Nietzsche's Challenge to Morality: The Death of God and New Values
Nietzsche's Critique of Morality and Monotheism
From Socrates to Jesus Christ, Nietzsche observes a decline: the advent of monotheism. For him, the plurality of perspectives on the human condition represents liberty. Politics has always prefigured the free spirit of man and its multiplicity: the power to create new ways of seeing the world. Polytheism, in contrast, was a time of splendor for thought.
Nietzsche condemns the values of resentment and the spirit of vengeance that permeate Christian morality. He argues that it was the Jews who dared to invert the aristocratic identification of values. For Nietzsche, Christianity operates an inversion of ancient, aristocratic, and active moral values, giving birth to a morality of resentment.
The Death of God: Rejecting Absolutes
When Nietzsche proclaims the death of God, he means that belief in God has died. This expresses a rejection of any belief in absolute entities. God does not create man; rather, man creates God. Belief in God is meant to give comfort to humanity amidst the misery and suffering that exist in this world.
When Nietzsche speaks of the death of God, he refers not only to the God of Christianity but also to anything that can replace it and represent the Absolute. For example, Nature, Progress, Revolution, and Science, when taken as absolute realities, are analogous to God.
Zarathustra: Transmutation of Values
Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a collection of his entire philosophy, a thought that represents a moral turning point. In this book, he aims for the transmutation of all values and the recovery of the Dionysian element.
What is the purpose of embracing the Dionysian element, so strongly suppressed throughout history? It is to achieve a transmutation of all values, asserting that man must always move in favor of life and strive to follow its dictates. Therefore, Nietzsche rejects any immutable moral code.
There is no immutable moral world; rather, it is man who invents the need for immutability and permanence. Such concepts are not real, as man is in a state of eternal becoming. If we were to fully accept this infinite future and constant flux, we would be overwhelmed, which is why humanity has historically invented stable values.