Death or revival of religion. Discovering the new horizons for the interpretations of Nietzsche's thesis "god is dead"

In the article the author discusses the idea of God’s death from the point of view of philosophical anthropology. Examining in detail the history of the formation of this concept the author notes that its intellectual cradle is the culture of the Renaissance and the philosophy of Modern Time, the quintessence of which is the statement of Feuerbach that the mystery of theology lies in anthropology. In other words, Feuerbach proclaims God the projection of human subjectivity. The author shows that the well-known thesis of Nietzsche “God is dead” is preceded by almost a century of reflection on the idea of the death of God. The author notes that in the twentieth century the reduction of the figure of God is characteristic of psychoanalysis, existentialism, philosophy of postmodernism. Also, the author analyzes two trends in the interpretation of the figure of the God in modern thought utilitarianism and the philosophy of the so-called theological turn.

According to the author, these trends are not different in a fundamental attitude, but in the degree of sincerity in disclosing their position. Advocates of utilitarianism openly impose their atheistic premises; the advocates of the philosophy of the theological turn are trying to obscure the desire to reduce the absolutely transcendent God. In the key section, the author examines the main modern interpretations of the idea of the death of God.

The understanding of the idea of the death of God as the realization of the philosophy of immanentism reveals its true nature and consequences, the main of which is the idea of the death of a man. The figure of the God ontologically provides the possibility of an anthropological phenomenon, that is, autonomous and free presence in the world of subjectivity. God, in his uniqueness, transcendence and absoluteness is the internal bond, which enables the chaos of subjectivity to line up in the order of consciousness. This allows the author to conclude that the mystery of anthropology, contrary to Feuerbach, lies in theology.