GOTT IST TOT

 

In the chronological sequence of Nietzsches Werke, now comes Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft (1882), mostly famous for the “Gott ist tot!” phrase. Curiously, this phrase appears twice in the book. The first time cryptically, the second time explicitly. Here is its cryptic version:

(108). New Struggles. After Buddha was dead, people showed his shadow for centuries afterwards in a cave, an immense frightful shadow. God is dead: but as the human race is constituted, there will perhaps be caves for millenniums yet, in which people will show his shadow. And we have still to overcome his shadow!

This aphoristic Nietzschean entry merely states that God is dead, but it does not clarify the circumstances of His death. That purpose is served by Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft (#125), which is told as a fanciful story about “The Madman.”

It is important to realize that Nietzsche’s madman of the Gott ist tot fame is not really mad, to Nietzsche. In fact, he can well be Nietzsche himself. (Which should not be news to Nietzsche’s detractors!) The core idea of my entry is its parallel between Nietzsche’s parable and Dostoyevsky’s Legend of the Grand Inquisitor.

“Gott ist tot!” is, undoubtedly, the most famous of all Nietzschean quotes, and one of the most famous ones in all history of one-liners. The context of this phrase is however not as clear to those who are repeating the three words as if they signified Nietzsche’s cry of victory in his personal combat with God, as if his revolt-- against all values and all morality-- triumphed, in his sick mind, in the death of God.

Here, however, is Gott ist tot! from the horse’s mouth, that is, in the context of Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft #125.---

(125). The Madman:

Have you heard of the madman who on a bright morning lit a lantern and ran to the market-place calling out unceasingly: ‘I seek God! I seek God!’ As there were many people standing about, who did not believe in God, he caused a great deal of amusement. Why, is he lost? said one. Has he strayed away like a child? said another. Or does he keep himself hidden? Afraid of us? Taken a sea voyage? Emigrated?--- the people laughed, all in a hubbub. The insane man jumped into their midst, transfixing them with his glances. Where is God gone? he called out.--- I mean to tell you! We have killed him, you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon, what did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun, whither does it now move, whither do we move?! Away from all suns? Do we not dash on, unceasingly, backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and a below? Don’t we stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall not we have to light lanterns in the morning? Do not we hear the noise of the gravediggers, burying God? Do not we smell the divine putrefaction?-- for even Gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed has bled to death under our knife; who will wipe the blood from us? With what water could we cleanse ourselves? What lustrums, what sacred games shall we have to devise? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it? There never was a greater event,  and, on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history hitherto! Here the madman went silent, and looked again at his hearers; they also were silent and looked at him in surprise. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, so that it broke in pieces and was extinguished. I come too early, he then said. I am not yet at the right time. This prodigious event is still on its way, and is traveling--- it has not yet reached men’s ears. Lightning and thunder need time, the light of the stars needs time, deeds need time, even after they are done, to be seen and heard. This deed is as yet further from them than the furthest star--- and yet, they have done it themselves! It is further stated that the madman made his way into different churches on the same day and there intoned his Requiem aeternam deo. When led out and called to account, he always gave the reply: What are these churches now, if they are not the tombs and monuments of God?

Without disputing all other claims of Nietzsche’s renunciation of God (which claims have been considered in other entries and sections), I want to point out only what concerns his Gott ist tot!, namely, that it is his accusation thrown at moral and religious hypocrisy of people and churches, who have alienated themselves from God by practicing the opposite of what they preached.

It is not enough, though, to limit our interpretation to the figurative sense only. After all, the infamous event of “deicide” (not in theological, but in ethical terms) has indeed taken place, literally, in the Christian tradition. And in Dostoyevsky’s Legend of the Grand Inquisitor (which is part of his novel Brothers Karamazov), the possibility of murdering God yet again, in case He should resist being banished from this world forever, is very strongly implied. In fact, Dostoyevsky’s Legend is a perfect timeless commentary on Nietzsche’s Gott ist Tot.

(The fact that the Legend predates Nietzsche’s dictum by a couple of years is of no consequence, as we are looking at this from a higher perspective than mere chronology, as I have already noted in my entry The Wanderer And His Shadow. Besides, Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky are spiritual brothers, and their ideas are dwellers of the same neck of the woods in their commonly shared mystical commonwealth of concepts.)