The Smile of Tragedy: Nietzsche and the Art of Virtue 9780271058900

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The Smile of  Tragedy

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Literature and Philosophy A. J. Cascardi, General Editor

This series publishes books in a wide range of subjects in philosophy and literature, including studies of the social and historical issues that relate these two fields. Drawing on the resources of the AngloAmerican and Continental traditions, the series is open to philosophically informed scholarship covering the entire range of contemporary critical thought. already published: J. M. Bernstein, The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno Peter Bürger, The Decline of Modernism Mary E. Finn, Writing the Incommensurable: Kierkegaard, Rossetti, and Hopkins Reed Way Dasenbrock, ed., Literary Theory After Davidson David P. Haney, William Wordsworth and the Hermeneutics of Incarnation David Jacobson, Emerson’s Pragmatic Vision: The Dance of the Eye Gray Kochhar-Lindgren, Narcissus Transformed: The Textual Subject in Psychoanalysis and Literature Robert Steiner, Toward a Grammar of Abstraction: Modernity, Wittgenstein, and the Paintings of Jackson Pollock Sylvia Walsh, Living Poetically: Kierkegaard’s Existential Aesthetics Michel Meyer, Rhetoric, Language, and Reason Christie McDonald and Gary Wihl, eds., Transformations in Personhood and Culture After Theory Charles Altieri, Painterly Abstraction in Modernist American Poetry: The Contemporaneity of Modernism John C. O’Neal, The Authority of Experience: Sensationist Theory in the French Enlightenment John O’Neill, ed., Freud and the Passions Sheridan Hough, Nietzsche’s Noontide Friend: The Self as Metaphoric Double E. M. Dadlez, What’s Hecuba to Him? Fictional Events and Actual Emotions Hugh Roberts, Shelley and the Chaos of History: A New Politics of Poetry Charles Altieri, Postmodernisms Now: Essays on Contemporaneity in the Arts Arabella Lyon, Intentions: Negotiated, Contested, and Ignored Jill Gordon, Turning Toward Philosophy: Literary Device and Dramatic Structure in Plato’s Dialogues Michel Meyer, Philosophy and the Passions: Toward a History of Human Nature. Translated by Robert F. Barsky Reed Way Dasenbrock, Truth and Consequences: Intentions, Conventions, and the New Thematics David P. Haney, The Challenge of Coleridge: Ethics and Interpretation in Romanticism and Modern Philosophy Alan Singer, Aesthetic Reason: Artworks and the Deliberative Ethos Tom Huhn, Imitation and Society: The Persistence of Mimesis in the Aesthetics of Burke, Hogarth, and Kant Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei, The Ecstatic Quotidian: Phenomenological Sightings in Modern Art and Literature Max Statkiewicz, Rhapsody of Philosophy: Dialogues with Plato in Contemporary Thought David N. McNeill, An Image of the Soul in Speech: Plato and the Problem of Socrates Alan Singer, The Self-Deceiving Muse: Notice and Knowledge in the Work of Art Chad Wellmon, Becoming Human: Romantic Anthropology and the Embodiment of Freedom Ilya Kliger, The Narrative Shape of Truth: Veridiction and Modernity in Nineteenth-Century France and Russia

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The Smile of  Tragedy Nietzsche and the Art of Virtue

Daniel Ahern

The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Pennsylvania

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ahern, Daniel R., 1952– The smile of tragedy: Nietzsche and the art of virtue / Daniel Ahern. p.   cm. — (Literature and philosophy) Summary: “Examines Nietzsche’s approach to what he called ‘the tragic age of the Greeks’ as the foundation not only for his attack upon the birth of philosophy during the ‘Socratic era’ but also for his overall critique of Western culture”—Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references (p.   ) and index. isbn 978-0-271-05250-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844–1900—Aesthetics. 2. Ethics, Ancient. 3. Tragic, The. 4. Socrates. I. Title. B3318.A4A34 2012 193—dc23 2011043049 Copyright © 2012 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, anzi z39.48–1992. This book is printed on Natures Natural, which contains 50% post-consumer waste.

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Every broken word for her . . . for Annette

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Contents

Acknowledgments  ix Abbreviations  xi Introduction  1 1 Dionysian Pessimism  8 2 The Good and Beautiful Body  34

I The Risk of Virtue  34 II An Outline for a Physiology of Aesthetics  45

3 The Socratic Cure for Life  70

I The Twilight of Ecstasy and the Birth of “Happiness”  70 II Apollo Democratized: The Birth of “Aesthetics”  90

Tomorrow and the Day After Tomorrow  108 Notes  123 Bibliography  141 Index  145

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In memory of my father, Joseph Michael Ahern, 1927–2008, and my best friend, Annette Jean Ahern, 1958–2009

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Acknowledgments

I wish to express my thanks to the Faculty of Arts at the University of New Brunswick for all the encouragement and support, especially Dr. David ­Flagel, Dr. Robert Moore, Dr. Thom Workman, Dr. James Murray, Mr. Robert Derrah, and, in the Department of Philosophy, Dr. Robert Larmer and Drs. Jennifer and Ronald Weed. I also thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for financial support of this ­project. Thanks as well to Mr. Rodney Parker, Mr. Matthew Reinhart, and Mr. Steven Scott for the fine work they did as my research assistants. For her criticism and editorial assistance, I want to thank Ms. Anne Simpson. and, for their research and editorial assistance, thanks very much to Dr. Michael Mills and Dr. Maria Papaioannou in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of New Brunswick. For their support and steadfast friendship, many thanks to Dr. Frank Cronin, Professor William Elderkin, Dr. Rod Michalko, Dr. Tanya Titchkosky, Dr. Jeff Frooman, and Dr. Brian Cupples. To Maria and Denise Melanson, many thanks for the solitude and beauty of “the cottage.” For the happy days at their “place” tucked under the pines, and their constant friendship, thanks to Louise Melanson and Fred McNeil. For their friendship, encouragement, and great company long before this project ever began, thanks so very much to Deborah Hopper and Paul ­Melanson. I cannot in words do justice in expressing my gratitude to my wife Dr. Annette Ahern for all her editorial work, confidence, and encouragement throughout this project. I am equally bereft of ability in thanking my two sons Brendan and Aidan for their company, patience, and the great gift of simply knowing they are here with me.

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Abbreviations

Listed below are the abbreviations I use for all references to Nietzsche’s published and unpublished works.

i. translations of nietzsche’s published works A B BT BT SC CW D E GM GS HH T UM Z

The Anti-Christ Beyond Good and Evil The Birth of Tragedy The Birth of Tragedy “Attempt at a Self-Criticism” The Case of Wagner Daybreak Ecce Homo On the Genealogy of Morals The Gay Science Human, All Too Human Twilight of the Idols Untimely Meditations Thus Spoke Zarathustra

ii. translations of nietzsche’s unpublished works “Homer’s Contest” HC SW “The Struggle Between Science and Wisdom” UW “Unpublished Writings from the Period of Unfashionable Observations” PPP “The Pre-Platonic Philosophers” PTA “Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks” WP “The Will to Power” iii. nietzsche’s collected works KGW Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe KGB Briefwechsel: Kritische Gesamtausgabe

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The tragic age of the Greeks: that is where the matter rests. —nietzsche

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Introduction The “ancient world” is one into which, Nietzsche says, “I have sought to find a way, into which I have perhaps found a new way.”1 This study is an attempt to follow the trail. Often the path dissolves into fragments of youthful unpublished text that, as indicators of his direction, leave nothing but a hint or, at best, a guess. Then again, we also find familiar, fairly well-defined markers—especially those warnings he placed around the dangers he identified with the birth of Socratic thought: with the birth, therefore, of Western philosophy. His cautions about “Socratism”2 indicate why he says, “I have perhaps found a new way” (T X 1). This “perhaps,” by no means an expression of self-doubt, is his tempting us toward this “new way.” He dangles it as a possibility and lure into chance and adventure since, after all, the word “perhaps” points to the absence of a “sure thing.” In charting his own course into ancient Greek culture, Nietzsche discovered the things he felt were the basic requirements of a philosophical existence. First and foremost is, of course, a certain joy that, being incomprehensible, can lead to things both terrifying and perfect. Then there is this joy’s location and gift, which, depending on the strength of its generosity, lets us judge who is best and worst among us. With these, Nietzsche saw the countenance of an era he believed tells us at least two things. First, commonsense and practicality, though revealing a profound intelligence, may also be signs of cowardice; and second, those seeking guarantees that an investment of time will deliver the profitable, tangible benefits of “knowledge” should avoid philosophy. Nietzsche’s “new way” into ancient Greek culture showed him that philosophy is not a means to making us “good,” nor to providing happiness, nor to techniques promising immortality, nor to figuring out “the meaning and value of existence.” These matters of self-interest point, he thinks, to that plebeian “Socratism” which, lacking the “sublime abnormality” and “conspicuous uselessness”3 of the earlier cosmology, reveals the symptoms of Greek cultural decay. Ostensibly, his journey began with the publication of The  Birth of Tragedy and continued onward to his call for a revaluation of all values. Throughout his expedition we see a kind of faith; one, Nietzsche

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says, “I have baptized . . . with the name Dionysus” (T IX 49). This name is emblematic of the “new way” he found into both the ancient world, and of his perception of the future of Western culture. Dionysus is a profound “perhaps” at the heart of Nietzsche’s faith; a faith providing him real joy in despising the nihilism he anticipated, and in the exhilarating vision of so many uncertain, only possible, tomorrows. I initiated this study because I wanted to investigate what, for lack of a ­better way of putting it, we might call Nietzsche’s “aesthetics.” That is, I wanted to discern the basis of or at least clarify the categories he employs in judging art and artists—both ancient and modern—as healthy or as “decadent.” I thought Nietzsche’s encounter with Greek antiquity would be a ­preliminary concern, quickly dispatched before proceeding to more important matters.4 But the more closely I approached the “aesthetic” contours of his critique of Greek culture, the more I found the interpretations of both “virtue” and “beauty” he pursues to the end of his philosophical life. For example, as I looked at why he thought tragic poetry was beyond the ken of “that famous old serpent” (B 202) Socrates, I was drawn to questions clustered around his perceptions as to why Plato placed art in the sewers of knowledge. And how is it, I wondered, that Nietzsche is so convinced that Aristotle misunderstood tragedy (T X 5)? Why would he say this? And though, as I said above, Nietzsche’s path into the ancient world is at times well defined, I often found it simply breaks off into multiple directions. Sometimes I would turn around and end up at the same place after having gone in a completely “different” direction. The more I “proceeded,” however, the more it seemed that Nietzsche pointed at things he purposely refused to explicitly “define.” I mean, he seemed to signal a certain comportment or attitude that he would not “explain.” Hence, like so many of us who read his texts, I often ended up lingering over those measured gaps, his guesses, his little wells of silence, the old laurels of ellipses, the jokes with an em-dashed punch line, as well as those provocative, scaffold sentences that dare you to finish them. Overall, though, I have come to think that the famously labyrinthine feature of Nietzsche’s “philosophy” is a purposely deployed web of breaks and of secret bridges running through the main themes of his thinking.5 These are certainly a “tangle,” but they are arranged with an eloquence pointing to the labyrinth wherein, under the rubric “Dionysus,” Nietzsche points at a pretense within the Socratic dialectics that, he believed, reduced Apollo to a cheap lucidity. Anyway, I ended up in that kind of philosophical acrobatics Nietzsche described as a “flight of imagination . . . a leaping from possibility

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to possibility, with these possibilities for the moment being taken as certainties.”6 This interpretation of Nietzsche offers no certainties, due at times, I’m sure, to my lack of agility and at other times to that proximity, a drawing too near, perhaps, to the god without whom there can be no poetry. In the end, this book does not, to quote the managerial class, “move forward.” As a matter of fact, it goes backwards, finding the markers Nietzsche places here and there through that maze leading to what we call his “philosophy.” Originally, I thought tragic poetry, the child of Dionysian and Apollinian powers, seemed the best way to access his perception of art and artists. I still think this is the case, but when I looked at his approaches to tragedy as an art form, I found, as I said above, what struck me more as an attitude, or maybe something like what Foucault meant in speaking of “an aesthetics of existence”7 as opposed to an explanation or “theory of tragedy.” In any case, the attitude or demeanour of “Dionysian pessimism” (GS 370) is the central concern of this book. I have looked at this quickened tendency, which, manifest as Nietzsche’s polemic directed at the Socratic era of Greek antiquity, will ultimately be deployed against Christianity and hence all things “modern.” This attitude is certainly recognizable in the fever pitch of contempt that sustains his philosophy’s generous scorn and sarcasm. Yet this volatile temper is also imbued with the tenderest appeals to love, a sacred, intoxicated “yes” to all innocence, and those little wells of quiet joy around which Nietzsche would harvest the subtlest expressions of gratitude. This strangely mercurial attitude is articulated via a foreign philosophical dialect which, first heard in The Birth of Tragedy, sounded strange and out of place, at least within the horizon of acceptable philosophical language in his lifetime. This is not surprising, since the accent of Dionysian pessimism carries a hint of contempt for the very birth of philosophy.8 For Nietzsche, philosophy was essentially stillborn and, in the guise of the rational “self ” sustaining its history, infected Dionysian and Apollinian artistic energies. He speaks in the idiom peculiar to Dionysian pessimism; that attitude which, when brought to bear on what we would eventually call philosophy, does not conceal a desire to destroy it. In short, Nietzsche speaks with the cadence of that earlier epoch he called “the tragic age.”9 Here was an era wherein the young man discovered the contributions of intoxication to philosophy. He also found an age bereft of any need for a rational self and hence any distinction of mind from body; an age that perceived no schism between poetry and philosophy, and no difference between the virtuous human being and the beautiful one. The dialect of this epoch is not steeped in, nor is it by

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any means inclined to express, the epistemic or moral authority of human, rational identity. On the contrary, it conveys, as I have said, a Dionysian pessimism: an attitude Nietzsche fashions into a philosophical style of balancing an ever-present quiver of ecstasy upon a lucid declaration on behalf of this world—no matter what. This style pervades Nietzsche’s texts, and I think its tone of enraptured ferocity expresses the deeply hazardous values he identified with the tragic age. These values are inseparable from Dionysian pessimism and, essential as they are to the earliest “interpretations” of the virtuous human being, led to his perception of Greek tragedy and cosmology as summits of cultural health. To attempt to speak in the manner of an era “two centuries before Socrates,”10 rendered, as I said above, Nietzsche’s philosophizing alien to his contemporaries. But the rejection of his obscure accent served an “untimely” project in an age whose values he thought had long ago succumbed to decay. Hence his hunt for those nimble readers who, moving between his words and lines, found him mapping our values within and without the confines of grammar (T III 5). To these readers he sought to show that, from a Dionysian perspective, a refusal to explain oneself or avoid contradiction might not be stupidity, but rather a sign of rank and even of good manners. This “unreasonable”11 oeuvre of joke, revenge, and song suspends Nietzsche’s thinking and, perhaps, explains the twists and turns of his various reputations. He’s been the poet-philosopher, the mad philosopher, a Nazi, an anti-Semite, forerunner of existentialism, prophet of war, postmodern pioneer, a male chauvinist, a nihilist, a mask, a mirror, the Antichrist, a guide to the perplexed, and so on. Some of these appellations are deserved and others are not. One thing is clear, though: the various characterizations of Nietzsche’s thinking, including this one, point at our incapacity to be indifferent to him. Indifferent, that is, to the ecstatic hint of the Dionysian he displays throughout his philosophy. As I said, I wanted to look into Nietzsche’s “aesthetics” but found myself gravitating more and more to clarifying the Dionysian disposition, which, though permeating his texts, is an elusive “perhaps.” It always has a bearing of impending activity; of an impatience with knowledge of what “is,” and of scorn for judgments, for or against, the “the value of existence.” I take the term “Dionysian pessimism” to designate what, in The Gay Science, Nietzsche called “tragic insight” (GS 370). He refers to it while demarcating his standpoint from the revenge inherent to the “romantic pessimism” of Wagner’s music, and the whole philosophical tradition of “aesthetics.” In light of his withering rejection of this tradition, along with his identification

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of Dionysian pessimism with a tragic vision, I was drawn to the questions that guide this study. What could he mean by a “Dionysian pessimism” (GS 370)? How does the god of the most savage bliss stand in the vortex of an annihilation “that is pregnant with future” (GS 370)? Does this “pessimism of the future” (GS 370) provide a means to grasping Nietzsche’s high estimation of tragic poetry? Can it clarify his perception of tragedy’s death with the simultaneous emergence of the impoverished “aesthetics” he identifies with Socratism? The more I pursued a response to these questions, the more I found that an appreciation for the attitude of Dionysian pessimism opened up much that is “unsaid” in Nietzsche’s texts. For example, though his hints at the role of the Apollinian within his perception of aesthetics are overshadowed by the status of Dionysus, Apollo is still woven into the suffering essential to virtue and, therefore, the event of beauty. The demeanour of Dionysian pessimism also points to the delicate tone of gratitude we find in Nietzsche’s thinking insofar as it expresses a certain praise for the opportunity to suffer and be destroyed. This “opportunity” sounds strange to the contemporary ear. But these “favourable conditions” are the basis of the subtle joy attending Nietzsche’s vision of tragic art and sustain, I think, not only his aesthetics, but his overall philosophizing. In light of the above remarks, this study is a preamble to a wider one on Nietzsche’s aesthetics12 and remains, therefore, within the parameters of his encounter with Greek antiquity. The significance of this encounter has been the basis for a considerable amount of Nietzsche commentary over the last century.13 And, to the extent that this literature takes up Nietzsche’s relationship with Socrates,14 it must look at the polemic Nietzsche directs at Socrates for being “among the despisers of tragedy.”15 For this reason, the scholarship around Nietzsche’s relationship to Greek antiquity moves, more or less, through an interpretation of his aesthetics. Scholarly contributions to this area of Nietzsche’s philosophy are too numerous to list here, but the following helped to shape the present study. Over twenty-five years ago, M. S. Silk and J. P. Stern’s Nietzsche on Tragedy16 introduced me to the significance of Nietzsche’s early encounter with Greek antiquity through the aesthetics articulated in The Birth of Tragedy. They also pointed me in the “opposite” direction, toward the “pre-Socratic” epoch of philosophy and hence to Nietzsche’s philological problems in his praise of this era.17 John Sallis’s Crossings: Nietzsche and the Space of Tragedy18 showed me how “the wisdom of Silenus” (BT 3) moves into “the Problem of Socrates” in Twilight of the Idols. Volume 2 of Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, The Use of

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Pleasure,19 was a great assistance to me in clarifying Nietzsche’s perception of the contest among competing desires and hence interpreting the relation between “virtue” and the human being as a work of art. In this same vein, Alexander Nehamas’s Virtues of Authenticity and The Art of Living20 helped me to see Nietzsche’s Dionysian pessimism as an “unspoken” temperament which, counter to Socratic irony, determines the “distance” (GM I 2) between human beings. And though Julian Young’s Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Art 21 strikes me as far too narrow in its conclusion concerning Nietzsche’s “pessimism,” this book does point to the value of looking at the role of pessimism within Nietzschean aesthetics. The present work moves within the well-traveled parameters of Nietzsche’s encounter with Greek culture. I hope its creative value will be seen in its exploring what Nietzsche meant by “Dionysian pessimism” (GS 370) in order to grasp the “physiological” divide he saw between the tragic and Socratic epochs of Greek antiquity. I show how Greek cultural health and cultural decay stand with the phenomenon of Dionysus as a physical event the young Nietzsche identified with “the Greeks of the tragic age.”22 I articulate the attitude of Dionysian pessimism, which, being “irrational,” immoral, and fraught with “error,” is not only the risk of suffering and potential death, but also an expression of joy. This very ecstasy dances across Nietzsche’s perception of tragic poetry as the earliest “interpretation” of the “virtue” he believed sustained the warrior aristocracies of “the older Hellenes” (T X 2). This perilous virtue is also the inspired yes to life he identifies with pre-Socratic cosmology: “the most deeply buried of all Greek temples!”23 This book, therefore, attempts to illustrate the posture of Dionysian pessimism in order to clarify Nietzsche’s identification of virtue with artistic creation during the tragic age. Our study ends by tracing Nietzsche’s perception of this identity’s decay into the cherished authority of the Socratic “self.” Chapter 1 provides an initial sketch of Dionysian pessimism by excavating what Nietzsche meant when he referred to “tragic culture.”24 This chapter looks at how Dionysian pessimism is an attitude that, permeating the crudest mores of the earliest warrior “aristocracies,” is nevertheless expressed in both tragic art and pre-Socratic cosmology. Chapter 2 looks at how the various features of Dionysian pessimism are exhibited through what Nietzsche considered basic to “the aesthetic state.” Hence I look at the roles of “­sexuality, intoxication [and] cruelty”25 in the creation of tragic poetry and how they are therefore essential to any artistic endeavour. These two chapters delineate what, for lack of a better way to express it, we might call the characteristics

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or features of Dionysian pessimism. These are generally identifiable in terms of finding the “ethical” and “aesthetic” located at the site of the human body; how the body is a gift provided out of gratitude within the ethical and aesthetic gestures; and finally, how this gift expresses the “selflessness” of Dionysian pessimism by lacking the “plebeian” concern with utility, and as the means to determine the value of a human being. Chapter 3 is dedicated to tracing the revaluation of these elements of Dionysian pessimism with the emergence of Socratic philosophy.

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Dionysian Pessimism “[N]ot even the boy whom his mother carries in the womb; let not even him escape, but let all perish together from Ilios, unmourned and unseen.” So spoke the warrior and . . . he counseled rightly. —Iliad

Fourteen years after completing The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche “appended”1 his “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” wherein, despite the defects of this “strange and almost inaccessible book” (BT SC 1), he still recognized the task to which he had “by no means . . . become a stranger” (BT SC 2). This task, though somehow always haunted by loneliness and smouldering violence, nevertheless breathed a little ecstasy at “that virtuous energy”2 he identified with the “most beautiful, most envied type of humanity to date, those most apt to seduce us to life, the Greeks” (BT SC 1). Nietzsche reaped much from the ancient Greeks, and his passion for them, far from being a dirge-like paean, is rather a seduction into “every labyrinth of the future.” It is easy to get lost here in the midst of such an undeniable “spirit of daring and experiment.” But no matter how quickly Nietzsche moves into dizzying vistas of the future, we must constantly recall that he always “looks back when relating what will come.”3 This “looking back,” this thinking backwards into the ancient world as a means to giving a name to our tomorrow, pervades Nietzsche’s thought. Indeed, the whole foreground of light and life that goes by the name of “Nietzsche’s philosophy” is etched on the horizon of his preoccupation with Greek antiquity. I approach this horizon through Nietzsche’s perception of ancient Greek tragedy and cosmology since they exhibit an attitude which, woven into the ethos he identified with the earliest warrior aristocracies, is central to interpreting the foremost features of his “revaluation of all values” (T Foreword).4 When Nietzsche looked at his contemporaries, he saw a “surfeit of [the] ill-constituted, sickly, weary and exhausted people of which Europe is beginning to stink today.” This perception of “the maggot man . . . swarming in the foreground”5 indicates an irascible disgust at the effects of Christian

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ressentiment 6 upon Europe. His well-known antagonism toward Christianity and its disastrous impact on the “tremendous remnants of what man once was” (B 52) led to his war against everything “modern.” That Nietzsche saw Christianity as a decisive step toward cultural nihilism is well-known, but the soil wherein this poisonous plant took root had already been prepared by a degenerate type of Greek philosophy.7 “In the great fatality of Christianity,” he says, “Plato is that ambiguity and fascination called the ‘ideal’ which made it possible for the nobler natures of antiquity to misunderstand themselves and to step on to the bridge which led to the ‘Cross.’” In the face of this calamity, he tells us, “[m]y recreation, my preference, my cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides.” And if we ask why? Because Thucydides is “the last manifestation of that strong, stern, hard matter-of-factness instinctive to the older Hellenes” (T X 2).8 Here we have one of Nietzsche’s many affirmations of that great divide he saw between the culture of the ancient Hellenes during “the best, the strongest, the most courageous period” (BT SC 1) and later “decadent Hellenism.”9 It seems strange to hear Socrates and Plato—the cornerstones of intellectual history—counted among the foremost promoters of cultural decay among the Greeks. But Nietzsche would have us understand this, and “if it seems otherwise to us that is because we have been brought up in their after-effect.”10 For him, it was the philosophers Socrates, Plato, and “the quarrelsome . . . loquacious hordes of the Socratic schools” (HH I 261)11 who stood opposed to everything “fundamentally Hellenic” (T X 3). A Traitor’s Distinction Nietzsche’s attack upon “the philistinism of the Socratic schools” (T X 3) determines so much of what is now standard “postmodern” fare. But when he first began to emphatically demarcate two epochs of Greek culture in The Birth of Tragedy, the response of his academic contemporaries was viscerally antagonistic. The philological community was appalled at his juxtaposition of Apollo and Dionysus as complementary, yet antagonistic, creative ­powers. They were equally offended at the portrait of Socrates, who, in destroying tragic art, represents for Nietzsche the degeneration of the “physical and spiritual energies” (BT 13) peculiar to the earlier and healthier Hellenic era. For both of these “decisive innovations” (E BT 1), The Birth of Tragedy was considered “‘sheer nonsense’ and . . . quite useless: a person who writes such things

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is dead to scholarship.”12 The publication of the book destroyed his career as a philologist. And, on top of dealing with this professional disaster, the young scholar had to witness the painful ripple effect of having students abandon both his lecture courses at the University of Basel as well as the University’s philology program.13 Being jettisoned from the profession of philology was probably the quickest, albeit harshest, route to where Nietzsche’s philological studies were already leading him: namely, to philosophy. And there is no doubt that his approach to philosophy was already imbued with his perception of both the healthy and degenerate epochs of Greek culture. When it came to the era of “overflowing health” (BT SC 4) he called the “tragic age of the Greeks,”14 Nietzsche certainly stood opposed to contemporary philology. He said the Greeks who created what would eventually be called “philosophy” at this time of “victorious maturity” were not “the sober . . . precocious technicians and the cheerful sensates that the learned philistines of our day imagine.”15 And, besides pointing at “the almost laughable poverty of instinct displayed by German philologists” (T X 4), Nietzsche also expressed a genuine skepticism regarding both Plato’s16 and Aristotle’s (HH I 261) perceptions of their own ancient philosophical ancestors.17 Predictably, this led to the perception that he “seemed to demonstrate disregard for his [philological] teachers.”18 But more significantly, Nietzsche’s articulation of two very diverse epochs within Greek culture led to his early rejection of the historical distinction between the pre-Socratic and post-Socratic epochs of Greek philosophy.19 The young Nietzsche rejects the traditional boundary between these eras in philosophy by making a philosophical distinction based, again, on his ­perception of the Greek culture’s two epochs of physiological health and degeneration. The age of profound cultural vitality, that between the six and fifth centuries BCE,20 saw the emergence, Nietzsche said, of “the pre-Platonic philosophers.”21 The thinkers “from Thales to Socrates” articulated the “beautiful possibilities of life”22 and should be seen as “one homogenous company,” because “from Plato on there is something essentially amiss with philosophers.”23 What is lacking is the vitality of the earlier age: the philosophers from Plato onward display the symptoms of “a decline of strength” (BT SC 4). In light of these concerns, it is curious that Nietzsche refers neither to “the pre-Platonic philosophers” nor to the “pre-Socratics” in his published works.24 But aside from these disinclinations, three features of the young Nietzsche’s initial approach to philosophy will remain constant throughout his intellectual life: the “physiological” distinction between the healthy and

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decadent epochs of Greek culture; the assertion that Greek philosophy, from Socrates onwards, is symptomatic of cultural decline (T X 3); and, though Socrates remains the last of the “original and exemplary sages”25 we call the pre-Socratics, his rank among them is the lowest.26 Nietzsche’s perception of the great rift between the healthy and degenerate ages of Greek culture determines not only his critique of Greek philosophy but also the horizon of his approach to Greek tragedy. Since this “physiological” distinction is going to directly and indirectly constitute the rest of this study,27 we must start with a look at Nietzsche’s fascination with the epoch that gave birth to both Greek cosmology and tragic art. We are speaking here of what he called the tragic age of the Greeks; that face of “the ancient world” (T X 1) upon which he read “the unity of philosophy and art for the purposes of culture.”28 The thinking he identified with what he called “the tragic age,”29 along with the contemporaneous emergence of the art of tragedy, revealed the symptoms of the profound health he would always identify with that epoch. Indeed, the very fact that tragic art and something that would one day be called “philosophy” could even emerge on the face of the earth constitutes “the highest authority for what we may term cultural health.”30 On the other hand, the connection between tragedy and the history of Greek philosophy is not only amplified with respect to the overflowing health of the early ­Hellenes. Nietzsche also recognizes this alliance when he describes the misunderstanding and destruction of tragedy at the hands of the last of the “original and exemplary sages,”31 named Socrates. Before we proceed any further, it has to be said from the beginning that Nietzsche speaks of “the tragic age” only in his early notes: at least as early as 1868 in the unfinished manuscript entitled “Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks,” and up to at least the summer of 1872. But we find no direct references to it in the published corpus, where this epoch is, at best, alluded to in the midst of unfavourable comparisons to his contemporary German culture32 and to the Socratic age of Greek cultural decay. Nietzsche’s abandonment of the designation “tragic age” notwithstanding, I use it throughout this investigation since this epoch is the background out of which he will sketch his critique of Western culture in terms of the central motifs of his philosophizing. Though he will drop such phrases as “the tragic age” and “pre-Platonic” philosophy, this era’s tragic poets and thinkers will serve as a touchstone for taking the measure of all the targets within the great range of what he called his “revaluation of all values” (T Foreword). Certainly, his very earliest sketches and attempts to look into the personalities of the tragic poets

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and pre-Socratics are charged with a youthful enthusiasm and ardour. But his love for Greek antiquity remained throughout his life, and, though he abandoned the language peculiar to his earlier philosophical philology, we can see his lifelong conviction that early Greek tragic poetry and cosmology pointed to a reservoir of possibilities that might open up new paths for the future. To Nietzsche as a youth, of course, the horizon of this “future” was dominated by Schopenhauer and Wagner as forerunners of a German renaissance. Yet, while acknowledging these cumbersome influences fourteen years later in his “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” a mature Nietzsche describes the tragic age in the same youthful, reverential tone as “the best, the strongest, the most courageous period” (BT SC 1). Consequently, I use the designation “tragic age” for several reasons: Nietzsche’s consistent perception of this epoch as the acme of cultural health; his own admission that the problems he confronted as a youth in The Birth of Tragedy were never abandoned (BT SC 2); and my own belief that what Nietzsche would come to call “tragic wisdom” (E BT 3) hinges on possibilities for the future he found in his own very original encounter with what, as a young man, he called the “Greeks of the tragic age.”33 Thus, the history of Greek philosophy is important to Nietzsche for several reasons. First, it reveals the physiological status of Greek culture, the importance of which cannot be overemphasized, especially in light of the dominant concerns with health and sickness permeating the Nietzsche corpus. Second, the history of Greek philosophy runs parallel to that of Greek tragedy in both the healthy and decadent epochs. And finally, Nietzsche sees the history of Greek philosophy as having been thoroughly distorted through the influence of the later epoch of Greek cultural decline. Regarding this latter point, it is worth noting that essential to his perception of this negative effect upon Western intellectual history is Nietzsche’s assertion of the profound failure to grasp the terrifying strength that sustained the “truly healthy culture”34 of the tragic age. As he put it, “[d]estiny has ordained [that] the more recent and decadent Hellenism has had the greatest historical power. For this reason the older Hellenism was always falsely judged. One must,” he continues, “be minutely acquainted with the more recent type to distinguish it from the older type.”35 These words, though written by the young Nietzsche, express a point of view he would maintain for the rest of his intellectual life. That is, he would always assert the great gulf between these two epochs as divisible along the “physiological” lines of health and decay.36 And he also constantly affirmed that the history of Western culture has, much to its harm, remained essentially

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ignorant of the earlier, healthier, tragic age of the Greeks because “Plato and all the Socratic schools fought against it!” (D 168). The “anti-Hellenic”37 Plato was biased toward the tragic age as “a very immoral culture” (D 168). This prejudice seeped into every succeeding intellectual discipline and was promoted by those “most learned and conceited of all scholars, the philologists and schoolmen, who are both by profession” (B 204).38 Plato’s myopic vision of the earlier Hellenes is “the ancient error” (D 168) Nietzsche saw flourishing throughout the post-Socratic intellectual history of Greek antiquity.39 So our conception of what constitutes a “high culture” originates from the age of a degenerating Greek culture. Ultimately, we have looked to “the more recent and decadent Hellenism”40 for our standards of excellence, thanks to the philologists who, wrapped in Christian prejudices validated by the authority of Plato, went “scenting out ‘beautiful souls,’ ‘golden means’ and other perfections in the Greeks . . . such things as their repose in grandeur, their ideal disposition, their sublime simplicity—a niaiserie allemande when all is said and done” (T X 3). In the foregoing, I have emphasized several key points. I have noted Nietzsche’s physiological distinction between the earlier, healthy epoch of Greek culture during the fifth and sixth centuries BCE and the subsequent degenerate age beginning in the fourth century. By drawing attention to Nietzsche’s philosophical distinction between the pre-Socratic and postSocratic philosophers, we have also seen that the history of philosophy serves as an indicator of both physiological phases of this culture. Moreover, we have found that he traces the physiological status of Greek culture not only through the history of Greek philosophy, but also through that of tragic art. Last, but by no means least in importance, is Nietzsche’s perception of how the prejudices of degenerate Greek antiquity toward the earlier tragic age have permeated our intellectual history. All of these points were originally articulated by the young Nietzsche, and each is essentially inseparable from the other. And it is important to emphasize that each of these observations on ancient Greek culture not only anticipates, but also makes possible the convictions of the mature thinker on the status of Western culture. Could Nietzsche have spoken of the disease of nihilism without that model of cultural health he saw in early Greek culture? No. Could Nietzsche have proposed that marvelous and strange “cure” for cultural nihilism he called “eternal recurrence” without the cosmic affirmation he saw in the annihilation of Dionysus? No. Could Nietzsche have made the myriad observations he does on art and artists without first having

