“We Are Still Pious”: Nietzsche and the Hard Problem of Atheism

Abstract

This chapter provides a reevaluation of Nietzsche’s atheism in response to Rüdiger Safranski’s thesis that the prevalence of scientific naturalism in Nietzsche’s time made his announcement that “God is dead” the equivalent of “braking down barriers that no longer existed”. Skonieczny distinguishes between two problems of atheism in Nietzsche—the “easy problem”, that is, that God is dead, and the “hard problem”, that is, how to act and think when God is dead. After an analysis of Nietzsche’s own insufficient answers to the “hard problem”, including the Eternal Return and the Overman, Skonieczny turns to Martin Hägglund’s interpretation of Derrida’s “radical atheism”, which proposes an appreciation of the precarious and uncertain nature of this world, rather than seeking (as Nietzsche did) what amounts to a new, this-worldly theology.