Blog 2: response to February 1st

Posted on February 2, 2007

We went through Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy too quickly to get a full sense of his argument (we'll come back to it) . But it should be clear that his very radical notion of what constituted the heart of Greek paganism--the doctrines of suffering / a notion of the divinity as a primal force of creation and destruction, etc.-- infiltrates his sense of what made Greek tragedy great (and that, he argues, has very little to do with the moral vision of human conduct promoted by Aristotle). The passage I read in class about King Midas' encounter with the demi-god Silenus (companion of Dionysos) gives you a flavor of what Nietzsche is interested in (pp. 21-22 of our text), that is, what he believes is distinctive about archaic Greek religion.

One of the concepts Nietzsche wants to assert is the notion that suffering is a cosmic principle (even the gods suffer, and this is most especially embodied in Dionysos): see variously pp. 40, 44, 45, 48. And he seems also to believe that humans share in the tragic by sharing in suffering (which strongly suggests that the suffering that is at the heart of the tragic is NOT divine punishment; it is a condition of existence itself). So, for example, Nietzsche writes on p. 40: "... the archetype of man, the expression of his highest and most intense emotions, an inspired reveller enraptured by the closeness of his god, a sympathetic companion in whom the gods suffering is repeated ..." Please note that this notion of the human as "sympathetic" (feeling pity towards) the tragic victim / hero is at once like AND unlike the "empathy" or pity that Aristotle claims as one of the central tragic emotions (recall that Aristotle believes the tragic plot culminating in catharsis powerfully evokes our empathy or compassion for the hero who is essentially innocent of the tragic deeds and yet still feels deep remorse, even a kind of accountability [because of the hamartia that set the tragic sequence in motion ... even if this "mistake" was done unwittingly]). Nietzsche isn't totally rejecting this Aristotelian compassion for the one who suffers, but he seems to suggest that this sort of suffering is the condition of ALL who exist (humans and gods alike), so the empathetic connection to the tragic hero is really a sort of generalized recognition of what he has earlier called the "horror of existence" (p. 22 ... and elsewhere, "the horror and absurdity of existence" p. 40), that is, terrible for everyone and not just for the particular tragic hero. For a rich if enigmatic statement of how and why humans and gods share in this condition (a very different notion from Szondi's sense of the human-divine gap), see his brief statement about "Aeschylus' view of the world" on p. 48 (he refers there to "the power of both suffering worlds [human AND divine] compelling reconciliation, metaphysical unity").

All this begs the question: if tragedy is so horrible, why then do we often feel exhilirated by it? This goes to the core issue of the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche's notion that the fusion of the Apollonian with the Dionysian perspective (or order with chaos, beauty with terror) permitted the aestheticization of suffering (see pp. 23-26): in other words, our tragic condition became, if not precisely intelligible, at least a work of art. This seems to be the meaning of his very cryptic statement that "the world is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon" (p. 8; NOT, that is, a moral or intelligible phenomenon); later he expands this slightly: "we can ... assume for our own part that we are images and artistic projections for the true creator of the world, and that our highest dignity lies in the meaning of works of art--for it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified" (p. 32 ... read this whole page). And then again on p. 39: The chorus of Greek tragedy "was a consolation to the Hellene [that is, to the Greek mind], thoughtful and uniquely susceptible as he was to the tenderest and deepest suffering, whose piercing gaze has seen to the core of the terrible destructions of world history and nature's cruelty ... He is saved by art, and through art has saved him for itself."

Nietzsche likes to use the world "redemption" of this saving possibility. And to the extent he also speaks of how the god who "suffers" is also "exalted," one might be inclined to read back into this notion some Christian understanding of Jesus of the cross, the son of God who dies in agony. And we might even extend that notion to the Christian sense that true devotion means that we should share in that suffering or "passion" (see p. 44). That would be wrong only in the sense that Nietzsche so clearly despises traditional Christian doctrine; and indeed, Jesus' suffering is meant, ultimately, as a gateway beyond suffering to "glory," "salvation," communion with God, goodness, love, etc. (just as Nirvana is, for Buddhists, a "space" beyond all suffering). It might be more to the point to say that, for Nietzsche, to the extent the Christian "myth" of suffering has any authenticity, it is only because Jesus' passion replicates the archetypal suffering: that of Dionysos himself. I would say that Nietzsche believes that the Christians (at least the ones who came to dominate the Roman Catholic Church--like St. Augustine, who was a Greek scholar--and these same Christians destroyed the more mystical Eastern / Egyptian Christianity of the Gnostics and other mystery cults) failed to understand the radical nature of Jesus' suffering. And in place of the "aesthetic" Jesus, they created the moral "obedient" Jesus, who submits or resigns himself to suffering (on p. 10 Nietzsche dismisses the notion of resignation). What he wants instead is a triumphant celebration of suffering as the meaning of existence itself, and he feels that Christianity ultimately avoids that confrontation and so ultimately despises life itself: "From the start Christianity was, essentially and fundamentally, the embodiment of disgust and antipathy for life" (pp. 8-9); and it is not surprising, then, that he also believes that Christianity "relegates ... all art ... to the realm of falsehood" [p. 8]).

One final note. There are times when Nietzsche seems to be suggesting a certain sort of affinity between Greek paganism and Judeo-Christianity: see pp. 49-50 for example. But in the end he seems to believe that the Jewish and later Christian (and certainly now Muslim) notion of "evil" fundamentally separates the two religious traditions. You will have a chance to comment on this (if you want) in the discussion questions for February 6th ... if you dare!