The Lash Lecture - From Nihilism to God: Challenging a Familiar Story

The Lash Lecture will be delivered by Fiona Ellis who is Professor of Philosophy and Head of Department at the University of Nottingham. Her most recent monograph is God, Value, and Nature (OUP 2014), and she has published on a variety of subjects including the philosophy of love and desire, the meaning of life, and the nature of religious understanding. She has just completed a monograph entitled The End of Desire: Meaning, Nihilism, and God. She will be giving the Stanton Lectures in 2030-1.

From Nihilism to God: Challenging a Familiar Story

Nietzsche famously associates the ‘death of God’ with the spectre of nihilism: once belief in God has disappeared, it seems that our deepest values and sources of meaning are placed in jeopardy. This lecture challenges that familiar story. Starting from Nietzsche’s own confrontation with nihilism, I shall explore some tensions within his response to it and ask whether they point in an unexpected direction. I shall suggest that Nietzsche’s rejection of God depends upon a particular – and contestable – conception of what God would have to be. Might a different conception of God offer Nietzsche more of what he needs than he suspects? And where does this leave the problem – supposedly our problem – of nihilism?

Join us on 25 November for an evening of philosophical and theological reflection.

If you have any questions please email Adele: [email protected]

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Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, Madingley Road, Cambridge, United Kingdom

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