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asked why “those most apt to seduce us to life, the Greeks . . . should have needed tragedy” (BT SC 1)? No. The primary concern of this chapter, then, is to begin our look at the young Nietzsche’s approach to what he called “the tragic age”41 of the Greeks. His fascination with this epoch takes him into an antiquity rife with a prodigious vitality, cruelty, and terror that gives birth, he thought, not only to what we now call “tragedy,” but also to that first attempt to name the “order of rank” pervading all things which we call “cosmology.” In providing the foregoing, we will be in a better position to enter the concerns of the next chapter, in which I will point to what Nietzsche meant in speaking of the “delicate problems of the physiology of aesthetics, which is practically untouched and unexplored so far” (GM III 8). Hence this chapter and the next are strictly provisional in character since both are concerned with constructing the point of departure for our wider concerns, namely, the critical standpoint from which Nietzsche speaks of virtuous human beings as inseparable from the event of beauty. Blood Relatives In spite of his often visceral attack upon it, we nevertheless acquire the unmistakable impression of Nietzsche’s great love for Greek antiquity. Indeed, no matter how antagonistic he was toward its decadent epoch, he still saw that, even in its “skinny old age”42 the ancient Greek culture retained a seductive power and greatness that, when compared, rendered the Europe of his day an embarrassment. But if this is so, then what is the character of the tragic age? Nietzsche does not speak of the “age of tragedy”—as if in exclusive reference to the emergence of the art of tragedy. To the young man, the tragic age is certainly that during which tragic art emerged, but contemporaneous with it is the “tragic knowledge”43 embodied in the pre-Socratic philosophers. But if he is not only referring to the emergence or “birth” of tragedy as an art form during what he called the “tragic age,” then what does he mean when he refers to the “tragic?” To respond to this question, we will enter that world “into which,” Nietzsche said, “I have sought to find a way, into which I have perhaps found a new way—the ancient world” (T X 1). To be guided by Nietzsche into the fifth and sixth centuries of Greek antiquity is to acquaint ourselves with human beings who, from his point of view, necessarily fail to fit our contemporary perception of the “human.” Here we really must use our imaginations

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in order to encounter “human beings . . . who are dependent on themselves and want their species to prevail, most often because they have to prevail or run the terrible risk of being exterminated” (B 262). This was a world “ruled,” he says, “by the children of Night: strife, lust, deceit, old age and death.”44 Nietzsche is moving here in the Homeric world of the warrior ethos akin to Lycurgian Sparta; a world of yearning violence that constantly exploded from without and from within. It was an age which delighted in cruelty: delighted, that is, in the infliction of pain as a prize and pleasure for those who, through combat and/or social rank, had to earn the right to assert their superiority over “lesser” people. Ultimately, for the warlike Hellenes of this period, “combat is salvation . . . and the cruelty of victory is the pinnacle of life’s jubilation.”45 The origins, Nietzsche says, “of everything great on earth . . . [are] soaked in blood thoroughly and for a long time” (GM II 6). But this should not “furnish our pessimists with more grist for their discordant and creaking mills.” Rather, we must make the effort to step out of a centuries-cultivated “feeling of shame at man” and recall that “in the days when mankind was not yet ashamed of its cruelty, life on earth was more cheerful than it is now that pessimists exist” (GM II 7). It is hard for us to grasp “how naïvely, how innocently . . . [the ancient] thirst for cruelty manifested itself ” (GM II 6)— especially “[t]oday, when suffering is always brought forward as the principal argument against existence” (GM II 7). We certainly resist “a really vivid comprehension of the degree to which cruelty constituted the great festival pleasure of more primitive men” (GM II 6). But our contemporary inclination to see cruelty as an argument against the value of life and living should not impede our path into Greek antiquity. If we are going to let Nietzsche guide us into “the ancient world” (T X 1), then we have to bear in mind that this was by no means a delicate age. And though we may be appalled, and condemn the ancient “joy in cruelty,” we must “recall the ages in which the opposite opinion prevailed.” Here we find human beings who “were unwilling to refrain from making suffer [sic] and saw in it an enchantment of the first order, a genuine seduction to life (GM II 7). Of course, “the voluptuous pleasure” (GM II 5) of cruelty is just one of the passions peculiar to “those centuries when the Greek body flourished and the Greek soul foamed over with health” (BT SC 4). The great love for combat, slaughter, enslavement, and, in a word, destruction is typical, Nietzsche says, of “the good severe will of the older Greeks” (BT SC 4). “Here we look,” he tells us, “into the abyss of hatred” and see “that the

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Greeks considered it an earnest necessity to let their hatred flow forth fully.”46 These “severe, warlike, prudently taciturn men” forged aristocracies “through the long fight with essentially constant unfavorable conditions” (B 262) and battled, not merely for existence, but for growth in accordance with life as will to power. Among such violent, suspicious, intolerant people, there is the fascination and proud identification with “the image of everything underlying existence that is frightful, evil, a riddle, destructive, fatal” (BT SC 4). Hence, the tragic age of the Greeks reveals individuals who, through a capacity for great violence, and the attendant pleasure of subjecting the vanquished to torture, are far from those we now consider humane or laudable. Nietzsche is not applauding brutality in his descriptions of the tragic age. But he was drawn to the profound contrast he perceived between the naiveté or innocence with which the Greeks, “two centuries before Socrates” (E BT:3), embraced and honoured virtually everything that his own Europe, at least in principle, considered immoral. He saw the values peculiar to the oldest warrior type as determining the spirit of the first aristocracies, and certainly those for the Greek culture of the tragic age. At that time, the idea that cruelty, combat, and enslavement were somehow “wrong” would have been unthinkable. But far more important than the stark contrast between the ancient attitude toward cruelty and that of his own contemporary Europe is Nietzsche’s genuine fascination with the fact that among the “older Hellenes” (T X 2), with their “craving for the ugly” (BT SC 4) and “tigerish lust to annihilate,”47 there also emerged into the light of day that narcotic activity through which the “beauty” of tragic art was created. We cannot be surprised that the passions of hatred, the lust for battle, and the intoxicating effects of cruelty and violence are honoured, for example, by Greek sculptors, who, Nietzsche says, gave “form again and again to war and combat in innumerable repetitions: distended human bodies, their sinews tense with hatred or with the arrogance of triumph; writhing bodies, wounded; dying bodies, expiring.” We should not forget that “the whole Greek world exult[ed] over the combat scenes of the Iliad,” and if we should find ourselves shuddering at this jubilance, then Nietzsche maintains we do not understand this ancient world “in a sufficiently ‘Greek’ manner.”48 That is, they were not “the sober and precocious technicians and the cheerful sensates that the learned philistines of our day imagine they were.”49 Rather, the tragic age, so rife with violence and the mythologies which “really must strike fear into our hearts,”50 is “the womb of everything Hellenic.”51

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This womb gave birth to tragedy. But the genealogy of this art form bears nothing of the accidental or contingent. Tragedy was not a “natural” gift peculiar to the Greeks of early antiquity. On the contrary, for Nietzsche it exposes the same “steely necessity which binds a philosopher to a genuine culture.”52 The tragic poet emerged as necessary to an age that cultivated imaginations “accustomed to the horrible,”53 and whose purpose was enmeshed and inseparable from the bloodlines of a warrior aristocracy. Nietzsche’s insistence here on the emergence of tragedy as a “necessity”54 and not a “‘natural quality’” (T X 3) is another way to demarcate his perception of Greek antiquity from that of the philologists of his time. The influence of Rousseau’s vision of “nature,” along with their own high estimation of the “decadent” epoch of Greek culture, led philologists to attribute multiple natural “perfections” (T X 3) to the Greeks which, to Nietzsche, were “nauseously frivolous” (T X 4). Not surprisingly, his own view of nature was far from that of Rousseau’s (T IX 48), and, in accord with his conception of the will to power, tragic art could only have emerged among those who took the steps necessary for their preservation and growth in the “long fight with essentially constant unfavorable conditions” (B 262). But if this is so, then our essential question is articulated quite clearly by Nietzsche himself. How is it, he wonders, that the “best turned out, most beautiful, most envied type of humanity to date, those most apt to seduce us to life, the Greeks . . . of all people should have needed tragedy” (BT SC 1)? His response is that it satisfied the need to see the annihilation of noble human beings. The pleasure of witnessing the destruction of a splendid person strikes us as counterintuitive and morally wrong. But such an impression is, from Nietzsche’s point of view, again indicative of how alien and strange the Greeks of the tragic age are to us. Of course, some of us, out of what Nietzsche called ressentiment, are pleased at the destruction of a “noble” person. But his perception of the ancient need, gratified through tragic art, is not that of resentment.55 Moreover, he will also criticize those who, like Schopenhauer, see tragic art as a comfort and means to accepting the contingencies that lead to human suffering: as if tragedy’s “greatest function was to ‘dispose one to resignation’” (T IX 24). And, as we noted earlier, Nietzsche will go so far as to fault Aristotle’s interpretation of tragedy as itself among the central reasons why we have failed to grasp why the Greeks “needed tragedy” (BT SC 1). It seems astounding to us that Nietzsche will see Aristotle’s paradigmatic interpretation of tragedy, itself an “artifact” of Greek antiquity, as a misunderstanding (T X 5). Nevertheless, he saw tragic art so woven into the

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mores of the earliest warrior aristocracies that by the time Aristotle speaks of the “two depressive affects . . . [of ] terror and pity,”56 Greek culture had already drifted far from its artistic moorings in the previous age. We tend to think of tragedy as something negative, gloomy and terrible. We use the term “tragedy” to express those experiences which heave us into the profoundest suffering: events of horrifying terror and sorrow so intense as to be actually unspeakable. It denotes events that lead us to doubt any semblance of the possibility of justice, and reveal why we despair at the world and the human race. This misery can smash human beings into those who, having been “hurt enough,” will fear their desires as paths to further pain. Or they may tend to despise those who, risking more suffering, will nevertheless seek to fulfill their desires. Such rancorous individuals become our cynics or, if not quite that bitter, enter into a protective shell of “pessimism” and resentment. It is perhaps worth noting that Nietzsche was himself no stranger to “tragedy” in the sense of fierce suffering.57 Yet, his own considerable experience aside, he was of the view that tragedy as an art—as a taking pleasure in the destruction of noble human beings—did not move within the contours of anything like resentment, resignation, or catharsis, since these standpoints are entirely too “pessimistic.” That is, there is something about these points of view which betrays “weariness, fatalism, disappointment, and fear of new disappointments—or else ostentatious wrath, a bad mood, the anarchism of indignation, and whatever other symptoms and masquerades of the feeling of weakness there may be” ( GS 347). What we have here, then, points to a pessimism that is symptomatic of weakness, which, cultivated through suffering, is a type of “disinclination.” Pessimism as a mode of “weakness” is an unwillingness, or reluctance, to have faith in life because of pain and suffering, not to mention the indifference of nature and the contingencies that forever undermine our hunger for knowledge and justice. But tragic art, Nietzsche says, is “far from providing evidence of ­pessimism among the Hellenes in Schopenhauer’s sense” (T X 5)—or in any sense mentioned thus far. His interpretation of tragedy as the way the ancient Greeks took pleasure in “the sacrifice of its highest types” (T X 5) points to what, for us, is so foreign a perception of “pessimism” as to be almost eerie. In short, there is for Nietzsche not only a pessimism of weakness, but also one symptomatic of a sound and incontestable health. “Is pessimism,” he asks “necessarily a sign of decline . . . and weak instincts—as it once was in India and now is . . . among us, ‘modern’ men and Europeans” (BT SC 1)? Of course, he answers “no” to this rhetorical question by pointing at “a pessimism of

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strength” manifest in a “sharp-eyed courage that tempts and attempts, that craves the frightful as the enemy, the worthy enemy, against whom one can test one’s strength . . . [f ]rom whom one can learn what it means ‘to be frightened’” (BT SC 1). Here we see that Nietzsche found the roots of Greek tragedy reaching so deeply into the savage health he identified with the earliest warrior aristocracies that what we call “pessimism” showed him the most ferocious will to power ever realized in cultural history (BT SC 1). In contrast to the “weariness, fatalism, disappointment, and fear of new disappointments” (GS 347) typical of “us, ‘modern’ men and Europeans,” Nietzsche saw that “there still could be an altogether different kind of pessimism, a classical type.”58 This classical or “Dionysian pessimism” (GS 370)59 is one wherein there is a vision of one’s own destruction as necessary, and it constitutes the mores of a culture that gave “form again and again to war and combat in innumerable repetitions.”60 This attitude affirms that one must inevitably be destroyed; not merely as a simple “fact of knowledge,” but more in the manner of taking possession of one’s death as one’s own to bestow in a deed that, in conferring “value” on something or someone, is the hallmark of a virtuous human being. This virtue of great courage and generosity has been identified with Socrates, who provided his death to the future of Athens. Yet Nietzsche refuses Socrates this honour since he represents “a ­misunderstanding” (T II 11) of Dionysian pessimism. But I’m getting ahead of myself here and, in light of the above, will just point out that in affirming one’s inescapable destruction, the question becomes “is there anything upon which I can rightly and genuinely squander myself?” In a warrior culture this attitude finds its expression in “master morality” (B 260) and is cultivated over generations (B 262) for whom the objects worthy of sacrifice are, of course, one’s family, class, city, and culture. Individuals quite capable and actually enthusiastic at the prospect of being destroyed in combat are essential to the preservation and growth of an elite warrior class.61 Indeed, those prepared to provide their own destruction for the benefit of generations to come are exactly the ones who, insofar as they are not ­concerned with preserving themselves, are judged to be “noble.” This “different kind of pessimism” (GS 370) is an affirmation of the value of the life of the noble since it can and must be risked for something more significant than the individual. Here, the value of a noble human being hinges on the capacity to recognize that there are things more valuable than his or her own life. Such is the conviction that the value of an individual rests upon how well that individual disposes of his or her life for the sake of the future. This feature

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of “virtue” is characteristic of that “pessimism of strength” Nietzsche identified with “the Greeks of the best, the strongest, most courageous period” (BT SC 1) and is, as we shall see, central to our examination of Nietzsche’s philosophizing. Our look at pessimism as modes of weakness and strength clarifies why any art form which affirms destruction as essential to creating the genuine value of one’s own life62 would have a certain enchantment for warrior aristocracies. When Nietzsche speaks of tragic art as the means through which Greek culture took pleasure in the “sacrifice of its highest types” (T X 5), this pleasure has to be seen as peculiar to a caste whose most basic values are being revered. As the young Nietzsche asked, “so that they may ‘live resolutely’, wholly and fully; would not the tragic man of this culture, given that he has trained himself for what is grave and terrifying, be bound . . . to desire tragedy as his very own Helen” (BT 18)?63 The ancient willingness not only to imperil oneself, but also to seek occasions of danger and suffering, points to the heart of the values and morality of “the older Hellenes” (T II 4). These were people who, from birth, were cultivated toward the values inherent to jeopardizing themselves. Virtues such as courage, generosity, and honesty were seen to be the property only of those who, in a very certain sense, knew that they had a responsibility to die well. Those not brought up in this manner possessed only those “virtues” conferred upon them by the warrior class. Here we see the foundations of those ancient orders of rank forged by individuals who “practice the difficult art of—going at the right time” (Z I 21) and cultivate the acceptance of self-destruction as the basis of their value as human beings. This is “the noble type” which, Nietzsche says, “experiences itself as determining values . . . it knows itself to be that which first accords honor to things; it is value-creating” (B 260). And, as is well-known, Nietzsche recognized that the very basis upon which Plato would later speak about virtue was initially provided by the oldest type of the warrior Greek noble, “who does not need approval” and for whom “morality is self-glorification” (B 260). A warrior aristocracy is composed of individuals who, through their willingness to destroy and be destroyed for something more valuable than themselves, generate the earliest interpretations of virtue. Their resolve to suffer unhesitatingly, and die if need be, constitutes their value and their supremacy over others. We are speaking here, of course, about “master morality.” Commentators on Nietzsche, and I include myself among them, generally tend to a narrow view of this morality; that is, its violence and ugliness lead us to

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look away from its horror and then reduce it to the binary relation Nietzsche articulates as “slave morality.” But I think the value of Nietzsche’s articulation of master morality exceeds the significance of the master-slave contrast and provides us a clue to his early characterizations of the tragic age.64 It certainly takes little imagination to grasp that a culture fashioned according to the values of a warrior caste possesses a history rife with an unquestionably horrific violence. The “depths,” Nietzsche says, “of such subterranean things are difficult to fathom” (GM II 6), but this is hardly the place to “yield to humanitarian illusions about the origin of an aristocratic society” (B 257)—not to mention the origins of the “virtues” later celebrated by Plato. For Nietzsche, the tragic age was a revelation of the truth that, without the lure and risk of annihilation, there can be no courage, no honour, no justice, and no culture. As he has Zarathustra point out, “[t]he devotion of the greatest is to encounter risk and danger and play dice for death” (Z II 12). As a result, our genealogist of morals thought everything that would later go by the name of “ethics” had its content and origin in the ancient capacity “to die in battle and to squander a great soul” (Z I 21). But aside from “ethics,” what would later be called “aesthetics” also points to the values Nietzsche saw forged out of the necessity and desire to risk death in battle.65 We spoke of tragedy as satisfying the need to see the annihilation of noble human beings, and with Nietzsche’s characterization of the ancient, warlike Hellenes this interpretation of tragic art is more comprehensible. All of us are initially offended at the idea of people needing to see the destruction of others. This is understandable, Nietzsche says, because “noble morality . . . is not the morality of ‘modern ideas’” and hence the values of the tragic age are “hard to empathize with today . . . [and] also hard to dig up and uncover” (B 260). Yet we have gone some way toward uncovering why the Greeks “should have needed tragedy” (BT SC 1) and toward the clarification of the pleasure peculiar to a caste that delighted in tragedy: enjoyed, that is, “the sacrifice of its highest types” (T X 5). But we have only advanced a little in the direction of our quest. In fact, the foregoing description of Greek tragedy’s roots in a warrior aristocracy only serves as a point of departure for the remainder of this chapter and will have to suffice as an initial sketch of the primal basis of tragic poetry within the tragic age. Now we turn to another which, like the first, is essential to Nietzsche’s philosophical critique of the West: his perception of the philosophers of the tragic age—the pre-Socratics.

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Tragic Cosmology I have mentioned the enormous importance Nietzsche attributed to the preSocratic thinkers, especially with reference to their underestimation by the philologists of his day, their being symptomatic of the epoch of the cultural health of the Greeks, and how they bore the wisdom of the tragic age. Bearing in mind the interdependence of these points within Nietzsche’s texts, I will next concentrate primarily on elucidating what he saw as the basis of all Western intellectual history. That is, I want to focus more on the approximately simultaneous birth of philosophy and of tragic art. Both emerge from “the womb of everything Hellenic,”66 so we will look for their genealogical resemblance or, to put it another way, their “unity of style.”67 Nietzsche identified the ancient warrior aristocracies as originating with individuals prepared to risk destruction for the sake of a value which, if not greater than their own lives, was created in the very risk of personal destruction. This attitude conferred upon them the right to rule other human beings and determined their authority to define “what is ‘good’” (B 260). Such a caste believed its existence was synonymous with that of truth and goodness insofar as it consisted of individuals among whom “the exalted, proud states of the soul are experienced as conferring distinction and determining the order of rank” (B 260). This was a ruling elite which essentially created the values of its culture and therewith determined the value of each human being. With regard to the emergence of “that many-colored and dangerous winged creature” (GM III 10) eventually called a philosopher, the young Nietzsche cultivates an image of certain strangers who, characteristic of the epoch, set out to rule the cosmos.68 We have already seen a rudimentary feature of this wisdom above, in that “different kind of pessimism” (GS 370) we are calling Dionysian. Not surprisingly, our contemporary idea that a human life possesses, by the very fact that it is “human,” an inherent value to be cherished quite ­independently of the performance of deeds would be incomprehensible to the Greeks of the tragic age. Predictably, then, the young Nietzsche finds it noteworthy that the pre-Socratics were devoid of an articulation of the “value of the individual.” That is, they do not speak of a privileged epistemic entity called a “self ” to be valorized independently of the dynamics of destruction and creation. In approaching the pre-Socratics Nietzsche asks, “How does the world look through the eyes of these early Greeks?” He never wavers

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about the importance of this question; yet, in approaching his response to it, he says, “I wish to avoid the even, serious tone.”69 That is, he wants his outlook on these “astonished strangers”70 to avoid the practical attitude peculiar to a privileged knowing “self ”—the philologist, for example—who, turning the pre-Socratics into “scientific” objects, compelled a “complete silencing of personality.”71 This muting of personality for the sake of “objectivity” went back, for Nietzsche, to the Platonic rejection of individual, transient existence, in favour of that more “real self ” forever sustained by the vision of universal Truth. Nietzsche’s consistent attack upon this privileged epistemic “self ” permeates his intellectual life and, being essential to his entire critique of Western philosophy, anticipates the postmodern critique of the sovereignty of the knowing subject. But what is particularly worthy of note here is that the postmodern displacement of the self as an epistemic center originates, at least within the context of Nietzsche’s thinking, with his earliest attempt to speak of the philosophers of the tragic age. Among the pre-Socratic thinkers, Nietzsche saw an attractive lack of concern over the individual’s value as an epistemic function that served as a path to virtue. In fact, when Plato is valorizing the rational self as synonymous with philosophy and virtue, we find, Nietzsche thinks, the foremost symptom of cultural decline. So Nietzsche’s desire to avoid the “serious tone” when dealing with the pre-Socratics is his attempt to evade a philosophical prejudice which, being too self-conscious, concealed the prodigious health and marvelously potent “naiveté” that would some day be called “cosmology.” The pre-Socratics’ startling absence of concern with respect to the “self,” as well as their lack of curiosity regarding its “meaning” and “value,” opened up an extremely important question for Nietzsche: “how did the Greeks philosophize during the richest and most luxurious period of their power?”72 To respond to his question, it is worth bearing in mind that the thinkers “of the two centuries before Socrates” (E BT 3) were not so much disinclined as incapable of imagining that our capacity for “knowledge” granted us a superior rank in the cosmos. As we have seen, at that time the human being was not conceived of within this interpretation of privilege. The “meaning and value” of the individual for the “contemporaries of tragedy . . . [and] of the Persian Wars”73 was articulated by a warrior aristocracy. It was they who conferred all interpretations of privilege and sovereignty, and whose Dionysian pessimism was glorified in tragic art. The value we unhesitatingly confer upon the human being based on our epistemic superiority—as the knowing

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being—reflects a prejudice Nietzsche sees pervading Western intellectual history. In the tragic age, no such “intellectual history” existed. The pre-Socratic thinkers were devoid of intellectual “conventionality, for in their day there was no philosophic or academic professionalism,”74 and they certainly had “nothing of the historian about them.”75 Nietzsche saw pre-Socratic cosmology as imbued with the values of the ancient warrior elite, and, upon inspection, we find him tracing these values through several features of their thought. We have already seen the preeminent one: namely, an indifference to the value of the “individual.” And this is further attested by the pre-Socratic inclination to see human beings as unified with the cosmos. That is, these philosophers saw the individual’s “identity” enmeshed with all things. It was a rare and marvelous thing when “Thales said, ‘Not man, but water is the reality of all things’”76 because the pre-Socratics, Nietzsche says, “bring themselves into a system.”77 This characteristic vision of oneself as intimately woven into the fabric of the cosmos is typical of a certain “generosity” in that, again, there is no inclination to “preserve oneself ” as distinctly valuable due to possessing a unique ontological status. This is why Nietzsche saw the ancient cosmologists welded to an age which valorized the necessary annihilation of individuals toward the possibility of creation. Any “thinking” that placed the value of the individual or the “self ” outside or external to this essential dynamic would not have been worthy of the tragic age of philosophy. As we will see, the valorization of the “self ” as somehow outside these dynamics as a privileged epistemic entity is reserved for the “philosophers,” those who would emerge “from Socrates onwards.”78 Thus when Nietzsche speaks of the “tragic age of the Greeks,” he is referring not just to the period of the birth of tragic art, but also to what he would eventually call the tragic wisdom naively expressed by the very first thinkers. Both the tragic poets and pre-Socratics “testify to the Hellenic nature”79 as a “pessimism of strength” (BT SC 1) that affirmed the intimacy of destruction and creation. We saw that tragic art affirms this dynamic in terms of the mores of a warrior aristocracy; but the earliest thinkers reveal the same “insight” insofar as they recognize themselves and the human race as unified with the necessary animating forces of destruction and creation.80 It was the young Nietzsche who recognized these cosmic forces permeating both tragic art and pre-Socratic philosophy. Yet he never abandoned his perception of the necessity of creation and destruction as the vortex of “becoming” inscribed upon all things. Indeed, his later attempt to speak of the human being in terms of the cosmological dynamics of the will to power

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affirms his youthful rejection of the metaphysics that locates the individual outside the maelstrom of destruction and creation. Throughout his philosophical life, Nietzsche thought the “world that reveals itself ” in the “philosophical systems of the early Greeks . . . is the same one that was created by tragedy.”81 A Matter of Taste The sense of our being, like all things, immersed within the cosmic forces of creation and destruction is, for Nietzsche, the calling card of the ­pre-Socratics. And, given the foregoing portrait of this world, we are not surprised that he does not see these philosophers as a collection of humble contemplatives. Insofar as they are personalities, not extensions of the detached rational “self ” embraced in the Socratic era, Nietzsche found the pre-Socratics revealing “the instincts of the older Hellenes” (T II 4). From the outset, we should note that the idea of rank has a role to play here: those of the aristocracy are supposed to know how to die well. Those not within this caste do not deserve to rule other human beings. In his lectures on the pre-Socratics Nietzsche addresses the aristocratic status of each one of them, while Socrates “distinguishes himself from all previous philosophers by his plebeian origins and by an altogether meager education.”82 The reference here to Socrates’ social origins would be repeated fifteen years later in Twilight of the Idols when Nietzsche looked again at the “Problem of Socrates.” The significance of the social rank of the “prePlatonic” thinkers83 lies in Nietzsche’s seeing Socrates’ predecessors as bearing the mores of the “older Hellenes.” These prejudices, he says, had faded in “the age of Socrates,” an age rife with “men of fatigued instincts” (B 212).84 In light of these observations, we can see that Nietzsche’s concern with the pre-Socratics is guided by sketching a functional portrait of personalities shaped by the attitude peculiar to the ruling class.85 There is no doubt that the young Nietzsche romanticized the pre-Socratics, but the young man’s concern with their personalities goes beyond the hero worship of these “first-born son[s] of philosophy.”86 He also saw these “personalities” exhibited in their cosmologies, which, for him, expressed the prejudices of the age. In short, when still a young man, Nietzsche was involved with what would later be so influential with Foucault, namely, “genealogy.” The earliest Greek thinkers, Nietzsche said, “reflect Greek life, but as if through a cloud of smoke.” Yet “[s]uch men are too rare for us to let them get away.” Under the influence of

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a later, more “self ”-conscious age, the significance of these thinkers dissolved, Nietzsche thought, in the hands of the philologists’ “criticizing, turning over, and shaking every fragment!”87 Nietzsche’s characterization of the pre-Socratics certainly seems appropriate to the political ruling class of the tragic age—at least to the extent that “each of them was a brutal warlike tyrant.” Each, he says, believed it possible “to reach the midpoint of being with a single leap and thence solve the riddle of the universe” (HH II 261). These thinkers each possessed the “calm conviction that he is the only rewarded wooer of truth,” and, Nietzsche adds, it is an “idle possibility” for us to begin to imagine “such pride as that of Heraclitus” and the “regal self-esteem” that “lies at the very core of the great philosophical nature.” Such individuals, Nietzsche says, “live inside their own solar system; only there can we look for them. A Pythagoras, an Empedocles too, treated himself with an almost super-human esteem, almost with religious reverence.”88 To such individuals, the profound insight expressed in naming the unity of all life conferred a profound distinction and rank upon them. This is the attitude the young Nietzsche conveys to us in his portrait of the preSocratics. But his sketch of the “happiness in the belief that one was in possession of the truth” as well as “the severity, arrogance, tyrannical and evil in such a belief ” (HH II 261) provides other prejudices peculiar to the tragic age. The young Nietzsche accompanies his earliest portraits of the pre-Socratics with a look at the etymology of σοφός. The term “does not,” he says, “without qualification, mean ‘wise’ in the usual sense. Etymologically it is related to sapio, ‘to taste.’” In this vein, he says that “[a]ccording to etymology, then, the word lacks the eccentric meaning; it contains nothing of quietude and asceticism, only a sharp taste, a sharp knowledge, without any connotation of a ‘faculty.’”89 So the wise man was not identified as one in possession of a developed rational gift or aptitude.90 He exploits this further by pointing out that during the tragic age, “[t]he philosopher is not a man of intellect, if by stressing intellect one designates a person who can see to the success of his personal undertakings.”91 This emphasis on intellect is reserved for the ability to solve the technical, practical problems that emerge for people seeking success in “personal undertakings” and was identified more with clever utility: τ ε′χνη, “which always denotes a ‘bringing forth.’”92 In other words, “the first sages (σοφοί)”93 are here, predictably, distinguished from the “intellectuals,” who solve practical problems. The former would eventually be called “philosophers” and the latter “scientists.” But Nietzsche approaches this truism in a unique manner. Through a consideration of the

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“Greek word designating ‘sage’” as “the man of keenest taste,” he seeks to elucidate how a “sharp savouring and selecting, a meaningful discriminating, in other words, makes out the peculiar art of the philosopher, in the eyes of the people” (my italics).94 Philosophy, then, is the realm wherein we find the exercise of a rare capacity for discriminating; a quite selective “taste” for “the astonishing, the difficult and the divine.” It “is distinguished from science by its selectivity and its discrimination of the unusual.”95 Nietzsche points out, too, that it was precisely philosophy’s capacity to discern greatness that made σοία stand at a higher rank than the knowledge of practical concerns. The latter, as τέχνη, is the passion peculiar to science, and “it rushes headlong, without selectivity, without ‘taste,’ at whatever is knowable, in the blind desire to know all at any cost.”96 The sovereignty of σοφία over τέχνη lay, for Nietzsche, in how the former’s taste for greatness conferred upon it the status of determining the ultimate value of things. In this sense, wisdom is recognized within the mores of the ruling elite’s position of deciding not only what “is worthy” but also in terms of restraining and controlling “the blind unrestrained greed of . . . [our] drive for knowledge.”97 And as we shall soon see, the young Nietzsche recognized philosophy to possess cultural authority over that of science since the latter “makes no distinction between great and small—but philosophy does!”98 Science provides the “advantage of being able to recognize something as fixed.” It supplies a sense of stability within the dynamics of destruction and creation, and in this it is a means for “individuals in certain enterprises . . . to seek their own gain.”99 But, guided as it is toward accomplishing this or that enterprise, science is radically distinct from philosophy’s “striking lack of utility.”100 It is exactly this uselessness which indicates the taste peculiar to philosophy, its nose for what is great. In this, it tames and controls the vulgar, “indiscriminate drive for knowledge”101 by not letting it determine what for Nietzsche was always the purpose of culture—the cultivation of great human beings. In this sense, philosophy always determined the aim and purpose of culture and hence was in a position of authority. In comparison with philosophy, the sciences “are able only to explain, not to give orders. And when they do give orders, they are only able to refer to their utility.”102 It is worth noting here that in his identification of “Σοφία . . . [as the] one who chooses with discriminating taste”103 the young Nietzsche articulates the basis of his perception of philosophy’s decline after the tragic age—that is, beginning with Socrates. What would eventually be called “philosophy”

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was, for the pre-Socratics, a “sharp taste” for things “out of the ordinary, miraculous, difficult, divine but useless.”104 It was bereft of any sort of interest in application, utility, or cleverness in the solving of practical problems. It had nothing to do with generating or guiding one seeking “success . . . in his personal undertakings.”105 Philosophy would only emerge with this ­“plebeian” character beginning with Socrates, whose “philosophy is absolutely practical.”106 But if this is so, what is the character of this taste for rare and divine things? Certainly, it is a kind of knowledge,107 but not, as we have seen, of a practical type. He tells us that, in its being “distinguished from intellectual cleverness by its emphasis on the useless,” philosophy “was ever on the scent of those things which are most worth knowing, the great and important insights.”108 What we find here is an activity wherein “greatness” is recognized, and this recognition is seen to surpass the value of any knowledge grounded in practical pursuits. Τέχνη is this latter type of knowledge, and its value hinges on knowing the means to getting things done. This practical knowledge can also be characterized as self-centered in terms of its being a “good” arising within the parameters of the individual’s practical survival and personal growth—in short, making a living. The term “self-centered” is used here in the sense of “plebeian,” and is contrasted with the “good” peculiar to σοφία as insight into great and divine things. Wisdom, then, is useless in that it is not dominated by one’s desire for the expeditious realization of immediate practical gain. In this sense of σοφία, Nietzsche saw pre-Socratic thought as bearing several features peculiar to what he called the tragic age. These archetypical thinkers reveal the mores of a warrior aristocracy to the extent that we see the passion peculiar to philosophy as being indifferent to the practical concerns of individuals. In this sense, then, we see that again the value of the individual is negligible. If it were otherwise, it would be plebeian and would not stand within the contours of the values peculiar to what we called Dionysian pessimism. That is, philosophy would be too narrowly self-preservative in its interests and so would lack nobility. Another point that, for Nietzsche, would be emblematic of the ancient warrior aristocracy is how philosophy was not originally identified as a specifically rational activity. Tragic art allowed for the intoxication of the maddest of passions and portrayed the destruction of the highest types for a society dominated by individuals who, in seeking the opportunity for combat, were hardly practical or “rational” types. Philosophy in the tragic age was not that

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“celebration of reason” we find, for example, in Socratic dialectics, since at that time “all such presentation of one’s reasons was regarded with mistrust” (T II 5). The idea of the philosopher as “intellectual” was by no means prevalent during this era. These thinkers were from the upper ranks, had adopted the mores of their class, and hence σοφία was not so much a “faculty” of mind as an activity. In short, wisdom was a deed. Among these thinkers, “authority is still part of accepted usage and one does not ‘give reasons’ but commands” (T II 5). In this sense, Nietzsche identifies the earliest origins of wisdom with the activities of sovereignty and the ruling of others. The “taste” peculiar to wisdom already marked one as among the very rarest of human beings, and superior to those possessing the knowledge (τέχνη) appropriate to the accomplishment of personal tasks. Having that taste for the “miraculous, difficult, divine” set one apart from others because it provided one with the rank to decide upon the “being” of things—quite aside from their practical use. Thus σοφία is the power to discern the identity of things and to name them according to their rank and value within the arché: the order of things. Just as virtue was the property of the warrior elite, and therefore something that could be conferred on others, so it was that σοφία, ever “on the scent of those things . . . most worth knowing,”109 emerged as the deed that subdues chaos through the creation of the laws that reveal the cosmos. We can see why the young Nietzsche saw the origins of philosophy to be steeped in the attitude peculiar to a ruling elite, because “philosophy starts by legislating greatness.”110 The philosophers of the tragic age could not only “hope to reach the midpoint of being with a single leap” (HH 261), but each believed he had succeeded (D 547). The conviction that one had “solve[d] the riddle of the universe” (HH 261) meant, Nietzsche says, that wisdom was the capacity to determine “the measure, stamp and weight of things.”111 It allowed for the interpretation of the laws that govern all things including those appropriate to human beings. The earliest manifestations of what we now call philosophy came out of a tradition dominated by a warrior class, which, steeped in the mores of Dionysian pessimism, could only recognize σοφία in terms of itself. Wisdom was a kind of mastery not over the means to “getting things done,” but rather the taste or selective power to “arrive at a just verdict on the whole fate of man— not . . . only on the average fate, but above all on the highest fate that can befall individual men or entire nations” (UM III 3). Philosophy, like tragic art, points to the context of command, and as the deed through which all things could be given their rank within the cosmos.

