An Appraisal of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Atheism

Abstract

Etymologically, the word a-theism means privation of God or gods. But the full import of this etymology did not emerge until the dawn of the modern age which inaugurated the transition from a religious to a secular age, from a supernatural to a natural orientation. This transition marks the birth moment of the god-less man of modernity and post-modernity. It is this godlessness that inspired the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. This essay is a critical engagement with Nietzsche’s atheism and its implications. It highlights atheism as a postulate for his critique of religion and traditional metaphysics through his two main doctrines of the Will to Power and Eternal Recurrence to the proclamation of the death of God and the emergence of the Overman, and how these are all interconnected. The burden of this paper is to demonstrate that Nietzsche’s atheism is not the conclusion of a philosophical argument, but a postulate that underlies his entire philosophy which is epitomized in his prophetic declaration of the death of God and the advent of nihilism.