new “yes”, preventing a return to previous values, that is, in order to justify the establishment of new values as a movement against the old ones, Nietzsche continues to call the new establishment of values nihilism, that is, such nihilism through which devaluation the former ends with the establishment of new ones, the only ones that now set the measure of values. Nietzsche calls this measure-setting phase of nihilism “perfect,” that is, classical nihilism. By nihilism Nietzsche means the devaluation of former highest values. But at the same time, he has a positive (“yes”) attitude towards nihilism in the sense of “revaluation of all previous values.” Therefore, the word “nihilism” does not cease to be polysemantic, and, if we keep in mind the extreme meanings, it is first of all ambiguous, ambiguous, since in one case it simply means the depreciation of former highest values, and in the other at the same time an unconditional counter-movement against depreciation. It is ambiguous in this regard already what Nietzsche cites as the prototype of nihilism is pessimism. According to Schopenhauer, pessimism is the belief that in the worst of worlds, life is not worth living to be affirmed. According to this teaching, both life and, consequently, existence as such as a whole must be denied. Such pessimism, according to Nietzsche, is “the pessimism of weakness.” For such a person there is only darkness everywhere, everywhere there is a reason for nothing to succeed; he claims to know how things will happen - precisely under the sign of omnipresent trouble, collapse. On the contrary, the pessimism of strength, pessimism as strength and strength, does not create the slightest illusions for itself, sees dangers, does not want to obscure or gloss over anything. And he sees through and through the fatality of wary, inactive waiting to see if the old things will return. It analytically invades phenomena; it requires a clear awareness of those conditions and forces that, in spite of everything, will still allow one to cope with the historical situation and ensure success.
"God is dead", or "God is dead"(German: Gott ist tot or Gott starb) - Nietzsche's saying. Appeared in the book “The Gay Science” written in 1881-1882. The metaphor of postmodern philosophy is associated with the statement - death of God .
It is usually associated with the destruction of ideas about the presence of some guarantor of the existence of humanity, lying beyond the boundaries of immediate empirical life, containing a plan of history that gives meaning to the existence of the world. The idea of the absence of such a guarantor arose as a consequence of the discussion about the justification of God (see theodicy) and is one of the main premises of modern European philosophy [ ] .
God is dead: but such is the nature of people that for thousands of years there may still exist caves in which his shadow is shown. - And we - we must also defeat his shadow!
God is dead! God will not rise again! And we killed him! How comforted will we be, murderers of murderers! The most holy and powerful Being that ever existed in the world bled to death under our knives - who will wash this blood from us?
The greatest of new events - that "God is dead" and that faith in the Christian God has become something unworthy of trust - is already beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe.
Many researchers and thinkers talk about the time starting from the end of the twentieth century as the beginning of a new one, or at least as the end and decline of an old era in the history of the development of Western culture. Indeed, over the past two centuries, enormous changes have occurred in almost all spheres of culture: many of the ideas that for centuries founded and determined the thinking of European people have undergone a radical reassessment, many of the ideological, moral, religious, ethical and social strongholds on which Western civilization rested have collapsed . During the twentieth century, a variety of “declines,” “ends,” and “deaths” were repeatedly proclaimed: “the end of metaphysics,” “the end of philosophy,” “the death of the Author,” “the death of the subject,” “the death of man,” etc. The view of modernity as one of the turning points in history has become familiar and even commonplace for us. However, with all this, we still do not have a clear idea of the origins and causes of the changes taking place around us.
In this context, the task of searching for a certain model that would give us the opportunity to present all the changes that have occurred in the bosom of European culture as consequences and manifestations of a single event becomes very relevant. The author of this work believes that it is possible to use Nietzsche’s idea of the death of God as such a model. The basis for this assumption is the fact of the presence of the following phenomena in the context of the culture of the 20th century: firstly, the crisis of Christianity, the total loss of faith, the collapse of spirituality and the devaluation of “old” values; secondly, the transformation of this idea in the work of such thinkers who played a decisive role in the formation of the spiritual situation of the 20th century, such as M. Heidegger, J. Deleuze, M. Foucault; finally, the emergence in our time of the so-called “theology of the death of God.”
Chapter 1.
General characteristics of Nietzsche's idea of the death of God
Apparently, the work of no other thinker has caused as much controversy, misunderstandings and misconceptions as the legacy of Nietzsche. And one should “blame” for this not so much Förster-Nietzsche, fascist ideologists or any other “distorters”, but rather the philosopher himself. Works, books, style of thinking and writing serve, perhaps, as the best illustration of the worldview of an apologist for formation, fragmentation and diversity of “points of view,” a critic of Identity and Unity. An aphorism, as the main means of expression, “implying a new concept of philosophy, a new image of both the thinker and thoughts” and relating to systematized thinking “like vectorial geometry to metric, like a labyrinth to an arrow with the inscription “exit””, turns the reading into “paleontology of thought , where one found “tooth” requires one to recreate an unknown whole at one’s own risk” [ibid.].
If we add to this a whole string of masks and a gallery of characters (a romantic pessimist, a Wagnerian, a skeptic-positivist, a nihilist, Antichrist, Zarathustra, Ariadne, Dionysus, the Crucified and, finally, “illness as a point of view on health” and “health as point of view on illness") through which he conveys his philosophy to his readers and behind which Nietzsche simultaneously hides, then the variety of misunderstandings and errors that develops around Nietzsche’s main ideas, including his words about the death of God, becomes unsurprising and even natural.
Indeed, it is difficult to avoid misinterpretations where, instead of a certain holistic concept with a system of argumentation and evidence, so “natural” for European philosophy, we are dealing with only a few allegorical aphorisms scattered throughout the thinker’s work, saying that God is dead.
Misunderstandings arise already at the very beginning when trying to attribute Nietzsche to one camp or another, “to evaluate the proclamation of the “death of God” from the diametrically opposed, but ideologically stable positions […] of orthodox Christianity and equally orthodox atheism.” It is clear that for a Christian we can only talk about atheism here, but on the other hand it will be difficult to find or even imagine an atheist capable of accepting such atheism.
