Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Nietzsche on Art

Aaron Ridley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134375448
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Storia e teoria della filosofia

Nietzsche is one of the most important modern philosophers and his writings on the nature of art are amongst the most influential of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This GuideBook introduces and assesses:

• Nietzsche's life and the background to his writings on art
• the ideas and texts of his works which contribute to art, including The Birth of Tragedy, Human, All Too Human and Thus Spoke Zarathustra
• Nietzsche's continuing importance to philosophy and contemporary thought.

This GuideBook will be essential reading for all students coming to Nietzsche for the first time.

1
REDEMPTION THROUGH ART: THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY

Profound, hostile silence about Christianity throughout the book. Christianity is neither Apollonian nor Dionysian; it negates all aesthetic values – the only values recognized in The Birth of Tragedy: it is nihilistic in the most profound sense, while in the Dionysian symbol the ultimate limit of affirmation is attained.

(Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, ‘The Birth of Tragedy’)

Introduction

Nietzsche’s first book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872), is a striking debut and an arresting example of German Romanticism at its headiest. Tragedy, as an art form, has long captivated the philosophical imagination – not surprisingly, given that tragic works of art can seem to offer richer and more profound insights into the human condition than works in any other genre. And Nietzsche’s early engagement with the topic certainly represents an attempt to do justice to that fact. Tragedy, in his eyes, tells us the deepest and most horrifying truths about ourselves, but does so in a way that makes the news not merely bearable, but welcome, enlivening, and even intoxicating; so that against the backdrop of a fundamentally pessimistic take on existence (the deepest truths are horrifying), tragedy offers us a paradoxical form of redemption. This is a very dramatic thought: to many readers, indeed, it has seemed to encapsulate a peculiarly powerful approach not only to tragedy as an art form, but to a proper understanding of our own most fundamental needs. The devil, though, is in the detail; and we will see in what follows that the task of arriving at a sustainable interpretation of Nietzsche’s position is a vexed – indeed in my view an unfulfillable – one, however fascinating some of the details might be, and however much it might be true that there is at least something seductive about the central vision. But it is an elusive vision; and I don’t pretend to have put my finger on it here. Instead, I try to clear some ground, and to identify the kinds of commitment that must be attributed to Nietzsche if his youthful ideas about tragedy are to have a chance, at any rate, of making sense.¹

The Birth of Tragedy didn’t appeal (even this much) to most of its earliest readers. It was denounced, ironically, as an exercise in ‘the philology of the future’ (Wagner’s music, which Nietzsche championed in the book, was at that time referred to as ‘the music of the future’); it was castigated for its ‘ignorance and lack of love of truth’, and its author, described as a ‘rotted brain’, was taken to task for his ‘inanities and wretchednesses’ (Kaufmann 1967: 5–6). Nietzsche seems not to have been very perturbed by these responses, but his professional reputation never fully recovered from them; and this, together with his increasingly bad health, contributed to his decision to quit academic life seven years later, in 1879.

It is not very surprising that The Birth of Tragedy went down badly. As a work in classical philology it is, at best, eccentric; and as an exercise in philosophy it is unfocused, verbose and frequently obscure. Moreover, it is – in one of its primary motivations – very blatantly a piece of propaganda, a hailing of Wagner as the saviour and redeemer of contemporary culture. In it, Nietzsche gives an account of the origins of Ancient Greek tragedy, and of its death at the hands of Socratic rationalism – a tendency that led, in the end, to Christianity; and he suggests that now, in an age over which this tendency has at last lost its strangle-hold, the possibility of a rebirth of tragedy has not only become imaginable, but has in fact been realised, in Wagner’s music dramas. Greek tragedy was the expression of, and the sustaining force behind, a healthy, vibrant culture. In the work of Wagner, therefore, we may hope, he suggests, for a dramatic renewal of our own culture.

