Today’s discussion was about Nietzsche, who has to be one of my favorite philosophers. The excerpt discussed was taken out of The Gay Science, where a madman runs into a marketplace and exclaims that God is dead and we have killed him. What a statement huh? We humans have destroyed, mutilated, and defamed the story, idea, and representation of God. God! Kierkegaard shares his disgust on how we have strayed away from God and Christianity, and here Nietzsche is, telling us that we are to blame. The madman plays an important role in this story. He has come to a realization, one that the atheists and churchgoers have failed to see and accept. What does “God is dead” imply? No longer is there a higher authority? There is no one to look up to? What will happen to the world if there is no longer a God? Are we doomed or do we as a society benefit from this statement? I believe that by removing God, there is a shift in responsibility. More importance is placed on the individual, and this is what Nietzsche wanted. A huge change like this can only make us transcend ourselves, see what we are capable of doing. Morality is a matter of perception now, not what “society tells us is morally right or wrong”. We take matters into our own hands since the responsibility and morality equilibrium is shifted towards us. This process of transcending your previous self ties in to Nietzsche’s overman. Humanity today is not the overman. We cannot be the overman because of our beliefs today. We are limited. Society has placed boundaries on what we are capable of accomplishing. View us humans as a bridge that leads to the overman. A bridge leads you from one point to another. I think the first point, for Nietzsche, is that we have accepted and realized that God is dead. Religion is dead, it’s over and done. It’s no longer here. As time progresses, we can change modern thinking. We can change the physical and theoretical limitations that we have placed on ourselves. Once we have removed those limitations and are in a constant state of transcending ourselves, we have reached the point across the bridge. The main purpose for us humans is to lead ourselves across the bridge, to point ourselves in a direction in which we have ultimate power and responsibility.