Huls 1

Jeremy Huls
18 October 2016
LBRL 422

The Birth of Tragedy and the Development of Culture

Nietzsche received a lot of criticism in his life for his first majorly published work, The

Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music, for both his elevated praise of Richard Wagner and

the lack of academic rigor evidenced by his disorganization of concepts, yet the ideas proposed

by Nietzsche in this work later inspired scholars and artists alike. He saw Greek tragedy as the

ultimate form of art because it captured the entire human through two primordial powers, which

he labels as the “Apollonian” and the “Dionysian,” which symbolize competitive yet

complementary forces that work together to create art. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche argues

that the culture of his time lacks the emotional values and attitudes that were present in the art of

Greek tragedy before the time of Socrates, whom he controversially blames for repressing the

Dionysian power through his endless search of the truth, and although the writing itself struggles

with issues of clarity and style, it proposes an interesting question in the competing needs for a

culture to maintain an identity and its need for connecting with the world around them.

The young Nietzsche explored views held by Schopenhauer, mainly how he sees “the

Will as essentially evil and the only way out of this suffering and evil is denial of the Will,”1

which inspired his negative attitude towards modernity, and the belief that all forms of art in his

time were merely “copies”2 of what was originally produced by the Greeks. The problem for

Nietzsche, was that people did not cherish art as much as they did in the past, which is why he

saw Richard Wagner as a savior that would revolutionize Germany through his music, based on

the ideas he formulated in the essay Art and Revolution, where Wagner described “Drama” as the

1 Jackson, Roy. Teach yourself Nietzsche. McGraw Hil, UK. 2008. Print.
2 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. Trans: Johnston, Ian. Vancouver
Island University. Web Accessed.
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“’highest conceivable form of art,’ because in its true perfection, it is a union of all the other

arts.”3 This impression by Wagner is Nietzsche’s main focus in Birth of Tragedy, which leads to

the creation of his “Apollonian” and “Dionysian” models that exemplify this “true perfection” of

art.

According to Nietzsche, the Apollonian force is characterized primarily by dreams, and

the Dionysian by intoxication; the former reinforces the idea of principium individuationis, or

individuation, while the other is symbolic of dissolution, or the sense of losing self. Apollo

imposes order, reason, and clarity, while its Dionysus instills chaos, frenzy, and uncertainty, and

when these powers are combined they illustrate the human condition, which Nietzsche saw to be

an art in and of itself. This is clear through his definition on the purpose or need for tragedy by

the ancient Greeks, which was to better understand the world both around them and within them,

and how a sense of joy arose from the “divine order of terror” which Nietzsche compares to “a

rose growing out of thorny bushes;” the interconnected nature of these forces becomes apparent

when he further explains that “The same impulse which summons art into life as the seductive

replenishment for further living and the completion of existence also gave rise to the Olympian

world, in which the Hellenic “Will” held before itself a transfiguring mirror.”4 The Greeks

mythologized themselves through the art of drama and tragedy, by having the human sphere of

life and the sphere of their divinities actually mirror each other, in effect idealizing an artistic

aspect of life that made it worth living.

A majority of people in Nietzsche’s time viewed the Greek life as “idyllic,” which

suggests that they generally lived happy lives with a care-free attitude, yet Nietzsche believed

that they lived “brutal” lives that were “short and full of suffering.”5 He considered the

3 Hollingdale, R.J. Nietzsche. Ark Paperbacks, London. 1985. Print. 64.

4 Nietzsche. BT, 17.
5 Jackson. 45.
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possibility that tragedy itself was a kind of cultural coping mechanism, that allowed people to

understand the seemingly contradictory forces of nature in a more balanced way, since he stated

“to the Apollonian Greek the effect aroused by the Dionysian also seemed ‘Titanic’ and

‘barbaric.’ But he could not, with that response, conceal that he himself was, nonetheless, at the

same time also internally related to those deposed Titans and heroes.”6 Here Nietzsche proposes

that all which is “beautiful” and “moderate” would not be able to be known at all if it weren’t for

an opposing quality that made their recognition possible. He asserts that the Apollonian power

and the Dionysian power are both necessary and desirable, because the Dionysian power is

closely related to the primordial essence of nature itself, while the Apollonian power maintains

its image and form, thus their synthesis makes reality relatable to the human condition.

Nietzsche explains the process of artistic creation through the example of the lyric poet.

The lyric poet, similar to the modern idea of a musician, is someone who creates a work of art by

tapping into both the Apollonian and Dionysian powers. The lyric poet first invokes Dionysus

himself in order to place himself closer to the primordial image of nature that is far removed

from his regular conception of reality, by numbing the regular senses via intoxication, so that the

artist can then mimic the “primordial oneness,”7 which Nietzsche relates to music. The lyric poet

mimics what he sees as plain music, which is not merely the subjective interpretation of the

objective art that is reality itself, because it seeks to replicate it naturally without the influence of

the “I.”8 After the original music is produced, only then does the lyric poet add images, ideas,

and metaphor to the creation, the purpose of which is that “The artist has already surrendered his

subjectivity in the Dionysian process; the image which now reveals to him his unity with the

heart of the world is a dream scene, which symbolizes that original contradiction and pain,

6 Nietzsche. BT, 4.
7 Nietzsche. BT, 5.
8 Nietzsche. BT, 5.
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together with the primordial joy in illusion.”9 This means that the origins and purpose of

existence cannot be deduced by reason alone, instead it requires a dissolution of the senses, in

order to contemplate the primordial state of being.

