cksalmon wrote:Hi Bond--
I realize you stated that we were to suspend our versions of reality for a bit and avoid cop-out answers.
BUT.
This is a rhetorical trope, not a statement of fact, so I'm really not sure how to answer the question.
(And I'm not suggesting that Nietzsche was a closet theist.)
Most, but not all, of my exposure to Nietzschean thought comes via its a/theological application in Mark Taylor's work. Nietzsche was an incredibly insightful commentator on Christendom and his thought still resonates, for me at least, today.
But, Nietzsche is not, I don't think, saying the same thing here as Altizer's 'death of God' theology, for example (in which, at some points, he apparently wants us to take him quite literally).
I think the question may conflate what is true (per Nietzsche's critique) with what is real.
I guess I'm saying that I don't read Nietzsche's comment as a metaphysical pronouncement.
CKS
His line of thinking against the metaphysical world developed over quite a few different writings. He traced the continual separation of the "True" world (the metaphysical world) with the "Material" world (the transitory, world of shadows (to use the Allegory of the Cave language) through three main stages in Western Thought:
1) Plato/Ancient Greece-where the True World could be found by embracing reason and rationality during life
2) Christianity-where the True World is found after death (Heaven)
3) Kant/Hobbes/Rousseau (Enlightened Political Philosophers)-Where the True World and God's Nature can only be guessed at.
Nietzche's argument that "God is dead" was basically an argument that the continual search for "Truth" (through questioning of God's Nature) we undermine the whole truth, because the very process of searching for Truth leads to a cynical nature that would make people, if confronted with truth, would still question it....meaning that the very highest pursuit (for truth) undermines the highest Ideals (that a Ideal Truth exists.)
(I think I got my point out alright...well sorta)