I would like to distinguish between six different Nietzschean 'sub-philosophies' -- or DGB interpretations/extrapolations of them -- that evolved out of his work over the course of his writing-philosophy career. Most of them are healthy to some greater or lesser extent although two of them -- 'Power over People', and 'Power to Influence People' -- can be associated with the rise of 'Nazism'. This having been said, Nietzsche may be considered an 'elitist' but he shouldn't be considered to be a 'supporter of Nazism'. Nietzsche most respected those individuals who 'rose above the crowd' in terms of their individual abilities and talents. But he did not like the 'herd mentality' that he could see in German society at his time which can be seen in history as a 'precursor' or an 'influencing factor' in the rise of Nazism.
Beyond this, let us take a look at the six individual Nietzschean 'sub-philosophies' that I am talking about that made up 'the parts of the whole' of Nietzschean philosophy and/or in the case of his 'Birth of Tragedy/Apollo vs. Dionysus' philosophy evolved into his later 'Humanistic-Existential-Be-The-Greatest-Person-You-Can-Be' (His 'Superman and Will to Power' Philosophy).
These six Nietzschean sub-philosophies can be viewed as a 'counter-thesis' or 'corolloraries' to his 'post-modern, deconstructionist' work where he let everyone know how much he didn't like 'Christianity', for what reasons, and everything else he rhetorically attacked with equal vigor.
Let me share with you the six Nietzschean sub-philosophies that I am talking about and say a bit about each of them, in this order.
These are:
1. 'BT (Birth of Tragedy)' Philosophy;
2. 'Dionysian' (Sensual and Sensorary) Philosophy;
3. 'Superman' (Strive To Be The Best You Can Be) Philosophy;
4. 'Will to Power' Philosophy. (Power Over What?)
a) Power Over People
b) Power To Influence People
c) Self-Empowerment
In this essay, we will focus on Nietzsche's 'BT' Philosophy.
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Part 1. BT Philosophy
Four of Nietzsche's earliest important influences were:
1. Greek Tragedy;
2. Hegel;
3. Schopenhauer; and
4. Richard Wagner.
Together these influences came together in his first book, 'The Birth of Tragedy'.
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The Birth of Tragedy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Birth of Tragedy: Out of the Spirit of Music
Cover of the 1993 Penguin edition
Author Friedrich Nietzsche
Original title 'Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik'
Translator Shaun Whiteside
Country Germany
Language German
Subject(s) Greek tragedy, the Apollonian/Dionysian opposition
Genre(s) philology
Publication date 1872
Media type Paperback, hardcover
Pages 160 (1993 Penguin ed.)
ISBN ISBN 978-0140433395 (1993 Penguin ed.)
Followed by The Untimely Meditations
(1876)
The Birth of Tragedy (Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik, 1872) is a 19th Century work of philosophy by Friedrich Nietzsche. The full title translates as The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. It was reissued in 1886 as The Birth of Tragedy, Or: Hellenism and Pessimism (Die Geburt der Tragödie, Oder: Griechentum und Pessimismus). The later edition contained a prefatory essay, An Attempt at Self-Criticism, wherein Nietzsche commented on this very early work.
Contents
1 The book
2 The Apollonian and the Dionysian
3 Influences
4 Reception
5 Quotations
6 Notes
7 References
8 See also
9 External links
The book
Nietzsche found in Greek tragedy an art form that transcended the pessimism and Nihilism one might find in a fundamentally meaningless world. The Greek spectators, by looking into the abyss of human suffering and affirming it, passionately and joyously, affirmed the meaning in their own existence. They knew themselves to be infinitely more than the petty individuals of the apparent world, finding self-affirmation, not in another life, not in a world to come, but in the terror and ecstasy alike celebrated in the performance of tragedies.
Originally educated as a philologist, Nietzsche discusses the history of the Greek tragedy, and introduces an intellectual dichotomy between the Dionysian and the Apollonian (very loosely: reality undifferentiated by forms and like distinctions versus reality as differentiated by forms, or the forms themselves). Nietzsche claims life always involves a struggle between these two elements, each battling for control over the existence of humanity. In Nietzsche's words, "Wherever the Dionysian prevailed, the Apollonian was checked and destroyed.... wherever the first Dionysian onslaught was successfully withstood, the authority and majesty of the Delphic god Apollo exhibited itself as more rigid and menacing than ever." Yet neither side ever prevails due to each containing the other in an eternal, natural check, or balance.
