God

By Andrew Aaron

There is an almost overpowering feeling that one gets merely from stating that "God is dead." This feeling is more than just one of "overpowerfulness,” or empowerment, it is also more than a feeling of being overpowered. Somehow, the feeling is a combination of all these feelings at once in a kind of whirlwind of ideas and emotions. When Nietzsche writes these words for the first time, a shudder must run through Europe, creating a rupture that remains to this day.

For thousands, if not millions of years, humanity has looked outside itself, beyond itself to find the "answer". Entire cultures are founded on, fueled by, churned by, and sometimes overthrown by the notion that there is somewhere else a way and a power. European history has been dominated by this notion. Whether it is the divine rights of kings that allowed for the most drastic and horrendous kinds of abuses or the taking (and losing) of property and treasure and population (almost always the last consideration), the power of the word "God" has given power of a different kind to many believers and nonbelievers alike.

The Vikings and the Norsemen, ancestors of both Heidegger and Nietzsche, had dark gods that were wrathful, wild, and lovers of battle. Other Europeans had gods of love and compassion (gentle Jesus) or stern and unforgiving (the Father of the Inquisition). Yet, in the end, the results were much the same. Wars of religion, like the Crusades, were engaged in by all sides. Wars of plunder, imperial wars, were engaged in by all. Wars of persecution and wars of hate were engaged in by all. The "answer(s)" always was pushing the combatants onward to greater gory glory.

On the other hand, art, poetry, and science flourished as well at times. The Norse (and their relatives) created the Eddas and the oldest piece of literature in Northern Europe, the saga of Beowulf. Monks preserved the wisdom of Greece and Rome in manuscripts that still are marvels for beauty and craftsmanship of penwork and drawing. The crusades made connections between the Islamic world and Christendom. Both sides benefited from trading of foods and technical knowledge. The "answer(s)" drove men (and some few women) on to discover as much of God's world as possible.

God's world and God's word. These are the common threads that run through both the good and the bad, the order and chaos of Western history. Whether one believed in a Calvinist manner or venerated the Ikons of Eastern Orthodoxy, whether the Pope was one's guide or one looked to the Archbishop of Canterbury, it didn't really matter. The answer was outside of man, separate from man, beyond man save by the intercession of intermediaries like Jesus and his saints and martyrs (or Moses and legions of rabbis and Talmudists or Mohammed and imams and scholars, to be fair). One could gain insight into the world only by leaving off looking at the ground and gazing into the heavens. It is not odd that both Nietzsche and Heidegger dislike Socrates. After all, it was Socrates who taught that men of understanding could by discernment see the signs in heaven for themselves and know to act accordingly. The common thread, the thing that ties so many centuries of European history together is this other-centered universe, this mindset that is directed outward away from the world to the supernatural world, the world beyond.

Yet the slow movement1 from gazing at earth to gazing inside does not occur all at once. Man moves from the earth-centered universe to that of a sun-centered one. This does two things at once, humanity is free now to move beyond either Aristotelian science or church dominated intellectual striving, but it also means that man is no longer the center of the universe, a problem that will come up more for Heidegger and the Existentialists than for Nietzsche. Over the centuries, man will be freed from certain moorings that seemed strong and sure. Humanity loosens and loosens again the ties that bind philosophy and science and art as well to dogma and belief. Through it all, though, no one stands up and says, "God is dead" the way that Nietzsche does. Thomas Jefferson is a "deist." Marx, while having little truck with traditional religion, has his own invisible Gods, who look not unlike the Gods of Adam Smith. The hidden is still lurking about, waiting to guide humanity if it wishes. What to do, what to do?

