Friedrich Nietzsche's The Parable Of The Madman

The Parable of the Madman by Friedrich Nietzsche tells of a man with a lantern who is searching for God, but announces that God is dead. No one believes in God or the power of God anymore, and so therefore the people have “killed” his existence in their minds. The madman is not celebrating God’s “death,” but is warning the people because he fears what will happen if they do not have a God in their lives, or some sort of purpose and direction. The madman believed there was a God, but the acts of man murdered him. He smashes his candle as he knows that the light of God is dead. Nietzsche had observed a middle-class culture that he believed was run by illusions and self-deceptions. He believed christianity and the idea of going to heaven after …show more content…
Pope John Paul II stated that, “All human creatures, not just philosophers, have the right to receive the truth about their existence and destiny.” The meaning of human life and the mystery of God are two points of reason that are surrounded by Faith. John Paul II believed both of these points are true because it is revealed in the fullness of Christ and faith. He said it is the Revelation of Christ that cannot be ignored, and those who believe in God and seek him with a sincere heart will know their “path of life” which, “leads in the end to the full and lasting joy of the contemplation of God.” John Paul stated that the the fundamental questions of “who am i?” and “where have I come from and where am I going?” can be answered through faith in God and the path to a moral life. John Paul was a philosopher who believed in the essential dignity of human nature, but he knew the ideologies of Nazism and Communism were built upon distorted philosophy. This is where he saw philosophy run astray. While Pope John Paul II clearly takes a religious point of view when asked the meaning of life, Nietzsche and Wordsworth look more towards specific characteristics of nature and human life than of a specific God. Nietzsche says that man killed God with disbelief, but also did not support faith in God, but moreover faith in oneself and one's own beliefs. Wordsworth urged man to look into nature and find the answers to one’s life through experiences and connections with the world around them. In a sense, it could be God who created the beauty of nature that people were told to follow, but there was no direct religious tie to Wordsworth’s romanticism. While Romanticism includes nature and art, it follows reasoning through science, and not through the creations of a