foale - blanchot and nietzsche on the death of god

7/27/2019 Foale - Blanchot and Nietzsche on the Death of God

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Blanchot andNietzscheon theDeath ofGod

Susan Foale

In

what sense isGod dead? Maurice Blanchot's account of thedeath of

God answers this

question through

an

interrogation

of the differences

between "the banal malediction of atheism" and "expatiating on the ab

sence ofGod without making God present by this very absence" (1997b,

180).Whatever the death of God means, Blanchot thinks this death is not

synonymous with atheism, humanism, or, indeed, a return to theologicaldiscourse.

Death isnot a subject Nietzsche chose towrite about in any full sense.

This isperhaps nsurprising,incehismanyobjectionstoChristianityre

predicated of what ispromised by aChristian death. Nietzsche thinksChris

tianitypreaches death, thedeparture from life. In addition, he describes as a

vice or an excess Arthur Schopenhauer's claim that"dying is thepurpose of

life" as thisclaim hardens into an article of faith forSchopenhauer's follow

ers. And notwithstanding his ambivalent regard for Socrates, Nietzsche is

appalled by Socrates' world-denying finalmoments, themoments of aman

who has suffered life and is imminently tobe cured in death. It is thepessimism of thedying Socrates thatprecedes the famous entry inThe Gay Sci

ence that introduces the eternal return, largely regarded byNietzsche com

mentators as a thought that affirms a love for this life.Nietzsche's ideal

death, voluntary death, ispreached by Zarathustra: "Everyone treatsdeath

as an importantmatter: but as yet death is not a festival. As yet,men have

not learned to consecrate the fairest festivals" (Z p. 97). Nietzsche thinks

voluntary death, that is, theability to say no when there isno longer time for

yes, is a freedom for, and in,death thatwe have not yet reached.

These general impressions ofNietzsche's position on death as the con

verse of lifeare supported by, forexample, a few entries from books 3 and 5

of The Gay Science. In section 109, Nietzsche writes thatwe should not

attribute to nature laws, to the universe a purpose. The world is a not a

livingbeing andwe should not interprettheuniverse as an organism: "When

will all these shadows of God cease todarken our minds? When will we

Journal ofNietzsche Studies, Issue 19,2000.

Copyright? 2000 The Friedrich Nietzsche Society.

71



72 Susan Foale

complete our de-deification of nature? When may we begin to 'naturalize'humanity in terms of a pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature?"

{GS 109). Itfollows rom ietzsche's claimsagainst he awsofnature nd

against the deification of theworld's character thatdeath is not opposed to

life and offers no salvation: "The living ismerely a typeofwhat isdead, and

a very rare type" (109).In a further entry,Nietzsche likens death to a "dark fellow traveler"

who is always standing behind us:

It is always like the lastmoment before thedeparture of an emigrants'

ship: people havemore to say toeach other thanever, thehour is late,andtheocean and itsdesolate silence arewaiting impatiently ehind all of this

noise?so covetous and certainof their rey.And all and everyone of them

suppose that the heretoforewas littleor nothingwhile thenear future is

everything_Everyone wants tobe first n thisfuture?and yetdeath and

deathly silence alone are certain and common to all in this future.How

strange it is thatthissole certainty nd common element makes almost no

impressionon people, and thatnothing is further rom theirminds than the

feeling thattheyform brotherhoodof death. Itmakes me happy thatmen

do notwant at all to think thethought f death! (GS 278)

Clearly, in this passage, Nietzsche is expressing his surprise and pleasureover what he regards tobe our reluctance or inability to think the thought of

death, where "the thought of death" presumably means thinking the sole

certainty of death in a way that would make a great impression on us.

Nietzsche wants the thought of life tomake a great impression?he thinks

theprevalence of "posthumous people," thosewho have faith inperpetuallife afterdeath,means this isnot yet thecase. Posthumous people endure the

cold and quiet of thegrave called "life," knowing "that it is only after death

thatwe shall enter our life and become alive"

(365).While Nietzsche is reassured thatmen do not want to think the thoughtof death?a thought thatmight convert thephysiological fact of death into a

moral necessity?he wonders about the attainment of "really contagiousnihilism," the teaching and practice of voluntary death as the deed of a thor

ough-going practical nihilism (WP 247). This would be a deed and practicetobe encouraged in theface of the ambiguous and cowardly slow suicide of

Christian pessimism. Furthermore, Nietzsche himself is not immune to the

lure of death when itmanifests itself in theproduction of a work: "This is

how all artists and

people

of 'works' feel... at every division of their lives,

which are always divided by a work, they believe that theyhave reached

theiroal; they ould alwayspatientlycceptdeathwith thefeeling,nowwe are ripe for it." This is not the expression of weariness?rather of a

certain autumnal sunniness and mildness that the work itself, the fact the

work has become ripe, always leaves behind in the author" (GS 376).



