ABSTRACT
This passage alone, taken from The Joyful Wisdom, is a sufficient indication of the seriousness with which Nietzsche took religion and Christianity. If he rejected both, he must have done so for deep-seated reasons of his own. Yet while proclaiming to the world the ‘death’ of the Christian God, he realized full well the consequences of such a fact, and above all the gradual but inevitable crumbling away of that system of morality which was based on the existence of the Christian God. Always prone to make the most uncompromising conclusions, he saw at once the prospect of a moral void and anarchy spreading all the world over, unless an alternative was found in time. The laments of his Madman with the Lamp, on becoming aware of the ‘murder’ of God, voice some of Nietzsche’s own fears and misgivings: ‘Whither are we travelling? Away from all suns? Is there still a height and a depth? Are we not wandering towards everlasting annihilation? Do we not perceive the indications of this immense void? Is it not colder? Is not the night becoming darker and darker? Must we not light our lanterns at noon?’