The source of such misunderstandings, apparently, is precisely the fact that we strive to see Nietzsche’s personal position in the words about the death of God, and forget Heidegger’s parting words: “it is necessary to read Nietzsche, constantly questioning the history of the West.” From this “historical” perspective, the thesis “God is dead” is no longer the point of view of a thinker on the issue of religion, but an attempt to point out a certain threshold state, a certain turning point in the destinies of the West. The words “God is dead” “turn out here to be only a diagnosis and prognosis”, “a seismograph needle recording the underlying situation of the era[...]” . Thus, Nietzsche’s “atheism” is of a special kind, it is not an enlightenment whim, and not a “scientific” conviction; it has nothing in common with the “free-thinking of our gentlemen physiologists and natural scientists”, who reject God on the grounds that he cannot be found in any way in test tube If we still try to give some name to Nietzsche’s position, then he should apparently be called a “godless man”: having caught the main melody of his era with a sensitive ear, he tried to “see the fatal thing up close, moreover, experience it on himself ", to carry out the act of "self-identification, voluntary assimilation of the disease." To correctly understand Nietzsche, we must keep in mind his deep personal involvement in this issue, the desire not to discuss and evaluate the reality revealed to him from the point of view of existing norms and criteria (for, on the contrary, it is this reality that sets the norms and criteria), but to accept it such as it is, and practically, experimentally, on yourself and by yourself, experience it. In general, Nietzsche was characterized by a biased personal attitude towards all the most important problems of his time: “he gave himself entirely to being devoured by gnawing anxiety for the fate of man and his existence: what will happen to him tomorrow, already today? [...] He looked closely at the greatest people of their time, and he was amazed by their calm equanimity and self-confidence: it seemed to him that they did not penetrate into the essence of the matter, did not sense the inexorable course of modern history. Of course, they could not help but notice what was happening. They often foresaw the future. they did not let the monstrous thing they saw inside themselves, they did not penetrate it to the bones..."
However, if Nietzsche does not express his personal opinion, but speaks on behalf of a certain historical reality, and his words should affect the entire European culture, then why in our time do many remain believers, many continue to trust in the Christian God in their lives? Maybe Nietzsche's prophecy turned out to be false, maybe there was no turning point?
Such objections can be answered by pointing out that the “event” of the death of God has a completely different scale than just one or two centuries: on the one hand, “Nietzsche’s words spell out the fate of the West during two thousand years of its history,” and, on the other, On the other hand, “the event itself is still too great, too inaccessible to the perception of the majority, so that even the rumors about it can be considered to have reached us - not to mention how few people still know what actually happened here...”. In other words, we only belong to the beginning of an era permeated and defined by this “event.” “It is possible that they will believe in this God for a long time and consider his world to be “real,” “effective,” and “determining.” This is similar to the phenomenon when the light of an extinguished star thousands of years ago is still visible, but with all its luminosity it turns out to be pure "visibility". And yet, from now on, the history of the West will be determined, according to Nietzsche, by a slow but steady movement towards an increasingly clear awareness of the death of God. It is possible that such twentieth-century phenomena as the crisis of Christianity and the total loss of faith are just the first symptoms of this awareness.
Moreover, Nietzsche's idea of the death of God does not simply boil down to a crisis of religion. The uniqueness of the philosopher’s position, the enormous importance of his work for understanding modern culture and the destinies awaiting it lies in the fact that he tried, with his characteristic radicalism, to comprehend all the possible consequences of abandoning the idea of God. And therefore, this event through the eyes of its discoverer is much larger than the prevailing ideas about it, not only in time, but also in the “spatial” dimension, in the sense of the number of spheres of culture affected by it: “[...] with the burial of this faith, everything erected on it, leaning on it, growing into it […] there will be a long abundance of collapses, destruction, deaths, collapses...” Thus, Nietzsche is talking about a revaluation and rethinking of all values, all ideological attitudes of the West, to one degree or another connected with the idea of God.
First of all, such a fundamental event as the death of God should affect the most universal of worldview teachings - metaphysics. If we remember that Nietzsche considered Christianity as “Platonism for the people” [see. eg: 10, p.58], and ““God” here simultaneously serves as the leading representation for the “supersensible” in general and its various interpretations, for “ideals” and “norms”, for “principles” and “rules”, for “ goals" and "values" that are established "above" beings in order to give beings as a whole purpose, order and - as they say briefly - "meaning", then the death of God turns out to be inextricably linked with the collapse of the binary disposition of the otherworldly and thisworldly, the material and the ideal , created by Plato and for thousands of years founded, determined and dominated the thinking of Western man. The fact that for Nietzsche the words “God is dead” means, among other things, also the liberation of our ideas about existence from the yoke of Plato’s metaphysical teachings, is proven by the constant presence of the theme of “darkening and solar eclipse” in all fragments dedicated to this event. So, for example, in one of the most famous - “Mad Man” the author asks through the lips of the herald of the death of God: “Who gave us a sponge to wipe off the paint from the entire horizon? What did we do, tearing this earth away from its sun?” [ibid., p.446]. If we recall Plato’s parable, where the Sun acted as a metaphor for the sphere of the supersensible, the ideal - the sphere that formed and limited the “horizon” of thinking of Western man only within the “light” of which the existing could be visible to the eye, as it “looks”, that is, as , what is its “appearance” (idea), then the death of God, indeed, appears as “erasing paint from the entire horizon,” for from now on “the sphere of the supersensible no longer stands over the heads of people as a light that sets the measure.”
At the same time, the death of God appears for Nietzsche as the opening of a new horizon - the “horizon of the infinite,” as the widest openness that we can experience. “The world has once again become infinite for us,” because the sphere of the supersensible that closed and limited it disappears, because formation and diversity are liberated from the dominion of the “One” and “Being,” the death of God makes impossible the strategy of reducing all world diversity to a single supreme principle and reveals all the heterogeneity and pluralism of the Universe. “Being and the One do not just lose their meaning, they acquire a different meaning, a new one. For from now on, diversity as such (fragments and parts) is called One, becoming is called Being […] the unity of diversity, the Being of becoming, is affirmed.”