Nietzsche argues that the tragedy of Ancient Greece was the highest form of art due to its mixture of both Apollonian and Dionysian elements into one seamless whole, allowing the spectator to experience the full spectrum of the human condition. The Dionysiac element was to be found in the music of the chorus, while the Apollonian element was found in the dialogue which gave a concrete symbolism that balanced the Dionysiac revelry. Basically, the Apollonian spirit was able to give form to the abstract Dionysian.
Before the tragedy, there was an era of static, idealized plastic art in the form of sculpture that represented the Apollonian view of the world. The Dionysian element was to be found in the wild revelry of festivals and drunkenness, but, most importantly, in music. The combination of these elements in one art form gave birth to tragedy. He theorizes that the chorus was originally always satyrs, goat-men. (This is speculative, although the word “tragedy” τραγωδία is contracted from trag(o)-aoidiā = "goat song" from tragos = "goat" and aeidein = "to sing".) Thus, he argues, “the illusion of culture was wiped away by the primordial image of man” for the audience; they participated with and as the chorus empathetically, “so that they imagined themselves as restored natural geniuses, as satyrs.” But in this state, they have an Apollonian dream vision of themselves, of the energy they're embodying. It’s a vision of the god, of Dionysus, who appears before the chorus on the stage. And the actors and the plot are the development of that dream vision, the essence of which is the ecstatic dismembering of the god and of the Bacchantes' rituals, of the inseparable ecstasy and suffering of human existence…
After the time of Aeschylus and Sophocles, there was an age where tragedy died. Nietzsche ties this to the influence of writers like Euripides and the coming of rationality, represented by Socrates. Euripides reduced the use of the chorus and was more naturalistic in his representation of human drama, making it more reflective of the realities of daily life. Socrates emphasized reason to such a degree that he diffused the value of myth and suffering to human knowledge. For Nietzsche, these two intellectuals helped drain the ability of the individual to participate in forms of art, because they saw things too soberly and rationally. The participation mystique aspect of art and myth was lost, and along with it, much of man's ability to live creatively in optimistic harmony with the sufferings of life. Nietzsche concludes that it may be possible to reattain the balance of Dionysian and Apollonian in modern art through the operas of Richard Wagner, in a rebirth of tragedy.
The Apollonian and the Dionysian
In contrast to the typical Enlightenment view of ancient Greek culture as noble, simple, elegant and grandiose,[1], Nietzsche believed the Greeks were grappling with pessimism. The universe in which we live is the product of great interacting forces; but we neither observe nor know these as such. What we put together as our conceptions of the world, Nietzsche thought, never actually addresses the underlying realities. It is human destiny to be controlled by the darkest universal realities and, at the same time, to live life in a human-dreamt world of illusions.
It was precisely this human-dreamt world that the Greeks had developed into perfection from the Homeric legends onward. The Olympian complex of deities, combined with all the details of their heroic lives and their numerous interactions with men and women of earth, formed a world picture in which individual people can live. This picture literally rendered humans as individuals, capable of greatness, always of significance. There is, in this world, objective clarity. The beings are almost sculpted. Hence, Athenians mature within the illusions of a world and life that is under control and that has clear models of personal significance and greatness. It is a beautiful creation. But it is, as Nietzsche observes, an Apollonian aesthetics, Apollo being the god who most typifies the Olympian complex in this regard. (BT, 1, p. 36) Apollo is the god of plastic arts and of illusion.