Blanchot and Nietzsche on theDeath ofGod 73

While Nietzscheis, then,

neithergarrulous

nor consistent on the sub

ject of death, "God is dead" are nonetheless probably his threebest-known

words. "God is dead" appears tomean that theChristian god has become

unbelievable and Christianity may not be revivified. With the collapse of

faith inGod comes the breakdown of thatwhich rests upon such faith,what

Nietzsche refers toas our "European morality," including amoral interpretationof temporal phenomena, an interpretation challenged by the thoughtof eternal return. For Nietzsche, Christianity (and, it should be added,

Socrates) is the source of the teaching adhered toby "posthumous people,"where time is

somethingthatmarks our

progressin themoral

overcomingof

earthly life.With therecession of theChristian faith itbecomes possible to

put forward a new doctrine, eternal return.

If theeternal return is critically linked to thedeath ofGod, it isperhaps

surprising that it should be deemed, by some, a new religion. For Michel

Haar's reading ofNietzsche, this iswhat itmust become for it to take hold

as a doctrine. Eternal return,by his account, is not obviously a religion in

the sense that religions express longing for transcendence; it is a religioninasmuch as it is founded upon faith in something, faith in one's own lifeas

worthyof

being repeatedinnumerable times. The eternal return

must,Haar

writes, "be understood as a religion of pure possibility"; as a religious doc

trine, it "establishes a connection with thedivine understood as the totalityandunityf self ndworld" (1996, 30).

Nietzsche himself, however, alludes toman's wish, having killed God,

togo beyond himself, toput himself where God was, thereby replacing the

divine logos:

The most extreme form of nihilism would be the view thateverybelief,

every considering-something-true, s necessarily false because there im

ply isno trueworld. Thus: a perspectival appearance whose origin lies inus (in so faras we continually need a narrower, abbreviated, simplified

world).?That it s themeasure of strengthtowhat extentwe can admit to

ourselves,without perishing, themerely apparent character, thenecessityof lies.To this xtent,nihilism, as the denial of a truthful orld, of being,

might be a divineway of thinking. WP 15)

Does, however, the death ofGod mean man is to venerate himself in

God's place? Blanchot thinks thatatheist humanism cannot be theoutcome

of the death of God. The Christian writer claims that atheist humanism can

end only infailure. It isa

small difference, perhaps, but foratheism toend infailure, itmust firstbe possible. For theChristian writer, even one attempt

ing seriously toappreciate and understand the influence ofNietzsche?"de

stroyerof theChristian world"?atheist humanism isbound toend inbank

ruptcy because its loftyambitions produce a being thatcan hardly still be

called a "being": "Man is himself only because his face is illumined by a



74 Susan Foale

divine ray"; "God... provides himwith theonly atmosphere he can breathe"(De Lubac 1949, 31, 32). The Christian writer's thesis is, then, that the

death of God is synonymous with the self-destruction of humanism, and

what is left ehindis a versionofMan who will beweighed downonce

againby the ld forces f fate hristianityhoughtt ad exorcised.Blanchot refers to atheism as something that"destroys itself inendless

problems" (1995, 288). Here he is speaking of "ordinary atheism" as op

posed towhat he calls "Nietzsche's atheism." This distinction refers to the

distinction Nietzsche himself seems touse in section 125 of The Gay Sci

ence. The madman seeking God is a figure of fun for those who already donot believe inGod?this is theresponse of ordinary atheism to thedeath of

God. Nietzsche's atheism, in contrast, is not simply a negation ofGod, a

problem resolved. If thedeath ofGod could be interrogated simply througha studyof common atheism, thiswould make the"breadth and profundity of

his [Nietzsche's] influence incomprehensible" (289). Blanchot's reading of

the eathofGod is that od has tobekilled rather han erelydenied inweak sense. The negation ofGod, and therefore all forms of ordinary athe

ism, is still always a discourse that speaks of and toGod, inGod's absence.

God cannot simply be questioned or refused because going beyond or surpassing God has what Blanchot calls an "ambiguous tendency toexperienceitself as absolute" (294). This gesture, by definition since it experiencesitselfas absolute, will always find the bias ofwhat itrejects. Blanchot main

tains that this cannot be what the death of God means, since with this death

dies thepossibility of absolutes ingeneral, namely, the ideals, values, and

truths thathave accompanied God.