The world has once again become infinite for us also because from now on it appears before us as a kingdom of chance and chance, as a “divine table for divine dice,” containing an infinite variety of possibilities. With the death of the Divine Logos, who created the universe “in his own image and likeness,” another fundamental postulate for metaphysics and European culture, proclaiming the identity of Being and thinking, inevitably collapses. The “godless” Universe, freed from the dictates of subordination to the goal, from the “eternal spider-mind and its web,” appears in all its alienness to “Truth,” “logicality,” “orderliness,” any kind of universal cause-and-effect patterns, in all its “eternal chaos”. Genesis now represents an infinite variety of self-developing particles and fragments, having their own unique paths, not reducible to a single linear history and not closed by the “highest and only Limit.”
But, first of all, “the world has once again become infinite for us, since we are unable to reject the possibility that it contains infinite interpretations”: the death of God means the loss of faith in the very possibility of building a unified and systematic conceptual model of the world, a radical refusal of the claim to a comprehensive description and explanation, because the source of the universal generalizing interpretation of the Universe has disappeared. The possibility of an infinite variety of interpretations of existence from the most diverse points of view and positions opens up, equally legitimate and not reducible to one. If we use the terminology of postmodern philosophy, then the death of God is, in fact, the “death of the Author” of the “work” - the world, the meaning of which is now generated by any of its “readers”, and any of the “readings” of which is now legitimate.
A radical change in our ideas about the world after the death of God presupposes a transformation of the methods and ideals of its knowledge. Diversity and formation require not a search for the “Absolute Truth,” but interpretation and evaluation: interpretation that always assigns only a partial and fragmentary “meaning” to a certain phenomenon and an evaluation that determines the hierarchical “value” of meanings, without diminishing or abolishing their diversity.
Rejection of the idea of “God's view,” that is, of “the experience of supra-historical observation, of looking-above-or-over, of a look that rises and soars imperturbably above the Past,” presupposes a rejection of the ideal of “disinterested contemplation” it defines. ", a neutral gaze in which "one must be paralyzed, there must be no active and interpretive forces, which alone make vision." Instead of the old epistemology, Nietzsche offers his concept of “perspectivism”: every need, drive, every “pro” and “con” is a new perspective, a new point of view, and the more affects we give the floor in the discussion of any subject, the more complete our idea of it, our objectivity, will turn out to be. The place of the absolute, hovering-above, disinterested, serene “eye without gaze” is taken by the gaze, as a moving center of plastic forces interpreting being, for which the main element of discrimination is the will to power.
The death of God, as an absolute subject and absolute mind, on the idea of which the finite subject previously relied and, in essence, duplicated its properties, should lead to the fact that in man, on the one hand, his bifurcation into “body” and “soul” is overcome, “material” and “spiritual”, but at the same time, on the other hand, there is a splitting of the individual “I” - what will later be called in postmodern philosophy “the death of the subject”. In the situation of the death of God, the centuries-old strategy of suppressing some of man's properties ("bodily", "natural"), considering them as "not truly human", at the expense of bringing others into the sphere of extra-natural Existence, becomes impossible. The “Other” in man—the “Self,” the unconscious—breaks out from under the dominance of the human mind. After the death of God, the entire dependence of the “I” on this sphere becomes obvious, and thereby its multidimensionality is revealed, the myth of its monolithicity is destroyed. Along with Christianity, the “fatal atomism that Christianity taught most successfully and for the longest time, the atomism of souls, should also disappear,” the soul should henceforth be considered as “a plurality of the subject” and “a social structure of affects and instincts” [ibid.].
But the death of God does not only mean the “death of the subject,” man himself must also “die.” If the normative and ideal model of man ceases to exist, the idea of his eternal and unchangeable nature disappears, then man becomes subject to evolution and can be considered as “that which must surpass.” "[...] Nietzsche has reached the point where man and God belong to each other, where the death of God is synonymous with the disappearance of man and where the promised coming of the superman means from the very beginning and, above all, the inevitability of the death of man."
Unfortunately, the scope of this work and its tasks do not allow us to consider in detail the key themes of modern philosophy, however, it can be noted that its main ideas, such as “post-metaphysical thinking”, “acentrism”, “death of the Author”, “death of the subject”, “ the death of man," her criticism of binarism and logocentrism, are, in fact, a continuation of Nietzsche's idea of the death of God.
So, Nietzsche’s words about the death of God are not an expression of the thinker’s personal beliefs, but an attempt to give a name to a certain historical event seen in the depths of European culture, powerfully penetrating into the past and defining the present and subsequent centuries, which should lead to radical changes in our ideas about the world, about the ways of knowing it and about man.
Chapter 2.
The main causes and consequences of the event of the “death of God” in the context of European culture
“God died” - the incredible and unimaginable happened, but the enormity of this event is not yet fully clear to us, for God not only “removed from his living presence”, but was killed, killed by people: “we killed him, [...] the most the most holy and powerful Being that ever existed in the world bled to death under our knives.”
But how did this become possible? "But how did we do it? How did we manage to drink the sea? Who gave us a sponge to wipe off the paint from the entire horizon?" [ibid]. The answer, according to Nietzsche, lies in Christianity itself, in European morality itself, the death of God is the “ultimately thought-out logic of our great values and ideals”, European culture has been “for a long time moving in some kind of torture of tension, growing from century to century to disaster" [ibid., p. 35]. God died because we, today, killed him, consigning him to oblivion, but, on the other hand, “necessity itself had a hand in the matter” [ibid], since the inevitability of this event was predetermined at the very beginning of European history. What in the history of the West, according to Nietzsche, predetermined the death of God? To answer this question we must understand the specifics of Nietzsche's view of history.
World history, according to Nietzsche, represents an eternal dualism, antagonism and confrontation between two types of forces - “active” and “reactive”. The first are creative forces, creating, creating, affirming difference and life. While for the latter, the primary ones are denial, resistance to everything that is different, the desire to limit, suppress everything else. Active ones constantly assert themselves by transforming the environment; reactive ones are only able to respond and react to external impulses.
