God is Dead: What Nietzsche REALLY Meant

God is dead - Nietzsche’s most notorious line and also one of his most commonly misunderstood. The Nietzsche God is dead statement is a New Atheist sentiment but the warning of a Postmodernist. It is commonly mistaken for a modernist sentiment proclaiming the death of Christianity’s God. But that is not what Nietzsche intended. It was not a declaration of atheism; atheism was already a trivial point of view (if still controversial) by the end of the 19th century. Nietzsche was not echoing a common sentiment but pushing beyond to its unseen implications. Nietzsche was pioneering the postmodern perspective. This is obvious from the aphorism it occurs in. In The Gay Science Nietzsche tells the parable of the madman who declares the death of God. The madman’s audience are not religious believers or members of the Church as one would expect from a declaration of God’s death. The audience was a crowd of jeering non-believers. This points to the real intention of Nietzsche’s statement. In this episode we