Nietzsche
Page 7
a Because of disabling headaches
b He inherited a fortune
c He was fired from his post
d He married a millionaire
3 Which one of the following is not a book by Nietzsche?
a Dawn
b Midnight
c The Gay Science
d Human, All Too Human
4 What was the name of Nietzsche’s ‘prophet’ in his book of the same name?
a Muhammad
b Buddha
c Zarathustra
d Abraham
5 Which one of the following books did Nietzsche not write in his final year of sanity?
a Beyond Good and Evil
b The Twilight of the Idols
c The Anti-Christ
d Ecce Homo
6 In which year did Nietzsche have his mental breakdown?
a 1900
b 1888
c 1889
d 1898
7 Where did Nietzsche’s sister and her husband set up a new German colony?
a Paraguay
b Uruguay
c Peru
d Argentina
8 What was the name of the compilation of Nietzsche’s unpublished notes?
a Ecce Homo
b The Will to Power
c The Eternal Recurrence
d Untimely Meditations
9 In which year did Nietzsche die?
a 1890
b 1900
c 1914
d 1899
10 What kind of funeral did Nietzsche receive?
a A pagan burial
b Burial at sea
c A scattering of his ashes over his favourite mountains
d A full Lutheran funeral
Dig deeper
Lindsey Chamberlain, Nietzsche in Turin: An Intimate Biography (London: Picador, 1999)
Friedrich Nietzsche, Conversations with Nietzsche, trans. by David J. Parent (Oxford: OUP, 1991)
Lance Olsen, Nietzsche’s Kisses: A Novel (Salt Lake City: Fc2, 2006)
Roger Safranski, Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography (London: Granta, 2003)
Lou Salomé, Nietzsche (Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2001)
Robin Small, Nietzsche and Rée: A Star Friendship (Oxford: OUP, 2005)
Julia Vickers, Lou von Salomé: A Biography of the Woman Who Inspired Freud, Nietzsche and Rilke (Jefferson: McFarland, 2008)
Irvin Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept (London: Harper Perennial, 2011)
4
The Birth of Tragedy
In this chapter you will learn:
• about the reception of Nietzsche’s first major work The Birth of Tragedy
• about his teachings on Apollo and Dionysus
• about his criticisms of the ‘theoretical man’.
As he suggested, Nietzsche certainly was ‘born posthumously’ in the sense that his first major work, The Birth of Tragedy, fell upon deaf ears when it was first published, and yet is now considered to be an inspired account of Greek tragedy and is studied in many universities across the world. Despite Nietzsche’s acknowledged brilliance and precociousness, this first work did not help to cement that reputation in academic circles; in fact, it did more harm than good and its publication was heavily criticized by scholars.
Although Nietzsche was himself later critical of The Birth of Tragedy, it is still an excellent read and many of the ideas contained within it crop up in Nietzsche’s later writings. The book deserves a chapter of its own because the work itself stands out as a unique and interesting thesis.
The ‘theoretical man’
Nietzsche’s dissatisfaction with the academic world is reflected in The Birth of Tragedy. The young Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorf (1848–1931) was among the many scholars who attacked Nietzsche’s book, writing a 32-page pamphlet with the sarcastic title Philology of the Future. Sarcastic maybe, but the point was made that Nietzsche was being far too ambitious and visionary, and lacked the limited – some would say ‘dry’ – pragmatism of academia. However, Nietzsche either refused or was unable to write within the accepted norms of the academic style, considering himself to be more of a poet. He saw his writing as an outlet for his artistic capabilities, and his early writing also shows the influence of his relationship with Wagner. Needless to say, Wagner considered The Birth of Tragedy a wonderful piece of work, but this is hardly surprising considering how much praise it heaps upon the composer.
A first impression of The Birth of Tragedy may make one wonder why Nietzsche chose to consider Greek tragedy, given his intention to produce a work that would have contemporary cultural significance, but this ignores the importance of Greek culture at the time. It was not, then, as many people today might see it (quite wrongly), a ‘dead’ subject with little importance except for those with the luxury to study it. While, on the one hand, there was a push towards industrialization and marketplace values, there was, on the other hand, an increasing disillusionment with the goals and values of modernity accompanied by a looking back to bygone eras, most notably that of ancient Greece. It was felt by many, poets and artists chief among them, that the Greeks possessed a set of values, a spirituality and an affirmation of life that seemed to be desperately lacking among industrialized, scientific, modern humanity. This condemnation of modernity was something Nietzsche shared. The following passage from The Birth of Tragedy is particularly enlightening:
‘Our whole modern world is caught in the net of Alexandrian culture, and the highest ideal it knows is theoretical man, equipped with the highest powers of understanding and working in the service of science, whose archetype and progenitor is Socrates. The original aim of all our means of education is to achieve this ideal; every other form of existence has to fight its way up alongside it, as something permitted but not intended.’
The Birth of Tragedy, 18
The ‘theoretical man’, the man of science and progress, is what Nietzsche consistently condemned throughout his writing career. This certainly reflects modern-day concerns where success is measured by how much money and property you possess rather than by, for want of a better word, your ‘wisdom’.