These two types of forces correspond to two types of morality - “master morality” and “slave morality”. However, we will distort the meaning that Nietzsche put into the concepts of “master” and “slave” if we assume that the criterion for distinguishing them is the relationship of “dominance” and “power”, for this is the ability to generate new values and assessments - Will zu Macht (where “Macht” should be translated not as “power”, but as “the ability for self-realization, for self-realization, for creativity”). The “master” establishes and creates values, while the “slave” is forced to accept them: whether he wants to preserve or overthrow the “master’s” values, the “slave” still directs his power to what has already been created, and in both cases he only reacts for life, instead of creating it yourself.
“Master Morals” is created as a statement and a grateful hymn to life, life in its diversity.
“Slave morality” arises when hidden anger, hatred, vindictiveness and envy, arising from powerlessness and humiliation - the slave’s sense of ressentiment becomes a creative force that generates its own values. It begins with negation, “from the very beginning it says No to the “external”, “other”, “not one’s own”” and only later creates a kind of affirmation, affirming universally binding, “absolute” and “the only true” values that burden and devalue life.
The history of Christianity and Western culture, if viewed through the prism of Nietzsche's doctrine of two types of forces and two types of morality, turns out to be a history of the triumph of negation and “reactive” man.
Already in Judaism and Platonism - the historical origins of Christianity - negation and the feeling of ressentiment play a decisive role. Judaism, according to Nietzsche, when faced with the question of being or not being, preferred to be “at any cost,” and that price turned out to be “a conscious perversion of its nature” [ibid.]: denial of life, affirmation of all decadent, decadent instincts . Judaism removed from the concept of deity “all the prerequisites for growing life, everything strong, bold, commanding, proud” [ibid.].
Platonism, for its part, having consigned to oblivion the pre-Socratic unity of thought and life, split man into two parts, forced thought to curb and cripple life, measuring and limiting it in accordance with the “highest values.” Starting with Plato, thought becomes negative, and life is devalued, reduced to increasingly painful forms. The philosopher, legislator and creator of new values and perspectives, turns into a novice and guardian of existing ones.
Platonism split not only man, but the whole world into two parts, everywhere condemning and devaluing one for the sake of the other. The “this-worldly” world is deprived of its meaning, beauty, and truth, since from now on they can only belong to the “otherworldly”; diversity and becoming are condemned in the name of “Being” and “One.”
Christianity, on the one hand, being the “last logical conclusion of Judaism,” on the other hand, absorbs Plato’s concept of two worlds. It continues and strengthens the trend of world denial of its predecessors.
The Christian God, obeying the creative power of ressentiment, turns into a captious “judge” and “vindicator”, “degenerates into a contradiction with life” [ibid., p. 312]. In essence, with Christianity, which turned God into a “deified “Nothing” "" [ibid.], his "killing" begins.
It would seem that the death of God should finally liberate life from the yoke of values that deny it, and mark the victory of “active” forces over “reactive” ones. However, this does not happen.
God died, but an empty place of his presence remained - the supersensible world, the orientation and criteria of positing, the definition of the essence of values remained the same. The authority of God and the authority of the church disappear, but the authority of conscience and reason takes their place, “divine” values are replaced by “human, too human.” Otherworldly eternal bliss turns into earthly happiness for the majority. The place of God is replaced by “Progress”, “Fatherland” and “State”. The old Christian man is replaced by the “most despicable creature” - the “last man”. He still continues to shoulder the burden of values that deny and cripple life, but now he is latently aware of all their insignificance, and therefore there is no longer “chaos in him that can give birth to a dancing star” [ibid., p. 12], in him there are no longer any aspirations, he strives only for “his own little pleasure” [ibid.].
“General Progress” and “State” are not able to truly replace God, they are unable to hide people from the impending Nothing, and therefore they try to forget themselves in vain business, in the pursuit of profit and thrills. But the collapse of all previous values is inevitable...
When Western man finally realizes that the other world of ideals is dead and lifeless, then a stage of “nihilism” must begin in European culture. For people, not being able to find the supersensible sphere in the world - the spheres where they placed its meaning, truth, beauty and value - will condemn it as devoid of any meaning, purpose and value at all: “the reality of becoming is recognized as the only reality and all kind of roundabout paths to hidden worlds and false deities - but, on the other hand, this world, which they no longer want to deny, becomes unbearable."
But the era of nihilistic crisis, according to Nietzsche, not only contains within itself the greatest danger, but also the greatest opportunity of our time. For after the collapse of previous values and the criteria for their establishment, reality, the real world, of course, depreciate, but at the same time they do not disappear, but for the first time only achieve significance. A person must realize the true source of values - his own will to power, reject and destroy the very “place” of previous values - “top”, “height”, “transcendentality” - and create new life-affirming, exalting people: “probably, a person will begin to rise from there higher and higher, where it stops pouring into God."
Thus, the reasons for the death of God, according to Nietzsche, lie in Christianity itself, in the former “highest” values, which were the product of “reactive” forces and a sense of ressentimet. After the death of God, European culture will try to place in his place the human values of “Progress”, “State”, etc. However, the collapse of all previous values is inevitable and after it the stage of “European nihilism” must begin. This stage will lead to the disappearance of the previous goals and meanings of the world, created on the basis of ideas about the supersensible sphere rising above it, but, at the same time, the opportunity will open for a new true position of values.
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Friedrich Nietzsche. Geniuses and Villains
Philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche and the Eternal Return
Lecture by Mikhail Shilman “On the benefits and harms of Nietzsche for life”
We meet again with Mikhail Shilman to turn to philosophy. In this program we will not talk about its categories, but about its personalities, namely, about the well-known Friedrich Nietzsche to all of us. Let us really try to understand what he said that was heard, what he passed over in silence, and why modern philosophy demonstrates an eternal return to Nietzsche.
Nietzsche and Stirner. Alina Samoilova
"What to do?"
The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and the theory of the superman today
[Object 22]. Friedrich Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism
We talk about Friedrich Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism with Candidate of Philological Sciences, editor-in-chief of the Cultural Revolution publishing house Igore Ebanoidze.