What can one do but come crashing into the marketplace and announce that "God is dead" to all those standing around jabbering and yammering away. With a prescience that is almost eerie, Nietzsche has the madman do the work of shouldering this enormous burden, these brazen shouting of a new truth. I spoke of power, the power of this new phrase, this new thought. The madman sees this, knows that the world is not ready for his truth. The question is whether Heidegger is ready and are we ready for this madman's truth. The further questions are whether we can truly grasp what Nietzsche is really saying, what he means by having a madman deliver his lines,

For Nietzsche, the death of God is both a freeing, optimistic thing, but also a dark omen of a change in the world and the way that world is seen. Heidegger in his essay touches on both these seemingly contradictory themes.  It is important to tease both out and then try to come back to Heidegger's final point about philosophy and its supposed end.

Early on, Heidegger refers to "We Fearless Ones.” He specifically refers to the piece that begins "The greatest recent event--that 'God is dead,' that the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable--is already beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe." This comes from a section called "The meaning of our cheerfulness," from “The Gay Science.” I do not think that Nietzsche is being ironic or sarcastic when he uses this word "cheerfulness.” I think that Nietzsche sees the revaluing of all values as a good thing. It is the throwing off of the veil, the beginning of seeing that which is truly there. In this sense, man freed of the limiting suprasensory world view, is now allowed to seek out from inside himself, from his being that truth which comes from this world without reference to some other world beyond. As Heidegger writes:

“The pronouncement "God is dead" means: The suprasensory world is without effective power. It bestows no life. Metaphysics, i.e, for Nietzsche Western philosophy understood as Platonism, is at an end.”

This does not mean nothing can bestow life. It means that although religion often speaks of "the world being impossible without God, man is nothing without God. etc.," such equations were never valid to start with. This is why Heidegger makes a point of saying that Nietzsche is no atheist. The men in the marketplace who do not believe in God are not the audience for the madman. Because they are atheists in that they no longer believe in God and no longer know how to look for God. They are without thought, for them God has become a mere concept, a repository for old ideas and beliefs, an excuse in a way for how to see the world. Hence, the optimism of the concept "God is dead". The person who can say this, who can free him or herself from a belief that never was valid to start with is now free to start to look for beliefs and concepts that are valid. The void yawns, Nihilism opens its mouth, and the man for whom "God is dead" can laugh aloud at Nihilism and really begin to think as opposed to merely reason.

That is the optimistic view. It is with the darker view, that Heidegger really begins to locate and then go beyond the mere surface of the phrase, "God is dead". If "God" the concept and all the concepts that go along with this overarching one are gone, then what? Where does man then go for answers?

Metaphysics as Nietzsche and the West understands the term, is at an end. It can no longer cast light on anything. In fact, as Heidegger develops his theme, metaphysics has never really cast light on anything at all.2 It is the love of rational, platonic thought that has most blinded men to truth. Truth, however, being a somewhat shady character, truth as the West has understood it, is shortsighted and may be wrong to be looked for in the first place. The darker view that runs through the "God is dead" theme is not just that the West's search for truth is misguided nor is it nearly the existentialist crisis I have just described.

Beyond this, the darker view is that Western metaphysics has trapped humanity, has kept humanity from achieving all that humanity can achieve. Whether it is because of the scientistic way of philosophizing, Baconsim, or because it has led to mistaken ideas such as the reactive method of Western retribution and justice, metaphysics has been a continuous vehicle for nihilism. This nihilism is the life denying life-destroying disease that the West has carried, bred, and is finally dying. 

Where Nietzsche is anti-metaphysics and seemingly develops something against it through his new take on philosophy and religion, Heidegger goes beyond metaphysics completely. In effect as the essay develops, Heidegger makes an extraordinary case that Nietzsche is just playing a new game but under metaphysics’ old rules. Heidegger points out this paradox, himself, in the one of the more important passages in the essay:

“Nevertheless, as a mere countermovement it necessarily remains, as does everything "anti," held fast in the essence of that over against which it moves. Nietzsche's countermovement against metaphysics is, as the mere turning upside down of metaphysics, an inextricable entanglement in metaphysics, in such a way, indeed, that metaphysics is cut off from its essence and, as metaphysics, is never able to think its own essence. Therefore, what actually happens in metaphysics and as metaphysics itself remains hidden by metaphysics and for metaphysics.”

