John Dunn

Over-hasty Nietzsche

Nietzsche was over-hasty when he exclaimed ‘God is dead’.

Quite reasonably, we might say, Nietzsche was right in thinking that there is no longer a god who gathers men and things unto himself, visibly and unequivocally, and by such gathering disposes the world’s history and man’s sojourn in it. The divine radiance has become extinguished in the world’s history. Man once was beholden to such a god without question, but it was questioning that killed the god. The world is bereft of a ground that grounds it and is left in the abyss.

But is that old god dead, i.e. that which worshippers have themselves sculptured in the mind as an object of worship, which they go on to believe is an entity wholly apart from them, i.e. an all-knowing God which controlled the affairs of man from across a divide?

No - that god still exists.We might lazily, but with some rationale, identify this god as Mammon, with the implications of materialism, in all senses of the word associated with that evil demon, but inauthentic being would be a better description of the god to whom we remain beholden, despite Nietzsche’s declaration.

We shall find the new ground of our existence and our new vocation only when we expose ourselves to being itself in a new mode of experiencing and assimilating it, which is to experience the present purely in terms of the future.

‘Only a god will save us’ and that god will be the future authenticity of being.

© John Dunn.