On Nietzsche's "The madman"
When Nietzsche’s madman proclaims the death of God, first he is claiming specifically that belief in God as traditionally understood is superlatively untenable and more broadly, all absolutes and all teleologies are unfounded, unsupportable human constructs. Where others looked at the world around them and saw purpose and order, Nietzsche saw flux and chaos, in the midst of which the human species, driven by the needs of survival, projects an individually internally constructed yet communally agreed upon cosmic order onto the external world as a function of the utility to “the herd” that the grand illusion provides. The innumerable consequences of the death of God in philosophy, science, and morality were thus directly in proportion to their dependence on absolutes or the absolute, and any human attempts past, present or future are doomed to failure by presupposing purpose and order in a fundamentally purposeless void.
The death of God corresponded with the death of universal morality for Nietzsche. Morality must be self-generated if it is to be authentic because no other foundation for morality exists in this view. Nietzsche’s madman asks the crowd, “What were we doing when we unchained this Earth from its sun?”(141). Moral prescriptions and injunctions that were assumed to be universal are really no more than the preferences and needs of the larger social grouping or “herd” reified and made instinctual by their survival through the generations. This leads to Nietzsche to the position that eventually when the words of the “madman” are truly ready to be received by the population at large that the loss of the foundation for a moral consensus will lead people to abandon their traditional moralities and cease their self-sacrifice in the name of the “herd.” Yet, the “madman” is not frivolous in questioning, “Aren’t we wandering as if through an endless nothing,”(142) nor in repeatedly invoking a sense of weightlessness and falling (141). Nietzsche seems to have serious concerns about the death of God leading to nihilism and despair, for what will people find worth living for without the ability to honestly find a foundation to moor their hopes and dreams for the future, or to believe that there can be any sense of purpose in life at all? Nietzsche’s response to this risk of nihilism is captured in his allegory, “The heaviest weight” which, to summarize briefly, asks us to speculate on the possibility of every detail of our lives being exactly repeated infinitely without any possibility of change. “The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again-and you with it, you mote of dust!”(148). It seems that this thought experiment seeks to provide weight where there was none before. Just as the death of God destroys teleology, so does “the heaviest weight” in the clear absence of the possibility of any final apotheosis or goal that an individual could build his life toward. However, instead of nihilism for Nietzsche, to the contrary this story brings to the foreground the need to affirm every moment of life, for “how benevolent would you have to become toward yourself and toward life in order to long for nothing more ardently than for this ultimate eternal sanction and seal?”(148).
Philosophy would seem to be similarly eviscerated by the death of God. Every philosophy at all related to teleology or the absolute already in existence could easily be considered just as much a part of the carcass of “divine rot”(142), and every new goal- oriented or absolute dependent construction would be mere “shadows” or reflections of the still decaying God, and the believers just as believers of traditional moralities would just be carrying the past that much further. Nietzsche considers the role philosophical justifications play in the lives of respective individuals to be like a “blessing” and, in light of the death of God, enjoins us all to create our own philosophies(144). We need, “new philosophers! The moral Earth is also round . . .[and] has its antipodes . . . [that] have their right to existence! . . . There is still another world to discover . . . To the ships, you philosophers!(144).
Even science is not spared as Nietzsche purports that it rests on a presupposition exposed to be a “metaphysical faith,”(151) viz., “an unconditional will to truth”(150). And even questions cause and effect, “An intellect that saw cause and effect as a continuum, not with our sort of arbitrary division and fragmentation, an intellect that saw the flux of events, would throw aside the concept of cause and effect and deny all determination” (137).
However, if we must affirm life, we must value it, and therefore not all philosophies are equally justifiable. On what grounds? What implicit value does life have? The fact that our species is hurtling toward self-destruction brings this question into sharp relief. Consensus though, is approachable. Science is a process in a critical feedback loop that produces the broadest possible consensus of rational thought in creating the best approximation of reality possible (and only approximations of reality are possible as already mathematically proven); even if science requires an implicit will to truth, so be it, as it is the only route to the survival of the species (the will to truth then becomes synonymous with the will to live), thus providing the grounds for the existence of any agents to affirm life in whatever way each chooses. How presumptuous to allow the destruction of the possibility of any further opinion on any matter, by allowing the destruction of the human species by not recognizing the likelihood, or even necessity, of appreciating that to affirm each moment of life is to affirm all moments of life, is to affirm the conditions that make life possible (the human species remains the only known entity even arguably capable of conscious agency. If I am overlooking recent research into other mammals, the point would remain as our self-destruction is likely to annihilate with it countless other species, as presaged in the growing consensus that we are living through a mass extinction, and the almost complete “clear-cutting” of the oceans).