The problem—and it is a problem for all times and all human life—is that the dark side of existence makes itself apparent and forces us to confront whatever we have tried to shut out of our nice, tidy livable world. Thus, for Nietzsche, while the Greeks, and the Athenians in particular, had developed a rich world view based on Apollo and the other Olympian gods, they had rendered themselves largely ignorant of reality's dark side, as represented in the god Dionysus. Only in the distant past, and largely outside of Athens, had Dionysian festivals paved the way to direct (and destructive) experience of life's darkest sides—intoxication, sexual license, absorption by the primal horde, in short, dissolution of the individual (occasionally, actual dismemberment) and re-immersion into a common organic whole. (BT, 2, pp. 39-40)
The Apollonian in culture he sees as Arthur Schopenhauer's concept of the principium individuationis (principle of individuation) with its refinement, sobriety and emphasis on superficial appearance, whereby man separates himself from the undifferentiated immediacy of nature. Nietzsche claims sculpture as the art-form that captures this impulse most fully: sculpture has clear and definite boundaries and seeks to represent reality, in its perfectly stable form. The Dionysian impulse, by contrast, features immersion in the wholeness of nature, intoxication, non-rationality, and inhumanity; rather than the detached, rational representation of the Apollonian that invites similarly detached observation, the Dionysian impulse involves a frenzied participation in life itself. Nietzsche sees the Dionysian impulse as best realized in music, which tends not to have clear boundaries, is unstable and non-representational, and, in Nietzsche's view, invites participation among its listeners through dance. Nietzsche argues that the Apollonian has dominated Western thought since Socrates, but he sees German Romanticism (especially Richard Wagner) as a possible re-introduction of the Dionysian, which might offer the salvation of European culture. The book shows the influence of Schopenhauer.[2]
The issue, then, or so Nietzsche thought, is how to experience and understand the Dionysian side of life without destroying the obvious values of the Apollonian side. It is not healthy for an individual, or for a whole society, to become entirely absorbed in the rule of one or the other. The soundest (healthiest) foothold is in both. Nietzsche's theory of Athenian tragic drama suggests exactly how, before Euripides and Socrates, the Dionysian and Apollonian elements of life were artistically woven together. The Greek spectator became healthy through direct experience of the Dionysian within the protective spirit-of-tragedy on the Apollonian stage.
Influences
The Birth of Tragedy is a young man's work, and shows the influence of many of the philosophers Nietzsche had been studying. His interest in classical Greece as in some respects a rational society can be attributed in some measure to the influence of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, although Nietzsche departed from Winckelmann in many ways. In addition, Nietzsche uses the term "naive" in exactly the sense used by Friedrich Schiller. More important influences include Hegel, whose concept of the dialectic underlies the tripartite division of art into the Apollonian, its Dionysian antithesis, and their synthesis in Greek tragedy. Also of great importance are the works of Arthur Schopenhauer, especially The World as Will and Representation. The Apollonian experience bears great similarity to the experience of the world as "representation" in Schopenhauer's sense, and the experience of the Dionysian bears similarities to the identification with the world as "will." Nietzsche opposed Schopenhauer's Buddhistic negation of the will. He argued that life can be worth living despite the enormous amount of cruelty and suffering that exists.[3]
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DGB Editorial Comments (Optimistic vs. Pessimistic Epistemology)
You can never completely track down a philosopher's entire historical line of influence. Every time you think you have captured all of the most important lines or sources of influence of a philosopher, all of a sudden, a couple of more influences pop into vision. And so it is with Nietzsche. New interpretations of Nietzsche bring to light new lines and sources of influence.
Until I read the interpretation of Nietzsche's BT from above (Wikipedia) -- and this might have been the second or third time that I read it -- I had never as completely viewed Nietzsche's BT as a 'spinoff' and 'modified extrapolation' of Schopenhauer's 'The World as Will and Representation' as I have at this moment.
Specifically, I can see now how Schopenhauer's 'World of Representation' became Nietzsche's 'Apollonian World' just as clearly as Nietzsche's 'Apollonian World' would later become Freud's 'Realm of The Superego' (Society's Ethical and Legal Restraints) in Classical Psychoanalysis. Similarily, Schopenhauer's 'World of Will' would become Nietzsche's 'Dionysian World' which in turn would later be translated by Freud into 'The Realm of The Id' (The World of Biological, Instinctual Dionysian Forces).
Furthermore, behind Schopenhauer's 'World of Representation' you can find the lingering influence of Kant's 'Phenomenal World' -- or 'World of Appearances' -- and behind that -- even Plato's and Parmenides' influence.
Now Kant's Phenomenal World -- or World of 'Appearances' as opposed to 'Actual Realities' -- has caused many philosophers including Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and even partly Freud, a world of problems and grief ever since Kant most clearly established this most mind-bending and mind-numbing 'subjective-objective paradox or dichotomy'. .
Indeed, I don't think even Kant would have liked the way that his philosophy -- and particularly his 'World of Appearances' -- was interpreted after he died. Is the 'epistmelogical world of man half full or half empty'. Accepting different proportions here for different epistemological interpretations on different life 'things' and 'processes', we can focus either on the part 'we got/get right' or the 'part we got/get wrong'. This can be the sole difference between an 'optimistic' vs. a 'pessimistic' or even 'cynical' attitude.