Philosophical readings. What is culture
Will culture disappear as an exhausted phenomenon that arose only 300 years ago? What is lack of culture? And how does the first differ from the second? A conversation about this with Vadim Mikhailovich Mezhuev, Doctor of Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
When Nietzsche was four years old, his father died of a brain disease, and six months later his two-year-old brother Joseph died. Thus, Nietzsche, at a very young and impressionable age, learned the tragedy of death, as well as the uncertainty and obvious injustice of life. His later books would contain many passages dealing with death. For example: “Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. Life is but a prototype of that which is already dead; and this is a very rare prototype".
After these events, he was raised as the only male in a family consisting of his mother Franziska, sister Elisabeth, two unmarried aunts and his grandmother - until, at the age of 14, he entered Schulforte, the most famous Protestant boarding school.
Here several significant events awaited him: he became acquainted with the literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans, with the music of Richard Wagner; wrote several “musical works that could be performed in church with all decency”; was churched at the age of 17; I read David Strauss’s controversial work “The Life of Jesus,” which had a profound influence on him.
Teaching career
At the age of 19, Nietzsche entered the University of Bonn at the Faculty of Theology and Classical Philology (study based on ancient written texts). After studying for one semester, he abandoned theology and lost all the faith he had. He moved to the University of Leipzig, where he established a reputation in academic circles by publishing articles on Aristotle and other Greek philosophers.
At the age of 21, he read Arthur Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation. One commentator writes: “Schopenhauer replaced the omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent God who rules the universe with a blind, aimless and virtually insensitive energetic impulse, which he could only describe as “blind and perfect “will”.
By this time, six years had already passed since the first publication of Darwin's book " On the Origin of Species” in English, and five years from its first publication in German. At the age of 23, Nietzsche joined the army for one year. One day, while trying to jump up, he suffered a serious chest injury and became unfit for military service. He returned to the University of Leipzig, where he met the famous opera composer Richard Wagner, whose music he had long admired. Wagner shared his passion for Schopenhauer. He was a former student at the University of Leipzig, and in age he was old enough to be Nietzsche’s father. Thus, Wagner became almost like a father to Friedrich. Subsequently, this role was occupied by a figment of Nietzsche’s imagination - the superman (German). Übermensch) - super strong not only physically, but also in all other respects, an imaginary individual with his own morality, who overcame everyone, supplanted God and became an expression of opposition to the world.
In 1869, Nietzsche renounced Prussian citizenship, without taking any other one in return. Officially, he remained stateless for the remaining 31 years of his life. That year, at the incredibly young age of 24, Nietzsche was appointed professor of classical philology at the Swiss University of Basel, a position he held for ten years. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. He served as a hospital orderly for three months, where he saw first-hand the traumatic consequences of battle, as well as diphtheria and dysentery. These battles had other consequences for him. Dr John Figgis writes: “Once, while helping the sick, and being in a frenzy of compassion, he glanced briefly at a herd of Prussian horses noisily descending from the hill into the village. Their magnificence, strength, bravado and power immediately amazed him. He realized that suffering and compassion were not, as he had previously believed in the manner of Schopenhauer, the deepest experiences in life. The power and authority were much higher than this pain, and the pain itself became unimportant - this was the reality. And life began to seem to him like a struggle for power.” .
Last years of life, madness and death
In 1879, at the age of 34, he resigned from his job at the University of Basel due to deteriorating health, after three days of incessant migraines, vision problems that caused him to be close to blindness, severe vomiting and unrelenting pain . Due to illness, Nietzsche often traveled to places with climatic conditions beneficial to his health. From 1879 to 1888 he received a small pension from the University of Basel, and this allowed him to lead a modest itinerant life as a stateless freelance writer in various cities in Sweden, Germany, Italy and France. During this time, he wrote his semi-philosophical anti-religious works, which brought him fame (or infamy), including the books " Fun Science"(1882, 1887), " Thus spoke Zarathustra" (1883–85), " Antichrist"(1888), " Twilight of the Idols(1888), and his autobiography entitled Ecce Homo»( this book, also called "How to Become Yourself" was written in 1888, but published only posthumously, in 1908, by his sister Elizabeth).
At the age of 44, Nietzsche lived in Turin. It is said that one day he saw a coachman beating a horse and wrapped his arms around it to protect it from the beatings. He then fell to the ground, and from that moment on, for the next eleven years, he was in a state of insanity, due to which he was unable to speak or write coherently until his death in 1900. Nietzsche's biographer Kaufmann describes these events as follows: “He fell right on the street, and after that he collected the rest of his sanity to write several crazy, but at the same time beautiful letters, and then darkness covered his mind, extinguishing all his ardor and intelligence. He completely burned out". Modern medical diagnoses describing the cause of his insanity are very varied. Nietzsche was buried in the family tomb next to the church in Recken.
The pain of unrequited love
During his visit to Rome in 1882, Nietzsche, then 37 years old, met Lou von Salomé (Louise Gustavovna Salomé), a Russian student of philosophy and theology (later Freud's assistant). They were introduced by a mutual friend, Paul Reu. She spent the entire summer with Nietzsche, mostly accompanied by his sister, Elisabeth. Salomé later claimed that both Nietzsche and Reuux proposed to her in turn (although these claims have been questioned).
In the following months, the relationship between Nietzsche and Salome deteriorated, much to his disappointment. He wrote to her about “the situation I found myself in after taking an exorbitant dose of opium – out of despair”. And to his friend, Overbeck, he wrote: "This last one a piece bitten off from life- the most difficult of all that I have ever chewed... I am crushed by the wheel of my own feelings. If only I could sleep! But the strongest doses of opiates save me only for six to eight hours... I have the greatest opportunity prove that “any experience can be useful...”
Kaufman comments: "Any experience really was useful for Nietzsche. He transferred his sufferings to books of the later period - “ Thus spoke Zarathustra" And " Ecce Homo» .
« Thus spoke Zarathustra" - Nietzsche's most famous work. This is a philosophical novel in which a fictional prophet named after Zarathustra (the Persian founder of the religion of Zoroastrianism in the 6th century BC) reveals to the world the ideas of Nietzsche himself.
