Creating Meaning after the Death of God (original) (raw)

2020, Third International Conference on Philosophy and Meaning in Life, Birmingham, UK

I argue an interplay between the individual and his community that creates meaning qua a will to power. My position banks on a naturalistic reading of Nietzsche stemming from his appreciation of the Greeks that an individual is naturally situated in a community. Nietzsche writes: “God is dead, and we have killed him.” The statement ought not to be read in a religious sense but in an epistemic-ontological one. The death of ‘God’ is the death of a ‘quasi-transcendental’ truth that governs one’s beliefs and actions. Killing this truth equates a re-questioning of truths and morals, a probing beliefs and actions—a transition from epistemology to ethics, a movement from thinking to doing. Rather than a nihilistic adage, this statement stands as an epistemic-ethical challenge to each individual to actively create meaning. Hollowing out the previously held belief makes room for passion, for eros, for self-creation. In confronting her beliefs can she reorient her action towards the betterment of both self and community; she realizes more of herself through engagement in community, in one’s own agora. This of course necessitates struggles—the agon of engagement, of self-creating, of finding meaning. This drive, this will, is a power, a will to power. A crude interpretation of this signifies a domination over the other in a competition or a struggle, yet this is something Nietzsche outrightly objects. These agons – struggles, contents, competitions – are needed for a dynamic self-creation. Finding meaning in this sense equivocates to hollowing out false idols and identifying to one’s role in society. It requires ‘killing’ the belief, distancing oneself from it, and creating meaning through self-creation.