With Friedrich Nietzsche ended the entire Western philosophical/metaphysical tradition. Nietzsche’s proclamation of the death of God (and, of the human subject) symbolized the death of metaphysics. When reading Nietzsche, we are reading a poet as much as a philosopher. Through aphorisms, analogies, and a host of other literary devices, Nietzsche levels his critique of metaphysics. In The Gay Science, he uses the analogy of a madman in the marketplace to proclaim his sentiment that “God is dead” (Nietzsche 95). More significantly, he uses his madman to deliver another sentiment “At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke and went out. ‘I come too early,’ he said then; ‘my time has not come yet…deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard’” (Nietzsche 96).
Through concepts such as Will to Power, the Uebermensch (Overman), and the Eternal Recurrence, Nietzsche tries to establish a joyful or gay science to replace his undermining of the whole foundation of philosophy – metaphysics. Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysics calls into consideration the cultural authority of science, a revaluation of morals and ethics that demonstrates their inability to represent any universal truths. As Nietzsche notes in his acclaimed Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “When I came to men I found them sitting on an old conceit: the conceit that they have long known what is good and evil for man. All talk of virtue seems an old and weary matter to man; and whoever wanted to sleep well still talked of good and evil before going to sleep” (Kaufmann 208-09). This analysis will explore The Gay Science as Nietzsche’s attempt to demonstrate that even once reality and truth are dead, there is still something close to a gay science or joyful wisdom that is possible for humans.
Nietzsche’s philosophy includes an attack on the tradition of philosophy, i.e. metaphysics. The philosophe...