Early in the text, he Birth of Tragedy proclaims that “art — and not morality — was the

essential metaphysical human activity; in the book itself there appears many times over the

suggestive statement that the existence of the world is justified only as an aesthetic

phenomenon,”10 which illustrates Nietzsche’s disinterest in any kind of “God” in the moral sense.

He elucidates on this meaning in the introduction of the 1886 revision, where he mentions he

does believe in some kind of “amoral artist God,” who seeks to know itself “in creation and

destruction; good and evil,”11 as a way of describing the seemingly contradictory nature of

existence itself, through the interaction between Apollonian and Dionysian powers. He further

explains that “the world is at every moment the attained redemption of God, as the eternally

changing, eternally new vision of the one who suffers most, who is the most rent with

contradictions, the most inconsistent, who knows how to save himself only in appearances,”12

meaning that reality itself is created by fluctuating forces that do not fit into a moral model of

existence; the Dionysian force is metaphorical for the ever-changing, fluctuating nature of time

and space, and the Apollonian force then is metaphorical for the need to maintain an individuated

counter-force capable of preserving itself against the Dionysian current of dissolution. The

combination of these energies originated in art, which Nietzsche also believed to be a reflection

of nature.

9 Nietzsche. BT, 5.
10 Nietzsche. “An Attempt at Self Criticism.” BT, 5.
11 Nietzsche. “An Attempt… 5.
12 Nietzsche. “An Attempt…” 5.
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The Greek tragedies written by Sophocles and Aeschylus were perceived by Nietzsche as

the best representations of the Apollonian and Dionysian interplay that made Greek tragedy as

great as it was. Euripides, on the other hand, was criticized by Nietzsche on the account that he

drastically changed the structure of Greek tragedy, since he “rid Greek drama of the role of the

chorus, the Dionysian element.”13 Before Euripides became popular, the chorus in Greek tragedy

was separate from the main stage, which was symbolic of the primordial Dionysian world being

strange and foreign to the Apollonian characters that act out the play. The members of the chorus

itself were also originally satyrs, the half-man half-goat creatures that where the male followers

of Dionysus, and are symbolic of wildness, licentiousness, irrationality, and the “primordial

image of man,”14 which was later almost completely ignored by Euripides. Nietzsche thought

that Euripides feared the irrational by limiting the role of the chorus, which was the turning point

that pushed Greece towards becoming a dominantly Apollonian culture. Rationality, paired with

reason, were the catalysts for the fall of classic Greek tragedy according to Nietzsche, but he did

not believe Euripides alone was responsible for the change.

The most controversial aspect of Birth of Tragedy, is the harsh attack on Socrates that

Nietzsche instigates. To him, the Socratic way of life is “the most honest theoretical man,

ventured to state that for him the search for the truth counted for more than truth itself,”15 which

is where Nietzsche formulates the idea of the “theoretical man.” This “theoretical man”

represents the endless pursuit of knowledge and science, which seeks to destroy myth by

elevating the value of reason over metaphor. Nietzsche is critical of Socrates because of its

failure to come up with an objective truth about the meaning of existence, a mission that he saw

as overly optimistic. This is further proof as to why Nietzsche rejected a moral basis for

13 Jackson. 48.
14 Nietzsche. BT, 8.
15 Nietzsche. BT, 15.
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existence, because it always seemed to aim at a more profound; constantly correcting itself

without ultimately defining a practical rule for living. Art however, does come to a practical

goal, which is to create myth; an eternal representation of the human condition powered by

metaphor.

While The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music was initially met with harsh

criticism after its publication, both by reputable academics and later Nietzsche himself, he

formulates incredibly interesting ideas that helped him develop his own unique style of writing

and philosophy. The Apollonian and Dionysian forces are fascinating because they are vastly

complex and difficult to define in a simple and succinct manner, yet they are recognizable by

contemplating the human condition in relation to the world as a whole, as the Greeks did with the

art of tragedy. Nietzsche argued that the forces need to be balanced, but not “moderated,” in

order to cultivate a healthy culture, since moderation leans towards the Apollonian force.

However, he also asserted that culture had become excessively Apollonian through the pursuit of

science and the development of modernity, and as a result people had become stagnant and

uninspired, which although was an unpopular opinion for his time became popular in the early

20th century and onwards to the present. Culture was very important to Nietzsche, as evidenced

by his nostalgia for Ancient Greece, and one of the most important idea expressed in his early

writings is that modernity is dangerous, because it aims at an endless pursuit of truth that fails to

stop to take in the beauty of the Apollonian and Dionysian powers working together to create art.

Works Cited
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Hollingdale, R.J. Nietzsche. Ark Paperbacks, London. 1985. Print

Jackson, Roy. Teach Yourself Nietzsche. McGraw-Hill, UK. 2008. Print.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. Trans: Johnston, Ian.

Vancouver Island University. Web Accessed.