In his autobiography, How to Become Yourself, Nietzsche writes: “I have not said here a word of what I said five years ago through the mouth of Zarathustra.”. Among these ideas are the idea that “God is dead,” the idea of “eternal repetition” (i.e., the idea that what has happened will continue to happen again ad infinitum), and the idea of the “will to power.” In the original, Nietzsche used a biblical style of writing to proclaim his opposition to Christian morality and tradition, with many blasphemous words against God.
Nietzsche and the "death of God"
Nietzsche's statements about the death of God appear in their fullest form as an anecdote or parable in The Gay Science:
“Mad man.
Have you heard about that crazy man who lit a lantern on a bright afternoon, ran out to the market and kept shouting: “I am looking for God! I'm looking for God! Since many of those who did not believe in God were gathered there, there was laughter around him. Has he disappeared? - said one. “He’s lost like a child,” said another. Or hid? Is he afraid of us? Did he set sail? Emigrated? - they shouted and laughed intermixed. Then the madman ran into the crowd and pierced them with his gaze. “Where is God? - he exclaimed. – I want to tell you this! We killed him- You and I! We are all his killers! But how did we do this?... The gods are decaying! God is dead! God will not rise again! And we killed him! How comforted will we be, murderers of murderers! The most holy and powerful Being that ever existed in the world bled to death under our knives - who will wash this blood from us? …Isn’t the greatness of this thing too great for us? Shouldn't we ourselves turn into gods in order to be worthy of him? sometimes a greater deed was not accomplished, and whoever is born after us will, thanks to this deed, belong to a history higher than all previous history!” – Here the mad man fell silent and again began to look at his listeners; They too were silent, looking at him in surprise. Finally, he threw his lantern to the ground, so that it broke into pieces and went out. “I came too early,” he said then, “my hour has not yet struck. This monstrous event is still on the way and is coming to us - the news about it has not yet reached human ears. Lightning and thunder need time, starlight needs time, deeds need time after they have been done to be seen and heard. This action is still further from you than the most distant luminaries - and yet you did it!»
Not surprisingly, this passage has generated a great deal of debate about what Nietzsche meant when he wrote these lines. Here he is not talking about the death of Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, on the cross. Such a statement was true during the three days that Christ was in the tomb, but the continuation of this reasoning was forever refuted by the resurrection of Christ from the dead.
Some have called Nietzsche's words that "God is dead" the words of a "madman." However, Nietzsche used this term many times, speaking in his own voice, not in the voice of a madman. In section 108 of the same Gay Science, Nietzsche wrote:
« New contractions . After Buddha died, for centuries his shadow was shown in one cave - a monstrous, terrible shadow. God is dead: but such is the nature of people that for thousands of years there may still exist caves in which his shadow is shown. “And we—we must also defeat his shadow!”
And in section 343 of The Gay Science, Nietzsche explains what he meant: “The greatest of new events - that “God is dead” and that faith in the Christian God has become something unworthy of trust - is already beginning to cast its first shadows on Europe.”.
In fact, Nietzsche believes that God never existed. This is his reaction to the concept of God as "the only, absolute and judgmental power interested in hidden and obscene personal secrets". But here another problem arises. If God is dead, then who will save us now? Nietzsche offers a solution consisting of three elements. In Twilight of the Idols he writes:
Philosophy teacher Giles Fraser writes: “The struggle that Nietzsche is waging is not a struggle between atheism and Christianity; this, as he explicitly writes, is the struggle of Dionysus with the Crucified. The whole point here is the spiritual superiority of Nietzsche's faith over Christianity. This, contrary to the view which commentators readily accept, is not a struggle against faith, but a struggle between faiths, or rather a battle between competing soteriologies.".
Nietzsche against the book of Genesis
In his book Antichrist, Nietzsche pours out a torrent of insults against God and the story of creation, the Fall and the Flood of Noah as told in the book of Genesis:
“Have you understood the famous story that is placed at the beginning of the Bible - the story of God’s hellish fear of science?.. They didn’t understand her. This priestly book par excellence begins, as one might expect, with the great inner difficulty of the priest: he has only one great danger hence, God only has one great danger. The old God, the “spirit” entirely, the real high priest, the true perfection, is strolling in his garden: the only trouble is that he is bored. Even the gods fight in vain against boredom. What is he doing? He invents man: man is entertaining... But what is it? and the person is also bored. God's mercy is limitless for that one calamity from which no paradise is free: God immediately created other animals. First God's mistake: man did not find animals entertaining - he dominated them, he did not want to be an “animal”. - Because of this, God created woman. And indeed, the boredom was over, but not yet the other one! The woman was second God's failure. - “A woman is essentially a snake, Heva,” - every priest knows this; “Every misfortune in the world comes from a woman,” every priest also knows this. " Hence, from her comes science”... Only through a woman did man learn to eat from the tree of knowledge. - What happened? The old God was gripped by hellish fear. The man himself became greatest God's blunder created in him a rival: science makes him equal to God - the end of priests and gods comes when man begins to learn science! - Morality: science is something forbidden in itself, it alone is forbidden. Science is the first sin, the seed of all sins, firstborn sin. This alone is morality. - "You Not must cognize"; everything else follows from this. - Hellish fear does not prevent God from being prudent. How defend yourself from science? - this became his main problem for a long time. Answer: get man out of heaven! Happiness and idleness lead to thoughts - all thoughts are bad thoughts... A person does not must think. - And the “priest in himself” invents need, death, pregnancy with its danger to life, all kinds of disasters, old age, the hardship of life, and above all illness - all the right means in the fight against science! Need not allows a person to think... And yet! terrible! The work of knowledge rises, rising to the skies, darkening the gods - what to do? - The Old God invents war, he separates peoples, he makes it so that people mutually destroy each other (the priests always needed war...). War, along with other things, is a great obstacle to science! - Incredible! Cognition, emancipation from the priest even increases, despite the war. - And now the last decision comes to the old God: man has learned science, - nothing helps, you need to drown him!»
The first reaction of anyone will be to ask: “How could a person in his right mind write such nonsense? And perhaps the most merciful answer is that these senseless insults were a foreshadowing of the madness Nietzsche suffered in the last 11 years of his life.