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A Brief and Violent History The young Nietzsche’s perception of the tragic age of the Greeks eventually determines the horizon of the rest of his intellectual life. It was the epoch within which, as we saw, tragedy affirmed the necessity of one’s destruction as the path to nobility. This is the meaning of “tragic knowledge”112 as it was also expressed, Nietzsche thought, by the pre-Socratics, who, in finding the rank of everything within the event of destruction and creation, located human life as itself unified within the rhythm of this dynamic. Here are thinkers who find everything, themselves included, as a gesture of the necessity of creation and destruction. In this vein, Nietzsche saw pre-Socratic thinking rooted in the same soil as that of tragic poetry since both articulated our profound intimacy with this necessity, which, though terrifying, is inscribed across the universe. The pre-Socratic thinker would see this necessity in terms of a single element like “water” or “fire,” but again, such “systems, even if completely erroneous . . . may be used to reconstruct the philosophic image, just as one may guess at the nature of the soil . . . by studying a plant that grows there.”113 For this reason Nietzsche always saw the significance of the very earliest Greek thinkers lying, not in questions over the validity of their “philosophical systems,”114 but rather in how the ancient world, specifically the tragic age, its mores and the attitudes peculiar to the earliest philosophical epoch, is embedded in the personalities permeating these “systems.” Hegemony in this epoch was reserved for those who embraced their own destruction and flirted with death as the means to attaining, preserving, and growing in the power to rule other human beings. Tragic art glorified this by revealing the great beauty inherent to the annihilation of these very best human beings. For Nietzsche, philosophy saw the light of day in terms of “philosophical systems” that “are governed in part by an impulse similar to the one that created tragedy.”115 The pre-Socratic thinkers are stimulated by the desire for precisely what they alone can discern—greatness. They are not after some sort of scientific “truth”; rather, they betray a need to rule the whole universe. Here are individuals who, with their systems in hand, are not only convinced they have solved the riddle of all being “with a single word” (D 547), but have thereby attained the highest conceivable rank. This is why Nietzsche’s portrait of “Greek thought in the tragic age”116 is rife with the characteristically violent health he saw marking this epoch of Greek history. His vision of the pre-Socratics is such that, since each believed only he stood supreme in the knowledge of the polyphony of the cosmos, they all bore the “severity, arrogance, tyranny and

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evil in such a belief.” They “were tyrants,” he says, which is what “every Greek wanted to be, and what everyone was when he could be” (HH 261). Citing Solon’s desire to provide laws as a “sublimated form of tyranny,” Nietzsche points to other lawgivers like Parmenides, Pythagoras, and Empedocles, and to Anaximander, who “founded a city” (HH 261). I have been referring to the pre-Socratics as “thinkers” as well as to their “thought,” but it is important to note that, from Nietzsche’s perspective, overtones of “objectivity” and “detached investigation” really must be abandoned. Post-Socratic intellectual history begins with Plato and his valorization of reason over the body; it is this perception of reason as somehow purified from the taint of desire which, as a mode of what Nietzsche called the “ascetic ideal,” would determine the future of σοφία. But no such abyss between “body and mind” existed for the pre-Socratics. As we saw, Nietzsche recognized the tragic age of philosophy as bearing the countenance of Dionysian pessimism. Hence these “thinkers” envisioned the cosmos in terms of the matrix of destruction and creation, and saw their ability to determine the rank of things within this dynamic as itself a deed of epic proportions and worthy of tragic art. The activity of cosmologizing was not entertained in terms of what we would now call an objective intellectual activity, but, on the contrary, was replete with every desire and lust for triumph, victory, immortality, and heroism. In short, it was suffused in the poetry of the time. Tragedy venerated the destruction of the most noble human beings, and in this it embraced the necessity of the destruction of greatness as the path to greatness. The philosophers of the tragic age were equally enamoured with glory—that of determining the order of rank permeating the cosmos. In this sense, “that entire period of Greek philosophy also belongs within the domain of their art.”117 For Nietzsche, tragic poetry and the activity of cosmologizing move within the overarching ethos peculiar to what a warrior elite determined as greatness. He loved the idea that these artistic and philosophical activities might have realized perfect cohesion. I mean one where the former provided an artistic intoxication that confirmed the destruction of the most virtuous, while the latter’s taste for the rank of all things determined who or what deserved to be honoured in tragic poetry. But this happy marriage was never realized because “almost all of the great Hellenes . . . seem to have come too late: such was the case with Aeschylus, with Pindar, with Demosthenes, with Thucydides—one further generation and it is all over” (HH II 261). A dejected Nietzsche tells us the “sixth and fifth centuries seem . . . to promise even more than they actually brought forth; it remained only a promise and

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proclamation” (HH II 261). The promise imploded because with the Greeks “everything goes quickly forwards, but it likewise goes quickly downwards” (HH II 261). Consequently, “the philosopher and legislator who would have comprehended tragedy never appeared.”118 Certainly, in speaking of the “philosophical systems of the early Greeks,” the young Nietzsche points out that the “world they reveal is the same one that was created by tragedy.”119 But their “history is brief and violent. . . . Alas, Greek history goes so fast! Life has never since been lived so prodigally, so exorbitantly. . . . [T]he movement of the whole machine is so accelerated that a single stone thrown into its wheels makes it fly to pieces. Socrates, for example, was such a stone” (HH II 261). Socrates’ role here can be overstated if we forget that Nietzsche sees him as one among other symptoms of the cultural decay we will trace in chapter 3. What I want to emphasize is that the unrealized unity of tragic poetry and cosmology led to the failure of a possible “reformation among the Greeks.”120 Nietzsche senses a missed opportunity here: had the “great preparatory exercise” (HH I 261) he identified with cosmology and tragic art been allowed to flourish in the health of Dionysian pessimism, then perhaps Socratic philosophy would never have had the opportunity to prepare “the soil for Christianity.”121 Plato’s eloquently expressed distinction between the philosopher and the artist, along with his devaluation of the artist within culture, was not possible within the tragic age. During this epoch the young Nietzsche found a “world in which the philosopher and the artist are at home,”122 and in this, he says, “we grasp the unity of philosophy and art for the purpose of culture.”123 This purpose points to the attitude of Dionysian pessimism, which, biased in favour of life, does not find its value diminished by suffering and destruction but, on the contrary, affirms these as essential to all creation. This tragic knowledge is manifest in both tragic art and cosmology in that one venerates it in the poetic destruction of the greatest individuals, while the pre-Socratic taste for the cosmic order of rank could have determined the greatness which deserves this “destruction.” But, as we saw, the potential of cosmology “remained only a promise and proclamation” (HH II 261), and, to top things off, “Plato and all the Socratics schools fought it!” (D 168). In the end “there is a gap, a breach in evolution” (HH II 261) that rendered the “requisite elements for the emergence of tragedy . . . scattered among the philosophers.”124 These observations conclude a very provisional sketch of a pivotal feature of Nietzsche’s philosophy. We have looked at what the young Nietzsche called

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the tragic age of the Greeks and, given his critique of the treatment of this era, find what I think is the initial basis for his lifelong attack upon Western intellectual history. Several primary features of the young man’s approach have been established: how both tragic art and early Greek cosmology are steeped in the values peculiar to the attitude of the Dionysian pessimism of a warrior class; that this was an age Nietzsche always regarded as overwhelmingly healthy; that Dionysian pessimism, the attitude which embraced the risk of destruction as the means to creation, is emblematic of the tragic age; and that both tragedy and philosophy are extensions of this attitude. So far we have an illustration to be filled out as we proceed; there is still a great deal left to be said about Dionysian pessimism in terms of the creation of both ­philosophy and art. But the foregoing is essential not only with regard to illustrating the importance of the tragic age of the Greeks, but also for establishing the significance of Greek antiquity for interpreting the foremost features of Nietzsche’s philosophy.

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The Good and Beautiful Body And another thing will I tell you, and do you lay it to heart: surely you shall not yourself be long in life, but even now does death stand hard by you. —Iliad

i. the risk of virtue It would be anachronistic to say that during the tragic age there was a recognized “intimacy” between ethics and aesthetics, since articulating such intimacy hinges on an inclination to distinguish them in the first place. The tendency to separate the “beautiful,” or the central concern of aesthetics, from “the good life,” or the aim of the ethical, is as common among ourselves as that other distinction we make between body and mind. But that such distinctions did not occur during the tragic age held a genuine allure for Nietzsche.1 In our first chapter, we have a sketch of the young man’s approach to the tragic age of Greek culture and how, during this time, “virtue” and “beauty” are embodied in the noble human being. We saw that the values of the earliest warrior aristocracies constitute the link between tragic poetry and cosmology. That is, tragic art and cosmology both express that Dionysian pessimism which, as the attitude characteristic of those who practice the art of dying well, is typical of the savage health Nietzsche identified with everything “fundamentally Hellenic” (T X 3). Having provided a very rudimentary outline of Nietzsche’s perception of the “Greeks of the tragic age,”2 we will now expand upon it in order to access the concerns of chapter 3: namely, his perceptions of how both tragic art and cosmology collapse into decay. As is well-known, Nietzsche identifies the death of tragic art with Socrates, who, having “seduced” Plato into ­dialectics,3 thereby poisoned philosophy as well. Our task in this chapter, then, is to expand upon the attitude of Dionysian pessimism as characteristic of a healthy warrior aristocracy and to reveal why this attitude constitutes the intimacy Nietzsche saw between what we call ethics and aesthetics. Having

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accomplished this, we will then be in a position to pursue our subsequent concern with why Nietzsche sees the influence of Socratic thought on tragic art and ethics as “anti-Greek” (T II 2). A Good Attitude During “the age of Socrates, among men,” Nietzsche thought, “of fatigued instincts” (B 212), the physical unity of virtue and beauty could not be maintained. Indeed, the technique of dialectics peculiar to Socrates is the ascetic exercise of rejecting the physical in order to gain knowledge of reality and truth.4 However, in the tragic age, Nietzsche saw what we call “ethics” and “aesthetics” as physically united. That is, his youthful encounter with this epoch marks a central feature of the philosophy of the more mature thinker: namely, the human body as the site of virtue and beauty. In the first chapter, we saw the noble type as the physical location of both. The attitude of ­Dionysian pessimism reveals its ethical contour through the individual’s risk of suffering and death for the sake of something other than himself. And, with regard to the aesthetic, this individual is also an occasion of “beauty” within the art of tragedy to the extent that, as a genuinely noble human being, he is destroyed. “The realm of virtue and of the arts . . . has its inception,” Nietzsche says, “at the point where the individual begins to regard himself as unimportant.”5 The annihilation of my body, or “at least the possibility of such a sacrifice,”6 is the basis of Dionysian pessimism and constitutes both the life of a noble or “good” person as well as the satisfactions of tragic poetry. Yet, whether we speak of these satisfactions or of the “good” man, Nietzsche would say the ­Dionysian pessimism of Greek antiquity is not only “very hard to understand . . . [and] hardly accessible,” it must also inevitably be “incomprehensible or painful to modern sensibility.” Nevertheless, even if this ancient attitude “has to be foreign” (D 195) to us, we will attempt its further clarification through a dominant and always timely philosophical theme in Nietzsche’s thinking: namely, suffering. We discussed Dionysian pessimism as an attitude Nietzsche identified with the warrior elite of the tragic age. There we saw that “pessimism of strength” (BT SC 1) which, as an acceptance of our inevitable destruction, allows one to decide what is worthy of one’s death. What deserves emphasis here is that in the tragic age, a good or virtuous person does not, as in “the age of Socrates” (B 212), reflect on “the good” as an object of knowledge. Nietzsche saw virtue

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among the early Hellenes as inseparable from the deeds which assume physical suffering and potential destruction. Thus the path to virtue, or the right to call oneself “good,” hinged not on dialectical ability,7 but rather on the human body as its proper site. After all, our body is the place of our living death, desire, pleasure, and suffering, as well as everything we have ever called “the world.” And only insofar as this “world” is risked for the sake of something other than myself do we find, Nietzsche thought, the earliest gesture of what would later be called the “ethical.” Of course, this gesture did not have any sense of what we today would call charity, kindness, or tolerance. The persons of whom we are speaking here are “good” to the extent that they risk suffering and death and, in so doing, demonstrate supremacy over those who do not. It is the element of risk, of “living dangerously” (GS 283), that makes these individuals “better” than others. Here, then, individuals are “noble” or “good,” not because of any altruistic inclination, but rather because of their courage. We generally tend to think of altruism in terms of “doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.” But the idea of risk here is not an estimation of the infinite value of other’s lives, nor of the equal value of human lives. Rather, what we have is risk as a sign of rank: as a “proof of strength”8 which merits ruling others.9 It is in this vein that Nietzsche will speak of great cultures standing on the foundation of “slavery in some sense or other” (B 257) and of the greatest benefits accruing to the human race through the most dangerous individuals (GS 1). We should not be distracted here by the references to slavery along with the overtones of violence in connection with the language of “virtue” and “ethics.”10 After all, Nietzsche is speaking about remote antiquity, the tragic age during which the Iliad was loved and physical courage constituted the basis of all virtue. This perception of virtue certainly fascinated the young man, especially since it was so emphatically rejected by the “Greek philosophers from Socrates onwards.”11 The contempt of these later thinkers for the tragic age is typical, Nietzsche thought, of their disdain for the body as a barrier to virtue (T III 1). We will be looking more closely at how this disdain “is a symptom of decadence”12 in our next chapter. What deserves initial emphasis here is that he perceives the Platonic rejection of the body as a simultaneous scorn for the location of all “ethics.” The “good” is, as we noted above, a physical event to the extent that suffering and death are risked, and hence, among “the older Greeks” (BT SC 1), it is the deed located at the site of my body. It is not an object of “knowledge,” but rather is “embodied” in a human being whose destiny is woven into “[d]eath, change, age . . . procreation and

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growth” (T III 1). In short, it is everything that offended the Socratic, “antiHellenic” philosophers.13 The Terms of Rank In saying Nietzsche’s perception of the tragic age is also that of the body as the site of “ethics,” I want to expand now upon the risk of pain and suffering as characteristic of a certain generosity. The element of generosity, of a kind of largesse, is central to the ethical gesture. The noble person commits the ethical deed in the risk of suffering as the gift of himself. But we should not see this gift as an expression of humble self-sacrifice. On the contrary, the ethical gesture confers “value” upon that for which the risk is taken because of precisely who is taking the risk. Such individuals “give their word as something that can be relied on because they know themselves strong enough to maintain it . . . even ‘in the face of fate’” (GM II 2). This is the attitude of Dionysian pessimism, which, for Nietzsche is that “rare freedom” (GM II 2) to risk self-destruction. Such liberty generates the self-esteem peculiar to those who feel themselves superior to those who, as we saw, do not or cannot take these risks. This freedom constitutes the autonomy of the early, warlike Hellenes; not to mention “that pathos of ­distance” (B 257) typical of the orders of spiritual and social rank throughout antiquity. Here, what “determines your rank is the quantum of power you are: the rest is cowardice.”14 The “noble type” (B 260) embodies the “ethical,” not in the sense of the “good” as an object they possess via reflection, but rather, through the act of giving his or herself over to something other than themselves as the gift of suffering. Those who are noble, then, are recognized as capable of committing this act and therefore of conferring value upon that for which they might well be destroyed. In this kind of human being Nietzsche saw the warrior type, who, careless of his own preservation, committed himself to his own annihilation as a sign of rank, which, along with its “extraordinary privilege of responsibility” (GM II 2), was jealously guarded by the violent minority making up its political class. This is why the earliest site of the ethical, of the capacity to “do the right thing,” was the suffering, pain, and potential destruction of the noble individual. Rationally “proving” it was “good” would have been “regarded with mistrust” (T II 5). And, since only these people were the few with the courage to provide this gift, then only they could be “generous.”

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As we have suggested, in our portrait of the noble type we should not let the language of “ethics” and “generosity” blind us to the age of which we are speaking. Nietzsche points out that these “‘good men’” were “sternly held in check inter pares by custom, respect, usage and gratitude, and even more by mutual suspicion and jealousy.” Nevertheless, “in their personal relations” they “show themselves . . . resourceful in consideration, self-control, delicacy, loyalty and pride and friendship” (GM I 11). But toward those not of this class, no such etiquette was required, and those outside the culture might be subjected to “a disgusting procession of murder, arson, rape and torture” (GM I 11). Consequently, in speaking of the body as the location of “ethics” among those making up the oldest warrior elite, we have to see the term in a very strict and narrow sense. First, it is anachronistic to use it in speaking of the Hellenic warrior aristocracy. We generally think of “ethics” as that region of philosophy concerned with the rational principles that govern our conduct with one another. But as we saw, at that time, “there was no philosophic or academic professionalism,”15 and hence no such thing as “ethics” per se. When looking at the meaning of “‘good’ and ‘bad’” (B 260), or at what constitutes a “good man,”16 Nietzsche uses the term “morality” and, rarely, “ethics.” As we know, he speaks of “master morality” (B 260), and the mores of a ruling elite, which, having been forged in conditions unfavorable to its survival (B 262), reserves the appellation “good” strictly for itself. It is something earned through deeds, and hence “the ruling group determines what is ‘good’” (B 260), but “goodness” is a distinction it may or may not confer on others. It is, as we saw in chapter 1, “a morality of self-glorification” (B 260) lacking the altruistic or egalitarian meanings we associate with the contemporary use of the term “ethics.” For Nietzsche, whether we are speaking of “ethics” or of “morality,” the terms are not that important. What is of profound importance to him is the human experience of pain, suffering, and death as the physical event through which “good and bad” are measured. And the character of this kind of measurement comes to light in the intensity with which Nietzsche assailed the Socratic rejection of the human body in matters concerning morality. Nietzsche saw ethics as an event of the human body; that is, as the site of suffering and death offered for the sake of something other than oneself. This sacrifice of the body and the endurance of suffering are the gift which, as a gesture of generosity, establishes one as “good” in the most ancient sense. With regard to Socratic morality on the other hand, the body remains central,

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but as the location of suspicion and denigration. We will look at Nietzsche’s perception of the role of the body within Socratic thought in our next chapter. For now, we have established his approach to the ethical in connection with those he called “the older Hellenes” (T X 2). It is a generosity manifest in placing a very limited value upon oneself in light of one’s finitude, and hence something that should be risked in favour of something not necessarily “infinite,”17 but deemed of greater value than one’s life. These are individuals who, Nietzsche says, would go “to their graves with an ironic smile—for what was there left of them to bury” (UM II 2)? And, as we have seen in our sketch of the ancient warrior type, here is a generosity which has no contour of duty-bound charity, nor the inclination to indulge others. We are speaking of the generosity peculiar to “those tremendous eras of ‘morality of custom’ . . . [when] suffering counted as virtue, cruelty counted as virtue . . . revenge counted as virtue, denial of reason counted as virtue, while . . . well-being was accounted a danger . . . pity was accounted a danger . . . work was an affront, madness was accounted godliness, and change was accounted immoral and pregnant with disaster” (D 18). The Abundant Our look at what passed for “ethics” during the tragic age moves within the horizon of Dionysian pessimism, and, in light of the emphasis upon suffering and death, it is not that hard to see the “pessimistic” features of “the good life.” However, Nietzsche also sees something which, in the midst of the potential annihilation basic to “ethics,” is nevertheless full of joy. And he articulates the delight pervading what we have called generosity with the name Dionysus. The significance of Dionysus goes back to Nietzsche’s philosophical debut in aesthetics with the publication of The Birth of Tragedy, where Dionysus is introduced as the rhythmic artistic power of a “horrible ‘witches’ brew’ of sensuality” (BT 2) that dissolves personal identity into a mad dance of social and personal destruction. Dionysus is that force through which all distinctions are destroyed, all rank is annihilated, and all “individuality” collapses in a primal pleasure so profound it becomes unbearable and indistinguishable from suffering. But this torrential sensuality was confronted by “rigid and menacing” (BT 4) artistic powers in the guise of Apollo, who, dreaming proportionate worlds of identity woven into images, words, and musical notes, delicately harnessed Dionysus within that mysterious austerity called “Attic tragedy” ( BT 4).

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As we will see, Nietzsche goes on to speak of the decline of these two artistic energies by the time Socrates is on the scene. That is, Dionysus and his intoxicating passions are “chased from the tragic stage” (BT 12), while Apollo’s dreamt worlds are reduced to a narrow enthusiasm for the “Truths” typical of “self-examination.” What should be emphasized now is that, along with the recession of the figure of Apollo after The Birth of Tragedy, the status of Dionysus grows not only with regard to Nietzsche’s perception of tragic art (T X 5), but also as an emblem for all the “life-affirming” architecture of Nietzsche’s mature philosophy. This does not mean that the Dionysus of The Birth of Tragedy, even if “spoiled” by “Schopenhauerian formulations” (BT SC 6), is abandoned. On the contrary, the young Nietzsche’s initial interpretative impressions of ancient Greek culture, including Dionysus and Apollo, are never deserted.18 Apollo recedes but is still called upon in matters concerning aesthetics (T IX 10). And even though Dionysus is forever in opposition to “aesthetic Socratism” (BT 12), he nevertheless grows into “the antithesis” Nietzsche saw in the “two types: Dionysus and the Crucified.”19 It becomes clear that if we are to make a respectful approach to this “overflowing wealth of the most multifarious forces,”20 then from the start we should abandon the “idea” of Dionysus. Dionysus is not, for Nietzsche, a “thought,” or a fragment of philological “knowledge.” On the contrary, he is, almost by definition, somehow unthinkable. There is an incomprehensibility and hence a savage contour to the dark ecstasies identified with Dionysus. Given the character of this inarticulate deity, it may seem strange to speak of the “ethical” in connection with him. Nevertheless, the generosity we have spoken about as typical of Dionysian pessimism bears the mark of this “god of darkness” (EH GM) insofar as the ethical act requires and is impossible without an element of excess. We saw that Dionysian pessimism is the attitude through which the good man becomes possible. Hence we have to remember that this pessimism is not mere resignation before the fact that one will die, but more an affirmation and acceptance of death which stimulates the individual to die well. This warrior attitude embraces a “morality of self-glorification” (B 260) located at the site of the body through deeds that require suffering and the risk of death for something so valuable that it is worthy of one’s courage. What we must clarify now is why this risking for the sake of something more valuable than oneself is intimately connected to a desire and passion that cannot be ­confined to a conception of duty to one’s class, family, and so on. This means an approach to Dionysus through the kind of suffering which, for Nietzsche, is

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synonymous with the fierce health of which we spoke earlier. We are speaking here of suffering that is grounded in the pain inherent to the possession of a profoundly intense vitality. When Nietzsche points to “the profound ­Hellene, uniquely susceptible to the tenderest and deepest suffering” (BT 7), he does not mean that somehow pain was more unpleasant for them than others. Rather, he is referring to a form of suffering which is not only impossible to alleviate by doing one’s “duty,” but, as an affliction of ecstasy, is an intoxicating ache of plenitude and fecundity which simply must disperse itself. This lavish prodigality and supererogatory power is such that its very dispersal can easily shatter the one in possession of it. Here is Nietzsche’s interpretation of a health devoid of any inclination toward self-preservation and of a vitality so utterly excessive that destruction is always immanent. This articulation of suffering is one appropriate to Dionysus, and for Nietzsche it is synonymous with the health he identified with “the real pain of Homeric men” (BT 3) during the tragic age. Here is the ache of a prodigious love for the very fact that one is. Dionysus represents “those who suffer from the over-fullness of life” (GS 370) and hence a health so intense that it must display the generosity of which we have been speaking. This generosity permeates, as we saw, the risks characteristic of the “ethical,” but, beyond the confines of duty, it lies in deeds of fierce “gratitude and love” (GS 370) for life and, as a result, the chance to be destroyed. No doubt such deeds may be very far from what our age would call “good,” but the gift of the body through an individual’s risk of suffering and death was the mark of a good human being. The ethical, from this point of view, comes out of a certain generosity characteristic of those who “practice the difficult art of—going at the right time” (Z I 21). It is a giving of oneself not out of a grudging or resigned sense of duty, but rather as a gesture of abundance: one is destroyed out of a strength of love for something far more valuable than oneself. This gift of the body takes on its distinctly Dionysian character when it is a genuine gift; that is, it becomes an “ethical” act insofar as it is done out of a joy that, intoxicated, refuses the barriers of death. This refusal to heed the voice of self-preservation is, as we shall see, central to the distinction Nietzsche makes between the tragic and decadent epochs of Greek culture. But to appreciate this distinction, we have to pursue this neglect of self-preservation further. Abandoning the ancient perspective of the instinct of self-preservation (GS 1) is by no means practical, nor are those who ignore it considered sane. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Dionysian ­element in the ethical deeds of the tragic age is by no means a model of sanity

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or practicality. “Dionysus,” Nietzsche says, is “a means to understanding the older Hellenic instinct, an instinct still exuberant and even overflowing: it is explicable only as an excess of energy” (T X 4). It is this excess which lies at the heart of the most ancient interpretations of virtue. Here the virtue Nietzsche associates with the “morality of self-glorification” (B 260) is, even if fraught with reverence for custom, emblematic of Dionysian excess. And this excess lies in the refusal we mentioned above: the warrior’s defiance of the instinctive perspective of self-preservation. It is exactly the rejection of the perspective of this drive that allows for anything we have ever called courage. The Dionysian element here is a lack of concern with safety, and a laughter drowning out the cautious voice of reason. For Nietzsche, a whole new world of virtue would stand on the foundations of practicality and reason with the emergence of Socrates. But virtue in the tragic age was the domain of excess to the extent that the reasonable and prudent concerns through which one attained some practical advantage were spurned by the warrior type as only appropriate to lesser beings. The gift of the body was an exhilarated stepping out beyond the edge of self-preservation over the abyss of obliteration. From this point of view, we see the most ancient “interpretation” of “selflessness.” The Dionysian feature of self-destruction and excess becomes fundamental to the darkest interpretations of “the good.” And it is worth noting that for Nietzsche, just as Dionysus is banished from aesthetics by “the philosophers from Socrates onwards,”21 so is this intoxicating “selflessness” simultaneously jettisoned from all “ethics.” It may sound a little jarring to the contemporary ear to hear of the selflessness of a “morality of self-glorification” (B 260). Of course, and, as I said in my opening remarks, this is not an altruistic selflessness, but rather an indifference to the concerns of practical gain. The ethical gesture of the noble type is “self-centered” in that it is precisely the self which, far from “gaining,” is on the verge of being lost. This is why, in speaking of Dionysian pessimism, the very term “Dionysian” is synonymous with excess, with an intoxicated yes to the world and all that, in lying beyond one’s finitude, surpasses oneself. Such “pessimism” is not wary and suspicious toward the world because of all the suffering, pain, and madness it most surely offers. On the contrary, this taking up of one’s suffering and potential death is not out of resignation to duty, but rather out of an exhilaration at the very fact that, even if condemned to finitude, one nevertheless is. Nietzsche articulated this little quiver of rapture in many ways, all of which rotate around Dionysus. One of the most consistent themes entwining this

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god is that of a violent health. Nietzsche’s language is such that we must not so much “think” Dionysus as imagine one’s “self,” one’s “identity” dissolved in what will become anathema to Socratism: namely, pleasure so orgasmically intense that it is almost unbearable. Thinking and imagining are one thing— the physical event is another. Nietzsche points to the Dionysus immersed in “that strange wealth of rites, symbols and myths of orgiastic origin with which the antique world was quite literally overrun” (T X 4). But aside from the orgiastic “element out of which Dionysian art evolved” (T X 4),22 there is a similar component to the “ethics” rooted in Dionysian pessimism. It lies in that excess about which we have been speaking: specifically, in a love or desire to somehow embrace everything that constitutes the edge of one’s skin—the world. This love burns from a joy so profound that one desires this place, this world, and everything about it with such an intensity that it is like a beloved; betraying it is impossible to imagine, and one seeks the chance to die for it. The capacity to give oneself over to everything that must surpass one’s own finite life is what Nietzsche called “the great health—that one . . . acquires continually, and must acquire because one gives it up again and again, and must give it up” (GS 382). The “good person,” as we saw, assumes his or her inevitable destruction and is thereby liberated to decide who or what shall receive the gift of his or her destruction. But for Nietzsche, the condition for such an attitude is by no means gloomy resignation, but rather an “overflowing health” (BT SC 4) which, akin to orgasmic pleasure, is manifest in the lust to dissolve one’s identity into “everything underlying existence that is frightful, evil, a riddle, destructive, fatal” (BT SC 4). In other words, the warrior elite of the tragic age consisted of mercurial individuals whose “goodness” was measured in terms of how ardently they could lose their lives. Here we move into every kind of excess, in the direction of what Nietzsche means in describing the Dionysian as such “joy, strength, overflowing health, [and] overgreat fullness” that one actually suffers from possessing it. Ultimately, then, it is “possible to suffer precisely from overfullness” (BT SC 1). Dionysus is the name for a health and vitality so lurid that, like the splitting skin of overripe grapes, the human being, aching with joyous gratitude at the very fact of existence, says yes to life beyond all death. This is that treacherous “over-rich and dangerous health” (GS 372) that surpasses self-preservative concerns and, “pregnant with future” (GS 370), disperses one’s identity, one’s “self,” as Bataille says, “gloriously or catastrophically.”23 Dionysian pessimism is an instinctive and potentially fatal shiver of ecstasy at the very fact that one is—including one’s destiny to suffer and be

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destroyed. This amor fati (GS 276) is the tragic wisdom of self-overcoming, “which out of joy hurls itself into chance—the existing soul which plunges into becoming” (Z III 19). There is no sense here of “duty,” or of a being “resigned” to one’s destruction. Dionysian pessimism is, rather, more a risking oneself out of a lavish, intoxicated joy in living, and one’s destruction is an impulsive gesture of playful generosity. In this kind of human being Nietzsche perceived the warrior type, who, careless of his own preservation, was committed to his own annihilation for the sake of something more valuable than himself. To such individuals, the value of one’s life hinged on the immediacy with which it was risked. Here is the tragic insight into human suffering which led Nietzsche to assert that, unlike his contemporaries (BT SC 1), these primitive warrior castes did not regard suffering as an argument against the value of life, but on the contrary, as an opportunity to demonstrate it. He identified this passionate intensity with the early Hellenes, with the tragic age, when “the Greek soul foamed over” with health to the point of neurosis (BT SC 4). “The highest virtue,” says Zarathustra, “is uncommon and useless” (Z I 22). There can be no hint of practical utility here, since such concerns poison the act of generosity by making it common or ignoble.24 That is, the practical, self-preservative interests typical of what Nietzsche called “the herd instinct” (GM I 2)25 are such that virtue, as Dionysian excess, simply cannot make sense. The “good” person is incomprehensible from the standpoint of those dedicated to their own “best interests.” The former’s generosity located in the physical risk of suffering and death is an extravagance which, in its indifference to self-preservation, is “unreasonable” to the latter. It is exactly the warrior’s dance along the edge of identity which, in its turning away from the “self,” recognizes the presence of the god Dionysus in matters of virtue. For Nietzsche, this warrior’s naiveté is matched only by the Socratic conviction “that virtue may be taught.”26 Our look at the “ethical” within the confines of Dionysian pessimism is an attempt to add more detail to the sketch of the tragic age initiated earlier. Clearly, the approach to “ethics” or morality in the foregoing is a far cry from our contemporary perception of what it means to live a “good life.” Our primary concern, though, has been to further clarify the element of generosity peculiar to Dionysian pessimism. In the process of developing the “ethical” as exemplary of Dionysian pessimism, we have woven together multiple interdependent themes. First, we spoke of how to risk suffering and destruction is to place the “ethical” at the site of the human body. Inseparable from articulating such a gambol is the ethical gesture of