When Nietzsche came to reflect on The Birth of Tragedy some fourteen years later, in the ‘Attempt at a Self-Criticism’ included in the second edition of the book, he was chiefly concerned to highlight continuities between his earliest thoughts and his later ones – to suggest, in other words, that The Birth of Tragedy was already a premonition of his own mature philosophical position. And it is certainly true that there are pre-echoes. The later Nietzsche is much exercised by ‘the problem of science’, for example, by ‘science considered . . . as problematic, as questionable’; and The Birth of Tragedy, in its discussion of Socratic rationalism, undoubtedly prefigures that concern – ‘for the first time’, as Nietzsche has it (ASC 2).² The later Nietzsche is, further, committed to fighting ‘at any risk whatever the moral interpretation and significance of existence’, a commitment that he not implausibly claims to detect in his first book, in which ‘art, and not morality, is presented as the truly metaphysical activity of man’ (ASC 5). Also, finally, the later Nietzsche, like the earlier, is wedded to the view that the fundamental value of something is to be determined by its value for life: in The Birth of Tragedy, he says, his ‘instinct . . . aligned itself with life’, and ‘discovered for itself’ a radically new ‘doctrine and valuation of life – purely artistic and anti-Christian’ (ibid.). Indeed, the ‘task’ of the book was ‘to look at science in the perspective of the artist, but at art in that of life’, a task to which the later Nietzsche, as he accurately informs us, ‘has not become a stranger’ (ASC 2).

These continuities are real, even if Nietzsche does occasionally overstate them. But it is easy to feel that it is the discontinuities that matter more; and of these, Nietzsche accords most prominence to three. The first concerns the younger Nietzsche’s metaphysical commitments. Where the later Nietzsche is generally highly critical of metaphysics, regarding it as a hang-over of Christianity, in The Birth of Tragedy he had peddled an ‘artists’ metaphysics’ – ‘arbitrary, idle, fantastic’ (ASC 5) – and had sought to express himself ‘by means of Schopenhauerian and Kantian formulas’ (ASC 6). He had, moreover – and this is the second discontinuity – argued that it would be ‘necessary’ for a man of a vibrant culture ‘to desire a new art, the art of metaphysical comfort’ (ASC 7, BT 18); to which the Nietzsche of 1886 replies: ‘No, thrice no! . . . it would not be necessary! But it is highly probable that it will end in that way – namely, “comforted”, . . . ”comforted metaphysically” – in sum, as romantics end, as Christians . . . No! You ought to learn the art of this-worldly comfort first; you ought to learn to laugh’ (ASC 7). Finally, the earlier Nietzsche had ‘spoiled’ his project by ‘append[ing] hopes where there was no ground for hope’, by ‘rav[ing] about “the German spirit”’ and imagining that, through Wagner, this spirit might redeem contemporary culture – when in fact ‘the German spirit’ was ‘just [then] making its last testament and abdicating forever’ (ASC 6). The later Nietzsche no longer pinned hopes of any sort to Wagner, let alone such grandiose ones; and in the ‘Attempt’ he reserves his affection exclusively for those parts of The Birth of Tragedy that have nothing to do with Wagner at all.

These continuities and contrasts suggest two thoughts. The first is that the book itself might be divided into two – into those parts of it that champion Wagner, and those that do not. And the second thought is that this division might shadow a distinction between those parts of The Birth of Tragedy that are encumbered with unnecessary metaphysical commitments and aspirations, and those that are not. Certainly this is the interpretative stance that the ‘Attempt’ encourages. It encourages one, that is, to read The Birth of Tragedy as if it consisted of an account of the birth and death of Attic tragedy – some of it misleadingly, but in the end innocently, couched in Schopenhauerian ‘formulas’ – onto which has been grafted a metaphysically compromised, and essentially baseless, account of the rebirth of tragedy in the works of Wagner. And it is a reading much like this that has, with the later Nietzsche’s blessing, become, if not perhaps the orthodoxy, then at least a conspicuous (and potentially powerful) interpretative option.³ I shall refer to this reading as the ‘bipartite’ reading.

It is one of the principal purposes of this chapter to ask whether such a reading is sustainable – to ask, in other words, whether the final ten sections of The Birth of Tragedy, which is where the Wagnerianism is, can be quite so easily pared away, so as to leave behind a discussion of classical culture that has been purged, in effect, not only of Nietzsche’s (subsequently rescinded) commitment to Wagner, but also of his (perhaps only apparent) commitment to Schopenhauerian metaphysics. To this end it will be most helpful, I think, to begin with a brief outline of the book that is as neutral as possible between the bipartite reading and any rivals to it that might emerge, so that the bones of possible contention are laid as bare as they feasibly can be.

