Nietzsche on Tragedy

What event was at the centre of Greek life?

the Dionysian tragic festival

Nietzche’s theory of nihilism

• Defined as the will to death, labelled the ‘Thanatos Principle’ by Freud

• the cruelty of nature and destructiveness of world history

• Means that for the Greeks “the very best thing…is to be nothing…the second best thing…is: to die soon”

Definition of the Apollonian

The realm of everyday sobriety, individualism and self-restriction

Definition of the Dionysian

Where the Apollonian is overriden by primal unity, intoxication and ecstasy

Principles of the Apollonian

• For the Greeks, the world of the legal and ethical boundaries in which civilisation is constructed

• For Nietzsche, about dreams—the world made shining through art

Apollonian art

• Apollonian art becomes beautiful through the economy of dreams—> this economy is only what is necessary for sense-making

• Art is more beautiful than nature because it achieves a wholeness that nature does not

• Homeric art is an Apollonian illusion because the Apollonian world is already only a semblance and thus Apollonian art is thus doubly illusionist

The Apollonian against nihilism

The Apollonian as a preventative against nihilism

Because of the illusion of Apollonian art means that Greeks saw life as having a possibility of greatness—humans could become gods

If so, their own misery and sadness was only individual rather than constitutive of the whole entity of living

Dionysian sublime unity

• Dionysian joy experienced as being part of a primordial unity with mankind but also with nature

• You look beyond phenomena for joy

• Experiencing the sublime is collective: created in the performance, because everyone takes part in the ecstatic worship of Dionysus

• This was done through song, rendering everyone a part of the tragic chorus

• Dionysian unity is therefore created by subsuming individuality

• Individuality figured as the cause of suffering

Defining the Dionysian primordial

• the totality of nature and life that individuals dissolve into

This evokes two emotions:

1) the pleasure, joy and lust for existence by being a part of something indestructible

2) agony at the destruction of one’s individualism

Nietzsche on catharsis

Aristotles sees catharsis as overcoming fear and pity

However, Nietzsche reads this as not overcoming but understanding the vulnerability of the individual’s fear in the Apollonian against the comfort of the Dionysian collective

It is not about the individual but the whole audience

Nietzsche’s complications to Dionysian comfort

Dionysus in two veins:

Child-god: the original state oft he people vs. The creator

Pain: experiences pain vs. Only spectates it

These contradictions make the comfort of the Dionysian redundant

Non-Dionysian philosophies (according to N)

Euripides: wholly Apollonian

Socrates: eradicates the Dionysian by seeing reality as individuals only causally connected, by seeing all problems as solvable by science

Without the belief of tragic inevitability, the possibility of catharsis collapses, leading to the death of tragedy

Why we need tragedy

we are currently socratic and therefore vulnerable to unexpected trauma

We need tragedy to experience tragic joy and therefore ascend to the Dionysian

Changes in Nietzschian philosophy

Illusion:

b4: dionysian is the illusion

After: the individual self in the Apollonian is illusionary

Justifying human existence:

After: argued that suffering that may seem unbearable for individual is justified in ongoing development of human race

^ makes redundant the question of individual human life is justified

Limitations to Nietzsche

doesn’t discuss tragic content or form—-his focus is on affect regardless of form

Doesn’t explain why tragedy is specifically important

Doesn’t explain how Shakespearean/modern tragedies without a chorus function—> relies on tragedy having a chorus

Doesn’t take into the possibility of tragedies commingling with ethics