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generosity through which suffering and potential death is seen in terms of the gift of the body. Finally, and equally enmeshed with these concerns, was the specifically Dionysian feature of “selflessness,” which, “explicable only as an excess of energy” (T X 4), permeates the ethical gesture in such a way as to render it “useless” from a practical point of view, and the deed which creates the “pathos of distance” (GM I 2) between good and bad men. These various contours of Dionysian pessimism are so entangled within Nietzsche’s perception of the “ethical” during the tragic age that to speak of one is to speak of the others. But if this web of meanings is manifest in judgments concerning good and bad individuals, how is it revealed in those concerning “the beautiful and the ugly?”27

ii. an outline for a physiology of aesthetics Fecundity “Nothing,” Nietzsche says, “is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivety rests all aesthetics” (T IX 20). And our look at the Dionysian pessimism through which the warrior nobility attains “virtue” leaves little doubt that it was this same elite which, reserving for itself the right to decide what is “good and bad,” thereby conferred “beauty” upon itself. In chapter 1, we spoke of how the values of a warrior aristocracy were extolled in tragic poetry. We also looked at Nietzsche’s description of this poetry as fulfilling the Hellenic “need ” (BT SC 1) to “sacrifice . . . its highest types” (T X 5). We will now pay closer attention to what he meant in saying this “sacrifice,” understood as a revelation of Dionysus, is a means to grasping “the tragic poet” (T X 5). With this we begin our discussion of a figure who is not only central to our investigation, but held no end of fascination for Nietzsche—the artist. We naturally distinguish the warrior from the poet in terms of his function. But what is of great importance here is our concern with identifying why, at least as far as Nietzsche was concerned, our inclination to separate “ethics” from “aesthetics” was lacking among the Greeks “of the best period.”28 We could resolve our problem by simply, and correctly, saying “ethics” and “aesthetics” were unified by the “over-rich and dangerous health” (GS 372) Nietzsche saw pervading that epoch of Greek culture. But if we are to grasp who the tragic poet is, then we must look at this “great health” (GS 382) in terms of ­Dionysian pessimism yet again, not only with regard to what constitutes a healthy artist,

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but also with an eye toward “the still more delicate problems of the physiology of aesthetics” (GM III 8). The “element out of which Dionysian art emerged” is, Nietzsche says, “the orgy” (T X 4). The veneration of sexuality, orgasmic ecstasy, the exaltation and solemnity of every “detail in the act of procreation, pregnancy, [and] birth” all reveal what Nietzsche called “the fundamental fact of the Hellenic instinct” (T X 4). But how do the sexual riots of “the Dionysian mysteries” allow access to “the psychology of the Dionysian condition” as basic to art? He raises this same question himself in asking, “What did the Hellene guarantee to himself with these mysteries?” (T X 4). First, they guaranteed, he says, “[e]ternal life, the eternal recurrence of life” (T X 4). Aside from the significance of the reference to “eternal recurrence” here as a mode of immortality, sexual intoxication is the path to eternal life through sexual bliss. Next, these mysteries showed “the future promised and consecrated to the past,” as embodied in those to be born and through whom even the dead are venerated within tradition. So these mysteries not only insure “the triumphant Yes to life beyond death and change” (T X 4), but in this triumph “true life” prevails “as collective continuation of life through procreation, through the mysteries of sexuality.” This, Nietzsche says, is why “the sexual symbol was to the Greeks the symbol venerable as such, the intrinsic profound meaning of all antique piety” (T X 4). These “myths of orgiastic origin” (T X 4) showed Nietzsche the prodigious assurance, not to mention naive confidence and absolute conviction, attending all intoxication. He took this “strange wealth of rites” (T X 4) seriously, and in his having done so, “that is what I recognized as the bridge to the psychology of the tragic poet” (T X 5). How did these rites, so basic to the “compulsion to an orgiastic state,”29 become such a “bridge?” We can begin a response to our question by noting that the “guarantees” peculiar to this “sacred road ” (T X 4) revealed those physiological “states in which we infuse a transfiguration and fullness into things and poeticize about them until they reflect back our . . . joy in life.” When we look, Nietzsche says, at “the oldest festal joys of mankind,” we find “[t]hree elements principally: sexuality, intoxication, cruelty” all of which “preponderate in the early ‘artist.’”30 Each of these passions generates the perspectives through which the world is bathed in “the feeling of plenitude and increased energy” (T IX 8). In order, he says, for “art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication” (T IX 8). All modes of intoxication are requisite, but “above all, the intoxication of sexual

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excitement, the oldest and most primitive form of intoxication” (T IX 8). This oldest, most primitive form was, among others, “experienced religiously” (T X 4) in the Dionysian mysteries. But what is it about this particular mode of intoxication that, in revealing “the Hellenic instinct,” also disclosed “the psychology of the tragic poet” (T X 4)? We saw that sexual intoxication was, along with every “individual detail in the act of procreation” (T X 4), venerated within the Dionysian mysteries. Moreover, these rites confirmed, Nietzsche says, eternal life, the affirmation of life “beyond death and change” (T X 4). We have to note here that “life” is not reduced to that of any particular individual. This is important since the destruction of personal identity within orgasmic intoxication can be the occasion of the creation of life—of future offspring. Sexuality and its “aphrodisiac bliss”31 are the basis of “true life as collective continuation of life through procreation” (T X 4). Nietzsche’s emphasis upon sexual intoxication and reproduction includes the ancient reverence for the pain of giving birth. Essential to the affirmation of life “beyond death and change” is the idea that “pain is sanctified: the ‘pains of childbirth’ sanctify pain in general” (T X 4). Fundamental, then, to the “Hellenic instinct” (T X 4) and the “Dionysian condition” is the affirmation of pain as the occasion of life, as a requirement and necessity for its furtherance. When Nietzsche looked at the tragic poet, he saw the same savage health he identified with the warrior type. This poet is “dangerously healthy” (GS 382) since, like the “virtuous” man, he is flushed with the same intoxicated, almost unbearable happiness at the very fact that one is. Here is a vitality which, in seeking expression, transforms the world’s every madness, horror, and terror into an object of desire. This is why Nietzsche will always connect art with the “‘embellishing’ power”32 peculiar to “the ecstasies of sexuality.”33 But equally important here is his perception of the tragic poet as possessing such ripened happiness that it “also encompasses joy in destruction” (T X 5). He is not speaking here of some hysterical, nihilistic joy in destruction for its own sake. Rather, this joy in destruction is realized through the very attempt to express itself—the very attempt to create, give voice to itself. The tragic poet is burdened with the same excessive vitality characteristic of the “good” man, but in the former’s case, the destructive feature lies in what Nietzsche saw as a certain joy in the cruelty with which the poet subjects himself to the pain of creation. The poet takes Apollo’s knife to himself and carves into his own passions in order to create—in order to give birth to the song of tragedy. The sanctity of pain Nietzsche saw in the Dionysian mysteries had nothing

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to do with “abortive actuality” (A 15). On the contrary, pain, and the proximity to death a woman endures in childbirth, are emblematic of the suffering Nietzsche recognized as essential to the affirmation of life he saw embodied in tragic poetry. This is the poetry of human mortality; the poetry which “postulates pain” as the sign of “all becoming and growing, [of ] all that guarantees the future” (T X 4). It is therefore, the poetry reserved for everything which, born out of pain, says yes to a future it can never possess. Progeny The foregoing at least begins to indicate why Nietzsche found aesthetics at the site of the body. The tragic poet is central to Nietzsche’s aesthetics because this poet illustrated that “the judgement ‘beautiful’” (T IX 1), is a physical event. On the occasion of “beauty,” Nietzsche saw the body either directly or indirectly quickened at the subtlest suggestion of the future, of “possibility,” of the remotest hint of the “immortality” typical of sexual ecstasy. Enmeshed with this kind of intoxication are all the others which, under the aegis of Dionysus, generate so powerful a sensation of plenitude that one is burdened with a strength and joy which simply must be dispersed. This dispersal of the “self ” throughout the cosmos may well be the physical site of what we mean when we speak of the “infinite.” But be that as it may, it certainly constituted for Nietzsche the “psychology of the orgy as an overflowing feeling of life and energy within which even pain acts as a stimulus” and moreover “provided me the key to the concept of the tragic feeling” (T X 5). The “tragic feeling” is the sensation of a negation of identity through which one’s suffering and finitude are felt within a certain perfection. Rather than undermining the value of living, my suffering and sense of inevitable loss stimulate the intoxicated “joy which also encompasses joy in destruction . . .” (T X 5; the ellipsis points are Nietzsche’s). In such a state, the prospect of death only enhances the sweetness of living. In light of such happiness, it comes as no surprise that Nietzsche’s interpretation of tragic art through the Dionysian “mysteries of sexuality” (T X 4) does not fit with the general sense of what we mean in speaking of tragedy. We tend to see this art form within the more “pessimistic” contours we find in Aristotle’s “half moral, half medicinal”34 perception of it. To describe why “the tragic feeling . . . was . . . misunderstood as much by Aristotle as it especially was by our pessimists” (T X 5), the role of Dionysus within Nietzsche’s

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aesthetics is of course essential. But we cannot forget that Nietzsche, “the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus” (T X 5), nevertheless speaks of our “deepest instinct, that of self-preservation” as basic to any interpretation of “‘beauty’” (T IX 19). This drive’s role within Nietzsche’s aesthetics brings us to the gate of that “permanent military encampment” wherein we find the ruthless counterprinciple to everything Dionysian. That is, we now approach the “rigid and menacing” (BT 4) Apollo. What finer countermeasure to the body’s ecstatic annihilation of identity is there than the drive to preservation, which, within its own intoxicated perspective, asserts the sovereignty of the “self ” for eternity? The degeneration of this instinct is central to the overall decline Nietzsche saw in Greek culture, particularly evidenced, he thought, in Plato’s philosophy. But during this culture’s healthiest epoch, the desire to stay here on earth is a profoundly physical longing for the taste, touch, sight, and sound of oneself under the sky. The demand that our finitude be vanquished by the hunger to remain on earth is the perspective of our drive to self-preservation,35 and nothing, Nietzsche says, is “older, stronger, more inexorable and unconquerable than this instinct” (GS 1). What stimulates this ancient drive is anything that thwarts its perspective: death, decay, any dissolution of structure, not to mention the obliterating bliss of an intoxicated sensuality. The very possibility of discerning any of these hinges on the provocation of our instinctive need to forge out what we call our “self.” This drive constitutes the inevitable incision through which what Levinas calls the “Il y a” becomes possible.36 The “world,” the “cosmos,” and all we can possibly mean with reference to these terms affirm the precious “I” within the perspective of the instinct of self-preservation. For Nietzsche, this drive is a constant opening up of the wound we articulate as “identity and difference,” “same and other,” “self and world,” along with all the other “bifurcations” between “consciousness” and its “objects.” Preservation asserts the code of stability through which the contemporaneity of the “world” and our “self ” are claimed. Its perspective is the profound desire for power over all “becoming,” and its “truths” are those of duration, changelessness, and eternity. Of course, from Nietzsche’s point of view, these “truths” only derive their “validity” through “that which gives thought the greatest feeling of strength.”37 Every instinct is, he says, “a kind of lust to rule; each has its perspective”38 and its own “For and Against” (HH Preface). By imposing “upon chaos as much regularity and form as our practical needs require,”39 preservation is constantly selecting the “world” according to whatever asserts the victory of its

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perspective. Here, it is not a matter of “truth,” but rather of gaining command over becoming and chaos. This selection of “stability” points to Nietzsche’s identification of Apollo with the instinct of preservation. The Apollinian is the imposition of equilibrium that, countering the Dionysian “compulsion to an orgiastic state,” makes the former one of the “two conditions in which art appears in man like a force of nature.”40 From his initial introduction of these “two conditions” in The Birth of Tragedy, Dionysus’ significance grows within Nietzsche’s thinking while that of Apollo fades, except when Nietzsche speaks of art. During the final years of his philosophical life, his observations on aesthetics still acknowledge “Apollo’s deception: the eternity of beautiful form; the aristocratic legislation, ‘thus it shall be for ever!’”41 Apollinian “freedom under the law”42 is a commanding imposition of structure upon the chaotic whirl of the Dionysian that is essential both to the birth to tragic art and to what Nietzsche meant by “the physiology of aesthetics” (GM III 8). As we saw, Dionysus is the name for that savage health and joy exploding throughout the body’s “play and counter-play” of passions toward an ecstatic “feeling of the necessary unity of creation and destruction.”43 Yet the very dissolution of identity constituting the ­Dionysian rapture stimulates the instinct of self-preservation and its Apollinian “aesthetic.” To clarify this, we must bear in mind that preservation’s perspective of stability is our need to impose structure and select duration and permanence. As our “deepest instinct (T IX 19), it forges out the “world” as something “which is, which abides.”44 In so doing, the human being as “one particular line of the total living organic world”45 affirms itself in an insatiable desire to remain on earth forever. Here is the seat of “the hyperbolic naiveté of man: positing himself as the meaning and measure of the value of things.”46 “Duration,” Nietzsche says, “is a first-rate value on earth” (GS 356), and, as preservation’s perspective, it is a value esteemed by most of us. But within an aesthetic dynamic, preservation’s activity of “selecting” the world reveals the imperturbable gaze of Apollo, whose strength lies in “a will to measure, to simplicity, to submission to rule and concept.”47 It is precisely these characteristics which led to the Socratic portrayal of Apollo in terms of “rationality.” This “rational” Apollo was certainly embraced within the post-Socratic perception of our “identity” as a purely rational essence. But Nietzsche had in mind an Apollo who, “bearing on his shoulders his bow and covered quiver,”48 embodied the fiercely healthy instinct of preservation’s “urge to perfect self-sufficiency.”49 And, since this impulse is an artistic one, far from the static rational “self ”

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proclaimed by the philosophical “décadents of Hellenism” (T X 3), its victory is an “Apollinian intoxication” (T IX 10). The “antithetical concepts Apollinian and Dionysian” are, Nietzsche says, “both conceived as forms of intoxication” (T IX 10). In “the Dionysian there is sexuality and voluptuousness: they are not lacking in the Apollinian.”50 But the latter is manifest in a certain ease, a kind of “cool” and calm pleasure in bestowing structure and form. In his earliest approach to this feature of his aesthetics, Nietzsche likened this activity to the generation of those multiple and doubtlessly “coherent” patterns we call dreams. This comparison is helpful to the extent that within the dream, “all forms speak to us; nothing is indifferent or unnecessary” (BT 1). Everything is completely acceptable and precisely as it must be. Here spontaneous “image-making energies” (BT 1) weave the necessary superficialities typical of the “surface- and sign-world” (GS 354) Nietzsche identified as consciousness. The dream showed Nietzsche the aesthetic event through which “worlds” are generated. Here preservation is the power through which the “self ” is contrived through “identifying” the world. In the dream, both are contemporaneously and perfectly in accord “as real.” The rhythm of this carving and forging of identity reveals how preservation permits all of us to become “an artist when creating the worlds of dream” (BT 1). But as a type of intoxication peculiar to the creation of art, this drive is stimulated into the assertion of its perspective. Its particular happiness is in the cutting, slicing, keeping, and discarding through which the world is “selected.” During the vitality of the tragic age, Nietzsche saw a healthy instinct of preservation embodied in the Apollinian intoxication through which the pre-Socratic thinkers fashioned cosmology out of chaos. In artistic activity, the ferocity of this drive was manifest not in an arid concern with merely staying alive, but rather with, for example, “stabilizing” the jump and rumble of the world in an explosion of musical notes. Indeed, preservation’s intoxication with its power to, as it were, “sculpt” and harness the world by means of notes, words, movement, and colours bespeaks that playfulness which, far from any concern with “truth,” provides the “world” as an object of desire. Self-preservation, Nietzsche tells us, is not “the primum mobile”51 of human or any other type of life on earth. On the contrary, it is, he says, “will to power,” that need “to become stronger,”52 or “more precisely, the feeling of growth, the feeling of increased power” (B 230). Preservation plays its role best when its perspective of “stability” is so healthy and strong that every possible characteristic of existence, including what it identifies as “frightful,

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evil, a riddle, destructive, fatal” (BT SC 4), stimulates the need to play with and ­harness these into art. The Apollinian represents the play of conferring structure upon things as an intoxicated legislation of their identity. This intoxication is the exhilarating sensation of a calm and effortless control over whatever defies the selective form-giving power of preservation. Hence Apollo represents the “simplification, abbreviation [and] concentration”53 of discipline, through which, in the case of cosmology, chaos is given a name. And, in the case of art, he symbolizes the discipline through which that chaos, so profoundly embodied in Dionysus, is forged into tragic poetry. Both of these forms of intoxication remained, Nietzsche says, “one of the great riddles to which I felt myself drawn when considering the nature of the Greeks.”54 In light of the concerns of this investigation, it is extremely important to point out that, the status of Dionysus notwithstanding, Nietzsche does not abandon the Apollinian in the realm of aesthetics. I tend to think the devolution of Apollo in Nietzsche’s thinking is due, at least to a certain extent, to his diminishing significance as an artistic power of intoxication after Socrates, who, for Nietzsche, advanced a pedestrian interpretation of Apollo as “reason” in “opposition to the instincts” (T II 11) and the body.55 The consensus is that, compared to Dionysus, the significance of Apollo all but disappears in Nietzsche’s texts.56 Certainly the number of references Nietzsche makes to Dionysus surpasses those to Apollo. But if we take Apollo to signify that form-giving power to harness and shape an ecstatic Dionysus, then he represents one of the foremost manifestations of the will to power. Apollo forges identity, and this is perfectly in keeping with the human instinct of preservation—the intoxicating combat with chaos and finitude to assert a sovereign eternity—the calm, serene joy of inviolable Being. For Nietzsche, this command is forever threatened and ultimately destined for destruction by the Dionysian urge, which, in annihilating all “identity,” is ever on the way to other, newer ones. Art is the place—indeed, it is emblematic—of these two forms of intoxication. On the one hand there is the Dionysian urge to smash through every conceivable wall of Being and Identity. On the other, there is the Apollinian passion to command the most potent powers of destruction and shape them into something perfect.57 Apollo, then, is the source of a profound suffering; a certain delight in cruelty and discipline which strives to sculpt even the most hideous manifestations of every kind of excess. This Apollinian element permeates Nietzsche’s philosophy, especially when it comes to what is essential to the cultivation of human beings and a future culture.

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It is true that Apollo is not spoken of much by Nietzsche after The Birth of Tragedy. The devolution of Apollo into reason’s divine essence only accessible via dialectics reduces him to a “frightfully self-satisfied and childish kind of dialectics” (T X 1). Is Nietzsche’s silence concerning Apollo a sign of respect? Is his silence here like those ellipses he deploys when he points to what cannot be reduced to dialectics? Is his silence a studied rejection of the Apollo peculiar to “the loquacious hordes of the Socratic schools” (HH 261) who couldn’t stop talking about the discipline they sorely needed (T X 3)? I think this may well be the case. Aside from the complaints of philologists over Nietzsche’s perceptions of Dionysus and Apollo, the philosophical reason for the silence around Apollo is that Apollo represents a willingness to do what Nietzsche saw lacking in the Europe of his time: namely, to go to war with oneself. For Nietzsche, the Delphic command to “know thyself ” is not the reflective self-examination of Socratic dialectics, but more a call to stand in the vortex of our passions as “creator, form-giver, hammer hardness, spectator divinity and seventh day” (B 225). Dionysus always seduces us into oblivion, but the “rigid and menacing” Apollo is the intoxication of that cool distance from all that immediacy which places Dionysus within that work of art we call our lives. Nietzsche saw Apollo as the god manifest not in the discipline of talking about our “self,” but rather in what Foucault calls “an aesthetics of existence,” or, as Nietzsche puts it, in “‘giv[ing] style’ to one’s character” (GS 270).58 This Apollinian characteristic of the tragic age of the Greeks certainly remained seminal for Nietzsche’s approach to aesthetics.59 So we have two forms of intoxication in tragic art. Foremost is the Dionysian orgasmic annihilation of the “self ” in a violent desire to leap “across the abyss of transitoriness,” as “ecstatic affirmation of the total character of life.”60 Here the Dionysian “myths of orgiastic origin” (T X 4) are symbolic of the “joy in destruction” (T X 5) typical of orgasmic ecstasy. And, as we saw, this form of intoxication provided Nietzsche “the bridge to the psychology of the tragic poet” (T X 5). Then there is the Apollinian intoxication, and here “‘Apollinian’ means: the urge to perfect self-sufficiency, to the typical ‘individual,’ to all that simplifies, distinguishes, makes strong , clear, unambiguous, typical.”61 The Apollinian is an intoxication that, taking hold of the Dionysian, shapes it into form and structure by subjecting it to identity. Apollinian ecstasy is stimulated by the maelstrom of Dionysian fury and, finding it irresistible, strives to capture it with words, or notes, or steps, and whatever else will place the mask of identity on the god with the “halcyon smile” (B 295).

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Apollinian intoxication is rooted in preservation’s inclination to subdue chaos into a code of control. It is not the self-obliteration typical of Dionysian ecstasy but is rather a luxuriant joy in the power to confer stability. This power to impose the structure and measure through which worlds come and go is the Apollinian joy of the child at play. The child constructs and, feeling itself in its gesture, is delighted into the play of building and destroying again and again. Here the fashioning of “identity,” form and structure, is not to be considered within the parameters of what we might call the “true” or “real.” These concerns are, as we shall see, reserved for the Socratic philosophizing that, as “metaphysics,” would undermine the status of art. Within Nietzsche’s aesthetics, the playful construction and destruction of identity go back to the earlier “Apollinian perspective”62 of the tragic age embodied in “the dark Heraclitus” (BT 24), for whom “everything is semblance and play.”63 The two types of intoxication we have considered are inseparable within Nietzsche’s approach to aesthetics, since it is the coalescence of these which generates the occasion for artistic deeds. We have spoken of his perception of the Apollinian in terms of the playful manipulation of the very power to confer identity or stability as a mode of intoxication. The insistence upon a restriction of chaos constitutes the perspective of preservation, and with this there is the possibility of the profound pleasure of success in the expansion of strength. The “will to power,” Nietzsche says, “can manifest itself only against resistances,”64 and though preservation is, like our other drives, another perspective of the will to power, its assertion of identity and stability is the heart of Apollinian intoxication. Yet, in spite of its indispensability not only for art, but for everything “human,” Nietzsche always asserts the body’s “horrible ‘witches’ brew’ of sensuality and cruelty” (B 2), which, as Dionysian, is forever on the verge of annihilating “identity.” It is exactly this tension between the Dionysian obliteration of the self within an ecstatic affirmation of life and the Apollinian counterecstasy of playing with selfhood in the face of all destruction that spawns tragic art. Before pursuing the wider implications of “the antithesis of the Dionysian and the Apollinian”65 within Nietzsche’s overall approach to aesthetics, we have to return to his point of departure in this domain: the tragic poet. When we left off our sketch of this artist, we were tracing Nietzsche’s emphasis on “that element out of which Dionysian art evolved—the orgy” (T X 4). Tragic art grew out of the “Dionysian subsoil”66 of “aphrodisiac bliss,”67 within which suffering, death, madness, and horror are honoured for the sake of life. And we have just seen that exactly this self-annihilating ecstasy stimulates the

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Apollinian play of melding this ecstasy into some sort of structure and identity. Grasping this dynamic in the case of the tragic artist means, once again, that this artist, like the warrior type or “virtuous” man we saw earlier, is burdened with the riotous health Nietzsche identified with the early Hellenes. This vitality is the reason why the tragic artist serves as Nietzsche’s model in determining the significance of all art. When the “Greek soul foamed over” (BT SC 4) with the explosive vitality of the tragic age, the earliest “interpretations” of values were the deeds of “virtuous” individuals. These were, as we saw, the values appropriate to Dionysian pessimism and the generosity peculiar to the gift of the body in combat. The tragic poet must also be seen within the mores of Dionysian pessimism insofar as its primary features are revealed in tragic art. When we looked at Dionysian pessimism, we found three overarching and inseparable characteristics: the body as location of the “ethical,” the body as gift, and “selflessness,” which, in its contrast to utility, is the means to ranking the value of human beings. We will now look at the tragic poet within the context of these features of Dionysian pessimism. The World Incarnate Our initial sketch of Dionysian pessimism revealed an attitude that affirms one’s destruction from the outset. But, as we saw, the acceptance of one’s inevitable death was not the occasion for a quietist withdrawal from the world. On the contrary, it allowed the individual to decide upon what was worthy of one’s destruction. Here the value of one’s life moves upon a readiness to face disaster. Dionysian pessimism, then, was central to the cultivation of the earliest warrior societies and the mores that would become the property of the early Greek aristocracies. And here “virtue” was illustrated in terms of the physical deed of risking suffering and death for the sake of something one deemed more valuable than oneself. It was within the confines of these descriptions that we spoke of the body as the site of the “ethical.” That is to say, the body as the location of pain, the place of one’s suffering, and the surest guarantee of one’s mortality is where the good happens even if one is destroyed. And, of course, the ancients recognized this “good” as courage. The tragic poet also stands within the contours of Dionysian pessimism to the extent that, like the warrior type, he embraces destruction from the outset. But this does not lead the poet to fly into combat; rather, the affirmation of destruction lies in the need to harness its every fury, terror, madness, and

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suffering. We should recall that Nietzsche identified the ecstatic Dionysian orgy as the “bridge to the psychology of the tragic poet” (T X 5). The tragic poet’s affirmation of inevitable destruction is not, any more than it is for the “virtuous” person, an occasion for despair. Rather, and again like the noble individual, the poet is quickened and stimulated by it. But Nietzsche sees the aesthetic deed of tragic poetry not as a leap into battle, but as rooted in the need to give expression to “an explosive condition.”68 This condition is the Dionysian, and hence we must grasp that the most terrifying and forbidding of all fates, along with every conceivable shade within the meaning of what we call “suffering,” only stimulates the tragic poet’s need to express these as somehow perfect. “This compulsion to transform into the perfect is,” Nietzsche says, “art” (T IX 9). It is the need to establish the world as a reflection of the physiological condition of the artist, which, in the case of the tragic poet, is the savage vitality of “Hellenic life”69 during the tragic age. The body is as much the site of the aesthetic for Nietzsche as it is of the ethical. And, though we have certainly anticipated it as foundational for all art in our outline of Dionysian and Apollinian intoxication, we have to look more closely at the physical “compulsion to perfect” Nietzsche identifies with artistic creation. If we are to grasp not only the tragic poet but also a means to looking at lesser “artists,” then, as is the case with virtually every feature of Nietzsche’s thinking, the “body and physiology [are] the starting point.”70 With the tragic poet, there is once again great “joy, strength, [and] overflowing health” (BT SC 1), but in this case we find a human being so highly attuned to every hint, suggestion, and nuance of intoxication that the world is shot through with the “pressure of abundance.”71 For Nietzsche, all artistic endeavour is an overflow of intoxicating affects which “must first have heightened the excitability of the entire machine: no art results before that happens” (T IX 8). He sees this physiological prerequisite as the condition artists try to describe when they are asked “what happens” while engaged in creative activity. Generally, they tend to make Plato’s point that they don’t “know” what they are doing.72 In speaking of abundance in terms of the “essence of intoxication . . . [as] the feeling of plenitude and increased energy” (T IX 8), Nietzsche not only characterizes its best example during the tragic age, but also points to that “essential” feature of artistic creation which defies the sobriety Plato required. For Nietzsche, the occasion of beauty is not one of “knowing,” but more the affect of the subtlest physical rapture, which, “corresponding to an increase in strength,”73 gilds the world with desire and renders it “perfect.” Thus Nietzsche approaches aesthetics via the “great intelligence”

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of the body (Z I 4) and the physiological dynamics that, as the excess and wingbeat of our competing desires, stimulates the need to command this whirligig and write its “name in letters of smoke among the stars.”74 Here we have the human body flushed with “very delicate nuances of animal wellbeing and desires”75—including the need for preserving that ecstasy. In this condition the body quivers with a Dionysian “multiplicity of ‘souls in one breast’”76 along with that other Apollinian need for a “harmonizing of all strong desires.”77 These are the “states,” Nietzsche says, “in which we infuse a transfiguration and fullness into things and poeticize about them until they reflect back our fullness and joy in life.” This intoxicated “aesthetic state”78 is one in which the individual, burdened by strength, disperses it such that “the sensations of space and time are altered . . . and, as it were, for the first time apprehended.” Now there is “divination, the power of understanding with only the least assistance, at the slightest suggestion.”79 This “‘intelligent’ sensuality” is felt “in the muscles, as suppleness and pleasure in movement, as dance, as levity and presto.” In this circumstance, all manifestations of physical strength are compelling “as pleasure in the proof of strength, as bravado, adventure, fearlessness, indifference to life or death.”80 The intoxicating sense of physical abundance peculiar to the “exalted feeling of power”81 generates the occasion of beauty. The world becomes “perfect” “because in beauty opposites are tamed; the highest sign of power, namely power over opposites.” This occurs, “moreover, without tension . . . violence is no longer needed . . . everything follows, obeys, so easily and so ­pleasantly— that is what delights the artist’s will to power.”82 This “excess and overflow of blooming physicality”83 is the heart of Nietzsche’s aesthetics. “In this condition,” he says, “one enriches everything out of one’s own abundance: what one sees, what one desires, one sees swollen, pressing, strong, overladen with energy. The man in this condition transforms things until they mirror his power—until they are reflections of his perfection.” In this state even an individual’s limitations and failings seem advantageous and “become for him none the less part of his joy in himself ” (T IX 9). This flush of physical joy demands expression, and it is here, in the very need to meet this demand, that “we discover,” Nietzsche says, “art as an organic function.”84 “Do you desire,” he asks, “the most astonishing proof of how far the transfiguring power of intoxication can go?—‘Love’ is this proof.” Among animals “this condition produces new weapons, pigments, colours, and forms . . . new rhythms, new calls and seductions. It is no different with man.”85 Love is that “making perfect, seeing as perfect, which characterizes the cerebral system

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bursting with sexual energy”;86 it is impossible “to suspend the interpretive, additive, interpolating, poeticizing power”87 that we lavish upon the beloved. We are drunk with the tremendous exhilaration of feeling “oneself transfigured, stronger, richer, more perfect, one is more perfect.”88 This “perfection” is the physical condition of abundant ecstatic energy which, as the glance of Dionysus, allows the lover to feel “richer than before, more powerful, more complete than those who do not love. The lover becomes a squanderer: he is rich enough for it.”89 Now, caught up in the “vibration and glittering of all the magic mirrors of Circe,” the lover will try anything; he “becomes an adventurer, becomes an ass in magnanimity . . . believes in God again, he believes in virtue . . . this happy idiot grows wings and new capabilities . . . even the door of art is opened to him.”90 Within this state of delirium, the beloved, and indeed the whole world, is perfected within the overarching and embellishing powers peculiar to the eyes of desire. As we saw, this form of intoxication is fundamental to the existence of “any sort of aesthetic activity or perception” (T IX 8). And, insofar as “everyone has his own knowledge of this,”91 then Nietzsche illustrates the power of our instincts to sketch out the world in their own terms. Certainly, that supercharged intoxication of “aphrodisiac bliss”92 forever smouldering within artistic creation, is something which most of us experience. But it “is exceptional states,” Nietzsche says, “that condition the artist.”93 Intoxication, sexual or otherwise, is nothing particularly out of the ordinary. But in the case of the artist, Nietzsche sees an individual who, overflowing with the energy of intoxication, does not collapse before “perfection,” but acts. That is, he or she will strive to create that perfection again and again. And it is within the context of this act that, having located the aesthetic at the site of the body, we must now return to that other characteristic of Dionysian pessimism: the body as a gift. A Dulcet Agony We have stated from the outset that Nietzsche saw the history of ancient Greek culture under the general rubrics of health and decay. The tragic artist certainly embodies the ferocious health of the early Hellenes, but within this inestimably important feature of Nietzsche’s overall philosophy, this poet becomes the standard by which he will approach “all aesthetic values” (GS 370). In this realm, Nietzsche says, “I now avail myself of this main

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distinction: I ask in every instance, ‘is it hunger or superabundance that has here become creative?’” (GS 370). Tragic poetry is a gift of superabundant vitality at the site of the body, that, fecund with joy, provokes an articulation of the world as an object of perfection.94 Yet, just as Dionysian pessimism is manifest in the joy that is suffered by the virtuous man, so is precisely the abundant joy of the tragic artist. As was just noted above, intoxication is one thing, but it “is exceptional states that condition the artist.”95 Nietzsche saw the tragic poet as so burdened by the possession of an intoxicated vision of the perfected world that his art, like that of all “[a]rtists if they are any good,”96 is a gift of the body’s excess strength and joy. According to him, all healthy artists are burdened with ecstasy, and this, as we have seen, is “an explosive condition”97 which, like “the ‘pains of childbirth’” (T X 4) venerated in the Dionysian mysteries, is suffered. Nietzsche attempts to express the dispersal of this excess as “the inner need to make of things a reflex of one’s own fullness and perfection . . . the extreme sharpness of certain senses . . . that turns into an extreme urge to communicate.”98 Intoxication is not out of the ordinary, but these conditions are peculiar to artists “who suffer from the over-fullness of life” (GS 370). This, as we said, is descriptive not only of the tragic poet, but also of all healthy artists. Out of the need to dispel their ecstatic insight into the perfection of all things, artists desire, Nietzsche says, “to speak on the part of everything that knows how to make signs” and therewith reveal “a need to get rid of oneself, as it were, through signs and gestures.”99 Jettisoning oneself here is a dispersal of the ecstatic; and Nietzsche makes a stab at articulating this in saying we “must first think of this condition as a compulsion and urge to get rid of the exuberance of inner tension through muscular activity and movements of all kinds; then as an involuntary co-ordination between this movement and the processes within (images, thoughts, desires)—as a kind of automatism of the whole muscular system impelled by strong stimuli from within.”100 Here we find the philosopher Nietzsche trying to meet Plato’s aesthetic requirement: a sober explanation for a condition which is anything but sober.101 What distinguishes Nietzsche from Plato, however, is that while Plato insists upon beauty as an object of reflection and therewith “rational knowledge,” Nietzsche will locate it in the “pre-reflective” ecstatic perspectives of the body’s drives. His attempts to describe in language what in situ has no “words” point not only to that poverty of language of which Nietzsche was well aware (B 296), but also to his conviction that “aesthetics,” as a branch of philosophy

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going back to Plato, was a negation of its own genuine point of departure: the physical event of “beauty.” The primacy of the body as the organic site of life as will to power, that is, as the location of our need not merely to stay alive, but that of the joy of growing, is the heartbeat of Nietzsche’s thinking and is most explicit when we look at his aesthetics. For Nietzsche, art is a gift of the body since every work by that name exists through the artist’s need to disperse surplus ecstatic energy. This “compulsion to transform into the perfect is—art” (T IX 9), and this giving of the ecstatic out of “the pressure of abundance”102 is Nietzsche’s vision of the artist squandering his body upon his culture. Among the ancient Hellenes it was the tragic poet who, Nietzsche thought, was the best example of this aesthetic gift. As the warrior’s ethical gesture is made out of the suffering of excess, so is the aesthetic gift conferred out of the savage health Nietzsche identified with the tragic age of the Greeks. In the case of the tragic artist, the bestowal of the body lies in the contest within which the Apollinian intoxication of preservation strives to harness the Dionysian ecstasy of self-obliteration. Tragic poetry is the gift of these two modes of intoxication, and it remained for Nietzsche the finest example of the body’s artistic powers. He saw the ecstatic excess suffered by the tragic poet as something that, in its dispersal as poetry, was a gift to his or her epoch. What he perceived as common to both the “good” man and the tragic poet was the excess of joy characteristic of the mores of the Dionysian pessimism marking the tragic age. With the former, the body is the site of the “ethical” in terms of the ecstatic suffering marking the ethical deed. The tragic poet is at the site of the body, and again the aesthetic deed is done out of the suffering of ecstasy. In both cases what would come to be called “ethics” and “aesthetics” are seen by Nietzsche to have been rooted in a certain kind of suffering—a suffering from joy. With the warrior type we saw that suffering was a path to glory and a means to affirming even the darkest features of life on earth. The tragic poet, on the other hand, also suffers from the ecstatic excess that places him in “physiological accord” (T II 2) with the virtuous person. Thus far we have looked at the tragic poet in only a general sense. That is, like the “virtue” of the noble type, the aesthetic is located within the attitude of Dionysian pessimism at the site of the body, and as a gift of the body. Moreover, we have taken some advantage of the portrait of the tragic poet as a means to illustrating what Nietzsche would see as typical of artists in general. We are going to exploit this illustration further as we proceed toward the completion of this chapter, but through concentrating on the link between tragic poetry and its connection to the mores of a warrior aristocracy.

