Friedrich Nietzsche's Parable Of A Madman

The theme of madness is very easily visible in Night. While it is not exactly referenced, the actions of the main characters and the other Jews in the book very clearly portray it, because of their persecution and their starvation. The Jews’ and their persecution and torture drive them insane. For example, when Mrs. Schäcter sees the fire on the way to Auschwitz.

Where was God? “I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I’ve been closer to Him for that reason.” - Elie Wiesel.

Foolish, chaotic, crazy, all ways to describe the state of a madman, and these just so happen to perfectly describe some characters in the works we have read and discussed. The theme of madness is heavily displayed in the literature pieces of Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, and Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. Victor Frankenstein, The Creature, Hamlet, and are the characters that most express the course theme of madness in the works. These characters display similarities on their way to that unstable state of mind.

Nietzsche's madman allegory represents the current moral situation of society during his time--a growing belief that God does not exist, a movement away from religious values. Nietzsche does not mean literally that God has been murdered, but because mankind created God, we also have the ability to kill God. In Nietzsche’s point of view, mankind created God by also creating a belief in God. By saying that mankind ‘murdered’ God, Nietzsche is proposing that we no longer believe in Him. With the grounding that religion provided in the past, Nietzsche fears that mankind will be left without purpose and virtues to lead them to do the correct thing. The ‘light,’ in Nietzsche’s allegory is belief in God; for this paper, light is a focus because of the implications that follow when there is none. With no light, everything previously known about moral beliefs and the world is overturned. Nietzsche proposes that instead of God guiding people (because people no longer believe in Him), people can follow their own virtues, such as courage, faith in oneself, and patience for the future.

Nietzsche admits that the realization that “God is dead” will travel slowly because it is just too “unthinkable”.

Religion has been subject to various examinations throughout time; this historically dominant concept has offered much to the world, while sometimes being disadvantageous. Philosophers have looked to offer insight and understanding to the idea of a higher power, aiming to try and grasp its complex nature. Friedrich Nietzsche a 19th century philosopher takes a different approach to the idea of religion in his literary narrative “The Gay Science”. In this narrative Nietzsche makes the bold statement that “God is Dead” (Nietzsche 95), claiming that we have all killed him. This is rather extreme statement in any context, however considering the time period in which he was writing, a time

After connecting the passage to Nietzsche’s opinion of a fulfilled lifestyle, I believe that he would disagree with Smith’s way of living. The two have contrasting ideas, in which Nietzsche’s seems to be a more ethical one in the fullest sense.

In order to solve this issue other philosophers hold that God is everlasting, instead of eternal, he, like humans, is a temporal being who exists within time and has a past present and future

This statement means that, when you try to rectify or to sort out things which are so difficult or threatening, you should do it diligently in a manner that you do not become part of the problem. Sometimes when people try to address challenging issues, they end up being part of the problem after they realize their efforts do not bear positive fruits (Faber, and Holub, 2013). The statement simply means that when we are addressing evil things, we should not allow those evil things to influence our thinking. We should stand by our decisions and address things according to our plans not the plans of the dark side.

The speaker opens the poem with the thought that madness or insanity is the best sense to have. This sounds right and makes sense when read quickly; however, it is contradicting to how societies think about logic and insanity because logic and insanity don’t normally fit together. Madness is the opposite of sensible, meaning serious mental illness where judgement is impeded upon or just foolish behavior. However, sensible means clear and sound reasoning which can be achieved by a sane and logical mind. This paradox is important because it combines not only two ideas but also two ideas that society never combined and instead always contrasted. During the author’s time, anyone with mental illness or remotely foolish would have been looked

Yo, I hope you are ready to learn some really cool shizniz about how we understand other shizniz by interpreting that shizniz. Over this past term, I have learned how individuals form an interpretation. Although learning about how to interpret an interpretation was an interesting experience, it also was pretty confusing; therefore, I am going to discuss what I have learned in a way that I hope will be fun to read and easy to understand. In this, you will read about concepts introduced by Nietzsche, reinforced by Gadamer, and challenged by Schott. In each of their articles highlighted key points of how to best understand a concept called “the hermeneutical claim to universality”, which can be defined as a notion of first having an interpretation of what one wishes to understand. Basically, this means if we want to understand anything we are trying to find an interpretation.

I find Nietzsche completely different from the other philosopher. His beliefs are very intriguing. I think he was an unhappy, miserable, and lonely person who hardships had some influence on how he felt about philosophy and life. If he had friends, a close family or even a positive person around him, I believe his philosophy may be different. There are some philosophers that I agreed with and some that I didn’t. His philosophy I found the same. I did not agree with his rejection of religion and God. I believe that religion does not sugar coat anything but teaches us how to truly live life virtuous. Christianity does not keep us from changing our lives for the better. It promotes improvement. It seems he had no faith. I think if he had faith

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” (Gay Science, 126) This harsh statement remains among Friedrich Nietzsche’s most powerful and disturbing quotes, spoken by a proclaimed Madman to a crowd of disbelievers. After making this claim, the Madman becomes horrified by his audience’s ignorance, noting that “This tremendous event is still on its way.” This has an effect of suspending the Madman’s message in time, expanding its audience infinitely, for the event of God’s death could still be on its way. Therefore, nearly 150 years after these words were written, we must ask ourselves, does God remain dead, and has our modern society killed him? This is a haunting and disturbing question, but in many ways our society does resemble Nietzsche’s masses. However, it also resembles the Madman himself, due to its inherent individualism.

Friedrich Nietzsche’s own skepticism symbolized the secular changes in contemporary Western civilization, in which he details mankind’s break away from faith into a new rule of chaos. In Book 5 of The Gay Science, Nietzsche establishes that “God is dead”, meaning that modern Europe has abandoned religion in favor of rationality and science (Nietzsche 279). From this death, the birth of a ‘new’ infinite blossoms in which the world is open to an unlimited amount of interpretations that do not rely on the solid foundations of faith in religion or science. However, in contrast to the other philosophers of his age such as Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Nietzsche deviates from the omniscient determinism of history towards a

God’s not dead and we did not kill him, Nietzsche did. Nietzsche comes up with a claim that God is dead. He supports this claim by describing a madman frantically running around town looking for an honest person, he is looking for God. Their responses are laughter assuming the man is crazy. The madman eventually comes to the conclusion that humanity is unaware of the death of God and its significance. The significance will take time to reach the people. Nietzsche’s way of saying God is dead is a way of claiming freedom over his own life and trying to bandwagon others on to it. He feels the need to not have to obey any higher authority and in this he starts a movement of free will and justifies it by attempting to bring other people along with him. While Nietzsche can make convincing claims about the death of God, God is not dead.