Our Speaker

Nicholas Piotrowski Nicholas is a resident of Batavia and a PhD candidate at Wheaton College. His dissertation addresses first century socio-rhetorical uses of sacred texts for the sake of community formation. This upcoming talk and discussion will revolve around only a slightly different topic. At the end of the 19th century Friedrich Nietzsche also used religious texts to give shape to the burgeoning postmodern world when he proclaimed that “God is dead.” Western thinkers in every discipline from political theory to the fine arts have taken up this “death of God” motif throughout the 20th century. Nicholas has observed, however, in his years of teaching philosophy to high school seniors and college freshmen, that what Nietzsche specifically meant has been lost in the intervening years. Perhaps it is time to reevaluate Nietzsche’s famous pronouncement in the light of more than a century’s worth of retrospect. Join us on February 26th at 10am at the Batavia Public Library for a lecture and open discussion and Q&A as we consider what it means and whether it is true that “God is dead.”