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Songs of Virtue Thus far we have spoken of the ethical and aesthetic within two basic features of Dionysian pessimism. Both are located at, as well as being a gift of, the body. Aside from these, each shares the other characteristic of Dionysian pessimism we identified as a certain type of selflessness. In the case of the noble or virtuous human being, we described this selflessness in terms of the risk of self-annihilation toward which the virtuous person lives as a possibility. Furthermore, we saw that pursing this possibility revealed both the “impracticality” typical of the ancient warrior elite and the means with which this elite kept more prudent people at a lower rank of value as human beings. Indeed, the alacrity with which the warrior hurled himself into combat was the measure of his value and constituted the right to rule those more inclined to preserve themselves. How, then, is tragic art, as the “compulsion to transform into the perfect” (T IX 9), related to that “selflessness” we identified as typical of Dionysian pessimism? In response we should first recall the ecstatic energy with which the tragic poet is burdened. It is through the dispersal of this abundance that the poet perfects the world in such a way as always, directly or indirectly, to appeal to “the ecstasies of sexuality.”103 But Nietzsche tells us that though they may not be as potent as sexuality, other “kinds of intoxication, however different their origin” (T IX 8) also kindle the artistic inclination to “perfect” the world. For example, those which come, he says, “in the train of all great desires, all strong emotions . . . of feasting, of contest, of the brave deed, of victory, of all extreme agitation; the intoxication of cruelty; intoxication in destruction” (T IX 8). All strong desires have a potent narcotic effect, and this physical phenomenon of ecstatic fertility is, for Nietzsche, typical of that healthiest of artists, the tragic poet. When we spoke of the selflessness of the noble, we took pains to articulate this, not in terms of altruism, but rather through describing the ethical gesture’s lack of practical utility. We saw that the generosity peculiar to the ethical gesture of the noble person derived its value from a lack of concern with one’s own self-preservation. In the case of the artist, and of the tragic artist in particular, Nietzsche saw an abundance of ecstatic energies which had to be dispersed, not for the purposes of personal gain, but rather out of the joy in commanding those energies in such a way that the darkest, most hideous features of existence are transformed into a range of perfections. The deed through which art, and in this case tragic art, is created is not done out of a

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desire to preserve oneself. On the contrary, Nietzsche saw nothing “self-centered” in the aesthetic gesture, since, like that of the ethical, it is a ­Dionysian abundance of strength which, “overflowing” (BT SC 4), “calls good even the most terrible and questionable qualities of life.”104 Among the ancient Hellenes, Nietzsche saw tragic art born out of the ­artist’s need to disperse the body’s ecstatic energies into the praise and ­glorification of life on earth. And in this, the tragic poet, like the warrior, stands within that feature of Dionysian pessimism we described as the “selflessness” typical of those unconcerned with practical gain or preservation. The perception of the tragic poet displaying “fearlessness in the face of the fearsome and questionable” (T IX 24) is, of course, fundamental to Nietzsche’s perception of the ferocious health of the tragic age. But beyond the artist’s indifference to self-preservation, there is also the profound affirmation of “selflessness,” which, to the extent that it resides in tragic poetry, allows us to expand on why Nietzsche saw “art as an organic function”105 of life as will to power. We must note that though self-preservation, the mere “will to exist,” is the lowest form of the will to power,106 this does not mean that art lacks a life-preserving, practical utility. Its function lies in whether or not it ultimately serves “health, future, growth, power, life” on the one hand, or “weariness . . . [and] impoverishment” (GS pref 2) on the other. Nietzsche certainly saw tragedy serving the former because it implicitly, and quite unconsciously, rejected any notion of human beings as inherently valuable because we are human. This is not surprising, since the attitude of Dionysian pessimism was such that only deeds counted, particularly those which exhibited a profound indifference to personal security. This basic feature of the “virtues” embraced by the warrior aristocracy is the means through which this caste not only ruled others but also framed the foundations of Greek culture. The organic function of tragic art lies in how precisely the virtues of this ruling elite are ­“perfected.” These values were founded, as we saw, on the acceptance of one’s own inevitable destruction and, consequently, the liberty to decide upon the object for which one should be destroyed. In this vein, we recognized the warrior code within Dionysian pessimism, which courts potential death, suffering, and disaster as opportunities “for-the-sake-of ” what one thinks is worth more than oneself. This embrace of potential destruction and suffering is the mark of tragic wisdom, which says yes to annihilation, not for its own sake, but because without it there can be no creation. Nietzsche perceived the organic function of tragic art as an affirmation, not of the value of the individual, but of the necessity of the individual’s destruction for the sake of

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the preservation and growth of Greek culture. Or, to put this in another way, the value of the individual is affirmed only to the extent that suffering and destruction are his or her fate. Tragedy glorified precisely the values dedicated, not to the practical concerns dedicated to preserving the individual, but rather to the Dionysian pessimism that determines destruction as the means to the future of Greek culture. Here we have an example of the organic function of art within a culture Nietzsche considered healthy. Tragic art stands within, and is a glorification of, the excess typical of Dionysian pessimism. He saw the tragic poet as a man of his time, an individual who not only represented his epoch’s savage vitality, but also articulated its intoxications. In this sense, the deeds of ­Dionysian pessimism have a narcotic affect on the poet since, as Nietzsche tells us, bravery “and composure in the face of a powerful enemy, great hardship, a problem that arouses aversion—it is this victorious condition which the tragic artist singles out, which he glorifies” (T IX 24). The tragic poet sings a song of praise for the “virtuous” man and, in so doing, promotes not the supreme value of the individual per se, but the deeds of individuals who choose their own destruction for the sake of a future they will never see. Yes and Amen As we saw, this “selflessness” is located at the site of the body in terms of the deed of suffering, which, as a form of generosity, is a gift bestowed out of Dionysian excess. We also noted that this generosity, as an enthusiastic courting of disaster, is the most rudimentary component of what passed for “virtue” in the tragic age. The attitude of Dionysian pessimism typical of “the ‘noble Greek’ of the old stamp”107 was by no means concerned with valorizing the conditions through which an individual’s personal gain was secure. On the contrary, for the “older Hellenes” (T X 2) the “devotion of the greatest is to encounter risk and danger and play dice for death” (Z II 12). This vision of playing with fire and death stimulated the tragic poet into the aesthetic gesture of tragic art. This art gives us the bravest and most virtuous individuals led into madness, calamity, atrocity, and the most profound suffering. Yet among the many things Nietzsche found so remarkable about this art form is that as a product of intoxication it is, like anything burdened with an “over-rich and dangerous health” (GS 372), generous toward life in refusing “the conclusions of pain” (GS pref 1). For him, this gift of intoxication is not

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meant to purge the “two depressive affects of terror and pity”108 as “Aristotle understood it” (T X 5). On the contrary, “tragedy is a tonic,”109 he tells us; an energizing vision of the “strangest and sternest problems” (T X 5) perfected in the annihilation of the Greek culture’s “highest types” (T X 5). This tonic is a “need ” (BT SC 1) which, as tragic poetry, is laced with the brutality we recognized as typical of the age. As such, Nietzsche will observe, it “is a sign of one’s feeling of power and well-being [in] how far one can acknowledge the terrifying and questionable character of things.”110 Certainly, Nietzsche saw the tragic poet, like the virtuous person, going far in such acknowledgment. But it is equally important to note here that the poet’s perfection of the darkest faces of existence through the destruction of the virtuous person by no means represents “some sort of ‘solution’ at the end.”111 On the contrary, only “the artists of decadence” would “crave . . . a solution, or at least the hope for a solution”112 to the “evil, problematic aspect of existence” (BT SC 1). The tragic poet provides no such thing—rather the opposite: “he justifies the terrifying, the evil, the questionable.”113 But this “justification” is not seen by Nietzsche within the contours of what we might call morality114 or reason, since these rubrics will emerge with more cachet in “the age of Socrates, among men of fatigued instincts” (B 212). The justification Nietzsche has in mind resides in the poet’s aesthetic gesture. Here the artist provides the intoxicant—the “tonic”115—of tragic poetry, which, far from offering a moral or rational “solution”116 to the terrifying riddles of existence, perfects the terrifying as a stimulant to saying yes to life beyond the frontiers of one’s own death. Who is most worthy of the tragic poet’s drunken song? The virtuous person. What happens to this individual? He is destroyed. The poet “selects” the noble individual to commit all manner of evil acts, endure profound suffering, a terrifying destiny, and finally destruction. But aside from the thrill of such a spectacle, the noble is not diminished as a “virtuous” human being. It is exactly here that Nietzsche saw the tonic effect of tragic art. Aside from the exhilarating spectacle of disaster, murder, cruelty, and depravity (still deeply cherished to this day), the tragedy preserves the honour of the noble. The heroic status of the noble person hinges on our incapacity to feel ashamed of them. When Nietzsche says the tragic poet justifies the darkest features of existence as opposed to finding a “solution” for them, he means an artistic justification,117 one that resides in the poet’s compelling us into an attitude of joyful thanksgiving at the very fact that we are. Here is “a pessimism ‘beyond good and evil’” (BT SC 5) which reveals Nietzsche’s conviction that, whether we speak of “master morality” or

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“of great art . . . the essence of both is gratitude” (CW Epilogue). The existential justification provided by art lies in a yes to life. But this affirmation proceeds not through moral or rational “solutions” to the problems of suffering and death. For Nietzsche, these “explanations” point at a “self-preservative” desire for comfort in the face of the incomprehensible and hence terrifying fact that one exists. In this sense, the aesthetic justification Nietzsche is speaking of runs counter to the “guilt” Heidegger identifies in terms of the ontology of “care.”118 The aesthetic gesture is a shameless joy that, exceeding the boundaries of “being-toward death,”119 reaches for an eternity requiring no ontological, divine or rational sanction. It is the “perfect” innocence of “amor fati” (GS 276) affirming solidarity with all living things. The yes given in tragic art resides in a shudder of ecstatic gratitude at the very fact that, in spite of suffering and death, one is and will have been here. In a certain sense, it is gratitude for the life which, being my own, is the simultaneous promise that I shall surely lose it. Morality and reason are means to protecting us from the incomprehensibility of existence as well as the certain knowledge of our destruction. The existential justification of the “aesthetic phenomenon” (GS 107) lies in a shiver of rapture which, as excess, reaches toward life beyond one’s “self ” toward its eternal innocence, incomprehensibility, and promise of destruction. This annihilation of the “self ” through the intoxicant of art is best exemplified, Nietzsche thought, in tragic poetry since it expresses the same gratitude for life that only a “good” person can possess. Both tragic art and the “virtue” indicative of “the Greeks of the best, the strongest, the most courageous period” (BT SC 1) are emblematic of the gratitude that says, “What do I matter!” (D 494). The aesthetic of tragic poetry selected those who lived in accordance with Dionysian pessimism as being the only ones worthy of the gift of its song.120 The tragic poet bestows the status of tragic hero only upon the “virtuous” individual. In so doing, the poet confirms the rarity of such people and that, in deserving this status, they are “better” than others. Through this confirmation, tragic art affirms the ancient master morality for which “virtue” was the means to determine the value of human beings. The Art of Virtue In this chapter, we have looked at Dionysian pessimism within the confines of what we called the “ethical” and the “aesthetic” and, in so doing, have sought to develop some of the central points initially outlined in chapter 1.

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To this end, we have emphasized the great health Nietzsche identified with “the tragic age”121 manifest in both the earliest interpretations of “virtue” and tragic poetry. In looking at “virtue” and tragic art, we have seen that Nietzsche locates each at the site of the human body. Moreover, it is the gift of suffering at this location which constitutes what we have called the gestures of both the ethical and aesthetic. The articulation of these points is inextricably woven into a description of Dionysian “selflessness,” which, “as an excess of energy” (T X 4), reveals the ecstatic character of both virtue and tragic poetry. And, because of this ecstatic element, we have also seen, not only why virtue and tragic poetry are “useless” from a practical point of view, but also how this very impracticality allowed the ancient Hellenes to determine the value of human beings within an order or rank. In light of how tragic poetry was so interwoven with master morality, it is not hard to see how it articulates the “virtues” of a warlike aristocracy and is inseparable from the dominant political power of the time. And though a poet’s life or death might hinge on the whim of a “virtuous” person, the poetry itself was not seen by Nietzsche as mere sycophancy. To think this is to forget that the poet does, after all, suffer from the excessive vitality Nietzsche saw marking the tragic age. The life of “virtue” is rooted in a joy in the strength one has in being able “to die in battle and to squander a great soul” (Z I 21). But the tragic artist is, as we saw, also burdened with an abundance of ecstatic energies through which “a preference for questionable and terrifying things is a symptom of strength.”122 Nietzsche saw the strength of Dionysian intoxication as an ecstatic condition permeating the overall vitality of the tragic age and hence, as binding both the warrior aristocrat and the tragic poet to the culture of “the older Hellenes” (T X 2). But the tragic poet’s ecstatic, transformative powers are such that the warrior’s annihilation only invigorates and stimulates the poet’s need to perfect a horrible fate, irredeemable loss, and everything in this world that “is false, cruel, contradictory, seductive, without meaning.”123 In saying that the tragic poet sang songs in praise of the old warrior aristocracy, we mean this aristocracy is “singled out” of course as an “inspiration.” But it might even be more important to bear in mind here that this selection of the aristocracy is an occasion for the release of what the poet already possesses: an abundance of ecstatic energies. This power is strictly artistic—it does not squander itself on the battlefield, but overflows into the songs of the most violent faces of the world with an effortlessness that compels us to “admit there will be music despite everything.”124

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Within this context Nietzsche asks, “What does the tragic artist communicate of himself? Does he not display precisely the condition of fearlessness in the face of the fearsome and questionable” (T IX 24)? Of course, the answer is yes. The tragic poet stares into the Dionysian vortex of ecstatic destruction and yet is able to make the Apollonian incision required for the poetry appropriate to the annihilation of noble individuals. Tragic poetry is that “cool, noble, severe beauty”125 relished by those “trained . . . for what is grave and terrifying” (BT 18). Here the poet is distinguished, not by a romantic sigh at the loss of a virtuous individual, but rather by providing the spectacle that affirms rather than undermines the value of life on earth. The tragic poet does not just fixate on the individual virtuous man, but exploits the event of virtue in terms of a poetry which, in perfecting “the terrifying, the evil, the questionable,” affirms “the large-scale economy”126 of life by not seeing its value diminished because human beings suffer and are destroyed. Thus the “selflessness” of Dionysian pessimism as embodied in the noble is “selected” by the tragic poet. But the poet, always stimulated by any hint of the ecstatic, playfully subjects the “virtuous” person to all manner of terror, evil, and pain; then, saving the best for last, destroys them. In this, the poet honours the noble as the one who, undiminished as a “good” human being, fulfills an ecstatic destiny in annihilation, and “lamentation itself becomes a song of praise” (BT 3). “The profundity of the tragic artist lies,” Nietzsche says, “in this, that his aesthetic instinct surveys the more remote consequences, that he does not halt shortsightedly at what is closest at hand.”127 Hence, like the warrior who embraces destruction not for its own sake but with an eye on “more remote consequences,” the tragic poet, we find, “does not halt shortsightedly” at the virtuous person, but exploits him or her as a means to saying yes to the finitude and loss that marks all living things. “In the face of tragedy,” Nietzsche tells us, “the warlike in our soul celebrates its Saturnalias” (T IX 24). The tragedy was a song especially reserved for “whoever is accustomed to suffering, whoever seeks out suffering” (T IX 24). Here, then, we have the poetry relished by a “species of severe, warlike, prudently taciturn men, close-mouthed and closely linked” (B 262). And the tragic poet will honour them again and again by serving up tragedy as a “draught of sweetest cruelty” (T IX 24). In this we should note that the profundity of the tragic poet lies in having given to the ancient Hellenes a narcotic which, as art, has “an organic function.”128 But this function is not to be seen in terms of the “half-medicinal, half-moral discharges of affects à la Aristotle.”129 Rather, it is an intoxicant laced with pain, suffering, madness

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and cruelty; and, since the warrior “extols his existence by means of tragedy” (T IX 24), then the old nobility would rejoice in it. Hence we should remember this was not an age wherein “the old, the noble taste” (T X 3) included “lesser” human beings. Tragedy was not, therefore, “democratic.” As the poetry appropriate to the “best” individuals, it was also a sign of rank and was employed, Nietzsche says, as a “means for making oneself feared” (T X 3). Hence tragedy’s organic function within Hellenic culture was to serve as a means to maintain the order of rank, that “pathos of distance” (GM I 2) between the “virtuous” who relished it and the “bad men” who, like Socrates, found it impractical. “Precisely their tragedies prove,” Nietzsche says, “that the Greeks were not pessimists” (EH BT 1). On the contrary, tragedy “has to be considered the decisive repudiation of that idea and the counter-verdict to it” (T X 5). Yet there is, as we have seen, another kind of pessimism among the Greeks; one which, under the aegis of Dionysus, characterizes “the older Hellenic instinct, an instinct still exuberant and even overflowing: it is explicable only as an excess of energy” (T X 4). Having looked at this excess as Dionysian pessimism within both the ethical and aesthetic gestures, we should recall the anachronism we spoke of at the start of this chapter. From the beginning, attention was drawn to its being inappropriate to speak of an “intimacy” between ethics and aesthetics during the tragic age. By now, in light of the foregoing, it should be clear that there was, at least from Nietzsche’s point of view, a genuine intimacy between what we would call the “ethics” and “aesthetics” of the early Hellenes. The anachronism would reside in our asserting that during the tragic age “ethics” and “aesthetics” were charted-out regions within the discipline of “philosophy.” Insofar as the terms “ethics” and “aesthetics” reach back to Socratic thought, they are, strictly speaking, not really appropriate appellations for what Nietzsche saw as the “virtues” and poetry of the tragic age. For Nietzsche, the distinction we make between ethics and aesthetics is quite foreign to the tragic age, and it is in this sense that our statement concerning their intimacy is both accurate and misleading. It is correct, in that the possibility of “right conduct,” that is, as “master morality,” and the “beauty” of this conduct, that is, as tragic poetry, are, from Nietzsche’s point of view, inseparable. But it is inaccurate since there was at the time no “science” of ethics or aesthetics. What is worthy of note here is how the very perception of “ethics” and “aesthetics”—insofar as they reveal “the gradual prevalence of rationality” (BT SC 4)—is, for Nietzsche, a symptom of “the dissolution of Greece” (T II 2). The most ancient “virtue,” along with the tragic poetry entwined within it,

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were both, as we saw, “prompted by well being, by overflowing health, by the fullness of existence” (BT SC 1). And in this, Nietzsche saw both growing “out of the deepest foundations of the Hellenic” (HH I 262). The identification of ethics and aesthetics as “philosophically” separate investigations into “values” indicated, he thought, a shift in the “physiological” status of ancient Greek culture. For him, the fragmentation of virtue and tragic poetry into two distinctive realms of “knowledge” is symptomatic of the decay of Greek culture. Consequently, when the tragic poet distilled an inebriant so powerful that madness and murder were seen as fundamental to “virtue’s” beauty, this was not, for Nietzsche, a synthesis of “ethics” and “aesthetics.” This terminology is more appropriate, not to the tragic age, but to “the decadents of Hellenism” (T X 3), who, “thanks to Socrates,”130 dared “to spill this magic potion into the dust” (BT 13). In the next chapter we will explore Nietzsche’s perception of the collapse of ancient Greek culture into that decay through which “virtue” and tragedy crumbled into “ethics” and “aesthetics.” Thus far we have something like a sketch of what Nietzsche perceived as the tragic age of the Greeks and, consequently, the culture of “the older Hellenes” (T X 2). By means of a description of “Dionysian pessimism” (GS 370), we have provided his perception of the most rudimentary and, indeed, violent origins of “virtue” and tragic poetry. As we saw, both are reminiscent of the savage vitality of the tragic age, with the human body as the site of everything we now call “ethics” and “aesthetics.” To this end, we have looked at the ethical and aesthetic as gestures— as deeds—pointing to a certain “selflessness” which, “contained in the word Dionysus” (T X 3), is characteristic of “the older Hellenic instinct” (T X 4). Here we noted the generosity, that, unconcerned with the practical utility of self-preservation, is the means through which the order of rank, dominated by a warrior aristocracy, was initiated and maintained. Now, in turning toward what Nietzsche called “the quarrelsome and loquacious hordes of the Socratic schools” (HH I 261), we will try to discern how the fragmentation of Greek culture has “left us confused by our split desire for freedom, beauty and greatness on the one hand and our drive toward truth on the other, a drive which asks merely ‘And what is life worth, after all?’”131

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3

The Socratic Cure for Life And then the foolishness of the body will be cleared away and we shall be pure and hold converse with other pure souls, and know of ourselves the clear light everywhere; and this is surely the light of truth. —Phaedo

i. the twilight of ecstasy and the birth of “happiness” We turn now to a pessimism which is perhaps more properly described as a kind of despair. Rife with a cautious and world-weary suspicion of the value of ever having walked the earth, this is the pessimism Nietzsche associates with the decline of Greek culture. For the purposes of clarity, we will use his term “Socratism” (B 190) in order to distinguish this pessimism of decay from the Dionysian type of the tragic age. There is something rabidly visceral in Nietzsche’s claim that “Socrates represents a moment of the profoundest perversity in the history of values.”1 But the polemical tone aside, this observation might lead us to think he sees Socrates as a singular cause of cultural decay. This is not the case. Of course, he recognizes both Socrates and Plato “as agents of the dissolution of Greece” (T II 2), but they are only agents among agents, carriers among other carriers of cultural infection. The indisputably great rank of Socrates and Plato within intellectual history is a circumstance Nietzsche found endlessly fascinating. On the one hand, he saw their unsurpassable accomplishment through what we call ­“philosophy” as having determined the horizon of Western culture. Nevertheless, his critique of “philosophy” stands on seeing it as a plant which, feeding off the poisonous cultural values peculiar to “Socratism” (B 190), renders it essential to the nihilism he saw reserved for the future. Nietzsche identifies this virulent character of “philosophy” beginning with Socrates, who embodies the pivotal shift from the cosmology of the pre-Socratics toward “the one great Cyclops eye” (BT 14) of the rational

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“self.” In chapter 1, Nietzsche’s approach to cosmology is expressed in terms of the vitality he identified with the mores of the warrior aristocracies of the tragic age and, therefore, as an activity of legislating the rank of all things. But with the emergence of Socratic “self-examination,” Nietzsche saw the end of “the great Greeks in philosophy, those of the two centuries before Socrates” (E BT 3). Indeed, “from Socrates onwards”2 philosophy is, he thought, “a secret raging against the preconditions of life, against the value feelings of life.”3 This profound antagonism toward “partisanship in favour of life”4 resides in philosophy as “Socratism,” the corrosive pessimism that poisoned tragic art. Tragedy is the Dionysian paean to the opportunity to suffer and be destroyed “for the future of life” (T X 4). But in “the age of Socrates, among men of fatigued instincts” (B 212), Nietzsche only saw “that of which tragedy died,” namely, “the Socratism of morality, the dialectics, frugality, and cheerfulness of the theoretical man” (BT SC 2).5 In pursuing a portrait of Dionysian pessimism, we found an attitude which permeates Nietzsche’s perception of the savage origins of Hellenic “virtue” and “beauty.” But, as the above remarks reveal, we are on the cusp of a radically different feature of his perception of ancient Greek culture. The old cosmology was certainly naive in hoping “to reach the midpoint of being in a single leap” (HH I 261), but it was, nevertheless, a manifestation of the same intoxicated vitality Nietzsche saw inscribed in tragic art. We have arrived at that point within Greek antiquity wherein its meteoric vitality “goes quickly downwards; the movement of the whole machine is so accelerated that a single stone thrown into its wheels makes it fly to pieces. Socrates, for example, was such a stone” (HH I 261). We are once again going to follow Nietzsche into “the ancient world” (T X 1). Now, however, he will show us its deterioration and how the values of decay and death—so elegantly staged in Socrates’ suicide—will debilitate “virtue” and “beauty” as the deeds emblematic of the tragic age. Thus far, our attempt to sketch Nietzsche’s perception of this epoch has revealed an age marked with an intense, terrifying vitality. But in turning to the period that gave birth to philosophy,6 we will look at the cultural conditions wherein Nietzsche saw wisdom “appear on earth as a raven . . . inspired by the smell of carrion” (T II 1). With the birth of “philosophy” comes the death of tragic art and, so too, an epoch during which every feature of Dionysian pessimism degenerates into the Socratism that, promoted by Plato, is “an objection to the foundations of Hellenic culture.”7

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Suffering and Stimulants Nietzsche’s perception of the collapse of tragic art is tied to a cultural event which has predictably been much celebrated. This event is, of course, the emergence of philosophy in the person of Socrates. And, since he consistently identified “the decadence of every of kind Greek excellence”8 with this event, Nietzsche was always, if not flagrantly opposed, then at least deeply suspicious about any rejoicing over the birth of philosophy. The relationship Nietzsche has with Socrates, both in terms of the latter’s “courage and wisdom” (GS 340) and as “the buffoon who got himself taken seriously” (T II 5), bears a complexity that in many respects is comparable to that Nietzsche had with Wagner.9 There is, of course, an intensely visceral tone in Nietzsche’s treatment of Socrates. But we will take him seriously when he says, “I never attack persons; I merely avail myself of the person as of a strong magnifying glass that allows one to make visible a general but creeping and elusive calamity” (EH I 7). And, in “the case of Socrates” (T II 7), this “availing” leads to a caricature which, aside from its considerable polemical value, is instrumental to Nietzsche’s articulating a “calamity” within ancient Greek culture. Certainly, the Socrates we find in Nietzsche’s texts is most recognizable as the one provided by Plato, who, Nietzsche says, “was the most audacious of all interpreters and took the whole Socrates only in the way one picks up a popular tune and folk song from the streets.” Nietzsche will certainly pick up Plato’s tune, but unlike Plato, who “did everything he could . . . to read something refined and noble” (B 190) into Socrates, Nietzsche will sing of a Socrates who is “truly a monstrosity per defectum” (BT 13). In this vein, it’s worth noting that Nietzsche speaks of our “tendency to reduce . . . opponents to caricatures—at least in imagination—and, as it were to starve them. . . . Plato, for example, becomes a caricature in my hands.”10 This is no less the case with Nietzsche’s Socrates, who, like Plato’s, is a fusion of the “masks and multiplicities” (B 190) peculiar to Nietzsche himself. We will not, at least to any great extent, pursue the passionate mockery, love, and contempt permeating Nietzsche’s attempt to “as it were . . . starve”11 Socrates into a caricature. The Socrates we will meet is composed of characteristics attributed to “the best, and also the wisest” of men.12 That is, the Socrates we will hear about is a variation on the “popular tune” (B 190) Nietzsche heard from Plato. The name Nietzsche gives to this melody is “Socratism,” and it is dedicated to every symptom of Greek cultural decay Nietzsche can dredge up.13 As we noted above, he identifies Socratism as that mordant pessimism which,

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symptomatic of a degenerating Greek culture, is synonymous with the rubric “philosophy.” Given this perception of the birth of philosophy, he sees it standing quite opposed to everything “fundamentally Hellenic” (T X 3). He subjects it, therefore, to relentless attack. This vision of philosophy constitutes the great divide Nietzsche always recognized as the “two antitheses: the tragic disposition, [and] the Socratic disposition—measured according to the law of life.”14 Our look at Dionysian pessimism has already introduced us to what Nietzsche means when he refers to the “tragic disposition.” It stands in marked contrast to the new philosophical attitude of “Socratism.” Indeed, we can say this antithesis is the physiological difference Nietzsche proclaims between the feral health permeating Dionysian pessimism and its infected manifestation within “the age of Socrates” (B 212). This means that the values we described in terms of the ethical and aesthetic gestures peculiar to ­Dionysian pessimism, become radically modified through the cultural illness which found its philosophical voice in the figure of Socrates. Foremost to his interpretation of this revaluation of ancient Greek values is Nietzsche’s identification of a fundamental shift concerning the event of human suffering and destruction. Our consideration of the tragic age revealed his identification of cultural health in terms of how suffering and inevitable annihilation are stimulants to an intoxicated affirmation of life. Indeed, this is why he would recognize Dionysian pessimism as “a pessimism of strength” in which the “evil, problematic aspect of existence” (BT SC 1) is not an argument against the “value of life.” But Socratism is a pessimism of decay to the extent that suffering and inevitable death become stimulants to an intoxicated rejection of life. What we have, then, are two kinds of pessimism, each with a different physiological status. The healthier Dionysian one is characteristic of the epoch during which the art of tragedy articulates the need to see suffering and destruction as an occasion of “beauty.” Socratism, on the other hand, is that infection Nietzsche identified with the birth of philosophy, which, in embracing the “rational self,” not only spurns tragic knowledge and its poetic status as tragic art, but, through this embrace, plants the seed of European nihilism. The Pied Piper of Athens As suggested, Nietzsche sees Socratism to be a kind of poisonous plant ­growing out of the soil of Greek cultural decline. Though at least initially inseparable from its catalyst Socrates, “Socratism” signifies the gradual decomposition

