8
taste, especially in music. Perhaps the whole of Zarathustra may be reckoned as music;
certainly a rebirth of the art of hearing was among its preconditions.”
20
But the change in
taste at this time pertained not only to music. In Book Three of The Gay Science, in an
aphorism called Against Christianity, Nietzsche declares another shift: “What is now
decisive against Christianity is our taste, no longer our reasons.”
21
The turn from his
positivist period to his third period—from optimism regarding friendship to pessimism—
therefore coincides with a shift from reason to taste. While he was always against
Christianity and the old table of values, as he is wont to call it, his objection comes to be
couched in the language of taste, rather than reason. The objection, then, must
necessarily come from a madman, and this is precisely on whom Nietzsche calls to
deliver his famous declaration of the death of God:
The madman.— Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright
morning hours, ran to the marketplace, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!"
—As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he
provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child?
asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone away on a voyage?
emigrated?—Thus they yelled and laughed.
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is
God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his
murderers.
22
What we know, then, is that Nietzsche’s opinion of friendship changed with his discovery
of the eternal recurrence. Moreover, the eternal recurrence coincides with the madman’s
“tasteful” murder of God. We also know that the eternal recurrence is not just a doctrine
of affirmation that comes ex nihilo. In fact, it is no doctrine at all, as doctrines rely on
20
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, 295.
21
Nietzsche, The Gay Science #132, 186.
22
Nietzsche, The Gay Science #125, 181. Book Three of The Gay Science opens with Nietzsche’s first
iteration of this famous proclamation: “New struggles.— After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still
shown for centuries in a cave—a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way of men,
there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. —And we—we still
have to vanquish his shadow, too” (#108, 167).
Convention