The death ofGod is not thenegation or denial of God. To maintain this

would be, Blanchot claims, to allow themeaning of Nietzsche's "deed"?

presumably themurder of God?to escape. And yet,we are told that "suchan affirmation, inawork inwhich everything ismoving, has a relative fixi

ty; it clarifies itself sometimes in a differentway, but itnever turns against

itself, and keeps to the end this sense thatGod, legislator and foundation of

theworld, is dead" (1995, 289-90; trans, slightlymodified). The death of

God isnot, therefore, like other thoughts thatcharacterise Nietzsche's work.

It looks something like a fundamental thought, one that is relatively stable

across Nietzsche's laterwork. "God isdead" isvery remote from the thought"There isno God," and it is as fundamental as thoughts can be inNietzsche's

case, Blanchotsays,

because all ofNietzsche'sthinking

is contained in it. In

order to studyNietzsche, Blanchot thinks itwould be sufficient simply to

study this thought.Blanchot sets himself apart fromwhat he calls the formula of current

Nietzscheanism, namely, the affirmation ofman and all that inman has

been impossible heretofore, alienated byGod. We have seen that thenega



76 Susan Foale

has to avoid experiencing himself as divine and must therefore fail endlessly in theattempt to surmount transcendence, to refuseGod absolutely. It

isnot somuch thatBlanchot thinks the death ofGod cannot take place?wehave seen that this affirmation "clarifies itself sometimes ina differentway,but itnever turnsagainst itself."Rather, the death ofGod continually takes

place, at the limit, and it is thismovement, more complex and equivocalthan thenegation of absolute value, that ismeant by transvaluation, Blanchot

thinks, themeans whereby we can attain an order towhich the notion of

value ceases to apply (Blanchot 1997c). Foucault calls this the retreat and

return of the origin and maintains thatmodern thought establishes a newrelation etweenthoughtndorigin,where theorigin s lessa beginningthan theway inwhich man articulates himself upon thebackground of the

already begun. Like Blanchot, Foucault refers to theretreat and returnof the

origin (or letus sayGod) as a task, "that of contesting the origin of things,but of contesting it in order to give it a foundation, by rediscovering the

mode upon which thepossibility of time is constituted?that origin without

origin or beginning, on thebasis of which everything is able to come into

being" (1970, 332).2

We have seen thatBlanchot, following Nietzsche, draws a distinctionbetween common atheism and the thought of the death ofGod and claims

thatwith this thought arises the task of contestation or non-positive affirma

tion. In addition, Blanchot wants toquestion thevery possibility of atheism.

Itwas stated earlier thatBlanchot thinks atheist humanism cannot be the

outcome of the death of God. The arguments for thisposition might be elu

cidated through an examination of his analysis of humanism and his critiqueof atheism.

Humanism, Blanchot notes, has been "constantly knocked about and

rejected yall importantesearch" 1997a, 247),withoutyet omingtoanend. Perhaps this is because the idea of thehuman benefits fromhumanism:

humanism procures from the death ofGod the idea ofman as absolute. Natu

ralistic humanism proposes a "science" of thehuman being as awhole, with

theChristian God as theessence ofman himself, God reborn in his creature.

Blanchot, however, does not think "it suffices tonegate the subject ofChris

tian predicates to reconcile man with his truth" (247). To put this another

way and reiterate earlier remarks, if this is all thathappens in thedeath of

God, itmeans humanism still belongs elementarily to theology. Blanchot

thinkshumanism is a

theological mythbecause it

merelytalks

profanelyabout God, that is, about man as a pseudonym forGod and because ituses

divine attributes in speaking ofman.

For much the same reasons that Blanchot thinks humanism is a theo

logicalmyth, he ossibility fatheism tarts o lookdecidedlyunsure.As



Blanchot and Nietzsche on theDeath ofGod 77

longas there is a link between

identity (Man's)and

God,atheism will re

main at the level of pretension?Man perpetuates the traitsessential to the

ideaof God. Blanchot thinks hat hile it ispossible tofindthevariousforms nwhichGod is ffirmedutterlyoreign,od isnever eadwhen it sstill amatter of identity,consciousness, ego: "T am never atheist. The ego,in itsautonomy, secures or constitutes itselfbyway of theunmitigated theo

logical project. The self as a center who says am' says it in relation to an

am' of height who always is" (1997a, 252).Blanchot seems to be genuinely interested inwhat he calls the condi