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of Dionysian pessimism. The most potent promotion of this decay lies, Nietzsche thinks, in the “anti-Hellenic development of the philosophers’ value-judgement”15 expressed in particular by Plato, “the scare-crow of the ancient philosopher.”16 To appreciate Plato’s elevation of the Socratic agenda, we must first consider the cultural significance Nietzsche assigns to the very fact that Socrates “got himself taken seriously” (T II 5). Even at his polemic best, Nietzsche does not suggest “that the more recent and decadent Hellenism”17 was Socrates’ personal responsibility. On the contrary, by the time Socrates is on the scene, he is only “a strong magnifying glass” (E I 7) disclosing “what had at that time begun to be the universal exigency (T II 9). This “exigency” is most clearly manifest among the “aristocratic Athenians” (T II 9), who lacked the strength typical of the “blooming physicality”18 of the tragic age. This weakness was evident in the overall absence of the rigorous discipline through which the earliest warrior castes forged an order of rank, the remnants of which were enjoyed by Socrates’ aristocratic contemporaries. As a result, Nietzsche characterizes the decadent Athenian aristocracy as those “who all the while still mouthed the ancient pompous words to which their lives no longer gave them any right” (B 212). Evidence of the degenerate state of the Athenian aristocracy lies, Nietzsche thinks, in having opened its doors to this very Socrates, who not only “belonged, in his origins, to the lowest orders” (T II 3), but was also, “to be precise, ugly.”19 The implication is, of course, that among the warlike Hellenes this “cave of every evil lust” (T II 9) with his “plebeian origins”20 and “fearinspiring ugliness” (T II 9) would have been barred from the older nobility (T II 3).21 It is an error to think Nietzsche believed Socrates had somehow caused the decline of his age. On the contrary, “his case, the idiosyncrasy of his case, was already no longer exceptional. The same kind of degeneration was everywhere silently preparing itself ” (T II 9). Thus Socrates’ admittance to “the aristocratic circles of Athens” (T II 8) is by no means a cause but, at best, just another symptom of cultural decay. But if this is so, then what does Nietzsche see as constituting “a decline of strength” (BT SC 4) at this time? He responds by pointing out that “[e]verywhere the instincts were in anarchy; everywhere people were but five steps from excess” (T II 9). In light of our portrait of the tragic age, it might seem that his reference to the possibility of “excess” among Socrates’ contemporaries would indicate a happy, even healthy circumstance. After all, when it comes to extremely powerful instincts, all of which are ravenous for satisfaction, Nietzsche is clear that we must

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“possess them to the highest degree”22 since they are essential to his conception of the health enjoyed by the early Hellenes. But along with this “explosive material” (T X 3), there is another element to health and vitality, namely, the capacity to harness these passions and “having them under control.”23 This strength is characteristic of Dionysian pessimism and hence the deeds of suffering, sacrifice, and glory that marked the tragic age. Consequently, in saying the decay of Greek culture is manifest because “everywhere people were but five steps from excess” (T II 9), Nietzsche is referring to a gradually dissolving capacity to resist the imperious demands of multiple, competing desires. This inability “betrays,” he thought, “a state of emergency” (T II 10) wherein the old Hellenic capacity to command and exploit “the antagonism of the passions; two, three, a multiplicity of ‘souls in one breast,’”24 was deteriorating. This lack of control reveals the fading “authority and majesty of the ­Delphic god” (BT 4) Apollo. Our study has shown that Nietzsche’s perception of tragic art hinges on the Apollinian intoxication of cruelty. Here the poet applies the knife to himself to carve into his own Dionysian excess for the sake of tragic song. Pain, then, was the tune played by these two gods, and it set the tragic poet dancing. But this suffering is, as we have repeatedly seen, also required in the realm of virtue. It would be ridiculous to suggest that Socrates’ status within a decadent Athenian aristocracy is because of his antagonism to tragic art. It is founded, rather, on the fact that the cruelty of askēsis, that pain of taking one’s “self ” in hand—so typical of the “warlike and rigorous” (BT 4) Apollo—was losing its enchantment within the “aristocratic circles of Athens” (T II 8). Here was a class which, though quite inclined to pay lip service to “sublime ethical deeds” (BT 15), was not, Nietzsche thought, particularly disposed to struggle for “that calm sea of the soul, so difficult to attain, which the Apollinian Greek called sophrosune” (BT 15). For Nietzsche it is not hard to see why Socrates, the disciple of Apollo, accesses the noble houses of Athens: in a circumstance wherein “no one was any longer master of himself ” (T II 9), Socrates was a paragon of precisely the discipline lacking in the aristocracy of his own time. To illustrate this, Nietzsche mentions that, when Socrates is accused of possessing “every evil lust, the great ironist uttered a phrase that provides the key to him. ‘That is true,’ he said, ‘but I have become master of them all’” (T II 9). For Nietzsche, Socrates, like his contemporaries, is subject to competing, powerful desires, all of which demand satisfaction. And in this, Socrates approached “the ‘noble,’ with a look that said clearly enough: ‘Don’t dissemble in front of me! Here—we are equal’” (B 212). But insofar as he exercised sovereignty over the “threatening

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anarchy among the instincts” (B 258), Socrates’ victory in this arena explains “the fact that he exercises fascination” (T II 8) among the aristocracy. That Socrates gains access to the aristocratic houses of Athens indicates, Nietzsche thinks, a collapsing order of rank in the culture. But this disintegration is not due to Socrates and the philosophizing that would become identified with him. On the contrary, this breakdown is the condition through which Socratic philosophizing could take root. Therefore, Nietzsche sees philosophy being sown in an age no longer capable of the self-discipline typical of “the Greeks of the best, the strongest, the most courageous period” (BT SC 1). Within an aristocracy becoming more enslaved by its own passions, Socrates’ legendary self-command was seen as an overwhelming example of “strength” in the face of “mutually antagonistic” (T II 9) and very powerful drives. And it is precisely as one who exercised command over his own “monstrum in animo” (T II 3) that Socrates not only fascinated, but “even more” was seen “as the answer, as the solution, as the apparent cure” (T II 9) for “the universal exigency” (T II 9). This “cure” is precisely that mephitic pessimism Nietzsche called Socratism; a form of self-mastery for aristocrats “who let themselves go—‘toward happiness,’ as they said; toward pleasure, as they acted” (B 212). This new philosophical corrective would be zealously promoted by Plato and “all the Socratic schools”25 as a transcendent panacea for “not only . . . knowing being but even . . . correcting it” (BT 15). But before we can see Socratism in its Platonic guise of decayed Dionysian pessimism, we have to revisit Dionysian pessimism in the context of Nietzsche’s sketch of Socrates against the background of a disintegrating aristocracy. This means we are led to the first of the three general features we identified as characterizing Dionysian pessimism. We now stand before the human body as the site of everything we now call “ethics” and “aesthetics.” Having arrived here once again, it is imperative to remind ourselves that the features of Dionysian pessimism are inseparable and can only be grasped in reference to each other. We now have to see how this imperative holds when these features are seen as a decaying dynamic. The Body as Disability We have returned, then, to what, in the context of Dionysian pessimism, determines the horizon of Nietzsche’s perception of the mores peculiar to the tragic age. At the start of our inquiry, we found that the body, as the site of

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tragic culture, is a locus of desire; indeed the very term “Dionysian” is here meant as the intoxication of physical longing the ecstasy of which simply had to be channeled into “lightning flashes and deeds.”26 We saw the body as the location of a vitality which took shape in passions that, for Nietzsche, gave birth to the earliest, most barbaric warrior classes—not to mention the “tonic”27 of tragic art. This initial perception of the body is indistinguishable from the very soul itself as a feral need and madness that, in search of some kind of name, eventually left its signature in the suffering, cruelty, and intoxications of battle. In light of this perception of “the foundations of Hellenic culture,”28 we need not look far to appreciate Nietzsche’s disdain for the decadent Athens wherein Socrates became “the wisest chatterer of all time” (GS 340). And, though it’s easy to be fooled by the arch tone Nietzsche occasionally adopts in spurning this epoch, his derision is nonetheless integral to his perceiving Socratism as a cultural contaminant. But we are no strangers to the physiological distinction he makes between the tragic and moribund epochs of Greek antiquity—nor to his repeatedly pointing at the superiority of the former over the latter. What we have to investigate now is why the great breach of health and degeneration so central to Nietzsche’s perception of Western culture opens at the site of the body in both the formation and deformation of ancient Greek “virtue” and “beauty.” Our look at the tragic age illustrated Dionysian pessimism as the attitude through which virtue and beauty are united at the site of the human body. We saw that the “tragic disposition”29 is an acceptance of my own inevitable destruction, and that this acceptance stimulates a desire to confer our destruction upon something we deem worthy of ourselves. Here the body’s destruction is the gift which only the noble or virtuous person is capable of bestowing. This appropriation of the body’s eventual destruction as the inestimably valuable occasion of virtue and beauty is something which, from the very outset, we are compelled to recognize as radically distinct from Socratic thinking. In Socrates’ day, the capacity to grant this destruction of oneself as a gift and thus as a gesture of rank was slipping away from the aristocracy, though it “still mouthed the ancient pompous words” (B 212) typical of earlier, warlike generations. As we noted above, among Socrates’ aristocratic contemporaries, the body was the site of a threatening anarchy of multiple desires all demanding gratification. Its multiple pleasures and intoxications were being pursued, Nietzsche says, to the point where “no one was any longer master of himself ”

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(T II 9) within the aristocracy. Being unable to assert sovereignty over themselves, they could no longer exercise the discipline essential to ruling others, let alone provide leadership and direction for the culture as a whole. From the outset, we see that the body is perceived quite differently within the two epochs Nietzsche saw marking Greek antiquity. During the tragic age even the darkest intoxicants and pleasures would be pursued (B 260). But we should recall here that Nietzsche did not see the “prudently taciturn men” (B 262) of “the older, stronger age” (GS 23) as dominated by these pursuits. Of course, they indulged every conceivable lust, but these intoxications were surpassed by those peculiar to the desire to embrace one’s destruction in deeds that promised sovereignty over other human beings. However, from Nietzsche’s point of view, the Socratic age was not particularly inclined toward making the sacrifices that created Greek culture. It was more an age given to a selfserving and pleasure-seeking individualism which is “much more powerful . . . [after] the love of the old, used-up ‘fatherland,’ . . . has been touted to death” (GS 23). In this circumstance, there “is hardly any secure future left; one lives for today, and this state of the soul makes the game easy for all seducers, for one allows oneself to be seduced and bribed only ‘for today’ while reserving the future and one’s virtue” (GS 23). These are the conditions within which Nietzsche saw the emergence of Socratism. Here we have an attitude that took root in a culture already inclined to see the body and its cadre of desires as increasingly threatening and problematic. In the tragic age Nietzsche sees the body as the location of a vitality so excessive that one suffered by possessing it. And as we saw, the only way to endure this Dionysian pain was to disperse it in a generative squandering. But in the age of Socrates, Nietzsche sees a symptom of the degeneration “everywhere silently preparing itself ” (T II 9) in the increasing suspicion and mistrust being directed toward the body. As the site of constantly demanding passions which, being irresistible, condemned one to perpetual, reactionary servitude, the body is suffered as the “cause” of the “discomfort” peculiar to a deficient command over competing instincts.30 Nietzsche translates this lack of self-control as the basis of Socratism’s wary apprehension of desire. Synonymous with this distrust was an emerging trepidation over precisely everything woven into the matrix of the body: namely, the world. And this is why he consistently articulates the anxiety at the site of the body through a critique of Plato, who, standing opposed to the second-rate reality of the body and this world, is constantly judged “as pseudo-Greek, as anti-Greek” (T II 2). In the tragic age, one suffered the

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body’s vitality as an excessive and procreant need only ameliorated through risking every kind of physical suffering and danger. However, Socratism suffers the body as a multiplicity of competing passions the demands of which are constant and by no means a path to “happiness.” So, by the time Socrates is on the scene, the body is not so much a catalyst in suffering for the sake of the future as itself suffered and is increasingly seen through the lens of a brooding pessimism colouring the future. This “state of the soul,” Nietzsche says, “makes the game easy for all seducers” (GS 23); and Socrates was just such a seducer.31 After all, “at that time . . . no one was any longer master of himself ” (T II 9), yet Socrates exhibits a calm command over the body. And in this he fascinated his aristocratic contemporaries since he possessed exactly what they so obviously lacked. “How,” Nietzsche asks, “did Socrates become master of himself  ” (T II 9)? He responds by pointing to Socrates’ embrace of “rationality at any cost” (T II 11). As he says, “If one has to make a tyrant of reason, as Socrates did, then there must exist no little danger of something else playing the tyrant” (T II 10). This “something else” is, of course, the body and its passions. At the time, “the ferocity of the drives” was seen to “threaten destruction: otherwise there would be no sense in developing shrewdness to the point of making it into a tyrant. . . . This is the problem.—In those days it was a very timely problem.”32 And Socrates represented “the solution” (T II 9) because he was the picture of an easy mastery over all desire. This command was paraded, Nietzsche thought, as the “moral” strength derived from the pursuit of “self-examination.” Socrates provides the technique of dialectics, the very application of which not only reveals the snares of ignorance generated by desire, but simultaneously opens up one’s “self ” as a frontier of knowledge that, when harvested, results in “virtue.” For Nietzsche, this technique of selfknowledge constitutes the “moral flood” that issued from Socrates, whose life was “directed toward . . . ethical reform. That is his single interest.”33 Socrates’ estimation of dialectics as a means to self-mastery, and hence moral reform, distinguishes him, Nietzsche thinks, from his philosophical predecessors. “Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Empedocles—each breathes Hellenic morality, yet each according to a different form of Hellenic ethics.”34 Thus the older cosmologists represented variations on the mores of the warrior code, which, “was there as a vital breath of air,” as “the traditional Hellenic custom of ethics”35 requiring “no other reasons than those of authority” (D 544). Nietzsche points out that the “profound, earlier ethics could not be expressed in words or concepts.”36 But “with Socrates something

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changes”;37 Socrates saw these customs collapsing and, attempting to salvage his culture, misdiagnosed the problem and declared war on the body as the moral cause of cultural decay. Socrates’ effort to protect his culture (T II 9) leads Nietzsche to see him as the last in the line “of original and exemplary sages.”38 But his antagonism toward the body “was a misunderstanding” (T II 11). Socrates is correct, Nietzsche thinks, in recognizing that his culture is going into decline. But when he finds the body as the site of moral corruption, this, Nietzsche says, “is itself only another expression of décadence” (T II 11) since now the “decline of Greece is understood as an objection to the foundations of Hellenic culture.” Consequently, “the Greek world perishes. Cause: Homer, myth, the ancient morality, etc.” In short, “everything genuinely Hellenic is made responsible for the state of decay.”39 This is why he says that, had pre-Socratic thought avoided being wrecked upon the very vitality that gave it birth, it might have protected itself from the more serious ravages of decline (HH 261). But, upon the spectacular failure of the ancient cosmologists, “all that remained was Socrates,”40 who, as a child of his time, promotes decay by sowing suspicion toward the body as the “cause” of suffering and unhappiness. Nietzsche saw this degenerate pessimism become the means through which “everything genuinely Hellenic” would come to be reviled. In this, Socrates is radically distinct from the older cosmologists. As Nietzsche points out, “Knowledge as the path to virtue differentiates his philosophical character: dialectic as the single path, induction . . . and definition.”41 During the tragic age, Nietzsche identified everything ever recognized as virtue and beauty with the flourishing vitality and, therewith, the deeds emblematic of Dionysian pessimism. But with Socrates, all the old virtues had to be examined through the rational lens of dialectics as the new technique through which one could reap virtue as an object of knowledge. Indeed, the very exercise of this rational technique conferred virtue insofar as it proceeded via the distrust and censure of the body. These observations reveal that the great fracture Nietzsche perceived between the tragic and Socratic ages occurs at the site of the human body as a profound schism over its status within competing interpretations of ancient Greek values. The former, Nietzsche thought, exudes a ferocious affirmation of the body as the location of enormous value. Here, the body is the path to the destruction that weaves our name into what we call the world. And it is here that the promise to the future is expressed in the language of ­suffering and potential death. This excess and generosity are the glance of Dionysus, who, as we saw, reveals the earliest, most terrifying visions of virtue

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and beauty. Thus the values of the earlier, tragic age depend on saying yes to a certain amor fati, that desire “to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things” (GS 276), including one’s destruction. For Nietzsche, the latter Socratic age is one of decay, since it distrusts the body as a terrain of anxiety over, and a suffering from, desires that, since they were neither resisted nor controlled, threaten destruction. The values peculiar to the tragic age hinge on the affirmation of the necessity of one’s destruction in terms of what we called the ethical and aesthetic gestures, while the Socratic age, though equally concerned with one’s destruction, is more inclined to avoiding it at all costs. In this sense, the great health of the tragic age lies in that intoxicated pessimism which, embracing the annihilation of the body, is the procreative, Dionysian promise to the future. In contrast with this, Nietzsche articulates Greek cultural degeneration via the Socratic suspicion of the body as a source of threatening, volatile passions from which wisdom protects us. And in this we see the dissolution of the earlier distinction between wisdom (σοφία) and practical knowledge (τέχνη) peculiar to the tragic age. Now “philosophy” emerges in what Nietzsche will see as the mere pose peculiar to the “cheerfulness of the theoretical man” (BT 17). Wisdom, which was always “distinguished from intellectual cleverness by its emphasis on the useless,”42 dissolves into the Socratic identification of reason with the moral requirement of “self-examination.” Nietzsche saw this demand as a means to seeking one’s advantage by protecting our “self ” from the dangers of physicality. Philosophy emerges, then, as a form of therapy; a means to treating the “self ” as essentially wounded at the site of the body. This new asceticism will give birth to a constellation of “actors” (B 7), the new “theoretical optimist[s],” (BT 15) who will generate various “Socratic schools.”43 With Socrates, philosophers become “virtuous” not through a sense of solidarity with the cosmic necessity of creation and destruction, but rather through the more “practical” exercise of dialectics. This technique allows me to possess the “good” as an object of reflection insofar as it protects me from the errors (B 190) specific to the body. With Socratism my “virtue” is displayed when I employ the technique that preserves my “self ” from an “irrational” physicality and, therewith, from “everything genuinely Hellenic.”44 Though we will say more about this as we proceed, we should note that the emerging “self ”-preservation essential to “virtue” is why Nietzsche says that after “Socrates, it is no longer possible to preserve the commonweal, hence the individualizing ethics that seeks to preserve the individual.”45 Here he puts his finger on the insidious pessimism of Socratism, which, in asserting the sovereignty of our rational self, is

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venerating fear of the body and therewith rejects all intimacy with the earth. For this reason, he will consistently attack Western philosophy as a cowardly promotion and valorization of Socrates’ “personal art of self-preservation” (T II 9). For Nietzsche, the Socratic age sought protection from the body, and this led to a distortion of the various features of Dionysian pessimism. Its characteristics undergo the radical modifications peculiar to what Nietzsche perceived as cultural decay. For example, we have just seen that the body remains the location for interpretations of value within both the tragic and Socratic ages; but the attitude toward this place, this very body of ours, is subject to a revaluation which moves from its being the celebrated place of intimacy with the cosmos to being perceived as a problem, or something suspect, even a moral “cause” for social and cultural decline. Given that this revaluation constitutes the fundamental difference between everything Nietzsche considered the healthy versus decadent epochs of Greek antiquity, we can now pursue the next element of Dionysian pessimism in its degenerate form: the body as gift. The Common Touch We have seen that, within both the aesthetic and ethical gestures, the second feature of Dionysian pessimism is the gift of the broken, suffering body. In light of the foregoing, we might think that Socratism rejects this gift out of hand. This is surely the case, but the rejection of the body as a barrier to virtue does not mean the end of physical sacrifice within Socratism. On the contrary, the body’s status as a gift within Dionysian pessimism will, like all of its features, be subjected to Socratic revaluation. To clarify, we should recall that Socrates emerges at a time when, characteristic of its decay, the Greek culture starts to find the body problematic. To explore how this “problem” constitutes the ground for modifying the role of the suffering body within the ethical gesture, we will pursue Nietzsche’s sketch of “Socrates, the roturier”46 a little further. To begin, Nietzsche certainly agrees with the philosophical tradition to the extent that, in the turn toward “self-examination,” Socrates inaugurated what we now call philosophy. But it is also here that he denies Socrates’ traditionally heroic status because, when the latter identifies himself with the Delphic command to “know thyself,” then, Nietzsche says, “the anti-Hellenic instincts come to the top.”47 He sees Socrates’ identification with Apollo as symptomatic of the decline of this god’s status from demanding the severity

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of a commanding self-discipline48 to embodying a plebeian interpretation of “reason” as a means to a “eudaemonistic”49 ethics. Again, it is not as if Socrates set out to do damage, since he wanted to reform his culture. And, given the degeneration Nietzsche identifies as weakness before the task of controlling desire, Socrates attained a rank that would have been impossible in the “good society” of an earlier time (T II 5). In other words, Nietzsche sees Socrates, and indeed, “philosophy,” emerging in reaction to that “state of emergency” (T II 10) through which the “old Athens was coming to an end” (T II 9). Thus when Nietzsche speaks of “the Socratic disposition,”50 he is referring to the “Greek philosophers from Socrates onwards”51 and to philosophy as the alleviation of anxiety and suffering at the site of the body. He pursues the idea of philosophy’s palliative effect by characterizing Socratism as the identification of “reason” with everything that is quarantined from physicality. “Rationality” is seen more and more as an instrument which, through a process of conceptual definitions, allows one to wrench virtue from the snares of physical desire. Reason, then, is gradually identified as a moral weapon that counters the “anarchy” of the passions: a mechanism which, with practice, becomes continually more functional in combating desire. The name of this practice is, of course, dialectics, the utility of which serves as “‘a counter-tyrant’” (T II 9) over “the antagonism of the passions.”52 Nietzsche sees dialectics as the vehicle for “that Socratic equation reason = virtue = happiness . . . that bizarrest of equations . . . one which has in particu­ lar all the instincts of the older Hellenes against it” (T II 4). This perception of dialectics as the means to “self-mastery” allows for expansion on several points raised at the beginning of both this chapter and the start of this study. Initially, I illustrated Nietzsche’s perception of pre-Socratic thought as steeped in the mores of Dionysian pessimism and, hence, those of a warrior culture. We saw that, among the Greeks of the tragic age, reason was more or less generally identified with either techné (τέχνη) as a kind of clever utility or with wisdom (σοφία).53 It was in this context that we first saw the significance Nietzsche placed on the fact that “Socrates belonged, in his origins, to the lowest orders” (T III 3). That is, we noted his identifying a more “plebeian” character to “wisdom” with the emergence of Socrates and, “philosophy.” In this vein, we should recall Nietzsche’s emphasis upon pre-Socratic cosmology as devoid of any “practical” motives. It is, he says, that “sharp taste” for things “out of the ordinary, miraculous, difficult, divine but useless.”54 ­Wisdom, then, has nothing to do with the motives of utility typical of our common dedication to self-preservation and personal gain. Instead,

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Nietzsche saw the wisdom of the tragic age as rooted in the “generosity” of Dionysian pessimism, as a deed conferring the rank of all things. As we saw, this was an epoch wherein the “value” of the individual rested upon their capacity for “virtue”; a quick generosity in risking suffering and potential destruction for something worthy of oneself. This fundamental criterion constituted the difference between the members of the warrior aristocracy and those they ruled. So Nietzsche saw pre-Socratic cosmology as emblematic of the wisdom that extols our physical unity with the destiny of all things: suffering, creation, and destruction as the law of life. In this “the philosophical systems of the early Greeks” reveal the same world “that was created by tragedy.”55 And, as we saw, tragic poetry expressed a perfection in the requirement of how the best, the most virtuous, are destroyed. Σοφία, then, was the special art of those who exercised that utterly impractical “knowledge of the essence and core of all things as ascertainable and, in fact, ascertained.”56 But Socrates emerged in a later epoch wherein there was an erosion of the old code of discipline, suffering, and self-sacrifice in the name of the future. In this context, Nietzsche sees the Socratic interpretation of wisdom as something deformed by motives rooted in cultural decay: fear of, and hostility toward, powerful instincts at the site of the body. And it is precisely here that we see beyond the polemical to the philosophical point in Nietzsche’s stating that “Socrates was rabble” (T II 3). Socrates certainly wanted to alleviate cultural decline and to restore “the ancient civic virtues,”57 but in asserting individual happiness as key to this endeavour, he articulates self-preservative and, hence, plebeian values. Regarding “post-Socratic ethics,” then, Nietzsche says, “all are eudaemonistic and individual.”58 Again, he is not “blaming” Socrates for this circumstance. As we saw, Socrates was permitted access to “the aristocratic circles of Athens” (T II 8) because “the instincts were becoming mutually antagonistic” and “no one was any longer master of himself ” (T II 9). Among “men of fatigued instincts” (B 212) Socrates exhibited a strength lacking in the aristocrats whom he fascinated. Now, “beginning with Socrates the individual all at once began to take himself too seriously.”59 In the earlier epoch, individuals preoccupied with personal gain were seen within the plebeian contours of self-preservation and techné. They were assumed to lack, therefore, the “generosity” typical of the nobility. But philosophy in its Socratic guise is no longer the privileged activity of the useless deed of wisdom. On the contrary, “anxiety concerning oneself becomes the soul of philosophy,”60 and this overestimation of the individual’s value is basic to Nietzsche’s critique—not only of postSocratic philosophy, but of Western culture.

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Thus, from Socrates onwards, Nietzsche sees the character of philosophy devolve from a naive affirmation of our intimacy with the creation and destruction of all life into a concern with determining the means to preserving the individual. Socrates provides an interpretation of the self which, if pursued, neutralizes desire in such a way as to reveal my true self as a “rational” identity. Here reason is dialectics: a procedure that extricates the “self ” as an object of reflection from the body.61 This technique opens the self up as a frontier of knowledge that, if explored, generates virtue and, consequently, happiness. Nietzsche dwells on Socrates’ plebeian origins to emphasize that only one from “the lowest orders” (T II 3) would see wisdom within the confines of the “personal happiness” generated by living a morally upright life. This reduction of wisdom from the activity of “legislating greatness”62 to that of making people morally good “smells of the rabble” (B 190) because it assumes that what is good promises beneficial consequences for the individual, while what is bad promises the opposite: unhappiness. When Socrates identifies “reason” with utility, the earlier “sharp taste”63 of wisdom for “the astonishing, the difficult and the divine”64 begins its degeneration into mere techné, or into dialectics which only valorizes those who “seek their own gain.”65 Socrates, says Nietzsche, believed that “‘[n]obody wants to do harm to himself, therefore all that is bad is done involuntarily’” (B 190). This contradicts the very event of virtue in the tragic age as an enthusiastic search for the most harmful, dangerous circumstances. But with Socrates we find “the prototype of the theoretical optimist” (BT 15) who thinks “‘it is stupid to do what is bad,’ while ‘good’ is taken without further ado to be identical with ‘useful and agreeable’” (B 190). Nietzsche characterizes Socrates’ origins through the latter’s asserting the irrationality of doing damage to oneself.66 It is here that Nietzsche sees the plebeian mentality that, essentially, finds the “generosity” of a warrior elite foreign to its fundamentally self-preservative values. The event of virtue in the tragic age simply does not make sense to Socrates because it requires the risk of physical damage and self-destruction. It is precisely this incomprehensibility of the virtues of the “older Hellenes” (T X 2) that “distinguishes” Socrates “from all previous philosophers” and reveals both his “plebeian origins and . . . an altogether meager education.”67 There is no doubt that Nietzsche admired Socrates for trying to salvage his culture, but in rejecting the gift of physical suffering and destruction as a Dionysian promise to the future, Socrates stands opposed to “that pathos of distance which grows out of the ingrained difference between strata—when the ruling caste constantly looks afar and looks down upon subjects” (B 257).

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Since the body is the gift emblematic of Dionysian pessimism, “Socrates, the roturier”68 can only be offended at such intoxicants. To the earlier cosmologists, the idea of severing virtue from its physical location would have been inconceivable, and, for this reason, Nietzsche always held that “the great Greeks in philosophy” are “those of the two centuries before Socrates” (EH III BT3). To them, virtue did not consist in asserting a distinction between desire and thinking, or the mind and body; on the contrary, it was the sovereign passion of destruction and creation as a law determining the order of rank throughout the cosmos. But with Socrates, “Greek taste undergoes a change in favour of dialectics,” and this, Nietzsche says, “is above all the defeat of a nobler taste: with dialectics the rabble gets on top” (T II 5). The old standard of virtue reserved for those prepared “to die in battle” (Z I 21) is abandoned for that new, more “efficient” virtue which, as the examination of one’s true, rational “self,” preserves us from the dangers flourishing at the site of the body. It preserves us, that is, from “sexuality, intoxication, cruelty— all belonging to the oldest festal joys of mankind.”69 Consequently, “Socratic philosophy is absolutely practical: it is hostile to all knowledge unconnected to ethical implications.”70 This technique allowed one to know virtue just to the extent that it could be isolated from all contact with the body. Socratism is, therefore, the delivery of this new technique which, in providing the “cure” called “philosophy,” was supposed to be “a way back to ‘virtue,’ to ‘health,’ to ‘happiness’” (T II 11). Of course, Socrates also suffered the degeneration “everywhere silently preparing itself ” (T II 9). But he “divined even more” (T II 9) and articulated exactly what his fellow Athenians were experiencing: namely, the ­“idiosyncrasy of feeling oneself as a problem.”71 And since Socrates’ self-mastery hinged on “clarity, severity and logicality as weapons against the ferocity of the drives,”72 he felt “all the world had need of him” (T II 9) and “his equalization of reason = virtue = happiness.”73 This equation was “his expedient, his cure, his personal art of self-preservation” (T II 9) and the fix for a culture sliding into decline. “In emergencies,” Nietzsche says, “‘practical’ philosophy steps at once to the fore,”74 and the “fanaticism with which the whole of Greek thought throws itself at rationality betrays a state of emergency” (T II 10). Socrates’ “reason = virtue = happiness” serves to “counter the dark desires by producing a permanent daylight—the daylight of reason” (T II 10), and with this technique for self-control he “exercised fascination: he seemed to be a physician, a saviour” (T II 10). Thus the “pied piper of Athens” (GS 340) provided his contemporaries with dialectics; a technique which, during the tragic

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age, “was regarded with mistrust” (T II 5). But in the epoch of degeneration, “neither Socrates nor his ‘invalids’ were free to be rational or not . . . it was de rigueur, it was their last expedient” (T II 10). In light of this, we can see that, for Nietzsche, the “Socratic disposition”75 is primarily a perception of “virtue” forged by the constant threat of being infected by desire, and thus a need for the permanent antidote of dialectics. Socrates’ captivating “equalization of reason = virtue = happiness” was the means through which “he fascinated . . . the philosophers of antiquity,” who, since they “never again freed themselves from this fascination,”76 thereafter determined the character of Western philosophy. Nietzsche’s interpretation of these elements of Socratic philosophy allows us to again appreciate the tremendous chasm he saw open up between the health he identified with the tragic age and the degeneration typical of all things Socratic. Certainly, the site of the body is essential to the conception of virtue during both the healthy and degenerate epochs of Greek antiquity. But in the former, this site possesses the inestimable value of a gift bestowed within what we called the ethical gesture, while in the latter, it is fundamentally debased as the location of suffering every conceivable barrier to realizing the “good.” Narcissus Philosophizes For Nietzsche, with this “basic error of [the] philosophers . . . the Greek world perishes” because now “everything genuinely Hellenic is made responsible for the state of decay.”77 The foremost of these philosophers after Socrates is, of course, Plato, who, having “read something refined and noble into the proposition of his teacher” (B 190), provides the best “example of the most complete severance of the instincts from the past. He is profound, passionate in everything anti-Hellenic.”78 Nietzsche suggests that with Plato, the “decline of Greece is understood as an objection to the foundations of Hellenic culture.”79 Now the master morality typical of the old nobility is rejected as false because it was inseparable from the very desires that haunted and threatened the Socratics. And for this reason, Nietzsche believed, the “moralism of the Greek philosophers from Plato onwards is pathologically conditioned: likewise their estimation of dialectics” (T II 10). Among these thinkers, virtue is by no means manifest in deeds risking suffering and death, but becomes more and more confined to the “deed” of philosophy, which, as dialectics, is the means to “the consciousness of exercising mastery over oneself.”80 These

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philosophers constitute “the counter-movement against the old, the noble taste” and had “more than enough reason to let morality be preached to them” (T II 3). The great campaign against the body and desire as barriers to virtue was initiated in an age wherein “anxiety concerning oneself becomes the soul of philosophy.”81 Philosophy, then, is the new realm of virtue. The very exercise of reason as dialectics was seen as identical with virtue, which, insofar as it negated the “monstrum in animo” (T II 9), generated what Nietzsche called a “detestable pretension to happiness.”82 The ethical gesture is no longer motivated by an intoxicated risk of oneself, but by the more “philosophical” one of preserving oneself within a perceived state of siege. This self-preservative activity is pursued through charting out the territory of the “self,” which becomes more and more manifest within philosophical reflection. Prior to Socrates, the value of individuals depended on how quickly they would dispose of their lives for the sake of something other than themselves—their family, class, or city. But in the “Socratic schools” (T X 3) decadence “betrays itself,” Nietzsche says, in a “preoccupation with ‘happiness’ . . . with ‘salvation of the soul.’”83 Ultimately, the Socratic virtues are “conceptual” entities that, “by definition,” are sterilized from all corporeal infection. Indeed, the very process of philosophizing constitutes virtue because it severs the “self ” from the body, thereby illuminating our rational identity. From Nietzsche’s point of view, this moralizing “self-examination” marks the beginning of a valorization of the individual, which, in determining the course of Western intellectual history, is the object of his everlasting scorn. He saw Socratic thought as an attempt to bring about moral reform in order to salvage a culture sliding into decline. But, since this rescue is done in the name of “philosophy,” the process of decay is actually promoted. With the Socratic shift toward “subjectivity” as an inherently rational identity, virtue is no longer the risk of oneself but rather the preservation and maintenance of the “self.”84 That is, “one must imitate Socrates and counter the dark desires by producing a permanent daylight—the daylight of reason” (T II 10). This beam of light is exhibited as dialectics; the technique that, searching for the treasure of the self, opens up the promised land of a good and happy life. Hence, the Socratic turn toward the “self,” along with “the entire morality of improvement” (T II 11) attending it, is, Nietzsche thought, essential to “the dissolution of Greece” (T II 2). With the valorization of the self as an identity revealed through its ontological separation from the body, virtue, as it was understood within the tragic age, is abandoned. Indeed, this mutilation at the

