Nietzsche: The Happy Atheist

I think Friedrich Nietzsche gets kind of a bum rap from people who don't know anything about him. What I find particularly astonishing about the general dislike for Nietzsche (or, in some cases, an ironic fascination) is that the critics or peons happen to fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of Nietzsche's work.



Nietzsche is most famous for his phrase, "God is dead." It sounds like a pessimistic sentiment, an existentialist and nihilistic way of looking at what can be perceived as the ultimate, inevitable downfall of religion. A lot of people push back against this, reviling the inherently anti-religious connotation of the phrase. However, Nietzsche was neither squarely anti-religion nor was he particularly nihilistic. In fact, he was quite the opposite. Despite being an atheist writer, he held a particularly hopeful and optimistic view of human existence. He didn't hate religion, he simply saw its "death" (ergo, God) as having cascading effects that would reverberate through the future. Nietzsche argues that the death of God would prevent the idea of Absolute Morality from taking hold, in essence allowing human beings to create moral laws according to each other as opposed to abiding by a greater power. His philosophy is strictly humanistic, though it has an unavoidably theological bent. Nietzsche doesn't want people to despair that God is dead. He wants people to rejoice in the newfound freedom from dogmatic views. Instead of not killing someone because of the Ten Commandments, people will refuse to kill each other simply because they have decided that it is wrong and immoral to do so of their own accord. Religion no longer factors into it.

Many people will take this atheistic humanism and twist it away from what Nietzsche intended, saying that people are "free spirits" (in Nietzsche's own words) and that they have the right to do as they please. There's always that guy in the back of your high school class that doesn't realize that Thus Spoke Zarathustra is supposed to be about the joy of freedom, not the pleasure of self-affirmation. Indeed, Nietzsche loathes pleasure for pleasure's sake. He argues that one should suffer during life, but that suffering should be on one's own terms e.g. a man devotes his time to helping people because it is in humanity's vested interest, not because he gains personal satisfaction from it. The Ubermensch is supposed to be an ideal that everyone should attain, not a private club of elitist pleasure-seekers. Nietzsche's work is joyful - that's why his famous work The Gay Science is titled as such. The wisdom which Nietzsche provides is supposed to help you become happy.

I'll leave a quote from The Gay Science here because Nietzsche says it better than I ever could:
(For context, the "event" that he's speaking of is the "death of God.")

"Are we perhaps still not too influenced by the most immediate consequences of this event -and these immediate consequences, the consequences for ourselves, are the opposite of what one might expect -not at all sad and gloomy, but much more like a  new and barely describable type of light, happiness, relief, amusement, encouragement, dawn .  .  . Indeed, at hearing the news that 'the old god is dead', we philosophers and 'free spirits' feel illuminated by a new dawn; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, forebodings, expectation -finally the horizon seems clear again, even if not bright; finally our ships may set out again, set out to face any danger; every daring of the lover of knowledge is allowed again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; maybe there has never been such an 'open sea'." (Nietzsche, The Gay Science 199)

Seriously, how can you not love this guy?

Art Credit: Anna Kapustina