tions of a trueatheism, possibly

a newpower

of determinationwherebyMan isnot affirmedor determined byGod. But even his reading of thedeath

of God, as contestation, could not fulfil these conditions. Whatever does

away with God lays claim, according toBlanchot, to the privileges of a

transcendent relation.Atheism is thereforenot possible, except to theextent

that trueatheists and truebelievers inhabit each other's ranks.The affirma

tion of God and the negation of God appear to be the same gesture for

Blanchot, inasmuch as thepretence of atheism will eventually furtively hange

places with theological discourse. He suspects "we are innoway done with

thetheological" (1997a, 253)

while we continue to thinkaboutobscurity

in

its divine form and continue to be unable to substitute for God a

nontheological, still unperceived possibility.Atheist discourse and theological discourse both sufferfrom the same

failure Blanchot claims. Neither can affirmwhat might be described as an

obscurity or otherness other thanGod orMan, "an obscurity still deprivedof the order thatwill alone determine and inform itby rendering itpossible"

(1997a, 255). This point, about theexchangeability of theological discourse

and atheist discourse, is the insight that it is as impossible to include as it is

to exclude thepossibility

ofspeaking

of a still obscureobscurity "wherebyto speak of God would be to say something quite different, and already to

deliver speech over to thatwhich will never let itselfbe heard on the basis of

theunity of theUnique" (253). To thisextent,Blanchot thinks the theological and atheism belong equally to the dimension of thatwhich can be dis

covered.

As has already been noted, Nietzsche spends little time thinking about

death per se. This ispossibly because "death," or at least thatpreached by

Christianity, is itself implicated in the collapse of an erroneous interpretation of theworld, namely, theChristian-moral one. That is to say, perhaps

Nietzsche thoughtabout death as a force or necessity inextricable from think

ingwhich depreciates thepresent life, the transcendentand teleological modes

of thought he sought to attack with the declaration of the death of God.

Nietzsche was horrified by the view that lifemight be ransomed for re



78 Susan Foale

demption. Zarathustra's warnings against the "preachers of death" indicatethatdeath and thepreaching of a departure from life are synonymous: "Ev

erywhere resound the voices of thosewho preach death: and theearth is full

of those towhom death must be preached. Or 'eternal life' : it is all the same

tome" (Z p. 73).Blanchot claims that all discourses, including philosophy, cover over

and obscure the necessity of death. If one of Nietzsche's concerns about

death as moral necessity is the role itplays in the deification of nature, a

related concern forBlanchot is thedeification of theobscure, or the loss of

theobscurity of obscurity. Perhaps this is the same concern. If thedeath ofGod was not continuous, that is, ifone could talk about itpost facto, it

would be like anything else we can discover and affirm to be true. If the

death of God is the end, or the extreme recession, of a procedure towards

truth,we cannot account for it in the same way that something true is af

firmed. he deathofGod signifies hede?entringfouraxiological and

metaphysical universe, but ithas to convey thisprocess without itselfbeingreduced to theblatancy of an affirmation of the true,a universality, a dead

metaphor.

University of Sussex

Notes

1.We can think of the death of God as one in a series of sacrifices?first man, then

man's instincts,re sacrificed oGod, then od himself s thevictim f sacrifice. et, because God is sacrificed to nothing?"the sacrifice of God is necessary so thatman can be

comeawareofmis nothing hat nvests im nd is thefoundation f his freedom"Blanchot1995,292)?his sacrifice,thedeathofGod, is includedin thenothingtowhichGod issacrificed and therefore is not, does not take place.

2. However, Foucault's view at this time differs from Blanchot's inasmuch as Foucaultthinks the death of God also promises the overman, that is, the imminence of the death of

man. As we have seen, Blanchot argues against reading the positive quality of the death of

God,mat is,thenegation fGod based on the ffirmationf somethinglse.

Works Cited

Blanchot, M. 1995. "On Nietzsche's Side." In The Work ofFire, trans. C. Mandell. Stanford,

CA: Stanford University Press.

-. 1997a. "Atheism andWriting: Humanism and the Cry." In The Infinite Conversa

tion, trans. S. Hanson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

-. 1997b. "The Laughter of theGods." InFriendship, trans. E. Rottenberg. Stanford,

CA: Stanford University Press.-. 1997c. "Reflections on Nihilism: Crossing theLine." In The Infinite Conversation,

trans. S. Hanson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Foucault, M. 1970. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of theHuman Sciences. Trans,

unknown. London: Tavistock.

foale - blanchot and nietzsche on the death of god

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