You see, at this point, DGB Philosophy turns completely away from the epistemological legacy of Parmenides, Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche -- arguably Kant was the least guilty of all the others -- and turns to a completely different line of epistemologists -- for lack of a better word call this next line of epistemologists 'Objectivist Epistemologists': Aristotle, Sir Francis Bacon, John Locke, The Enlightenment Philosophers (Diderot, Voltaire, Tom Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson...), Bertrand Russell, General Semantics (led by Alfred Korzybski and his main student, S.I.Hayakawa), Erich Fromm, Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden...
These are my main DGB epistemological influences -- although I am also very much aware and attuned to the more 'subjectivist' and/or 'narcissitic influences of Schopenhauer, Nietsche, Foucault, Derrida, and the rest of the 'deconstructionists' and 'pos-modernists' as well.
The crucial epistemological issue at stake is this: How much does our 'World of Epistemological Representation' represent a world of 'truth and objectivity and structural similarity' i.e. have 'truth value' vs. alternatively, how does our epistemological representations represent a world of 'subjectivity, relativism, narcissistic bias, appearance, illusion, deception, dog and pony shows, sophistry...etc.?
And the answer is that our epistemological world of representation represents -- both. Both truth and structural similarity on the one hand, vs. sophistry, illusion, and deception on the other hand depending on the particular context and circumstances of each epistemological event that we are talking about.
Alternatively, it's all a matter of which side of the philosophical and epistemological equation each philosopher/epistemologist wants to emphasize -- the part we get 'right' and/or the part we get 'wrong'.
Do we want to emphasize the mistakes, illusions, deceptions, and narcissistic biases in human epistology? Or do we want to emphasize the accuracies, the structural similarities, the facts, the truth... between 'the real' and 'the represented'?
Is the glass half full? Or half empty?
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Apollo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Apollo
2nd century AD Roman statue of Apollo depicting the god's attributes - the lyre and the snake Python
God of music, poetry and oracles
Parents Zeus and Leto
Siblings Artemis
Children Asclepius, Troilus, Aristaeus
Ancient Greek Religion
Main doctrines
Polytheism · Mythology · Hubris
Orthopraxy · Reciprocity · Virtue
Practices
Amphidromia · Iatromantis
Pharmakos · Temples
Votive Offerings · Animal sacrifice
Deities
Twelve Olympians:
Ares · Artemis · Aphrodite · Apollo
Athena · Demeter · Dionysus · Hera ·
Hermes · Hephaestus · Poseidon · Zeus
---
Primordial deities:
Aether · Chaos · Chronos · Erebus
Gaia · Hemera · Nyx · Tartarus · Oranos
---
Lesser gods:
Eros · Hebe · Hecate · Helios
Herakles · Hestia · Iris · Selene · Pan · Nike
Texts
Iliad · Odyssey
Theogony · Works and Days
See also:
Decline of Hellenistic polytheism
Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionism
Supreme Council of Ethnikoi Hellenes
Ancient Roman Religion
Main doctrines
Polytheism & Numen
Mythology
Imperial Cult · Festivals
Practices
Temples · Funerals
Votive Offerings · Animal sacrifice
Ceres · Diana · Juno
Jupiter · Mars · Mercury · Minerva
Neptune · Venus · Vulcan
Divus Augustus · Divus Caesar
Fortuna · Pluto · Quirinus
Sol Invictus · Vesta
The Lares
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In Greek and Roman mythology, Apollo (in Greek, Ἀπόλλων—Apóllōn or Ἀπέλλων—Apellōn), is one of the most important and many-sided of the Olympian deities. The ideal of the kouros (a beardless youth), Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun; truth and prophecy; archery; medicine and healing; music, poetry, and the arts; and more. Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto, and has a twin sister, the chaste huntress Artemis. Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu. Apollo was worshipped in both ancient Greek and Roman religion, as well as in the modern Hellenic neopaganism.