So even with Nietzsche's insights, we still have not traveled as far we thought. At best, Nietzsche provides a window, albeit large and dramatic, into where the West has gone wrong philosophically, but perhaps he does.

For Nietzsche, the death of god is both a freeing, optimistic thing but also a dark omen of a change in the world and the way that world is seen. Heidegger in his essay touches on both these seemingly contradictory themes. It is important to tease both out and then try to come back to Heidegger's final point about philosophy and its supposed end.

I ask this question because Heidegger seems to be without hope, where Nietzsche seems full of hope. I locate this hope in Nietzsche's quest to describe, in effect to bring about the Overman. This Overman will transcend our old dichotomies, our old foolish pride and our prideful shame. The madman is not this Overman, I do believe. The madman is the forerunner, a kind of prophet, but a wholly different magnitude and kind than the old Biblical prophets. The fact that Nietzsche creates the character of the madman fact that while he subjects this character that he cares for to the jeers of the marketplace and yet doesn't allow him to fall into self-pity or Jonah-like self- exile, is a sign that Nietzsche believes that the future is yet to be made. This seems to be the definition of hope to me. Yet, to Heidegger this does not seem.

Is the “end of philosophy” of Heidegger a sign of giving up? Heidegger ends by somewhat quietly asking if we will wake up to what nihilism has done to us, wake up to what we need to understand the world as it is now and what will be in the future. I say quietly because it comes so quickly at the end of the essay and so belatedly, as it were. It follows on so much of "the wrong" and how we got here.

Being is constantly losing in the quest to become known, constantly submerged under the weight of false-Being. How do we stop this process? In other places, Heidegger embraces a kind of listening silence that may yield new answers. It is almost as if after so much reasoning, so much rational thinking, talking, and more talking, that Heidegger wants the West to be quiet for a moment. I am tempted to say that literally, Heidegger is asking for silence for God's sake. Maybe he is doing just that in fact.

The whole point behind the "end of philosophy” is that our kind of philosophy (although Heidegger may mean all philosophy) is no longer capable of doing any of the things that it was meant to do. It can no longer free us from the marketplace. It is no match for technology. It has sold out to both and been dealt with poorly in the transaction. Liberal humanism, Marxism and fascism all are dead ends of one kind or another. The end of philosophy is really shorthand for saying "Western metaphysics, which is really metaphysics, is finished as a place to find solutions to problems. Man is alone in a cold universe and philosophy can not warm humanity any further." If "God is dead," then heaven, hell, ideal forms, platonic signs, "natural" law, inalienable rights, all the touchstones of Western thought no longer function. More, they no longer even exist; they have been effectively erased for all time. Nausea, in Sartre's meaning, becomes the normal state of man and he must deal with its symptoms all by himself.

I do not know if Heidegger is right or not. It may be that such a question is invalid at this point in history. However, I am certain that the madman is right when he says "I come too early ... my time has not come yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering-it has not reached the ears of man."

I look around and see that the supersensory world still exists in all its forms. Religious fundamentalism sweeps the globe with talk of millennial (and other forms of) redemption. Men everyday speak in glowing terms about the market as if it was some force beyond human control or creation. The world is filled with vast and secret conspiracies that are unseen and super potent. Books, movies, and television preach that he world that you know is not the real world, there is another, true world underneath the surface. How far are we, in short, from the ancient beliefs in old Demiurges in malicious Gods and demons who use us for their sport? How far are we from the idea that this entire world is but a reflection of the true world above, soon to become visible? Heidegger goes beyond Nietzsche. I do not think we are ready to move quite yet.

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11)  I do not use the word progression, although this may be so, given both Heidegger’s downward ladder of philosophy and the postmodern trend to dislike “progression” because of what it entails.

22) There are contradictions in this, I know. However problematic as these may be, I just don’t have the background to develop them. Suffice it to say, Nietzsche and Heidegger are not self-created men. They come out of this tradition, raised on Western thought and now pulling the roof on everybody inside. Rorty refers to this.