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1883-1887Reputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Nietzsche Declares the Death of God

European morality has lost the belief it was built on, Nietzsche argues, and most people have not noticed yet

On the timeline · around 1883-1887 · The Enlightenment and the 19th CenturyThe Enlightenment and the 19th CenturyModern PhilosophyNietzsche Declares the Death of God1850186018701880189019001910

Quick facts

Nietzsche's dates
1844-1900
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Published in parts, 1883-1885
On the Genealogy of Morals
1887
Key concepts
Death of God; slave revolt in morality; will to power

What happened

Friedrich Nietzsche, born in 1844, wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra in four parts between 1883 and 1885 and developed his critique of morality further in works including On the Genealogy of Morals in 1887. Nietzsche's pronouncement that God is dead argued that belief in the Christian God had become unbelievable in modern European culture, and that the whole of European morality built on that faith faced collapse as a result, whether or not people recognized it yet. In the Genealogy, Nietzsche traced what he called a slave revolt in morality, arguing that the priestly class, resentful of the power held by a noble warrior class, inverted the noble evaluation of good and bad into a new opposition between good and evil that redefined weakness as virtue. Nietzsche opposed both moral systems with his concept of the will to power, describing it in one late formulation as what is good: everything that heightens the feeling of power in man.

Why it matters

Nietzsche's argument that European morality had lost its foundational belief without losing its moral demands became one of the most influential diagnoses of modern secularization, and his genealogical method, tracing moral concepts to the historical power struggles that produced them rather than treating them as timeless truths, shaped 20th-century philosophy from existentialism through poststructuralism.

How we know

Nietzsche's major works survive in their original German editions from the 1880s and have been continuously translated and studied since; his biography, including his final years of mental and physical decline until his death in 1900, is corroborated by extensive surviving correspondence and contemporary accounts.

Sources

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Nietzsche Declares the Death of God · History of Western Philosophy · SourcedStory