As morality is dependent on the survival of moral agents, morality as such must affirm science even in its perpetually limited form. In the possible case that impending doom is avoided, the fundamentally flawed nature of humans and thus their beliefs (especially on big questions that require much broader correspondence with evidence to verify its truth) behooves the species to protect the sanctity of each consciousness from the imposition of belief by force, and reject belief systems grounded upon “revelation” that by definition/design refuse to be subject to the constraints of evidence and dissent and therefore provide cover for the perpetual breeding of humans incapable of recognizing the fundamentally tentative nature of all knowledge, but especially claims to knowledge incapable of providing evidence, humans that by having been refused the opportunity to approach an objective common ground reality (in the way they were raised), must claim membership to a belief systems that arrogates absolute truth to itself and thus necessarily relegates all other humans to a lower moral class (if they are regarded as human at all), inevitably promulgating the disrespect and death of innocents (the apogee of violation of consciousnesses, viz., their respective dissipations).
page numbers refer to Existentialism: Basic Writings: Second Edition
The death of God corresponded with the death of universal morality for Nietzsche. Morality must be self-generated if it is to be authentic because no other foundation for morality exists in this view. Nietzsche’s madman asks the crowd, “What were we doing when we unchained this Earth from its sun?”(141). Moral prescriptions and injunctions that were assumed to be universal are really no more than the preferences and needs of the larger social grouping or “herd” reified and made instinctual by their survival through the generations. This leads to Nietzsche to the position that eventually when the words of the “madman” are truly ready to be received by the population at large that the loss of the foundation for a moral consensus will lead people to abandon their traditional moralities and cease their self-sacrifice in the name of the “herd.” Yet, the “madman” is not frivolous in questioning, “Aren’t we wandering as if through an endless nothing,”(142) nor in repeatedly invoking a sense of weightlessness and falling (141). Nietzsche seems to have serious concerns about the death of God leading to nihilism and despair, for what will people find worth living for without the ability to honestly find a foundation to moor their hopes and dreams for the future, or to believe that there can be any sense of purpose in life at all? Nietzsche’s response to this risk of nihilism is captured in his allegory, “The heaviest weight” which, to summarize briefly, asks us to speculate on the possibility of every detail of our lives being exactly repeated infinitely without any possibility of change. “The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again-and you with it, you mote of dust!”(148). It seems that this thought experiment seeks to provide weight where there was none before. Just as the death of God destroys teleology, so does “the heaviest weight” in the clear absence of the possibility of any final apotheosis or goal that an individual could build his life toward. However, instead of nihilism for Nietzsche, to the contrary this story brings to the foreground the need to affirm every moment of life, for “how benevolent would you have to become toward yourself and toward life in order to long for nothing more ardently than for this ultimate eternal sanction and seal?”(148).
Philosophy would seem to be similarly eviscerated by the death of God. Every philosophy at all related to teleology or the absolute already in existence could easily be considered just as much a part of the carcass of “divine rot”(142), and every new goal- oriented or absolute dependent construction would be mere “shadows” or reflections of the still decaying God, and the believers just as believers of traditional moralities would just be carrying the past that much further. Nietzsche considers the role philosophical justifications play in the lives of respective individuals to be like a “blessing” and, in light of the death of God, enjoins us all to create our own philosophies(144). We need, “new philosophers! The moral Earth is also round . . .[and] has its antipodes . . . [that] have their right to existence! . . . There is still another world to discover . . . To the ships, you philosophers!(144).
Even science is not spared as Nietzsche purports that it rests on a presupposition exposed to be a “metaphysical faith,”(151) viz., “an unconditional will to truth”(150). And even questions cause and effect, “An intellect that saw cause and effect as a continuum, not with our sort of arbitrary division and fragmentation, an intellect that saw the flux of events, would throw aside the concept of cause and effect and deny all determination” (137).
However, if we must affirm life, we must value it, and therefore not all philosophies are equally justifiable. On what grounds? What implicit value does life have? The fact that our species is hurtling toward self-destruction brings this question into sharp relief. Consensus though, is approachable. Science is a process in a critical feedback loop that produces the broadest possible consensus of rational thought in creating the best approximation of reality possible (and only approximations of reality are possible as already mathematically proven); even if science requires an implicit will to truth, so be it, as it is the only route to the survival of the species (the will to truth then becomes synonymous with the will to live), thus providing the grounds for the existence of any agents to affirm life in whatever way each chooses. How presumptuous to allow the destruction of the possibility of any further opinion on any matter, by allowing the destruction of the human species by not recognizing the likelihood, or even necessity, of appreciating that to affirm each moment of life is to affirm all moments of life, is to affirm the conditions that make life possible (the human species remains the only known entity even arguably capable of conscious agency. If I am overlooking recent research into other mammals, the point would remain as our self-destruction is likely to annihilate with it countless other species, as presaged in the growing consensus that we are living through a mass extinction, and the almost complete “clear-cutting” of the oceans).
As morality is dependent on the survival of moral agents, morality as such must affirm science even in its perpetually limited form. In the possible case that impending doom is avoided, the fundamentally flawed nature of humans and thus their beliefs (especially on big questions that require much broader correspondence with evidence to verify its truth) behooves the species to protect the sanctity of each consciousness from the imposition of belief by force, and reject belief systems grounded upon “revelation” that by definition/design refuse to be subject to the constraints of evidence and dissent and therefore provide cover for the perpetual breeding of humans incapable of recognizing the fundamentally tentative nature of all knowledge, but especially claims to knowledge incapable of providing evidence, humans that by having been refused the opportunity to approach an objective common ground reality (in the way they were raised), must claim membership to a belief systems that arrogates absolute truth to itself and thus necessarily relegates all other humans to a lower moral class (if they are regarded as human at all), inevitably promulgating the disrespect and death of innocents (the apogee of violation of consciousnesses, viz., their respective dissipations).
page numbers refer to Existentialism: Basic Writings: Second Edition