Interestingly, Nietzsche presents Socrates as an example of this ‘theoretical man’. In the philosophical realm, Socrates is considered one of the greatest philosophers, yet Nietzsche frequently criticizes him as the ‘archetype’ of those modern, alienating values. Little is known about the life of Socrates and, as he did not write anything down, we have to rely on the writings of his disciple Plato who used Socrates as his mouthpiece in his dialogues. Therefore, when Nietzsche talks of the philosophy of Socrates, he is not usually making any distinction from that of Plato.
Nietzsche disagreed with the following aspects of the philosophy of Socrates and Plato:
1 The Platonic view was that there is such a thing as objective truth. This view was a response to the belief in relativism: that morals and beliefs are a product of a particular time and place and that, therefore, there is no such thing as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.
2 Plato argued that the world we live in is essentially an illusion, a poor image of a better, perfect world. The role of the philosopher, therefore, was to seek out this better world rather than be preoccupied with everyday existence.
3 Plato believed that the true world could be accessed through the power of reason. Humankind has both instinct and the capacity to reason, but frequently prefers to follow instinct and ignore reason, just like other animals. Plato argues that, by exercising reason – the intellect – humankind can know what truth is.
Finally, Nietzsche lays the blame for over 2,000 years of this kind of philosophy and the death of tragedy at the foot of Socrates. In particular, Nietzsche considered the whole philosophical concern with metaphysics, the speculation on what exists beyond the physical world, to be an error and a distraction from what really mattered.
For Socrates, tragedy was no longer required because reason could remove the fear of death. Although Nietzsche admired
the genius of Socrates, as well as his achievements, he saw Socrates as representative of the desire to explain, to engage in argument and counter-argument, rather than accept that ultimately there are no explanations. Also, Nietzsche was not against reason and science; he would be the first to praise its achievements and its role in the enhancement of life. What he condemned was the regard for reason as a provider of answers, delivering humankind from a state of ignorance.
Despite Nietzsche’s solitude and bouts of depression, he always argued for an affirmation of life, of saying ‘yes’ to life, rather than adopting the resigned cynicism of, say, Schopenhauer. This quality, he believed, existed among the ancient Greeks, although they had much to complain about given the harshness of existence for most of them, certainly in comparison to the luxury enjoyed by modern Europeans. Nietzsche talked often of the importance of ‘health’, especially in conjunction with southern climes. These themes can be traced right back to The Birth of Tragedy.
Spotlight
Given that today Nietzsche is recognized as one of the world’s great philosophers, he nonetheless was never trained in philosophical method, nor did he have much knowledge of the history of philosophical thought, including Aristotelian thought, the medieval scholastics and the British empiricists.
When Nietzsche was only 23 he had written to a friend that he hoped one day to combine philology with music, to produce music written with words rather than with notes. To do this, he needed a theme, and that of Greek tragedy seemed to fit the bill perfectly. Before starting to write The Birth of Tragedy, he had already set his stage, having given two public lectures in 1870.
The first of these lectures, ‘Greek Music Drama’, which examined Dionysian festivals as the origin of tragedy, was well received and kept well within the framework of classical philology of the time, but Nietzsche wanted to be much more ambitious than that. The second lecture, ‘Socrates and Tragedy’, according to Nietzsche, ‘aroused terror and misconceptions’. How, one wonders, could a public lecture ‘arouse terror’? This lecture, in line with what he was intent on saying in The Birth of Tragedy, was Nietzsche’s first public condemnation of the great Socrates. It focused on the Greek philosopher’s emphasis on rationalism as leading to the death of tragedy and, in Nietzsche’s eyes, of wisdom. This dialectical will to knowledge destroyed the life forces of myth, religion and art. In this lecture, Nietzsche also suggested the possibility of a rebirth of Greek tragedy, although he did not at this point mention Wagner as this possible saviour.
Spotlight
Nietzsche was by no means ignorant of how cruel and brutal the world could be. When he wrote his essay ‘The Dionysian Worldview’ in 1870, the Franco-Prussian War had just been declared. Rather than remain in his cloistered ivory tower, Nietzsche voluntarily enlisted as a medical orderly.
Cosima Wagner tried to discourage Nietzsche from joining the medical service, telling him that his lack of training would hinder rather than help the cause. She suggested that he would be a much more beneficial contributor by sending a hundred cigarettes to the front. However, Nietzsche did not take her advice and for a short time he did experience war at first hand. As a medical orderly, he witnessed scenes of appalling suffering and destruction. In a letter to Wagner, he gave a graphic account of travelling for three days and nights in a cattle truck with the wounded. As it turned out, however, he spent only two weeks on the battlefields before contracting dysentery and diphtheria.
Case study: The Franco-Prussian War
The effect of the Franco-Prussian War on Nietzsche’s physical and mental state cannot be underestimated, despite the relatively short time he spent in the field of war. When war was declared on 19 July 1870, Nietzsche’s initial reaction was one of horror that Europe had failed to behave in a civilized manner (if only he had known what even more terrible events were to occur in the twentieth century), coupled with a hope that a new Europe would emerge from the devastation that the war would inevitably bring. He anticipated a Europe with a new culture and an increase across the continent of his ‘monasteries’ of ‘free spirits’ (see Chapter 4). At first, Nietzsche remained in neutral Switzerland, but upon hearing news of German victories, he felt obliged to enlist on the Prussian side.
