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Wednesday, January 15, 2020

On Nietzsche’s Theistic Hopes

Nietzsche said, “God is dead,” but he was not an atheist. Hegel, a pious man, had used the phrase, “God is dead,” to describe a situation in which consciousness senses that there is no hope and feels unhappy. For Nietzsche too, the death of God is unrelated to the religious notion of God, though he does not accept the Hegelian notion that unhappiness is humankind’s fate. 

According to Nietzsche, the idea of “God’s eye view” is dead. There is no single view of the world, there is no single truth, and there is no divine plan for mankind. A privileged perspective from philosophy, religion, and metaphysics is no longer available. He attacks the idea of morality that is valid for everyone, everywhere. He insists on a multiplicity of perspectives, noting that values are relative to a time, a place, and a set of circumstances and customs. 

In every age, humanity endeavors to construct its own destiny by creating a new set of values. People define who they are and what they can be. Thus, Nietzsche’s statement, “God is dead,” must not be taken as a denial of theism. The statement gives rise to new theistic hopes of creative values which drive the secular and technological world.

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