Nietzsche and the Death of God

Nietzsche and the Death of God

In this course, Professor Ken Gemes (Birkbeck, University of London) explores the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. The course begins with the famous ‘death of God’ speech from ‘The Gay Science’, and focuses on what Nietzsche meant when he spoke about the ‘death of God’. In the second module, we turn to Nietzsche’s concept of nihilism—the denial that there are any existential values in the world—before moving on to his critique of Christianity and Christian morality in the third module. In the fourth module, we explore how Nietzsche envisioned the creation and mass adoption of new value, before thinking in the final module about who Nietzsche thought his readership was, and the purpose of his philosophy for this intended audience.

Nietzsche and the Death of God

In this module, we explore Nietzsche’s concept of the death of God, an idea that involves not only the rejection of the ontological claims of Christianity, but also its core values of truth and compassion.