Nietzsche predicted that after the collapse of the Christian theistic values through which religion had given meaning to human life, a vast wave of meaninglessness and nihilism would arrive in the West in the following century—the twentieth century—in the form of wars and ideologies. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra he represented that future metaphorically as a dark night, spoken of by an old man who can be read as a figure for Nietzsche himself, warning of it before its time had come. The phrase “God is dead” is also presented through such dramatic voices in Nietzsche’s work. It has become one of his most famous statements and has received many different and contradictory interpretations, yet understanding its place in Nietzsche’s thought can lead to a deeper understanding of his philosophy.

For Nietzsche, the problem was not simply that belief in God was disappearing. The problem was that with the decline of Christian values, the values through which religion had given human life orientation and meaning would also disappear, and nihilism would suddenly advance.

Nietzsche lived at a time when the Church’s authority over people was weakening and Christian values no longer guided human lives as they once had. For centuries religions had been like a shelter to which people retreated in the dark night of life so that they did not have to encounter its deepest fear. With the erosion of Christian values, that shelter was disappearing.

For existentialist philosophers, anxiety and dread are characteristic features of human existence, connected with awareness of mortality. This becomes one of the central concerns of existentialist philosophy. Existential thinkers—whether theistic, such as Kierkegaard and Jaspers, or atheistic, such as Nietzsche and Sartre—offered different responses to the question of what a human being should do with suffering, anxiety and the problem of meaning.

In this video, Dr Areta considers how Nietzsche’s response to suffering, anxiety and the meaning of life relates to nihilism, and also examines the statement “God is dead.”

Video from the “Steps into the Light” YouTube channel:
https://youtu.be/VHjq7W8xW-0

Post by Samira Ghobadi