1. An outline

Nietzsche’s central thought about Ancient Greek tragedy has it shaped a bit like an onion, whose successive layers act as partial mirrors on their convex sides and as partial filters on their concave sides. At the heart of the onion is the idea that human individuality – the separate existence of individual human selves – is, in some sense, an illusion. Reflected in the outer layer is the (in some sense) illusory ‘self’ of the spectator. And it is in the intervening layers, some of which are more reflective and/or permeable than others, that the actual tragedy – the drama – is played out.

The effect of the drama upon the spectator is, essentially, to allow him a glimpse of the (alleged) truth that lies at the heart of it – that human individuality is an illusion – while also shielding him from the full impact that, without the filtering and mirroring, this truth would have upon him. Unshielded, Nietzsche holds, the spectator would be destroyed. So the drama conceals and softens the truth even as it reveals it. Nietzsche associates the truth at the heart of the tragedy with the god Dionysus – who, in Greek mythology, was dismembered by the Titans – and calls the state induced in the spectator by his glimpse of that truth ‘Dionysian’, a state of intoxicated ecstasy. The other aspect of tragedy, which is responsible for shielding the spectator from the full impact of the truth, Nietzsche associates with the god Apollo. Apollo sustains the illusion of individuality – of the intelligibility and, indeed, the beauty of things, including human beings – and induces in the spectator the ‘Apollonian’ state that Nietzsche often describes as ‘dream-like’. Both the Dionysian and the Apollonian principles are therefore essential to tragedy as Nietzsche conceives it. Without Dionysus, the drama would merely sustain and reinforce the illusion of human individuality. Without Apollo, the drama would destroy (i.e. dismember) its spectators, at any rate psychologically.

But why, on this model, might tragedy be thought to be worth having at all?⁴ And still more: why might it be held to be necessary to the sustenance of a healthy culture? If the truth at the heart of tragedy – that human individuality is in some way illusory – is fundamentally destructive, after all, it might seem better not to get even a glimpse of it. Whereas if, on the other hand, that truth really is worth knowing, why wouldn’t dream-like illusions – illusions that obscure precisely what the heart of tragedy reveals – be better done without, and the truth faced?

Convincing answers to these questions are extremely difficult – perhaps impossible – to give, although I’ll canvas some suggestions presently. For the moment, though, and sticking at the level of generality that an outline of this sort requires, the story is this. Man requires (the illusion of) individuality in order to act and function in the world. He must experience himself not only as numerically distinct from others (I am I, you are you), but as qualitatively distinct: I, but not you, am father of this child, have responsibility for milking the cows, need to distinguish myself at darts, am giving a lecture first thing in the morning, etc. And for these things to be possible, he must experience the world in which he acts and functions as relevantly orderly, as patterned in the various ways that those actions and functions presuppose, so that the world is experienced as intelligible and, at least in principle, as amenable to his purposes. The world, that is, together with the overlapping and interlocking endeavours of its ‘individual’ inhabitants, must appear capable of sustaining a rational interpretation. And this is an appearance that Apollo holds in place.

It is, however, only an appearance. The world is, in some sense, not really like that, and to live in it as if it were is to range over a merely artificial surface. It is, moreover, to lose touch with something deeper and more primordial about life, and from which life itself draws its most fundamental energies – above all, as it turns out, the energy to go on living. The Apollonian world is orderly and beautiful, but ultimately quite pointless: individual success is transient, happiness rare and fragile, suffering and death unavoidable. The ‘wisdom of Silenus’ – that ‘What is best of all is . . . not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best . . . is – to die soon’⁵ – exerts a powerfully seductive influence. And to offset this influence, life must touch base with an energy that is blind to such thoughts, that is oblivious to the final futility of human living and that glories, simply (and, as it might be, irrationally), in itself. This is the energy of Dionysus. It lies at a level that is somehow beneath that at which we exist as distinct selves, and so undercuts the kinds of pessimistic reflection about individual lives that lend Silenus’s wisdom its seductive force. Borne neat, this energy would destroy us. But (just) touching base with it refreshes our appetite for life, and returns us reinvigorated to the world of Apollo.

