Hello, I'm Dr. Anadale and our text today is the Madman passage from
Nietzsche's book The Joyful Wisdom, also called The Gay Science. This passage
falls into four parts. In the first part the madman appears in the marketplace
telling the people "I seek God," and the people react by mocking him. They treat
him as though he's a child. They say "What, has God gone missing? Is there
something wrong with you? why do you say this this crazy thing?" In the second part
the madman announces the death of God he says I'll tell you what happened to God
God is dead and furthermore we we collectively killed him and what follows
then is a series of rhetorical questions meant to highlight the gravity of this
event of the death or the murder of God who gave us the sponge says the madman
to wipe away the horizon etc in the third part of this passage the madman
then turns his attention to we as the inheritors of a godless world and he
says we must become gods in order to be worthy of having killed God and then
finally the people look at him stunned and confused he says I've come too soon
my time has not yet come the madman embraces the role of a
prophet or a precursor what he is saying here is that you may not understand me
now but you people will understand me in the future eventually you'll see the
truth of what I've said today so with that four-part structure in mind
let's think about briefly what this passage might mean what does the death
of God mean this is a subject for discussion in our class coming up but a
couple of ideas this might be a diagnosis Nietzsche might be saying in
this passage that the world has lost its orientation to God that is to say people
no longer think of God the world has become desacralized
or secularized God is no longer present in the social order in the economic
order or in people's daily lives as they consider their behavior and their
choices the death of God could also be an especially cruel way of stating that
God does not exist it would be similar to telling a
young child that Santa Claus is dead he used to be here it's not here anymore
it's meant to evoke a profound feeling of loss and suffering that's possible
but the thing that catches us in this interpretation is this assignment of
responsibility because the madman says we we collectively all of us are
responsible for the death of God we have killed him and that invites some
speculation what what is nietzsche saying here about modern people in 1870s
in Germany or in European culture what have we done what actions did we take
what social change took place that would cause us to be responsible for the
demise or the departure or the death of God even if it amounts to the evacuation
of God or of sacred influence from our culture and from our civilization and
then finally this troubling passage this statement that we must become gods now
he says to be worthy of having killed God but there's also a suggestion here
that the empty cultural space left by the death of God that is the the things
that God used to do for us things like provide meaning to our lives and serve
as a basis for an ethical system these tasks can no longer be done by God and
they must now be done by human beings so we must become a source of meaning in
our own lives we must become the ground of our own ethical system these are some
of the things that I think each is suggesting in this passage that's all
I'm gonna say about it for right now if you're in one of my classes we'll be
talking about this passage in more detail shortly thanks for watching bye