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.Theseartworks were no longer perceivable as they had been thousands ofyears ago; they had turned to stone, and their animating spirits hadflown.Greek art was long dead.So although there was, on the onehand, the hope of reinstituting the Greek spirit, there was an accom-panying emptiness in the awareness that the classical Greek timeswere not the present times.The idea of being a modern personwho sought to become an ancient person generated theoreticalproblems that emerged throughout the literature of the period.54Frequently enough, what one finds during this late eighteenth andearly nineteenth century period is an uncertainty about how toexpress exactly what was sought from the classical Greeks.It wasadmitted that the Greek gods were no longer culturally alive, butthere was a confidence that the Greek spirit could somehow beincorporated into European culture, even though this new life had tobe in some contemporary, or future, form.55This cultural situation soon generated a sense of disillusion-ment: the Christianity of the time was perceived to be spirituallydying, and the rejuvenation to be attained by a return to the Greekspirit became undermined by the growing realization that the Greekgods had already turned into stone.The increasingly frequent use ofthe phrase God is dead in philosophic and literary expression isevidence of the growing spiritual crisis.49 NIETZSCHENietzsche himself used the phrase God is dead for the firsttime explicitly in 1882 (in The Gay Science, §108), but this phraseoccurs within philosophical texts as early as 1804 and 1807.56 Inthese earlier instances, the phrase is used to refer either to the cruci-fixion (where Jesus-as-God dies), or to the spiritual crisis of thedevout believer, who has sacrificed everything for God, only todiscover that this sacrifice has not borne any spiritual fruit or any response from God.After having sacrificed everything to God,and then having later found no definite presence of God, devoutbelievers would often fall into a condition where there was nothingleft in which to believe a condition, in effect, of utter nihilism.This is a spiritual condition comparable to that of the disillusionedbeliever in God, who asks how God can allow crimes againsthumanity to happen, and allow them to go unpunished.In his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel offers a memorablecharacterization of this dark night of the soul, having in mind theexperience of the disillusioned devotee.57 For Hegel, the perceptionof God s death especially as it is experienced by a formerly devoutbeliever leads dreadfully to absolute disillusionment.Here, theloss of faith in God is understood in a general and philosophicalsense, namely, as the loss of acknowledgment of stable, universalrealities.Hegel believes that the former devotee, now havingnothing more upon which to rely, sinks into an exclusive, one-sidedfocus upon individual concerns.And insofar as the disillusionedindividual becomes preoccupied with merely individual matters, heor she observes that the person is reduced to pettiness, self-centeredness, and utter finitude.This specific understanding of thisspiritual debilitation recognizes most importantly that at the centerof the nihilistic consciousness is a sense of loss, emptiness, solitude,and despair.Nihilistic consciousness issues when the ground ofone s spiritual substance is removed, and one falls into the beliefthat there is nothing of permanent meaning for which to live.58Nihilism and the death of God To sense the emotional depth that is likely to have motivatedNietzsche s discussions of the death of God, we can reflect on the50 God s deathkinds of emotions that accompany the death of anyone whom onehas depended on and loved.The general psychology of the situationis well documented.First, there is an initial experience of shock anddisbelief, followed by profound emotional pain and a growing senseof emptiness.Then, the pain slowly subsides and the emptinessgradually becomes replaced with more satisfying meaning as onereadjusts and reconstitutes one s outlook in a constructive way, onceone has, ideally, grown to accept the loved person s non-presence.Typically involved in the experience is a severe loss of personalsignificance, a disorientation that results from the disruption, if notcomplete disintegration, of what had been a primary source of spir-itual nourishment, not to mention a sense of fear as a consequenceof having been left relatively alone by the person s death.Recoveryfrom such a loss is not a necessary result; cases of spouses dyingimmediately after the death of their husband or wife are known,and cases of individuals who slowly die of heartbreak after the deathof their loved ones are familiar.Whether Nietzsche was ever a completely devout and commit-ted Christian during any time in his life is an open question, but it isundeniable that his father was a minister, that his early years werecentered around his father s church and accompanying pastor shouse (located only meters away from the church), and that thekind of music he wrote in his teens is clearly in the style of churchmusic.That his father who Nietzsche loved died when he wasonly four years old, followed by his younger, two-year-old brotheronly six months later, can be added here as additional facts of signif-icance.Nietzsche s early childhood experiences presented him withan understanding of death that could easily be transposed intoreflections on the death of God, if only because the Christian Godis a superhuman father-figure.59Despite the available biographical evidence which can groundsome speculations, it is impossible to know what the full psycholog-ical impact the death of Nietzsche s father and younger brother was.We are on more stable ground, if, to understand the idea of the death of God, we consider what it would mean to add the word absolute before the kinds of experiences, mentioned above,that are typically involved in the loss of a loved one.Rather than51 NIETZSCHEexperiencing a severe loss of personal meaning one that is devas-tating enough literally to kill some people one would experiencean absolute loss of personal meaning and consequently sufferfrom feelings of utter emptiness.Rather than experiencing a disori-entation resulting from the disruption of one s personal meaning,one would experience an absolute disorientation, a completegroundlessness, or an abysmal absurdity.Rather than experiencingfear, one would experience absolute terror.Rather than feelinglonely, one would feel absolutely alone and completely abandoned.Given the extremes of emotion involved here, it is easy to seehow the death of God, if experienced by a person of previouslydeep faith in God, could lead to an attitude of nihilism and psycho-logical destitution.The deeper one s belief in God, the moremaddening, and more life-threatening, God s death would be [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]