Nietzsche vs Darwin
In the book " Thus spoke Zarathustra", Nietzsche reveals his superman to the world, in the evolutionary words of his prophet:
“I teach you about the Superman... You have made the journey from a worm to a man, but much still in you is from a worm. Once you were apes, and even now man is more of an ape than any of the apes.”
However, contrary to expectations, Nietzsche, being an obvious evolutionist, opposed Darwin and Darwinism. If there was a doctrine to which he was slightly inclined, it was Lamarck's theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. In fact, Nietzsche had his own theory to explain evolution. He called it “the will to power,” which was actually the will to superiority.
The important factor for Nietzsche was not the number of offspring produced by any individual or species, as for Darwin, but the quality of those offspring. And Darwinism was not the basis and did not even influence this worldview. Nietzsche said that Darwin was wrong in four fundamental aspects of his theory.
1. Nietzsche questioned the mechanism of formation of new organs through small changes, because he understood that a half-formed organ had absolutely no survival value.
In his book " Will to power" he wrote:
“Against Darwinism. The usefulness of an organ does not explain its origin, on the contrary! Indeed, during the very long time that is necessary for the emergence of a certain property, this latter does not preserve the individual and does not bring him any benefit, least of all in the fight against external circumstances and enemies.”
2. Nietzsche questioned Darwin's worldview of natural selection because in real life he saw that the weak rather than the strong survive.
In Twilight of the Idols he wrote:
“Anti-Darwin. Regarding the famous “struggle for existence”, then it seems to me, however, more the fruit of an assertion than a proof. It happens, but as an exception; there is a general view of life Not need, not hunger, but, on the contrary, wealth, abundance, even absurd extravagance - where they fight, they fight for power... Malthus should not be confused with nature. - But let us suppose that this struggle exists - and in fact, it occurs - in this case, it, unfortunately, ends contrary to what the Darwinian school wishes, as perhaps we would you dare to desire with her: it is precisely unfavorable for the strong, for the privileged, for the happy exceptions. Childbirth Not grow in perfection: the weak constantly become masters over the strong again - this happens because there is a great number of them, that they also cleverer... Darwin forgot about his mind (that's in English!), the weak have more intelligence... One must need intelligence in order to acquire intelligence; it is lost when it becomes no longer necessary. He who has power renounces the mind (“Get lost!” they think in Germany today, “ empire should still remain with us”...). As you see, by mind I understand caution, patience, cunning, pretense, great self-control and everything that is pretense (the latter includes b O most of so-called virtue).
3. Nietzsche also questioned Darwin's theory of sexual selection, since he did not observe that it actually takes place in nature.
In the book " Will to power" Under the heading "Anti-Darwin" he wrote:
“The significance of the selection of the most beautiful has been so exaggerated that it has gone far beyond the limits of the beauty of our own race! In fact, the most beautiful creature often mates with very disadvantaged creatures, the highest with the lowest. We almost always see males and females coming together through some chance meeting, without being particularly discriminating.”
4. Nietzsche argued that there are no transitional forms.
In the same section entitled "Anti-Darwin" he writes:
“There are no transitional forms. It is claimed that the development of beings is moving forward, but there is no basis for this assertion. Each type has its own boundary - beyond it there is no development. Until then - absolute correctness."
Nietzsche then offers us another lengthy chapter, again entitled “ Anti-Darwin»:
« Anti-Darwin. What strikes me most when I mentally cast my gaze over man’s great past is that I always see in him the opposite of what Darwin and his school currently sees or wants to see, i.e. selection in favor of the stronger, the luckier, the progress of the species. Just the opposite is evident: extinction happy combinations, the uselessness of higher order types, the inevitability of the dominance of average, even lower average types. Until we are shown why man should be an exception among other creatures, I am inclined to suppose that the school of Darwin is mistaken in all its assertions. That will to power, in which I see the final basis and essence of any change, gives us the means to understand why selection does not occur in the direction of exceptions and happy cases, the strongest and happiest turn out to be too weak when they are opposed by organized herd instincts, timidity weak, numerical superiority. The general picture of the world of values, as it seems to me, shows that in the area of the highest values that hang over humanity in our time, the predominance belongs not to happy combinations, selective types, but, on the contrary, to types of decadence - and perhaps there is nothing more interesting in the world than this disappointing spectacle... I see all the philosophers, I see science on its knees before the fact of the perverted struggle for existence, which the school of Darwin teaches, namely: I see everywhere that those who compromise life remain on the surface, experience the value of life. The error of Darwin's school took the form of a problem for me - to what extent must one be blind in order not to see the truth here? That species are the bearers of progress is the most unreasonable statement in the world - they so far represent only a known level. That higher organisms developed from lower ones has not yet been confirmed by a single fact.”
Kaufmann writes lucidly about this: “[Nietzsche] has in mind his “fortunate predecessors” Socrates or Caesar, Leonardo or Goethe: people whose power gives them an advantage in any “struggle for existence”, people who, even if they outlived Mozart, Keats or Shelley, did not abandon after themselves children or heirs. However, it is these people who represent the “power” that all people crave. After all, the basic instinct, according to Nietzsche, is not their desire to preserve life, but the desire for power. And it should be obvious how far apart Nietzsche’s “power” is from Darwin’s “adaptability.”.
In light of the above, it is not surprising that in his book “ Ecce Homo“Nietzsche calls scientists who believe that superman is a product of Darwinian evolution “bulls.”
Nietzsche, of course, was a philosopher, not a scientist, and he does not explain the subtleties of how the "will to power" works in an evolutionary scenario - other than that superior individuals have always had and will have the power to rebel over their contemporaries in their journey from apes in the past to a highly evolved superman in the future.
This has led some modern commentators to go out of their way to emulate Nietzsche and Darwin, for example in books such as Nietzsche's New Darwinism» John Richardson.