As the patron of Delphi (Pythian Apollo), Apollo was an oracular god — the prophetic deity of the Delphic Oracle. Medicine and healing were associated with Apollo, whether through the god himself or mediated through his son Asclepius. Apollo was also seen as a god who could bring ill-health and deadly plague as well as one who had the ability to cure. Amongst the god's custodial charges, Apollo became associated with dominion over colonists, and as the patron defender of herds and flocks. As the leader of the Muses (Apollon Musagetes) and director of their choir, Apollo functioned as the patron god of music and poetry. Hermes created the lyre for him, and the instrument became a common attribute of Apollo. Hymns sung to Apollo were called paeans.
In Hellenistic times, especially during the third century BCE, as Apollo Helios he became identified among Greeks with Helios, god of the sun, and his sister Artemis similarly equated with Selene, goddess of the moon.[1] In Latin texts, however, Joseph Fontenrose declared himself unable to find any conflation of Apollo with Sol among the Augustan poets of the first century, not even in the conjurations of Aeneas and Latinus in Aeneid XII (161-215).[2] Apollo and Helios/Sol remained separate beings in literary and mythological texts until the third century CE.
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More DGB Editorial Comments on Nietzsche's 'Birth of Tragedy' Philosophy
So here's the situation: Nietzsche enters into BT a 'Hegelian philosopher', partly mesmerized, defined, and subsumed by Schopehnauer as well - but partly able to shake Schopenhauer off his tail.
You see, by all accounts, Schopenhauer was a nasty, nasty man, and he wrote a nasty, nasty philosophical treatise. I don't know how many of you have read the book, or seen the movie, 'Lord of The Flies' -- but that was Schopenhauer's narcissistic philosophical treatise in a nutshell -- softened a little bit by a couple of strategies that Schopenhauer advocated to try to 'escape the ugliness, irrationality, viciousness, violence, and coldness of life' such as: 1. take up Buddhism and learn how 'not to want' (Gee, that's easy.); and 2. go the theatre, enjoy good art, and use the whole medium of art, theatre, and music to escape the ugliness, irrationality, and tragedy of your 'Lord of The Flies' existence.
I can identify with this last strategy partly. I write at least partly to compensate for, and/or escape, my 'Lord of The Flies' existence. And an 'economic recession' -- that seems about to turn into an an 'economic depression' --
tightens the screws on everybody. So does bad business decisions and a bad business environment. For that matter, so does a bad love relationship, a bad family situation, and internal negativity. I'm not identifying with all these different situations -- but at least some of them.
Now you can do what Schopenhauer would have us do -- and run from all of these different 'bad' situations -- for example, leave your bad situation at work and go to the theatre. And find your 'emotional cathartic release' in a good Greek Tragedy (or a Shakespearian tragedy, or presumably any form of 'good theatre').
Or you can do what Nietzsche decided to do -- and that was to 'embrace life to the fullest passion and intensity in all of its highest highs and lowest lows. Whether good or bad, you don't run from life -- you passionately embrace it.
Two very different forms of 'philosophical psychotherapy'. Nietzsche partly embraced both Hegel and Schopenhauer -- before fully turning away from Hegel's 'dialectic' approach to philosophy and life; and partly turning away from Schopenhauer's 'extreme pessism' and his 'suppress-your-desires-in-Budhism' as well.
Still the philosophical remnants of Schopenhauer remained in Nietzsche (as they would both strongly seep into Freud and Psychoanalysis later).
And nowhere did Schopenhauer's remnants remain alive more than they did in Nietzsche's perception and judgment of 'Apollo' which rather than an 'Enlightenment' interpretation of Apollo as The God of 'Truth, Ethics, Law, and Order' would come to mean something entirely different to Nietzsche in the order of 'Social and Political Illusion, Sophistry and Ideology' ('ideology' in the terminology of Marx later)..
This is a sad statement of Apollo's Greek legacy in my opinion.
I prefer Nietzsche's BT philosophy of 'homeostatic-dialectic-democratic balance' (in DGB terminology) between the 'Apollonian' part of man and the 'Dionysian' part of man as laid out in his classic first book, 'The Birth Of Tragedy'.
But like Freud would abandon his 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory', so too would Nietzsche basically abandon the 'Apollonian part of man' in BT -- to the detriment of his later more 'extremist-Humanstic-Existential Superman or Will to Power Philosophy'.
We will attend to Nietzsche's later humanistic-existential philosophical developments in later essays...
dgb, Feb. 10th, 2009, updated and modified Mar. 30th, 2009.