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site of the body for the excavation of one’s “self ” is, he says, “no more than a form of sickness” (T II 11) through which “Socrates represents a moment of the profoundest perversity in the history of values.”85 This is not surprising. For Nietzsche, the preoccupation with personal happiness as evidence of one’s “virtue” is, at least with regard to the future of Greek culture, a catastrophe: “This is a final, inferior phase. Previously it had not been a matter of individuals, but of the Hellenes.”86 Now the desire to give one’s destruction as a gift that conferred value on something outside oneself is considerably undermined since, with Socratic philosophy, virtue rotates “around the condition of their souls.”87 With the Socratic emphasis on the “self,” we find the revaluation through which “moral judgements are torn from their conditionality . . . from their Greek and Greek-political ground and soil. . . . The great concepts ‘good’ and ‘just’ are severed from the presuppositions to which they belong and, as liberated ‘ideas,’ become objects of dialectic.”88 In problematizing the body, Socratic thought abandons everything “fundamentally Hellenic” (T X 3). Now the ethical gesture is no longer the bestowal of the gift of the body for the maintenance and creation of something beyond oneself. On the contrary, it degenerates, Nietzsche thought, into negating the value of the body in order to behold one’s true “self ” shining within acts of pure philosophical reflection. Now “there remains nothing for me but me myself,”89 and virtue is the gift I give to myself through “philosophy.” For Nietzsche, this philosophical virtue prides itself on having nothing to do with the earlier embrace of destruction, but rather, is a self-absorbed turning “inward” that jettisons the body and, therefore, our intimacy with the world. We should note that, in light of the above, Nietzsche’s perception of Socrates illustrates the decay of the first two features of Dionysian pessimism. First, it is clear that in both Dionysian and Socratic pessimism the site of the body is central. However, instead of the affirmation of physical destruction typical of the tragic age, Socratic pessimism is offended by the finitude and chaos peculiar to the body. Indeed, we have seen that, within this paradigm, the incapacity to govern powerful competing instincts is seen, not so much as a sign of weakness, but as a threat to one’s happiness. For Nietzsche, this fear of the very power of desire is a symptom of decay. In the tragic age, savagely potent instincts and the ability to harness them was itself a sign of health. In the Socratic era, this ability begins to fade to the point where one sees protecting oneself from such danger as itself a virtuous deed. Given this circumstance, the degeneration of the second element of ­Dionysian pessimism is predictable. In the tragic age, the body is given in

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an act of generosity, a deed of courage, which, without any motive of utility, constitutes the virtue inherent to what we called the ethical gesture. Once again, the element of physical sacrifice for the sake of the future is found within the Socratic outlook.90 Now physical suffering and destruction, as well as the pleasures peculiar to every desire, are seen, not as emblematic of virtue, but as a burden and obstacle to the virtue inherent to self-knowledge. Here the body is the site of every obstacle to the happiness peculiar to knowing my “self ” as rational. In this sense, then, the body has no status as a gift bestowed out of the intoxicating overabundance of strength Nietzsche identified with the tragic age. On the contrary, in “the age of Socrates” (B 212) the body is itself suffered and must be jettisoned for the sake of the “soul.” And, as we saw, dialectics becomes the technique through which the affects of desire are neutralized, thereby protecting the “self ” from “physical danger.” In the Socratic age, the body is suffered as a locus of desires that distract the individual from the virtue inherent to self-control. Here, as was the case in the tragic age, the body is sacrificed in the name of virtue—but this “sacrifice” is a rejection of the body for the sake of the gift of a virtue one gives to oneself. In both cases the body functions within an interpretation of generosity, but in the latter, one must disapprove of what was most essential to the “early Hellenes” for the sake of the gift of “salvation” I confer upon myself.

ii. apollo democratized: the birth of “aesthetics” The foregoing observations on Nietzsche’s Socrates have allowed us to look at the degenerate state of two features of Dionysian pessimism, and to set the stage for clarifying his distinction between Socrates and what he called the “Socratic disposition.”91 This later distinction will play a significant role in revealing the last feature of degenerate Dionysian pessimism: selflessness as “uselessness,” and therefore as basic to determining the order of rank among human beings. Given these concerns, we will have to bear in mind that Dionysian pessimism, whether in an ethical or aesthetic gesture, cannot, for Nietzsche, “make sense” within the Socratic attitude. This is because, as Dionysian, it stands within a certain ecstasy, and is therefore a “pessimism of strength” (BT SC 1) stimulated by everything the Socratic attitude must reject. The great supremacy of Dionysian pessimism lies in its longing to explode upon the future it needs to eternally affirm. The three general features we have sketched are best expressed, Nietzsche thought, in the songs of tragic

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poetry during the tragic age. Socratic pessimism is the decayed and ravaged face of Dionysian pessimism, and every feature of the former is the devaluation of the latter from the point of view of fear and exhaustion. Of course, the indivisible features of Dionysian pessimism persist as entwined within its decayed Socratic state. Though Nietzsche’s perception of Socrates and Socratism is essential to demarcating the era of Greek cultural decline from the tragic age, Socratism is more or less Socrates’ legacy and is more properly identified with Plato, along with, as Nietzsche put it, “the philistinism of the Socratic schools” (T X 3). This distinction shows that though Nietzsche saw Socrates as a harbinger of cultural decline, he still admired him “in everything he did, said, and did not say” (GS 340) because, his rejection of Socrates’ “morality of improvement” (T II 11) aside, the latter did try to salvage his culture. Nietzsche will certainly point to a declassé, uneducated Socrates promoting the plebeian agenda of finding happiness through preserving one’s “self.” But, since Socrates strove to “protect and defend his native land,” Nietzsche finds him in philosophical accord with his predecessors.92 This is where Nietzsche draws the line between Socrates and the corrupted youth called Plato (B Preface). We also find the ground here for Nietzsche’s early rejection of the distinction we generally make between the pre- and post-Socratic philosophers. We should recall that Nietzsche spoke “of the pre-Platonic philosophers as of one homogenous company” because with “Plato, something entirely new has its beginning.”93 In the end, Nietzsche did not really deviate that much from seeing Socrates as the last in “the series of original and exemplary sages”94 in Greek antiquity since, even if his cure for cultural decay was symptomatic of the illness he fought, Socrates still stood in solidarity with this life and world. But with Plato, Nietzsche sees “partisanship in favour of life”95 abandoned. A Suicidal Optimism In order to see the shadow cast by Socrates through Plato, and consequently over the history of philosophy, we will proceed through an illustration of the third feature of Dionysian pessimism in a state of decay. We will now look at the decomposing dynamic of selflessness. During the tragic age, this capacity was “explicable only as an excess of energy” (T X 4) through which the body’s suffering and destruction were a gift to the future. Moreover, the value of this gift was such that, being utterly useless from a practical or self-preservative

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point of view, for this very reason it was essential to judging the “distance” (T IX 38) between good and bad human beings. To begin, we shall consider Nietzsche’s perception of what is generally thought to be the heroic act through which Western philosophy had its ­origin: Socrates’ death. Many would say there is no better example of ­Dionysian selflessness than Socrates’ dying for the sake of philosophy and the Athens he loved. Though we will not pursue the wider concerns surrounding Nietzsche’s relationship to Socrates,96 we can provide an outline of Nietzsche’s perception of the death of “that famous old serpent” (B 202). His admiration for Socrates notwithstanding, it is clear that Nietzsche does perceive his death as a rejection of life and an extension of the self-centered element of Socratism. Beyond this, there is also Nietzsche’s suspicion that, in light of the latter’s rejection of the body, committing suicide was by no means a great sacrifice. And the apparent ease with which Socrates died is indicative of the rancorous pessimism that “life is worthless” (T II 1). Nietzsche implies malicious irony on the part of Socrates, who knew that the “bravery” of his death would confer a crown upon his own legend. In this sense, Nietzsche points out that early “Hellenism revealed its strengths in its succession of philosophers. This revelation comes to an end with Socrates, who sought to engender himself and reject all tradition.”97 Nietzsche suggests that Socrates’ death is a piece of theater by pointing out that while his audience marveled at his indifference to death, Socrates “said softly to himself: ‘death alone is a physician here. . . . Socrates himself has only been a long time sick . . .’” (T II 12; the ellipsis points are Nietzsche’s). Behind his “cheerful mien” he concealed “all his life long his ultimate judgement, his inmost feeling. Socrates, Socrates suffered life” (GS 340). The great pessimism of “Socratism” lies in its profound contrast to that of the ­Dionysian. The latter is an ardent yes to suffering and inevitable destruction as one’s own and something one can give. But Socrates lived at a time of malaise in which suffering was regarded not as a requirement for creation and life, but rather, in light of its location at the site of the body, as that which justified doubt over the value of existence. This degenerate pessimism finds its initial expression in Socrates, who “conceives it to be his duty to correct existence” (BT 13) since, given human existence’s location in blood and desire, he finds it “infected with every error of logic there is” (T III 1). Nietzsche does not think we should be particularly impressed at how, “with perfect ­awareness and without any natural awe of death” (BT 13), Socrates courted his own destruction— because after all, in the end, “Socrates had had enough” (T II 1). His death

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was not an act of generosity in the manner of the old warrior code. On the contrary, Socrates “wanted death”:98 he wanted out of his own pessimism, out of the inescapable Socratic vision, which, wherever “it turns its eyes . . . sees lack of insight and the power of illusion; and from this lack it infers the essential perversity and reprehensibility of what exists” (BT 13). Socrates struck an heroic pose and, having “handed himself the poison cup” (T II 12), passed himself off as the martyr for philosophy, who, according to Nietzsche, was actually quite happy to be gone. Hence Nietzsche poses his rhetorical question “O Socrates, Socrates, was that perhaps your secret? O enigmatic ironist, was that perhaps your—irony” (BT SC 1)? The iconic status of this death resides in its being perceived as an event affirming the selflessness essential to any sacrifice made for the greater good. But Nietzsche saw it as the ruse of a “malicious Socrates” (GM III 7). He does not find the selflessness of the tragic age here. This is not a risk for the future; it is a death wish concealed by the histrionics of “optimism” in one  who “wanted to die” (T II 12). Nonetheless, in a decadent epoch, it was a convincing performance. The profound antagonism toward the body Nietzsche called Socratism, and its inherent devaluation of the ethical gesture in the risk of physical suffering and death, crystallized into the “brave” and imperturbable Socrates committing suicide. “The dying Socrates,” Nietzsche says, “became the new ideal, never seen before, of noble Greek youths: above all, the typical Hellenic youth, Plato, prostrated himself before this image with all the ardent devotion of his enthusiastic soul” (BT 13). This enthusiasm rendered Plato “profound, passionate in everything anti-Hellenic”99 and inspired the further decay of the “selflessness” of Dionysian pessimism. An Ideal Cruelty The Socratic estimation of the “self ” as something which, thanks to the philosophical technique of dialectics, is carved out of the wilderness of the body becomes, Nietzsche thought, profoundly intensified with Plato. With Socrates, the values permeating Dionysian pessimism are rejected at the site of the body “and, as liberated ‘ideas,’ become objects of dialectic.” The “great concepts ‘good’ and ‘just’ are severed from the presuppositions to which they belong.”100 They are no longer manifest in the deeds appropriate to the aristocracies that founded Greek culture. Now the only deeds through which “goodness” and “justice” are realized are those of philosophical reflection

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upon their conceptual status within “a virtue that ‘proves’ itself with reasons.” Ultimately, they are pursued as dialectical “realities” wherein, Nietzsche says, one “looks for truth . . . one takes them for entities or signs of entities: one invents a world where they are at home, where they originate.” This “mischief,” Nietzsche says, “reached its climax in Plato,”101 who, with “the greatest strength any philosopher so far has had at his disposal” (B 191), not only asserts the “self ” completely detached from the body, but also another superior world which, in contrast to this one, is the true and eternal homeland of this “self.” This is, of course, the story of how, when he split the human soul into its “rational” and “irrational” elements, Plato found a better, truer world which, being the location of all beauty as well, requires our condemnation of this world. This simplified version of an old and complicated story captures Nietzsche’s perception of Plato as the foremost champion of Socratism.102 Plato finds in Socrates’ “personal art of self-preservation” (T II 9) a moral prerequisite for “self-control and temperance” (D 9), which becomes a bridge to knowledge of the very highest reality. And it is here that Plato’s role in the decay of Dionysian selflessness is fundamental. We saw that just as the body had to be sacrificed for the sake of the future during the tragic age, Socratism also requires a sacrifice of the body. But in the latter case whatever pledge there may be to the future is enmeshed with the primary concern of delivering myself from “a state of emergency” (T II 10). The idea here is that by disconnecting the body from my “self,” I meet the moral standard essential for accessing the “Truth.” Here we have the basic strategy of attempting to secure the future of my culture through concentrating, first and foremost, on me.103 The Socratic technique for coping with the threat of physical desire is dialectics. And, as we have seen, Socratism is an ascetic procedure meant to ensure the moral salvation of the individual. For Nietzsche, Plato takes up Socrates’ essentially moral agenda104 to articulate the basis of all possible “knowledge.” This metamorphosis of Socratism into a moral passport to knowledge is, Nietzsche thought, the heart of Platonism. Proceeding with the scalpel of defining terms, the dialectician slices into every desire and, “identifying” each in the mirror of language, takes possession of them as objects of “knowledge.” Platonism dissolves the world into an “idea” that, as an extension of the rational “self,” only confirms both this “self,” and the “world,” as “truths” guaranteed by the formal ontology of language. Now love, hate, beauty, strength, justice, truth, and victory attain reality only to the extent

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that the intoxications peculiar to Dionysian pessimism are neutralized within a conceptual framework accessible exclusively to the virtuous—to the “philosopher.” The more the philosopher clearly defines “justice,” “truth,” “moderation,” and “beauty,” the closer he is to virtue. And, of course, the closer to virtue, the closer he is to truth and “reality.” As Nietzsche put it: “Plato measured the degree of reality by the degree of value and said: The more ‘Idea,’ the more being. He reversed the concept ‘reality’ and said: ‘what you take for real is an error, and the nearer we approach the ‘Idea, the nearer we approach ‘truth.’”105 For Nietzsche, Plato retains the moral guarantee inherent to Socrates’ “reason = virtue = happiness,” but then transforms this “bizarrest of equations” (T II 4) into the moral endorsement of the “rational” self as central to the occasion of truth. And, since this “self ” is defined in terms of the moral imperative to evacuate the body, Nietzsche sees a culture which, in order to preserve itself, takes flight from the arché of creation and destruction affirmed in both the cosmology and tragic poetry of the tragic age. In short, he finds a culture in “a state of emergency” (T II 10). For him, ­Platonism is the mutation of the primarily moral agenda of Socratism into an epistemology sustained through a condemnation of “the fundamental fact of the Hellenic instinct” (T X 4). Now the human body and the horizon of the world moving over its skin are second rate compared to the “self ” and its “better,” more “real,” homeland. As we saw, the ethical and aesthetic gestures peculiar to the tragic age point to the gift of the body for the sake of the future on earth. But the crystallizing of Socratic pessimism within Plato’s thinking uproots the ethical and aesthetic by embracing the moral duty of rejecting the body and, therewith, everything that binds us to this planet. This rejection predictably undermines the “selflessness” typical “of the older Hellenes” (T X 2) and renders its Socratic manifestation an insult to the earlier warrior code. We found that the “plebeian” element Nietzsche recognizes in Socratism lies in its preoccupation with the “self ” as a rational identity that, if preserved from the body, guarantees personal happiness. This preservation is attained by way of the practical tool of dialectics, the application of which is simultaneously the means to both my true self and virtue. The selflessness of Dionysian pessimism, on the other hand, lies in the risk of physical suffering and annihilation in the name of the future. But its pathological (T II 10) expression is Plato’s vision of our moral duty to “imitate Socrates” (T II 10) and, through reflection, “kill the body.” By committing a kind of artificial suicide, the philosopher arrives at

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the happiness of being a pure spectator who, preserved “sub specie aeterni” (T III 1), attains “objectivity.” Now, under the aegis of Socratism’s greatest champion, the self becomes central to a new interpretation of victory, that of the detached spectator who, having salvaged a rational identity from the perils at the site of the body, stands among the gods, surveying a cosmos of eternal truths. Apollo’s Twilight The deterioration of Dionysian selflessness into “objectivity” within ­Plato’s philosophy rests on an “asceticism,” which, in “sacrificing the body” because it is my destruction on earth, rejects the destruction necessary for living things. For this reason, Nietzsche claims, “Plato is a coward in face of reality—­ consequently he flees into the ideal” (T X 2). His contempt for “the moralityand-ideal swindle of the Socratic schools” (T X 2) rests on the perception of that plebeian valorization of the “self ” he thought would have repelled “the great Greeks in philosophy, those of the two centuries before Socrates” (EC BT 3). These were the “real philosophers of Greece”106 because they neither rejected nor fled the destiny of all life on earth. On the contrary, “they bring themselves into a system”107 that confirms their destruction for the sake of tomorrow. The asceticism peculiar to Plato’s thought sustains his ideal of the self as an objective, detached spectator and hence, like any form of discipline, bears its own brand of suffering and cruelty. The “asceticism” of the tragic age was founded upon a perception of the body as a formidable opportunity instead of a threat. As the location of “everything that intoxicates,”108 it was a site of combat where victory was realized in that sovereignty expressed in the ­Apollinian ideal of sophrosune. Here we find the self-imposed cruelty which, ideally, is the discipline that could only be attained by a nobility whose lives were also a “practice for dying and death.”109 This preparation was not, however, practicing dialectics as the means to a virtuous escape from desire. On the contrary, it was a reserve and self-command that marked, Nietzsche thought, “the authority and majesty of the Delphic god,” who represented the discipline essential to “a training so warlike and rigorous, and a political structure so cruel and relentless” (BT 4). The very prim and austere “Apollinian impulse to beauty” (BT 4) Nietzsche saw at work in tragic art110 constitutes the self-discipline typical of the virtuous person who, insofar as he controlled

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his most tempestuous passions, was able to rule other human beings. It was only later, in the decadent, Socratic age, that “Apollo’s γνϖθι σαυτόν was misunderstood”111 and faded “into the cocoon of logical schematism” (BT 14). Within this cavity of the “self,” virtue is reduced to a locus of reflection that, via the technique of dialectics, constitutes a moral validity for rejecting the body and its attendant, menacing passions. This is the decayed asceticism generated by the “Socratic equation reason = virtue = happiness” (T II 4) as the new and quite practical solution for what in “those days it was a very timely problem”:112 a general incapacity for the self-command Nietzsche identified with the tragic age. In its dedication to attaining the happiness of objectivity, Platonism undermines the selflessness of Dionysian pessimism. It suffers the body and hence, like Socrates, it suffers “life” (GS 340). It’s worth noting that Nietzsche’s recognition of “philosophical science” (HH I 261) prior to ­Socratism implies the most ancient face of apodicticity. The attitude toward suffering peculiar to the Dionysian pessimism of the tragic age revealed the “naive ­impartiality”113 of the pre-Socratics, which, as the embrace of their certain destruction, allowed for an altogether healthier paradigm of “detachment” from the self. For Nietzsche, this earlier manifestation of “objectivity” generated the scientific heights “attained in the disposition of a Democritus, Hippocrates and Thucydides.”114 But with Socrates and the latter “Socratic schools” the “evolution of philosophical science, hitherto so wonderfully regular if all too rapid, was destroyed” (HH I 261). This is an interesting threshold: on the one hand we have the earlier, Hellenic “impartiality” that, based on the recognition of one’s personal annihilation, kindled an intrigue and passion for knowledge, not as a means to personal salvation, but rather as a desire to find one’s place within the world we are all destined to lose. Here is an “objectivity” grounded in the “selflessness” of Dionysian pessimism, which, as the “certitude” of inevitable annihilation, embraces this tragic insight as a path to the future. But after Plato came “under the spell of Socrates” (HH I 261), this certitude was abandoned in the name of a selfpreservative need to assert our rational identity “at any cost” (T II 10). Of course, for Nietzsche the cost is this world, which, as a barrier to “truth,” is rejected for what is most valuable: one’s “self ” enduring into eternity. With the decay of Dionysian selflessness we find, Nietzsche says, not a human being but “the perfectly abstract man,”115 who neither lives nor dies. It is a detached self, an ego which, in its very transcendence, “exists” as an objective vision of universal truth.

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Achilles with a Smile In the hands of Plato, then, Socratic selflessness is transformed into an obliteration of the body for the sake of the pure detachment of “objectivity.” Here the true self is dissolved into a universal access to knowledge. Admittance to this realm is possible only by meeting the moral requirement of abandoning the site of the body and therewith this world. But when we initially looked at the “selflessness” peculiar to Dionysian pessimism, we did so by illustrating two general characteristics. The first was the element of “uselessness”: that is, how the selflessness of the ethical and aesthetic gestures lacks the “plebeian” motive of personal gain. The second was the connection of these gestures to determining the value and, therefore, the rank of human beings. We will now proceed to look at the decay of these two features of Dionysian selflessness. The “uselessness” of the ethical gesture resides in a risk taken, not for personal, practical gain, but out of a gratitude and joy exceeding the measure of death. In the Socratic age, however, the new asceticism lies in the ­self-vivisection demonstrated by Socrates, “who cut ruthlessly into his own flesh” (B 212) for the treasure of the “harshest daylight, rationality at any cost, life bright, cold, circumspect, conscious, without instinct, in opposition to the instincts” (T II 11). But for Nietzsche, the values of the tragic age were the measure of a certain gratitude that surpassed the limitations of suffering and death. In this, he perceived a lavish squandering of excess strength and joy that, exploding beyond the broken body, stood as surety for the future. As barbaric, narrow, and ugly as this “generosity” certainly was, Nietzsche nevertheless recognized within it the germ of an ecstatic yes to life on earth. Within this affirmation he saw a possibility which, though fraught with peril, seemed to promise him a path to the values required for the future of Western culture. In contrast, this pledge to the future is rejected within Socratism and by its greatest champion. Plato, Nietzsche said, had deviated “so far from all the fundamental instincts of the Hellenes, [and was] so morally infected,” that he was rendered “an antecedent Christian” (T X 2). Predictably, the Socratic-Platonic judgment upon the body and this world resides in finding both “useless.” We have here yet another of the decayed features of Dionysian pessimism. However, the basis of this negative judgement rests on a very practical, and thus for Nietzsche, “plebeian,” assumption: the Socratic conviction that we all want to be “happy.” Here, reason, understood as detached from the body, is synonymous with virtue because this detachment

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results in happiness. This is, as we saw, the Socratic ­equation “reason = virtue = happiness” (T II 4), and it generated, Nietzsche says, “the question whether, regarding the valuation of things instinct deserves more authority than rationality, which wants us to evaluate and act in accordance with reasons, with a ‘why?,’—in other words, in accordance with expedience and utility—this is still the ancient moral problem that first emerged in the person of Socrates, and divided thinking people long before Christianity” (B 191). In this, we see the “uselessness” of Dionysian pessimism decay into the negation of everything that had been affirmed as “virtue” in the tragic age. Now the body, instinct, and this world are threats to the exercise of that self-examination through which the “self ” is defended from these barriers to personal salvation. The technique of dialectics becomes the new means to realizing selfcontrol, and it opens up the realm of virtue to anyone prepared “to imitate Socrates and counter the dark desires by producing a permanent daylight . . . of reason” (T II 10). In this, Nietzsche sees the dissolution of the intimacy between virtue and that living “dangerously” (GS 283) characteristic of the tragic age. Here virtue is produced by a technique not unlike, for example, those required for carpentry and horse training. “It is for everyone and popular” because, like any craft, “virtue may be taught.”116 This is why Nietzsche consistently points to the “plebeian” element of Socratism, which, reducing virtue to the happiness of preserving one’s “self,” provides the tool of dialectics. Now “anyone” can access virtue and, like Socrates, seize the property of the “aristocracy.” In this vein, Nietzsche will say that through dialectics, “the rabble gets on top” (T 3:5), and that this positing of “proofs as the presupposition for personal excellence in virtue signified nothing less than the disintegration of Greek instincts.”117 This revaluation of virtue is manifest, therefore, in determining the order of rank among human beings—that is, we find a decisive shift in the interpretation of “nobility.” As in the tragic age, the Socratic era is equally concerned, based on a perception of “virtue,” with discerning those most worthy of ruling human beings. Within Socratism, virtue is demonstrated via a facility with dialectics. So the better one is at utilizing this “merciless weapon,”118 the more their virtue is “proven.” With this “new variation” (T II 8) we find a different field of “combat,” and the demeanour of the new warrior is the “Socratic sarcastic assurance of the old physician and plebeian” (B 212). The example of Achilles is replaced by a more current hero, one more appropriate for the times: namely, the Socrates who faced death with such “bravery.” Quite predictably, the “philosopher” is now the foremost example of a new

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warrior elite. Here valour is “displayed” through one’s facility in dialectical battle; a “new kind of agon” (T II 8). For Nietzsche, the Socratic thinkers perceived the philosopher as the one who sacrifices his body for the sake of his True self and, therefore, the vision of truth so perfectly demonstrated “in the cold knife-thrust of the syllogism.”119 With the philosopher as the new warrior king, this final overturning of the interpretation of rank within Greek antiquity is at the heart of Nietzsche’s sarcasm toward “the cheerfulness of the theoretical man” (BT SC 1). In him, Nietzsche saw an individual who pretends an absence of desire out of the need for power over the threatening “anarchy of his instincts” (T 3:4). Clearly, the disinterested attitude of “the theoretical man” is by no means detached from instinct. On the contrary, Nietzsche saw it as dominated by the ancient appetites for self-preservation and, of course, those of suffering and cruelty so essential to the new asceticism that promised Truth in a world transcending this one. Great Pan Is Dead In the tragic age, the ethical and aesthetic gestures were unified within the attitude of Dionysian pessimism at the site of the body. But once the SocraticPlatonic or “philosophical” severance of the true self from the body takes place, the aesthetic gesture goes into decline as well. From the start, Socratism rejects virtue at the site of the body because it threatens the preservation of the rational self. And this rejection is fundamental to banishing the poetry of the tragic age. The Dionysian ethical gesture is reformed within the Socratic agenda to the point where, as we saw, the philosopher is the most virtuous. But this rehabilitation of the ethical gesture within the philosophical region called “ethics” is also the simultaneous revaluation of what constitutes beauty. And, since Nietzsche disdains the Socratic vision of virtue so eloquently articulated by Plato, we are not surprised at his visceral contempt toward that other poisonous branch of philosophy called “aesthetics.” Indeed, the very idea that “aesthetics,” like “ethics,” is rooted in Socratic soil cannot but spell the death of tragic poetry and inevitably render Plato “the greatest enemy of art Europe has yet produced” (GM III 25). All the features of Dionysian pessimism we saw within the aesthetic ­gesture are, predictably, uprooted in the initial rejection of the body. Now aesthetics emerges as an extension of the rational self, which, with its capacity for objectivity, can adopt the standpoint of the detached “spectator”

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(GM III 6). Though this disinterested attitude serves to shield the philosopher’s rational identity from “any instinct or free wingbeat” (GS 305) of desire, it is also the barrier to precisely the fecundity essential to procreation and, therewith, all art. “For art to exist,” Nietzsche says, “for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication” (T IX 8). And as we have seen, sexuality, “the oldest and most primitive form of intoxication” (T IX 8), is essential to art since its “aphrodisiac bliss”120 fuels the Dionysian excess that transforms ­everything—including the annihilation of the virtuous person—into perfection (T IX 9). So it is clear that Nietzsche saw “the Socratic disposition”121 toward the body undermining the very possibility for “art to exist” (T IX 8). Hence “aesthetics,” like any region of philosophical investigation, is an activity which, in the process of “knowing” its object, has to strangle it. Given this fate, Nietzsche pointed out in 1873 that “truth kills.”122 In 1888, he still says that when it comes to philosophers, they “kill, they stuff, when they worship, these conceptual idolaters” (T III 1).123 From the outset the very possibility of tragic art and, as far as Nietzsche is concerned, the possibility of all art is negated by Socratism. With this negation of the very site of the aesthetic gesture, that of tragic poetry as the gift of the body is rejected out of hand. We saw that the tragic poet subjects himself to the Apollinian intoxication of selecting an identity for suffering and destruction. This “selecting” reveals, Nietzsche thinks, the peculiar strength of the tragic poet in at least a couple of ways. First, there is the poet’s “fearlessness in the face of the ­fearsome and questionable” (T IX 24). Such poets can look into themselves: stare “long into the abyss” and yet “not become a monster” (B 146). Here the poet risks gazing upon the most terrifying, heartbreaking faces of existence without being broken and despising life. In this, Nietzsche sees another manifestation of health: the poet’s joy in being able to play with “the children of Night.”124 This indicates the poet’s healthy instinct of preservation as an intoxicated Apollinian “self-sufficiency.”125 Indeed, “if he is an artist, a genius of communication” (T IX 24) the poet provides us the “terrifying and questionable character of things”126 as perfect: a song that, reflecting the mores of a warrior culture, stimulates our need “to live dangerously” (GS 283). This is the poetry Nietzsche found carved out of Dionysian excess and, as a gift of the body, was conferred upon ancient Greek culture. It is an inebriant: “tragedy is a tonic,”127 he tells us, and here the aesthetic gesture provides everything “frightful, evil,

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a riddle, destructive, fatal” (SC BT 4) as a stimulant to life “‘once more and innumerable times more’” (GS 341). The “magic potion” (BT 13) called tragic poetry reveals the healthy selflessness of the tragic poet standing “at the edge of the rolling world.”128 On this precipice, with “fearlessness” (T IX 24) before “the hard, gruesome” (BT SC 1) aspects of existence, the poet recreates terror, madness, and death as songs that transform “terrible and questionable things”129 into the strangely exquisite. In short, the poet gets us drunk. As Nietzsche puts it: “the effect of works of art is to excite the state that creates art—intoxication.”130 The poet bestows that shiver of ecstasy which wobbles and destabilizes the dominating instinct of self preservation manifest in the rational self and, in this, provides that sip of intimacy with everything that ever was and ever will be. Here is a physical “Yes to life beyond death and change” (T X 4) through which my personal identity, my salvation, my personal “happiness” dissolves into sun-crowned summer tulips “and the huge night, straining its waist against the Milky Way.”131 This tremor of rapture is also the condition of the tragic poet whose “creativity is gratitude for [his or her] . . . existence,”132 and who suffers, Nietzsche says, from the very ecstasy of an “overflowing health.” He asks, “Is it possible to suffer precisely from overfullness” (BT SC 1)? The answer is, of course, “Yes.” This is the suffering he identifies with the tragic age. And the tragic poet, suffering from an excess of strength, agonizes the desire to give a name, a face, a word and place to this excess: to Dionysus. This very agony is “the ‘torment of childbirth’” (T X 4), which, emblematic of tragic art, blows “over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unknown accents; a wind that smells of baby’s spittle, crushed grass, and jellyfish veil, announcing the constant baptism of newly created things.”133 The poet’s suffering here is the selflessness of Dionysian pessimism within the aesthetic gesture. It is the pain inherent to the mad desire to sculpt ecstasy into a note, a word, or countenance that destroys the “self.” Being burned by the flames of intoxication, the poet survives through the Apollinian need to confer the illusion of a sober Dionysus. This Apollinian mask is the selfpreservative dynamic through which the excess of intoxication is burned off in the creation of the work that, as art, signifies the victory of the artist whose gift ignites excess in us. This gift, rupturing the practical benefits of preserving the rational self, is the Dionysian fracture of rational discourse quickening our desire for life on earth and an eternity of “what spring does with the cherry trees.”134

