God is dead

"God is dead" (German: Gott ist tot [ɡɔt ɪst toːt] ⓘ; also known as the death of God) is a statement made by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The first instance of this statement in Nietzsche's writings is in his 1882 The Gay Science, where it appears three times.[note 1] The phrase also appears in the first section, that titled the Prologue, of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and again in Chapter 25, The Pitiful, of the longer portion, Zarathustra's Discourses.

The meaning of this statement is that since, as Nietzsche says, "the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable", everything that was "built upon this faith, propped up by it, grown into it", including "the whole [...] European morality", is bound to "collapse".[1]

Other philosophers had previously discussed the concept, including Philipp Mainländer and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The phrase is also discussed in the Death of God theology.

  1. ^ a b Anderson, R. Lanier (March 17, 2017). Friedrich Nietzsche. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University – via plato.stanford.edu.


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