Nietzsche, Darwin and Hitler
Nietzsche may not have foreseen the events of the twentieth century, but the main modern example of his “superman”, a strong personality who lived by the laws of his own morality, was Adolf Hitler. Hitler accepted both Darwin's "science" and Nietzsche's philosophy. For him, Darwin's notion that the strong dominate the weak was the greatest good. At the same time, he considered himself a superman, according to Nietzsche's philosophy, and used Nietzsche's idea of superior individuals to convince the German nation that they were a "superior race." Hitler took both of their ideas about morality to their logical conclusion, leading to the sack of Europe and the murder of over six million innocent people in the Holocaust.
What motivated Nietzsche?
In his autobiographical book " Ecce Homo", Nietzsche leaves us in no doubt about his own self-perception and about his books.
He took the title for his book, Ecce Homo (meaning “Behold the Man!”) from Pilate's description of Jesus Christ in John 19:5. The four chapters that make up the book are titled: "Why I'm So Wise," "Why I'm So Smart," "Why I Write Such Good Books," and "Why I'm Fate." In a chapter entitled “Why I Am So Wise,” he wrote:
“I am militant in my own way... Task Not is to overcome resistance in general, but one on which you need to expend all your strength, dexterity and skill in wielding weapons - resistance equal enemy..."
So, Nietzsche chose not just anyone but Almighty God himself as his “equal” opponents! Compare this with Eve's first temptation by Satan in the Garden of Eden - the serpent promised Eve that they would become "like gods" (Genesis 3:5). In this “competition” Nietzsche stands side by side with Dionysus. He wrote: “I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus: I would rather be a satyr than a saint.”. In fact, Dionysus was not a philosopher, but the Greek god of wine, the inspirer of ritual madness, ecstasy and orgiatic excess. Dionysus is the embodiment of everything that the Apostle Paul calls “sinful nature”:
“The works of the flesh are known; they are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, quarrels, envy, anger, strife, disagreements, (temptations), heresies, hatred, murder, drunkenness, disorderly conduct and the like. I warn you beforehand, as I warned you before, that those who do these things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:19–21).
This self-identification with Dionysus gives Nietzsche the right to call himself the first immoralist and lies at the basis and is also the result of his entire anti-divine, anti-Christian moral theology. The very last sentence of the book " Ecce Homo" sounds like this: “Did you understand me? – Dionysus vs. Crucified…» .
We know that his mind was filled with the works of atheists and skeptics such as Strauss and Schopenhauer. He also talks about having "no pleasant memories of his childhood or youth." Some have suggested that Nietzsche's anger against Christianity conveyed unconscious feelings, repressed from childhood, towards the "benevolent" spinster aunts and other women who lived with him. One commentator goes so far as to write: “We just have to replace the phrases “my aunts” or “my family” with the word “Christianity” and his angry attacks will become clearer.”.
In one of the chapters of the book Ecce Homo entitled "Why Am I So Clever", Nietzsche writes:
“It completely escaped me how “sinful” I could be. Likewise, I have no reliable criterion for what remorse is. ... “God”, “immortality of the soul”, “salvation”, “otherworldly” - all concepts to which I never gave either attention or time, even as a child - perhaps I was never child enough for this? – I know atheism not at all as a result, still less as an event: it is implied in me instinctively. I'm too curious, too not obvious, too passionate to allow himself an answer as rough as a fist. God is an answer as rude as a fist, indelicacy towards us, thinkers - in fact, even just rude as a fist, ban for us: you have nothing to think about!..”
Was it really true that at Nietzsche’s young age, no one explained that the world had ceased to be the way God created it in the first place, that sin had entered the world, and that the world was cursed, that God, the Great Judge, whom Nietzsche hated so much because he was Accountable to him is also the loving God who sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to die on the cross and rise again so that He could forgive us our sins?
However, in his work Antichrist, as well as in many other books, Nietzsche demonstrates that he was well aware of all these concepts, but vehemently rejected them. Many people have tried to counter the concept of future judgment, for example by claiming that there is no absolute good and evil. Nietzsche took a more radical approach: he proclaimed the death of the Judge!
Conclusion
In the last chapter of the book " Ecce Homo", Nietzsche culminates in his angry outpourings against "God", "truth", "Christian morality", "salvation of the soul", "sin", etc. He sums it all up in his screaming climax: “Did you understand me? – Dionysus vs. Crucified…».
However, wait a minute, Nietzsche, you chose Almighty God as your “equal” opponent! It may seem that you have failed your final blow against God by your extreme reverence for Christ, (unwittingly?) recognizing that He, the Crucified One, is Almighty God.
Nietzsche shook his fist at God, but Nietzsche himself is now dead, and God is not. Therefore, the final word remains with God.
“The fool said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” (Psalm 14:1).
“For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will destroy the understanding of the prudent.” (1 Corinthians 1:18–19)
Nietzsche's popularity
Nietzsche's works did not gain widespread popularity among his contemporaries. First edition of the book Thus spoke Zarathustra"was published in a circulation of only 400 copies. However, after his death, as the wave of evolutionary atheism swept the world in the 20th century, he became one of the most widely read philosophers due to the fact that his books were translated into many languages and many authors cited them for their own glory. Contemporary political leaders have claimed to have read his works - among them Mussolini, Charles de Gaulle, Theodore Roosewelt and Richard Nixon.
In the Encyclopedia Britannica“The following is said: “The associations with Adolf Hitler and fascism that we have in connection with the name of Nietzsche are mainly due to the way his sister Elisabeth, who married one of the leaders of the anti-Semitic movement, took advantage of his works. Despite the fact that Nietzsche was an ardent opponent of nationalism, anti-Semitism and power politics, his name was subsequently used by the fascists to promote ideas that were disgusting to him.”
During the First World War, the German government published a book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” edition in 1,150,000 copies, and they were issued to German soldiers along with the Gospel of John. " Encyclopedia Britannica“With a touch of slight irony, he comments on this situation as follows: “It is difficult to say which of the authors was more compromised by such a gesture.”
Links and notes
- Nietzsche carefully wrote his works in numbered sections (sometimes these sections are numbered throughout the book, sometimes by chapter) and thanks to this, any quotation can be easily found in any translation and any edition by section number. In this article we will resort to this practice by citing the works of Nietzsche.
