Nature is dead. And we have killed it

Nietzsche's quote is useful as an ecological analogy of the destruction humans have wrought on nature, the very thing that sustains us

- Emmanuel Oboh

One of the most well-known quotes by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche begins with the statement, “God is dead,” from his 1882 work, The Gay Science.

Quoted at length it reads: “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

A reading of the quote suggests that an analogy can be drawn between the “God” Nietzsche refers to and the current degraded state of nature. Simply substituting the word “God” with “nature” underscores the severity of the present environmental crisis.

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?”

In a similar vein, nature is dead. Nature remains dead. And we have killed it.

The environmental crisis we face today is one in which, through our daily actions, we continue to inflict profound harm on the natural world. The cumulative effect of human activity on the environment, now termed the Anthropocene, can be traced back to the early periods of “civilisation” and industrialisation. In other words, since those times, humanity has been — and continues to be — responsible for the death of nature.

Despite numerous calls to action and a growing body of work by environmental philosophers and activists, only modest progress has been made, and much more remains to be desired. We are all complicit in this death. “How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?”