So life itself, on this picture, requires both the Apollonian principle (if we are to be able to act or function at all) and the Dionysian (if we are to bother to do either). And Greek tragedy, or so Nietzsche tells us, sustained the culture that produced it precisely because it answered to this requirement in a peculiarly adequate way.

The mechanics by which it is supposed to have done this, however, are complicated, and Nietzsche doesn’t always offer a lot of help in sorting them out. But the following, at least, can be hazarded without too much violence to the text. The outer layers of the onion, to pick up on that image, consist of character and plot. The spectator recognizes the protagonist of the drama as an ‘individual’ like himself, and understands the unfolding of his or her story as an intelligible account of what might happen to someone like this under circumstances like these. Here, we are firmly in the realm of Apollo. Another layer down, however, and we encounter the chorus, which chants in unison. The chorus sets up a sort of hyper-reality – equivalent in kind to the world of the Olympian gods – which has the effect of nullifying the ordinary world of everyday experience (‘as lamplight is nullified by the light of day’ [BT 7]), and hence of undermining the spectator’s easy identification with the events and characters portrayed on stage.⁶ And then we meet the music. Music – or so Nietzsche follows Schopenhauer in insisting – is the primordial art. It operates beneath the level of ‘individual’ human selves, and articulates directly the irrational energy that is (in some sense) at the heart of things. It therefore brings the spectator not merely to see himself as an epiphenomenon of what humanity collectively is, but to recognize that collective as itself no more than an epiphenomenon of the energy of Dionysus. And the dénouement – the destruction (the dismemberment) of the tragic hero – is as close to the middle of the onion as one can intelligibly get. Here, the hero is simply ripped apart – or is finally revealed as having always been no more than ripped apart, as no more than the froth on a wave that has everything to do with life, but nothing – in the end – to do with him. And this is the news – the paradoxically energizing news – that the spectator intuits through the workings of music, chorus and plot, and – ultimately – the central character, in whom, illusory (i.e. dismembered) though he may have turned out to be, the spectator finds himself reflected.

This, then, for better or for worse, is Nietzsche’s account of Greek tragedy; and the historical coming together of the various elements it comprises constitutes its birth, as he originally had it, ‘from the spirit of music’.⁷ But tragedy was soon to meet its death, also at Greek hands. And what killed it, in effect, was the hypertrophy of one aspect of the Apollonian, the aspect that gives the world the appearance of being rationally ordered. In the person of Socrates, the Greeks came to understand and value life solely in terms of reason and order, to the exclusion not only of the darker, irrational side of things symbolized by the dismembered god, but also of every other (i.e. every non-rational) aspect of the Apollonian.⁸ And life in this newly ‘real’ Socratic world was made liveable – was inoculated against the seduction of Silenus – by a new equation of reason with goodness, so that the rational life could be held to be valuable in itself, without recourse to intoxicating supplements. And tragedy, which had been the expression of and an antidote to a fundamentally pessimistic take on existence, was thereby displaced by what Nietzsche terms ‘Socratic optimism’, a tendency that is neither Dionysian nor (properly) Apollonian, and which – in its rejection of some fundamental (i.e. Dionysian) truths about life – eventually produced Christianity.

For two thousand-and-something years this tendency held sway. But in modernity, Nietzsche suggests, it has begun to lose its grip, and the conditions are once again present for Dionysus to take the stage, and for the irrational, primordial forces associated with him to make their potency felt. The rebirth of tragedy is now possible. And in Wagner’s work it has been achieved – in the reentwining of the Apollonian and Dionysian principles through music, character and plot. The greatness of the Greeks had been sustained by such a synthesis: they turned their underlying pessimism to paradoxical account. And now the kind of vibrancy and creativity that they exemplified beckons again. We stand on the threshold of a new golden age.

2. Dionysus

Everything in this story swings on Dionysus. Nietzsche takes himself, together with Wagner and the pre-Socratic Greeks, to be serious about what Dionysus stands for, and to be serious, too, in rejecting the rationalistic optimism that supplanted him. But what, exactly, does Dionysus stand for?

Two rather different answers immediately suggest themselves. The first, which is metaphysically humdrum, one might term the ‘psychological’ thesis. This is the thought that our felt separateness from one another is ultimately quite superficial, and that certain experiences reveal that the apparent barriers between us are easily broken down. So, for...