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.Theseartworks were no longer perceivable as they had been thousands ofyears ago; they had turned to stone, and their animating spirits hadflown.Greek art was long dead.So although there was, on the onehand, the hope of reinstituting the Greek spirit, there was an accom-panying emptiness in the awareness that the classical Greek timeswere not the present times.The idea of being a modern personwho sought to become an ancient person generated theoreticalproblems that emerged throughout the literature of the period.54Frequently enough, what one finds during this late eighteenth andearly nineteenth century period is an uncertainty about how toexpress exactly what was sought from the classical Greeks.It wasadmitted that the Greek gods were no longer culturally alive, butthere was a confidence that the Greek spirit could somehow beincorporated into European culture, even though this new life had tobe in some contemporary, or future, form.55This cultural situation soon generated a sense of disillusion-ment: the Christianity of the time was perceived to be spirituallydying, and the rejuvenation to be attained by a return to the Greekspirit became undermined by the growing realization that the Greekgods had already turned into stone.The increasingly frequent use ofthe phrase God is dead in philosophic and literary expression isevidence of the growing spiritual crisis.49 NIETZSCHENietzsche himself used the phrase God is dead for the firsttime explicitly in 1882 (in The Gay Science, §108), but this phraseoccurs within philosophical texts as early as 1804 and 1807.56 Inthese earlier instances, the phrase is used to refer either to the cruci-fixion (where Jesus-as-God dies), or to the spiritual crisis of thedevout believer, who has sacrificed everything for God, only todiscover that this sacrifice has not borne any spiritual fruit or any response from God.After having sacrificed everything to God,and then having later found no definite presence of God, devoutbelievers would often fall into a condition where there was nothingleft in which to believe a condition, in effect, of utter nihilism.This is a spiritual condition comparable to that of the disillusionedbeliever in God, who asks how God can allow crimes againsthumanity to happen, and allow them to go unpunished.In his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel offers a memorablecharacterization of this dark night of the soul, having in mind theexperience of the disillusioned devotee.57 For Hegel, the perceptionof God s death especially as it is experienced by a formerly devoutbeliever leads dreadfully to absolute disillusionment.Here, theloss of faith in God is understood in a general and philosophicalsense, namely, as the loss of acknowledgment of stable, universalrealities.Hegel believes that the former devotee, now havingnothing more upon which to rely, sinks into an exclusive, one-sidedfocus upon individual concerns.And insofar as the disillusionedindividual becomes preoccupied with merely individual matters, heor she observes that the person is reduced to pettiness, self-centeredness, and utter finitude.This specific understanding of thisspiritual debilitation recognizes most importantly that at the centerof the nihilistic consciousness is a sense of loss, emptiness, solitude,and despair.Nihilistic consciousness issues when the ground ofone s spiritual substance is removed, and one falls into the beliefthat there is nothing of permanent meaning for which to live.58Nihilism and the death of God To sense the emotional depth that is likely to have motivatedNietzsche s discussions of the death of God, we can reflect on the50 God s deathkinds of emotions that accompany the death of anyone whom onehas depended on and loved.The general psychology of the situationis well documented.First, there is an initial experience of shock anddisbelief, followed by profound emotional pain and a growing senseof emptiness.Then, the pain slowly subsides and the emptinessgradually becomes replaced with more satisfying meaning as onereadjusts and reconstitutes one s outlook in a constructive way, onceone has, ideally, grown to accept the loved person s non-presence.Typically involved in the experience is a severe loss of personalsignificance, a disorientation that results from the disruption, if notcomplete disintegration, of what had been a primary source of spir-itual nourishment, not to mention a sense of fear as a consequenceof having been left relatively alone by the person s death.Recoveryfrom such a loss is not a necessary result; cases of spouses dyingimmediately after the death of their husband or wife are known,and cases of individuals who slowly die of heartbreak after the deathof their loved ones are familiar.Whether Nietzsche was ever a completely devout and commit-ted Christian during any time in his life is an open question, but it isundeniable that his father was a minister, that his early years werecentered around his father s church and accompanying pastor shouse (located only meters away from the church), and that thekind of music he wrote in his teens is clearly in the style of churchmusic.That his father who Nietzsche loved died when he wasonly four years old, followed by his younger, two-year-old brotheronly six months later, can be added here as additional facts of signif-icance.Nietzsche s early childhood experiences presented him withan understanding of death that could easily be transposed intoreflections on the death of God, if only because the Christian Godis a superhuman father-figure.59Despite the available biographical evidence which can groundsome speculations, it is impossible to know what the full psycholog-ical impact the death of Nietzsche s father and younger brother was.We are on more stable ground, if, to understand the idea of the death of God, we consider what it would mean to add the word absolute before the kinds of experiences, mentioned above,that are typically involved in the loss of a loved one.Rather than51 NIETZSCHEexperiencing a severe loss of personal meaning one that is devas-tating enough literally to kill some people one would experiencean absolute loss of personal meaning and consequently sufferfrom feelings of utter emptiness.Rather than experiencing a disori-entation resulting from the disruption of one s personal meaning,one would experience an absolute disorientation, a completegroundlessness, or an abysmal absurdity.Rather than experiencingfear, one would experience absolute terror.Rather than feelinglonely, one would feel absolutely alone and completely abandoned.Given the extremes of emotion involved here, it is easy to seehow the death of God, if experienced by a person of previouslydeep faith in God, could lead to an attitude of nihilism and psycho-logical destitution.The deeper one s belief in God, the moremaddening, and more life-threatening, God s death would be [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]