Editing God is dead (section)

==== Mainländer ====
Before Nietzsche, the concept was popularized in philosophy by the German philosopher [[Philipp Mainländer]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=Weltschmerz, Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860–1900.|last=Beiser|first=Frederick C.|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2008|isbn=978-0198768715|location=Oxford|pages=202|quote=Batz introduces a very modern and redolent theme: the death of God. He popularized the theme before Nietzsche.}}</ref>

It was while reading Mainländer that Nietzsche explicitly writes to have parted ways with [[Schopenhauer]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=Nietzsche's Philosophical Context: An Intellectual Biography|last=Brobjer|first=Thomas H.|publisher=University Of Illinois Press|year=2008|isbn=9780252032455|pages=149|quote=Decher emphasizes the importance of the fact that Mainländer reinterpreted Schopenhauer's metaphysical and single will to a multiplicity of wills (always in struggle) and the importance of this for Nietzsche's will to power. It was in a letter to Cosima Wagner, December 19, 1876, that is, while reading Mainländer, that Nietzsche for the first time explicitly claimed to have parted ways with Schopenhauer.}}</ref> In Mainländer's more than 200 pages long criticism of Schopenhauer's metaphysics, he argues against one cosmic unity behind the world, and champions a real multiplicity of wills struggling with each other for existence. Yet, the interconnection and the unitary movement of the world, which are the reasons that lead philosophers to [[pantheism]], are undeniable.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Philosophie der Erlösung. Zweiter Band. Zwölf philosophische Essays.|last=Mainländer|first=Philipp|year=1886|pages=533, 534|quote=Was überhaupt zu einer solchen Einheit führt, ist der nicht abzuleugnende dynamische Zusammenhang der Dinge und ihre einheitliche Bewegung.}}</ref> They do indeed lead to a unity, but this may not be at the expense of a unity ''in'' the world that undermines the empirical reality of the world. It is therefore declared to be dead.

{{Quote|Now we have the right to give this being the well-known name that always designates what no power of imagination, no flight of the boldest fantasy, no intently devout heart, no abstract thinking however profound, no enraptured and transported spirit has ever attained: ''God''. But this basic unity ''is of the past''; it no longer ''is''. It has, by changing its being, totally and completely shattered itself. ''God has died and his death was the life of the world.''{{efn|{{lang|de|Jetzt haben wir auch das Recht, diesem Wesen den bekannten Namen zu geben, der von jeher Das bezeichnete, was keine Vorstellungskraft, kein Flug der kühnsten Phantasie, kein abstraktes noch so tiefes Denken, kein gesammeltes, andachtsvolles Gemüth, kein entzückter, erdentrückter Geist je erreicht hat: '''Gott'''. Sie hat sich, ihr Wesen verändernd, voll und ganz zu einer Welt der Vielheit zersplittert. Aber diese einfache Einheit '''ist gewesen'''; sie '''ist''' nicht mehr. Gott ist gestorben und sein Tod war das Leben der Welt.}}<ref>Philipp Mainländer: ''Die Philosophie der Erlösung. Erster Band.'' Berlin 1876.</ref>|group=note}}|Mainländer, ''Die Philosophie der Erlösung''}}