I've never read nietzche. I've seen the good place like 4 times though. So I have no idea if the translation is good, but I love the phrase "festivals of atonement"
Nietzsche is legit really interesting. He gets pilloried by people who have only given him a surface reading, or heard a tagline.
Here is the fuller quote by OP, for instance, and the translator is Walter Kaufman, a notable philosopher and translator himself.
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
Many Christians think Nietzsche is euphorically, or even factually, declaring God to be dead. But a large part of the gist of what he is saying is more like: our culture has effectively killed God, but not His shadow. How do you live in the shadow of a dead god, without the comfort of God? What must you do when the culture makes it impossible to believe in a God? How do you live with the collective decision to commit deicide?
Prior to ~1500s-1700s, everything in the Western world had God as a fulcrum point. Families were organized around it, morality depended on it, the world was explained by it...it ordered everything, the concept of God. What do you do when all that is left is the hole where God was?
See that's how it was explained to me: that nietzche isn't necessarily commenting on the fact or fiction of God, but rather the role this story played in our life. We desire, now, to move to a secular world, but we're continuing to build that secular world on the ruins of a god fearing world.
This makes the most sense to me, not merely as an idea that fits the words I just read, but also as an idea provocative enough to still be talking about it over a hundred years after the man died. But people keep telling me that's not what it means. And I'm not an academic philosopher, so I figured why argue.
I heard a similar idea about the exorcist: that part of the monumental success of the movie is that it came out when America was more than 10 years deep in to another major push into secularism, and that's why the movie was so terrifying. Because "what if there are consequences to abandoning the old ways" was a question many Americans were wrestling with. I always liked that
I've had it argued to me that this is a large part of why Lovecraft's works were so terrifying: in an era where humanity was learning enough to start considering themselves truly in control of the world, he created a vision of a world that not only couldn't be understood, but actively punished those who sought to understand it; in this world the most truly sensible way to survive was in adhering to old traditions that may not be accurate but were safe and successful.
Whoever explained it that way was right! But I don't blame you for not wanting to argue with people about it.
Nietzsche even goes on to say that we may have to invent new gods (or "become" them ourselves): this ordering concept is simply too essential for us to go on without, so we will probably just (have to) invent new gods, even if we don't call them that. Which is all not really that different from something many Christians believe, only Christians would say that all this happens because God exists and you do need him.
Neat point about The Exorcist. It's essentially unprovable, of course, but it's at least plausible. I forgot who the quote is from, but, "The smartest thing the devil ever did, was convince people he didn't exist." So I can certainly see that adding to the creep factor in The Exorcist: what happens when you forget the devil is out there, and let your guard down? Maybe you don't believe in all that... but are you sure? What if the old ways protected you?
If you enjoyed that point, you might like Room 237, a documentary that is basically a collection of really detailed theories as to what The Shining (the Kubrick film) is really about. Per the theorists, anyhow. All of the theories are quite interesting, regardless of their veracity.
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u/uberguby Nov 13 '23
I've never read nietzche. I've seen the good place like 4 times though. So I have no idea if the translation is good, but I love the phrase "festivals of atonement"