The causes of the Franco-Prussian War are complicated. Essentially, it was sparked by France’s growing concern that Prussia was effectively building a European empire by striving towards German unification. At that time, ‘Germany’ as such did not exist as a nation state; what unified these separate nations was the German language. It was the most powerful of these states, Prussia – under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck – that wanted to create one nation, which the French felt would destabilize the European balance of power.
The war lasted only a little over five months, but it resulted in half a million military casualties and an unknown number of civilians killed or wounded. The French were confident of victory but the Germans proved to better organized and equipped, usually with the latest that technology had to offer, and the French surrendered when Paris fell on 28 January 1871.
Apollo and Dionysus
It has already been mentioned (see Chapter 2) that Wagner’s writings had a huge influence on Nietzsche’s early work. Wagner held that there is a dualism between, on the one hand, humankind and Nature and, on the other hand, Art and Nature. In The Artwork of the Future, he argued that humankind, by exercising its intellect, is actually being drawn away from Nature and, therefore, its true Art. The fulfilled person is one who is in touch with their true nature and can express this through the medium of the perfect Art. Here, Wagner is making parallels between the role and function of Art with religion. It is perhaps inevitable that, when Wagner talks of his own art as being the model for the perfect, then Wagner – as the composer for this art – must be a religious ‘saviour’.
In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche gave importance to Art as a medium through which we comprehend the world. He took on board this dualism of Art and Nature under the principles of Apollo and Dionysus. These two Greek gods are presented as a metaphor for two fundamental principles:
• The Apollonian: Nietzsche compares the Apollonian with dreams. In a dream, you express fantasies but these are a way of forgetting the world rather than confronting the realities of the world. Apollonian art is exemplified by painting and sculpture. In the same way that we conjure up images in dreams, we do the same in painting. But these paintings are only representations of the world; they are fantasies that allow us to turn our backs, at least for a while, from the world we live in. Apollo, then, is an artistic style: that of form and clarity, and so is also represented most commonly in sculpture and architecture.
• The Dionysian: Nietzsche compares Dionysian art with intoxication. Nietzsche did not necessarily mean alcoholic intoxication, but rather the kind of ecstasy that can also be caused by other means than alcohol, for example sexual intercourse, dancing or religious activities. Like the Apollonian, the Dionysian is a mechanism for fleeing from reality, but intoxication is not the same as fantasy. Dream fantasies are an individual and private experience when you turn away from the world. Dionysian intoxication, however, is not about forgetting the world but forgetting your self and experiencing more of a mystical communal union. Dionysian art is more akin to music and poetry. Nietzsche accepted that the distinction between painting and music was not always so clear. It is quite possible, for example, to have Dionysian painting, and Nietzsche was aware that music had Apollo as its patron god. The more important distinction is how one responds to the work of art rather than the work of art itself. Nietzsche sees Apollo as expressing individuality, whereas the Dionysian revels in music and dance and so breaks down the individual like some kind of Sufi dhikr (meditative dance).
A way of understanding what these Dionysian energies are like can be ascertained from the following:
‘From all corners of the ancient world (leaving aside the modern one in this instance), from Rome to Babylon, we can demonstrate the existence of
Dionysiac festivals of a type which, at best, stand in the same relation to the Greek festivals as the bearded satyr, whose name and attributes were borrowed from the goat, stands to Dionysus himself. Almost everywhere an excess of sexual indiscipline, which flooded in waves over all family life and its venerable statutes, lay at the heart of such festivals. Here the very wildest of nature’s beasts were unleashed, up to and including that repulsive mixture of sensuality and cruelty which has always struck me as the true “witches’ brew”. Although news of these festivals reached them by every sea- and land-route, the Greeks appear, for a time, to have been completely protected and insulated from their feverish stirrings by the figure of Apollo, who reared up in all his pride, there being no more dangerous power for him to confront with the Medusa’s head than this crude, grotesque manifestation of the Dionysiac. Apollo’s attitude of majestic rejection is eternalized in Doric art.’
The Birth of Tragedy, 2
The Dionysiac energies, therefore, when unleashed, are dangerous, grotesque, cruel, sexual and wild. It is the rule of the jungle: eat or be eaten. In such a vision of a conflicting, violent world, it is difficult to find meaning or value or beauty but, for Nietzsche, this did not mean a path towards nihilism. Rather, his ‘affirmation’ – like the Greeks’ – is to revel in this energy. In a Schopenhauerian sense, the Dionysian represents the primary, cruel, creative and elemental life force that Schopenhauer refers to as Will. This gives Nietzsche’s work an almost metaphysical dimension, as he pictures the world as consisting of this underlying life force that is ‘cultured’ by societies attempting to live within its violence, anarchy and indifference. Culture, then, is when human beings build up a livable framework in which to survive in what is, in essence, a hostile climate. Some cultures, notably the ancient Greeks as far as Nietzsche was concerned, do this better than others.