The death of God

Shore's shortest account of modernity: the project of finding God a replacement, which is very hard because God simultaneously grounded knowledge, being and ethics.

Put simply Shore: modernity, in short, is the search for something to replace God. That is very hard, because God did three jobs at once: he grounded what we can know, what exists, and what is right.

Announcing "God is dead" is not atheism. It reports an event: humanity has crossed from a world God organized into one without him, and we ourselves did the killing.

Put simply Nietzsche: saying "God is dead" is not saying there is no God. It reports that something has happened: we have moved from a world God gave order to into one without him, and we killed him.

Where to read it Nietzsche, The Gay Science §125.

What dies with God is arguably not any being, physical or metaphysical, nor one religion's creed. The word names a belief that reality has order, purpose and wholeness.

Put simply Nietzsche's "God" arguably is not a being of any kind, nor one religion's beliefs. The word stands for the belief that reality has order and purpose and makes sense as a whole.

Sooner or later everyone concludes that the harmonious world where contradictions resolve, Hegel's end of history, is never coming. Unity cannot be found: life is nothing but difference.

Put simply Nietzsche: sooner or later we all realize that a harmonious world where every conflict is resolved, the end of history Hegel promised, is never coming. There is no unity to be found; life is all difference.

Nihilism is simply another name for the death of God: the crisis in which our supreme values become worthless and the principles that once structured reality no longer do.

Put simply Nietzsche: "nihilism" is another name for the death of God. It is the crisis that comes when our highest values lose their worth and the principles that once ordered reality stop doing so.

In some sense Nietzsche does not care whether a God actually exists; what counts is whether we believe in one and arrange our lives around that belief.

Shore sees mourning in Nietzsche: he dismantles every system and shows morality impossible, offers nothing to make up the loss, yet still grieves for God and for morality.

For Shore, Nietzsche's announcement of God's death could never be retracted, like the Bastille's fall for Hegel; everyone since must reckon with it and its potential implication: everything is permitted.

Put simply Shore: once Nietzsche said God is dead, it could not be unsaid, just as for Hegel the storming of the Bastille could not be undone. Everyone since must face it, and its possible implication: everything is permitted.

Psychoanalysis theorizes life once God is dead: having thrown him out, we hunt for windows to climb back in, torn between craving authority and wanting to undermine it.

Put simply Yurko Prokhasko, a psychoanalyst and friend of Shore's: psychoanalysis is a theory of life after we reject God. Having thrown him out, we look for windows to crawl back in, torn between craving authority and wanting to undermine it.

On Shore's reading, the avant-garde took Nietzsche literally: if God's loss was to be compensated at all, his death had to be embraced without reservation, and whatever was toppling given a push.

Put simply Shore's reading: the avant-garde took Nietzsche's "God is dead" literally. If anything could make up for losing God, his death had to be embraced completely, and whatever was already falling should be pushed.

Without God, there is no "intelligible heaven" in which values might be found; human beings must create them themselves.

Put simply Sartre: without God, there is no higher realm where values are waiting to be found. People have to create their values themselves.

Sartre brooded for years on the despair left by God's death, yet died in 1980 regarded as France's, perhaps Europe's, conscience: in Shore's phrase, the nearest thing postwar Europe had to a God.

Girard, on Shore's reading, turns the death of God around: what matters is not God's absence but the killing, that we killed him, and the recognition that we did.

Put simply Shore's reading: Girard turns the "death of God" around. What counts is not that God is gone but that we killed him, and that we recognize we did.

After God's death comes the subject's, and Foucault admits how much that hurts; he sympathizes with people who find it unbearable.

Put simply Foucault admits how painful it is that, after God's "death," the self loses its central place too. He sympathizes with those who find that unbearable.

When Foucault announces the subject's death, Shore hears mourning rather than gloating, something close to Rousseau's nostalgia for the state of nature.

Put simply Shore: when Foucault declares the self dead, he sounds mournful, not gleeful, a little like Rousseau longing for humanity's lost natural state.

Not only is God dead; so is every would-be successor. History, Man, the Self, any transcendental signified: none exists to ground meaning or hold a system together.

Put simply Derrida: God is dead, and so is everything people tried to put in God's place, such as History, Man or the Self. Nothing exists that could ground meaning or hold a system of thought together.

The Rectoral Address asks: if Nietzsche was right that "God is dead," and we take seriously "the abandonment of man today in the midst of being," what follows for science?

Put simply Heidegger's rector's speech asks: if Nietzsche was right that "God is dead," and people today really are left abandoned in the world, what follows for science?

In the 1966 Spiegel interview, released only after his death, Heidegger conceded that Nazism had perhaps been wrong, yet insisted the West's real crisis was still godlessness after Nietzsche.

Put simply In a 1966 Der Spiegel interview, published only after his death in 1976, Heidegger allowed that Nazism was perhaps wrong. Still, he insisted, the West's real crisis was a world without God, after Nietzsche.

In the text In the Spiegel interview (1966, published 1976), asked about his 1933 statement that the Führer alone was Germany's reality and law, Heidegger replies: "The sentences you quote I would no longer write today."

"Only a god can save us," Heidegger told Der Spiegel; what remains for us is to ready ourselves, staying open to whether a god comes or stays away.