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Sobriety Socratism, then, being essentially “practical,” rejects the aesthetic gesture since the former is, Nietzsche thought, the technique through which the preservation of the rational self is indistinguishable from a moral imperative. The generosity of the aesthetic gesture resides in providing precisely that surplus of ecstasy which shatters identity. This gift, sculpted at the site of the body, points to “the older Hellenic instinct, an instinct still exuberant and . . . explicable only as an excess of energy” (T X 4). But Socratism rejects this gift because, as a threat to the rational self, it is therefore immoral. From this point of view, we hear the echo of the ancient battle between philosophy and poetry.135 With the emergence of “the Socratic disposition”136 Nietzsche finds the plebeian inclination to look only for what is “useful.” Thus the “generosity” inherent to the virtue embraced by the older Hellenes and extolled in tragic poetry is regarded as irrational, and therefore it is condemned. And it is impugned on the very basis of what, at a former time, constituted its excellence, namely, its “conspicuous uselessness.”137 Here the plebeian requirement of preserving one’s “self ” is essentially absent. Art reveals nothing useful; it is a complete lack of techné in assisting those “to seek their own gain.”138 But, insofar as poetry offers nothing useful to the Socratic mission of “self-knowledge,” it is disqualified for lacking “truth” and, therefore, the “virtue” which became the imperial property of philosophy. Now “aesthetics” emerges as a rational discipline dedicated to “proving” that beauty conforms to rational principles that protect the “self ” from the “incomprehensible” generosity of the tragic age. In short, with the birth of aesthetics, beauty conforms and, indeed, is indistinguishable from “the dialectics, frugality, and cheerfulness of the theoretical man” (BT SC 2). For Nietzsche, this is the cornerstone of “the philistinism of the Socratic schools” (T X 3). Theirs is a standpoint that, having embraced the Socratic cure, takes the path of a “philosophical” hero—a new Achilles in whose eyes “the fair frenzy of artistic enthusiasm had never glowed” (BT 14). Hence the uselessness characteristic of Dionysian pessimism within the aesthetic gesture is spurned on the grounds of what, in the tragic age, constituted its nobility. That is, we see a rejection of the earlier lack of concern for the “individual” and the generosity bound up with the useless gesture. Now art is only valued insofar as it is “comprehensible” and promotes the Socratic agenda of making the individual “happy.” That is, it must have a use in terms of enabling us to “know” or gain insight into the self. The artists must now justify themselves

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by, as it were, providing what we call “measurable outcomes” through the application of dialectics. They have to clarify themselves in terms authorized by philosophical discourse. But Nietzsche saw this discourse as an architecture designed to fortify the philosopher from everything the artist “says” since art hinges on “an indirect demand for the ecstasies of sexuality”139 and, therefore, a “Yes to life beyond death and change” (T X 4). For Nietzsche, the annihilation of the rational, practical “self ” within sexual ecstasy is emblematic of art, which, through the hieroglyphs of the body, expresses the Dionysian “annihilation” of the individual necessary for the birth of the future we cannot have. Ultimately, he will see the healthy artist as the one expressing a Dionysian joy in embracing the perfection of this world and this life by gladly losing both. This is the wisdom borne by tragic poetry. Philosophy, on the other hand, emerges as a kind of technology meant to preserve the individual, whose value is seen to surpass that of this world. Hence, in the encounter with the poets, the Socratic philosophers “receive absolutely nothing from art, because they do not possess the primary artistic force, the pressure of abundance: whoever cannot give, also receives nothing.”140 Of course, with the inversion of the aesthetic gesture, the artists contribute nothing to the “truth.” And, as was suggested above, when they are required to justify themselves through the “Socratic equation reason = virtue = happiness” (T II 4), artists fail to express the “deliverables” peculiar to art. They cannot prove that it will make makes us “happy,” that it will make us “good,” that it will provide “knowledge.” The artists cannot even explain exactly what art “is.” This defect, then, is “proof ” that they, like all of Socrates’ interlocutors, lack virtue since they cannot articulate the function of what they do and thus fail to guarantee their “value.” Such inability means that, like children, artists must be guided and supervised. So they are relegated to the lowest ranks of The Republic, where they traffic in the edifying trinkets appropriate to children.141 Yet, like all children, they will flirt with danger so they must be protected from themselves—and their influence must be limited.142 In short, they need a firm hand: whatever they say must be cleansed of falsehood and therewith the intoxicants that distract from the adult virtue and bravery of self-examination.143 As we have proceeded through this chapter, we have found, not the disappearance of Dionysian pessimism, but rather its slide into “skinny old age.”144 Throughout our study, we have identified this attitude with Nietzsche’s ­perception of “the Greeks of the best, the strongest, the most courageous

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period” (BT SC 1). But as the above has shown, each feature of Dionysian pessimism becomes deformed by the fear marking the “plebeian” agenda which, for Nietzsche, determined the future of Western culture. Each aspect of Dionysian pessimism is retained within Socratism, but in such a decayed state as to be the perversion and naive betrayal of “the Hellenic character” (BT 16). We saw, for example, that the body, as the site of the ethical and aesthetic within Dionysian pessimism, still holds its “place” within Socratism: but precisely as the location to be abandoned because of its threat to the “truth” of our rational identity. Once this site is deserted, each facet of Dionysian pessimism spirals into the “irrational.” For example, the gift of the body as the “most precious, noblest and most dangerous squandering” (GS 370) renders tragic virtue and beauty despicable.145 Socratism will also “sacrifice the body,” but not “in favour of life.”146 On the contrary, the Socratic rejection of the body is an act of virtue “proven” by the gift of “happiness” the philosopher confers upon himself. The happiness of the “objective,” detached spectator points to the decay of another element of Dionysian pessimism: namely, “selflessness.” During the tragic age, this selflessness was described in terms of its being both devoid of the motives of personal gain and fundamental to judging the virtue or rank of human beings. But “in the age of Socrates” (B 212) Nietzsche saw an ­“objectivity” that, as rational, is the perspective of a dominant instinct of selfpreservation and therefore the utility of maintaining the “self ” as a rational identity. This maintenance of “rationality at any cost” (T II 11) is so hopelessly “self  ”-serving that the intoxicated obliteration of the individual within the ethical or aesthetic gestures of Dionysian pessimism is seen as “stupid” (B 190). Here the selfless gesture of the Dionysian gift of the body through joy rendering us willing to be destroyed degenerates into a “selfless” objectivity that guarantees our personal “happiness.” Now, free from the threats of the body, we find “the theoretical optimist” (BT 15) who promotes “practical and theoretical utilitarianism” (BT SC 4). This “more optimistic, superficial, and histrionic” (BT SC 4) creature will always assert the sovereignty of “reason” to prove the universal truth that we, each of us, must pursue our own personal happiness. This herd optimism requires us to reject as “error” (B 190) the intoxication of Dionysian pessimism, which, as an ecstatic joy, gives the body to the suffering and potential destruction that “cannot be disentangled from the fatality of all that which has been and will be” (T VI 8). From the Socratic point of view, such a gift is proof of profound ignorance, not to mention entirely dangerous and utterly profitless since it does not

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facilitate “self-knowledge.” Indeed, the very uselessness that marked the “nobility” of both the ethical and aesthetic gifts in the tragic age is revaluated by the Socratic schools. This is seen when the Socratics will glorify themselves as those who, in seeking “truth,” are the martyrs misunderstood by their unenlightened contemporaries. The latter regard the philosophers as “useless” because, being ignorant, the common people are ensnared within the body and are, therefore, blind to the “practical” benefits of philosophy. This pose of “wisdom” explains why Nietzsche says that all “the more profound natures of antiquity were disgusted with the philosophers of virtue: they were looked upon as quarrelsome and play actors.”147 Here again, the “uselessness” so essential to the virtue Nietzsche identifies with the deeds of the earlier warrior aristocracies is once again retained within Socratism, but as the “mise en scène at which Plato and his disciples were so expert” (B 7). These observations lead to the second feature of the selflessness typical of Dionysian pessimism. I am speaking here of the selflessness of the tragic age as a means to determine the value of human beings. We saw that the gift of suffering and potential death constituted the “virtue” of the “the ‘noble Greek’ of the old stamp.”148 Dionysian pessimism affirms one’s inevitable destruction and allows one to take it up as being, in a certain sense, one’s own possession. This possession is, then, something the individual can bestow upon something one deems worthy of it. This basic inclination is at the heart of master morality and, in spite of its barbarism (GM I 11), provides the most rudimentary basis for later interpretations of the “virtuous” person. This attitude was the means to ruling other human beings and accessing the authority to define “what is ‘good’” (B 260). For Nietzsche, the quick and cheerful gift of one’s destruction was essential to the basic virtue of courage typical of a warrior aristocracy. Again this element for determining virtue, and therefore the rank of an individual, is also retained within Socratism. But with Socratism the alacrity with which one dispatches the body is motivated not toward the affirmation of life, but rather, by the desire to leave it. And it is in this sense that Nietzsche identified Socratism with “the wisdom of Silenus,” who says that what is best for the human race is “not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is—to die soon” (BT 3). From this point of view, Nietzsche will emphasize the suicidal feature of Socratism. He sees it as the “courage” to reject the site of our intimacy with this world; to discard, that is, precisely our physical desire to be here. For this reason, it is always worth remembering that Nietzsche consistently points out that “Socrates wanted to die” (T II 12).149 Now the idea of a courageous death

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is not the generous gift to life, but rather the courage to destroy oneself for the sake of a happiness that supersedes the value of life and death on earth. In this sense, Socratism even negates the value of death by seeing it not as a gift to the future of life on earth, but rather as salvation from the physical obstacles to the perfection of another world. Consequently, Nietzsche will identify ­Socratism as the revaluation of the earlier interpretation of courage typical of the tragic age. The quick giving of the gift of the body in the risk of suffering and potential death is replaced by the vision of the new hero whose virtue resides in a cheerful rejection of the body for the sake of a better world. We see, then, that the perception of virtue as courage, as well as the means to determining the most valuable human beings, is retained with ­Socratism, but as the courage to “cheerfully” reject the body as the site of suffering and death. This inverted interpretation of virtue, along with the “joy” at its heart, becomes essential to affirming the philosopher as the most virtuous and therefore the best candidate for ruling other human beings. Socratism retains the features of Dionysian pessimism to the extent that each is thoroughly ravaged. Being primarily dominated by the instinct of preservation, Socratism misunderstands (T II 11) the prodigious squandering through which life is enhanced. But the lavish, Dionysian yes to life and death at the site of the body is exactly what Socratism identifies as the great threat to the future of Greek culture. Its suspicion and fear of the body would certainly prepare “the soil for Christianity.”150 And this cultivation goes hand in hand with the fear and suspicion of all art indicated by the death of tragic poetry upon the birth of “aesthetics.”

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Tomorrow and the Day After Tomorrow Truly high respect one can have only for those who do not seek themselves. —Goethe

In taking up what I imagine Nietzsche meant by classical or “Dionysian pessimism,” the event of human suffering is, no less than this pessimism itself, “inseparable” (GS 370) from what we call “Nietzsche’s philosophy.” That there can and, most likely, will be great pain in our lives points to what we have already risked of ourselves. All the unforeseen accidents that wreck us physically, or hurl us into the maelstrom of losing the ones we have loved, show that, somehow, we have already given. This “generosity” is what the young Nietzsche found so profound about “the Greeks of the tragic age.”1 That is, he saw an attitude toward suffering radically distinct from that marking his own: “when suffering is always brought forward as the principal argument against existence, as the worst question mark” (GM II 7). His early encounter with the “tragic age” not only allowed Nietzsche to take up his own suffering,2 but also became essential to what he would eventually call his “revaluation of all values.” The immensity of this task, “so black, so huge it casts a shadow over him who sets it up” (T Foreword), rests on its being directly opposed to Western philosophy’s denigration of, and flight from, the need to suffer that Nietzsche found pervading pre-Socratic virtue and art. How to reveal an ecstatic gratitude for the opportunity to suffer and be destroyed on earth? This was Nietzsche’s untimely expedition: a voyage in search of the means to shift our attitude toward suffering and, therewith, toward living. Cultivating this attitude “may,” Nietzsche says, “be a strange and insane task, but it is a task—who would deny that” (B 230)? How to articulate a certain joy at the heart of suffering? How to demonstrate that suffering can bear a “yes” at its core; that virtue is risking the possibility of pain and self-destruction for a future we cannot have? No doubt, the risk of the “self ” may well be enmeshed with great madness and evil; but by now

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we see that for Nietzsche there are no guarantees. In the end, the affirmation of life he saw at the heart of suffering is something which, like the existence of God—Dionysian or otherwise—could never be “demonstrated.” This yes to life is not subject to the Socratic celebration of the rational “self ” since, at least as far as Nietzsche is concerned, its gift is the joy of risking everything at the site of the body. And, as we saw, the hazards he identified with virtue only quicken a gesture of joy that, when subjected to dialectics, is interred as “selfknowledge.” The error and danger peculiar to the joy Nietzsche saw within the event of suffering stand under the rubric of Dionysus, and hence virtue “does not desire to be recognized . . . [and] it does not communicate itself.”3 He knew that the generosity of the body as a gift could have no ­“validity” since it “has all the instincts of the average man against it: it is unprofitable, ­imprudent, it isolates; it is related to passion and not very accessible to reason.”4 The Dionysian runs counter to the “happiness” Nietzsche identified with Socratic “rationality” because he found the latter dominated by the ­perspective of self-preservation, and this leads only to mediocrity.5 Being the intellectual heirs of Socratism, we find ourselves, he thought, seeking a world “in which nothing harmful, evil, dangerous, questionable, destructive would remain.”6 But as we have seen, Nietzsche’s Dionysian agenda steers directly into everything “mankind has always hated, feared and despised the most—and precisely out of this I’ve made my ‘gold.’”7 And with this gold he fashioned a tragic wisdom that, reaching back to “the great Greeks of the age of tragedy,”8 is embossed upon his “‘revaluation of all values’” (E I 1). To express the Dionysian element Nietzsche saw within suffering and annihilation is, as he knew, something that must, by its very ecstasy, threaten the “rational self ” centered within the philosophical discourse of his epoch. So he indirectly communicates it through an “accent” quite foreign to his contemporaries. That is, he devised and spoke in what he imagined was the philosophic idiom “of the age of tragedy.” This is why his texts are woven with a daggered laughter that offers rather than “explains” the ­attitude of a  ­Dionysian pessimism. Its perspective is provided in the cadence Nietzsche thought appropriate to those who, out of gratitude, sought to give their own inevitable suffering and destruction toward life on earth. And of course, one only judges the “virtue” of such a gift by measuring its ­accompanying mirth.

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War and Self-Vivisection Dionysian pessimism is an attitude that, in a certain sense, stakes suffering and inevitable destruction not on a Silenian despair, but rather on the ecstatic hint that in the risk of our suffering and destruction we assert our own eternity and, thereby, confirm the future of life. Such a pledge is by no means “sensible”; it requires no witnesses, nor is it inclined to explain itself. It is a passion, an “uncanny, unbounded Yes and Amen” that, breaching “rational identity,” commits to everything that ever was and all that is yet to come. This is the wing beat of eternal recurrence quickening “those who make things beautiful. Amor fati” (GS 276). This daring to be beautiful risks suffering out of gratitude for the opportunity of having lived. Nietzsche initially located such thanksgiving within the narrow confines of physical combat, and, indeed, this constitutes the “virtue” which, being central to “master morality,” is perfected within tragic poetry. Here, the virtuous person risks him or herself out of gratitude and, in so doing, stands within the ranks of those who possess the courage for beauty, namely, the nobility. Though Nietzsche initially saw virtue and beauty exemplified as Dionysian pessimism within the very narrow arena of physical combat, it would be false to reduce his vision of these to the realm of warfare. Nevertheless, he certainly anticipated the countenance of Dionysian pessimism on the battlefields of the future. Indeed, he dangles the “gratitude” peculiar to it in terms of the new cultural horizons generated by “that inarticulate, earthquake-like shuddering of the soul” attending “every great war” (HH I 477). Here the accent of Dionysian pessimism strikes us as sickening and terrifying—especially to us heirs of the last two world wars—not to mention the recent, seemingly interminable, “war on terror.” Though Nietzsche’s claims on “the grand sagacity” and “curative power” (T Foreword) of war were pillaged by the Nazis,9 we should bear in mind that “every great philosophy so far has been . . . the personal confession of its author” (B 6). So we cannot forget that his valorization of war points at a man who lived the shuffling and slippered existence of illness. Are his comments those of one who despised his own physical infirmities? Perhaps. But Nietzsche’s legendary illnesses notwithstanding, he did find a suffering more dangerous than what he called his “terrible years of physical suffering.”10 This was the nightmarish vision of the “meaninglessness of suffering” (GM III 28). And, confronted with this prospect, not only did the specter of nihilism appear to him, but he was inevitably and irresistibly drawn to its maniacal, reactionary flame of hate for every “truth” that had

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ever promised meaningful suffering. In these circumstances Nietzsche would “often look back in wrath at the most beautiful things . . . because they could not hold me” (GS 309). Such experience led to the firestorm not just of his “physical agonies,”11 but of the pain of finding a mixture of decayed Greek humanism and Christian “salvation” bereft of anything beyond the hateful evidence that suffering renders life “worthless” (T II 1). And within a physically and psychologically wrecked existence, Nietzsche put “aside all trust, everything good-natured, everything that would interpose a veil, that is mild, that is medium—things in which formerly we may have found our humanity” (GS Preface 3). This was “the long, slow pain that takes its time—on which we are burned, as it were, with green wood” (GS Preface 3). This experience is the biographical stamp upon his thinking; the event of human suffering that “compels us philosophers to descend to our ultimate depths. . . . I doubt that such pain makes us ‘better’; but I know that it makes us more profound ” (GS Preface 3). Within this chasm he met the phantoms and nightmares attending “a contempt for men that had become pathologically clairvoyant” (GS Preface 1). He had haunting visions of a future when “everyone will draw back from undertakings that require quiet tending for decades or centuries if their fruits are to mature” (HH I 472). There were apparitions of politics wherein “men and parties alternate too quickly, hurl one another too fiercely down from the hill after having barely attained the top” until “these short-winded struggles will impel men to a quite novel resolve . . . to do away with the concept of the state . . . [and] the distinction between private and public” (HH I 472). And upon this he saw “[p]rivate companies . . . absorb the business of the state: even the most resistant remainder of what was formerly the work of government . . . will in the long run be taken care of by private contractors” (HH I 472). These visions only exacerbated Nietzsche’s despair; not because there would be wars “the like of which have never yet been seen on earth” (E III 1), but because he was convinced they would be dedicated to cultural mediocrity. He anticipated wars that, taking his perception of European politics at the time, would be determined by “the sirens who in the market place sing of the future . . . about ‘equal rights,’ ‘a free society,’ ‘no more masters and servants’” (GS 377). And these tunes would lead to a danse macabre of “nationalism and race hatred and . . . the national scabies of the heart and blood poisoning that now leads the nations of Europe to delimit and barricade themselves against each other as if it were a matter of quarantine” (GS 377). In short,

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Nietzsche anticipated wars consecrated to the “plebeian” agenda inherent to Socratism’s “nosce te ipsum”12 (E II 9) and hence the lurid “masterpiece of the art of self-preservation—of selfishness” (E II 9). In the end, he did not doubt that there would be wars; it was more a question of whether or not they would be fought for a future defined by the aspirations of “private contractors” or some other, as yet undreamt, “perhaps.” Whatever the case, as far as he was concerned, avoiding war is, at least from the standpoint of Dionysian pessimism, a fool’s game reserved for those who would be enslaved. Yet, inevitably, “blood is the worst witness of truth: blood poisons and transforms the purest teaching to delusion and hatred of the heart” (A 53).13 The language of war goes to the heart of Dionysian pessimism. It is inherent to the philosophical accent of “the great Greeks in philosophy, those of the two centuries before Socrates” (E III BT 3). In this vein, it is worth noting that just as Nietzsche believed Socrates saw his own illness as “only the most extreme case . . . of what at that time begun to be the universal exigency” (T II 9), the same can be said of Nietzsche. We know what he thought of the Socratic “cure” for a decaying Greek culture, but what does Nietzsche himself offer us? Whatever it is, it comes from a conviction that his own experience of the failure of Socratic and Christian values for interpreting human suffering allowed him to see, as Socrates did, “that his case, the idiosyncrasy of his case, was no longer exceptional” (T II 9). Extrapolating from his own circumstances, he saw not only that his own nihilism was “the logical conclusion of our great values and ideals,”14 but also that “this destiny announces itself everywhere; for this music of the future all ears are cocked even now.”15 These ghoulish and curiously prescient visions of a nihilistic future marked a spiritual infection Nietzsche endured “patiently, severely, coldly, without submitting, but also without hope” (GS Preface 1). And though at times “the barrel of a revolver . . . [was] a source of relatively pleasant thoughts,”16 he  nevertheless rejected the Socratic option and found a “deterrence from the deed of nihilism, which is suicide.”17 In the end Nietzsche emerged with a “new way” (T X 1) for philosophy; one that, having traveled “through the whole of nihilism, to the end,” moved toward an Orphic insight that placed nihilism “behind, outside himself.”18 But what was the insight that, within his affliction, allowed him “the gratitude of a convalescent—for convalescence was unexpected” (GS Preface 1)? We have already seen it above; he called it “amor fati” (GS 276), and, running counter to Socratism, it speaks to an excess and love through which pain “is not considered an objection to life”

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(E III Z 1). Amor fati is Nietzsche standing at the site of own his shattered body and doing all he can to fight despising his own life. Here was combat that led him to say, “just think: in many ways, body and soul, I have been since 1876 more a battlefield than a man.”19 Within these ruins, Nietzsche selected amor fati; a self-imposed yes to the crushing possibility of loving the very fact that one, nonetheless, is, and out of gratitude “wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity” (E II 10). This is Nietzsche’s Dionysian pessimism, and he expressed it in a philosophical accent that, refusing to take himself too seriously, saw that even if suffering is not “proof ” of truth, “it is more when one’s own teaching comes out of one’s own burning” (A 53). Amor fati is the calling card of a gratitude that, in spite of the event of human suffering, will not reject existence. On the contrary, as an illustration of Dionysian pessimism, amor fati is Nietzsche’s strangled assent to this life no matter what: as a path to being “one of those who make things beautiful” (GS 276). This is a “pessimism ‘beyond good and evil’” (BT SC 5), which, in spite of pain and suffering, asserts, “‘The world is perfect’—thus speaks the instinct of the most spiritual, most affirmative instinct” (A 57). This “most spiritual” voice expresses that “compulsion to transform into the perfect,” which, Nietzsche says, “is art” (T IX 9). To find beauty in the midst of suffering is an act in the direction of a certain joy, of a certain Dionysian generosity that “finds all kinds of disguises necessary to protect itself against contact with . . . everything that is not equal in suffering. Profound suffering makes noble; it separates” (B 270). This was Nietzsche’s tragic insight: that suffering does not negate the “astonishing finesse, that the value of life cannot be estimated ” (T II 2). The Revaluation of All Happiness Suffering, then, is no reason to condemn existence. Yet merely enduring it is no mark of distinction either; what he thought really constitutes the “pathos of distance” (B 257) between human beings lies between those who can and those who cannot see existence as a gift. The former will give to this life through the ethical and aesthetic gestures we explored as Dionysian pessimism. The latter move within that Socratic solitude, condemning us, Nietzsche thought, to the self-absorbed conviction that “there remains nothing for me but me myself.”20 Within the vortex of the Socratic self as a “universal” principle, giving to whatever is Other than that principle, is impossible since, locked into

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its “knowledge,” it must “define” everything within its own orbit of ­utility. We  saw how Dionysian pessimism, as an attitude permeating both tragic poetry and pre-Socratic cosmology, turns upon a curious joy in the giving of one’s body toward something an individual deems worthy of the gift. We then saw the devaluation of this gift to be simultaneous with the overestimation of the “self ” characteristic of Socratic philosophy. For Nietzsche, the ecstatic gratitude marking the tragic age is so hysterically rejected within Socratism that, for all the latter’s virtuous posing, it conceals a self-serving cowardice which, in preparing “the soil for Christianity,”21 is essential to the nihilism he saw pervading “our great values and ideals.”22 In this sense, we can look at Nietzsche’s “revaluation of all values” (E II 9) as a task motivated by his desire to cultivate Dionysian gratitude. This dangerous and unpredictable appreciation is the goal of the revaluation which, expressed in the accent of the spiritual tyranny (HH I 261) of the tragic age, seeks to raze the whole value system of the West. “I feel impelled,” he says, “to reestablish order of rank.”23 The “perhaps” toward which he deploys the revaluation is a future where, in spite of everything, we are grateful for this life. Then, like “sentinel thorns, whose employment is to guard the rose,”24 there are his conceptions of a “master race” (GM I 5), the “overman” (EH III 5), and “‘eternal recurrence” (EH BT 3). These are the enigmatic outposts Nietzsche placed on the frontier of a possible future. They are, of course, easily explicated within the confines of his own pain-stained existence. After all, and as he points out, “Nausea at man is my danger” (EH IV6). Yet, in spite of the days of “motionless black melancholy” leading him to say, “I no longer see why I should live for another six months,”25 it is worth recalling what he called “the gratitude of a convalescent” (GS Preface 1). Within this experience he saw and retained the vision of an epoch “when gratitude acquires a kind of spirit and genius” (GS 100), and he sought to teach “what is understood by so few today . . . to share not suffering but joy” (GS 338). The future Nietzsche envisaged moves through the contours of suffering as an unavoidable path for all of us. But we should not forget that, as we have seen, whatever the afflictions and anguish reserved for us, he entertained a conception of generosity that demonstrates the virtue of not taking our suffering so seriously that we would denigrate life. This, especially for those of us who are no strangers to loss and calamity, is such a demanding request. Nietzsche made this appeal to himself knowing that giving of oneself in spite of distress and hardship is, when not seeking personal gain, the mark of courage. This largesse constitutes the spirit of his revaluation of all

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values as a moving toward a “nobility” he expresses in the antiquated and, at times, terrifying voice he gives to the tragic age. Looking back over centuries of philosophical endeavour, he decided against the “many vain and overly enthusiastic interpretations” (B 230) that, peculiar to Socratic metaphysics, have left us hoping “‘that some day there will be nothing anymore to be afraid of! ’” (B 201). This interpretation of cultural “‘progress’” (B 201) drove Nietzsche to the remnant cosmologies of the tragic age. His conceptions of the master race, the overman, and the eternal recurrence do not, any more than Dionysian pessimism could to the Socratics, make sense. They point to a spirit of gratitude that seeks “a reawakened faith in tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, of a sudden sense and anticipation of a future, of impending adventures, of seas that are open again, of goals that are permitted again, believed again” (GS Preface 1). But in the end, Nietzsche’s revaluation, like the “great preparatory exercise” (HH I 261) he identified with the pre-Socratic “reformation among the Greeks,”26 lies in fragmentary utterances about a master race, the overman, and eternal recurrence. The revaluation of all values is an attempt to roughly sketch out some kind of new spiritual horizon for the West, and again, this daunting task remains, like that of the pre-Socratics, “only a promise and proclamation” (HH II 261). What we can take from these fragments is, of course, something we all have in common with Nietzsche: a perception of suffering and inevitable destruction as basic to being here on earth. But he would also have us harvest the germ of courage residing in the “generosity” he identified with the ethical and aesthetic gestures. Dionysian pessimism is the dangerous and unpredictable precipice upon which Nietzsche will leave us. It offers no technique, nor a program for a better world. Having endured the spiritual disease he called nihilism, he tells us he lost his “way once in every labyrinth of the future: as a soothsayer-bird spirit who looks back when relating what will come.”27 His perception of the future of the human race was determined by a past essentially European; that is, a heritage under the spell of the voice which, peculiar to “‘the daimonion of Socrates’ . . . always dissuades” (BT 13) us from the gift of living on this earth. The death of God is only another victory of “reason,” but who knows? The revaluation opens up the unthinkable, the impossible, the “goals that are permitted again, believed again” (GS Preface 1). After all, though no lover of Christianity, he laments, “Almost two millennia and not a single new God!” (AC 19). For Nietzsche, Dionysian pessimism is the intimacy of virtue and beauty, which, running counter to its dissolution in dialectics, is a lure to those of us

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who might be sparked toward every “perhaps” that comes from the realm of Apollo—the land of dreams. It is not merely an attitude typical of the “tragic age,” but rather something the nature of which can only lie in what we, each of us, would do to pursue our heart’s desire. What is the dream, the love towards which we are irresistibly drawn? Perhaps its most terrifying “impossibility” is exactly the measure of our wildest desire for what we see as greatness. “And to ask it once more: today—is greatness possible? ” (B 212). To answer these, our perhaps most secret questions, Nietzsche would have us remember that we only die once. Dionysian pessimism is no formula, and taking it up as a possibility would be a destiny “bound in blood and skin.”28 It is a lure into deeds the “content” of which are up to us, and, quoting Goethe’s Faust, Nietzsche might add, “Here the prospect is free” (T IX 46). Perhaps one might risk oneself in preserving the planet from an impending eco-holocaust, or confronting the atmos-fear generated by the state’s desire to “protect” us through massive surveillance, or attending a Burning Man Festival, or any other exhilaration that liberates us from our musty old Socratic “self.” Whatever the dreams that quicken us may be, they must, Nietzsche thinks, be wrought with desire and deeds. To attempt them is to step into “cruelty,” a certain “asceticism” through which we carve out each yes and no shaping the sculpture of our lives. In doing so, we find that there was “a thunderstorm in our air, the nature which we are grew dark—for we had no road. Formula for our happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal . . .” (AC 1; the ellipsis points are Nietzsche’s). This sense of, as it were, existential direction emerges when, especially in the midst of our own unmistakable hardships, we “refuse the conclusions of pain” (GS Preface 1) that compel us to reject life. These kinds of “consolations” (GS Preface 1) are, at times, irresistible, but to disdain the “value of existence” because we suffer is, for Nietzsche, to take one’s self far too seriously. Indeed, to think one has the authority to reject existence because of suffering points to the mask forever paired with tragedy; namely, comedy. In this, he exhorts us to the “objectivity” of that “gaya scienza” (E III GS) which, in repudiating the reduction of existence to our own suffering, is the melodic standpoint within tragedy. We are not surprised, then, when he says that “staying cheerful when involved in a gloomy and exceedingly responsible business is no inconsiderable art: yet what could be more necessary than cheerfulness” (T Foreword)? Here, bravery consists in a joy Nietzsche thought too profound for the Socratics, who, only able to muster the irony of detached spectators, were bereft of the humour attending the liberation from the burden of our own significance.

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Dionysian pessimism is by no means a sadomasochistic death wish. On the contrary: it stands within the joy acknowledging the inestimable and eternal fact that one is alive on earth. Hence, when Nietzsche says “[s]uffering is the meaning of existence,”29 there is a song and a playful little smile that taunts us with the “perhaps” bearing our name. He knew that, naturally, the uncertainty attending the curious generosity of Dionysian pessimism betrays a sense of humour not shared by everyone. And he would not, therefore, be surprised at how many of us are spellbound by media perpetually assuring us that the world is uncertain, unpredictable, and dangerous. Nietzsche imagined a certain reckless cheer the lack of which “preserves the distance which divides us” (T IX 37). This distance points to the “order of rank” he saw between human beings, as an almost imperceptible smile moving through his conceptions of the master race, the overman, and eternal recurrence—all of which rendezvous at the site of his revaluation of all values. These outposts for the future of the human—or inhuman—race are expressed in that precipitate, “naive”30 philosophical accent he cultivated as emblematic of the tragic age. It is a philosophical dialect that, counter to “the spirit of gravity” (Z III 11), speaks in “the language of the wind that thaws ice and snow: high spirits, unrest, contradiction and April weather are present in it” (GS Preface 1). These “high spirits” run throughout Nietzsche’s perception of tragic poetry as the earliest “interpretation” of the “virtue” he believed sustained the warrior societies of “the older Hellenes” (T X 2). And this perilous ethic is also the inspired yes to life he identifies with pre-Socratic cosmology: “the most deeply buried of all Greek temples!”31 Prelude to a Master-Slave Aesthetics This study takes many liberties, especially in giving such high status to “the tragic age,” an epoch Nietzsche never mentions in his published works. But I think this silence is deployed in the feral tone he thought appropriate to his love for “the Greeks of the best, the strongest, the most courageous period” (BT SC 1). In chapter 1, I illustrated this period by exploring Dionysian pessimism as a path to accessing Nietzsche’s perception of the intimacy of virtue with artistic creation within “tragic culture.”32 This meant tracing Dionysian pessimism as an attitude that, permeating the crudest mores of the earliest warrior “aristocracies,” is nevertheless expressed in both tragic art and preSocratic cosmology. Following this initial point of departure, in chapter 2

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I concentrated on how the various features of Dionysian pessimism are exhibited through what Nietzsche considered basic to “the aesthetic state.” This opened up the roles of “sexuality, intoxication [and] cruelty”33 not only in the creation of tragic poetry, but also within any artistic endeavour. These two chapters delineate what, for lack of a better way to express it, we might call the characteristics or features of Dionysian pessimism. These are generally identified in terms that point to the human body as the gift which, bestowed out of gratitude, constitutes the values of the “ethical” and “aesthetic” within gestures of generosity. Finally, this gift is articulated as an expression of the “selflessness” of Dionysian pessimism, which, being the absence of the ­“plebeian” concern with utility, is the measure central to the ancient determination of the “rank” or “value” of a human being. Chapter 3 is dedicated to tracing the revaluation of these with the emergence of Socratism. This age heralds the symptoms of cultural decline and provides another unified vision of virtue and beauty, but now within a “philosophical” attitude the gratitude and generosity of which are props, Nietzsche thought, in a self-preservative charade. Once virtue is torn from its physical site, the ground of sacrifice essential to tragic art is also abandoned. Nietzsche is well-known for speaking of the inherently moralistic odour to what, in the name of philosophy, passed as reason and knowledge. We see why. With the decay of Dionysian pessimism into Socratism, the veneration of “rationality” is the valorization, he thought, of cowardice: an incapacity to sacrifice oneself for the place where we shall surely die. This “infirmity” lies in the very heart of everything that, under the rubric of “philosophy,” has gone by the name of “ethics” and “aesthetics.” Having accessed Nietzsche’s perception of “virtue” and “beauty” in terms of the feral health characteristic of Dionysian pessimism, we have also traced the negation of the Dionysian ethical and aesthetic gestures that gave birth to Western philosophy. We know the great “physiological” divide Nietzsche perceives between the tragic and Socratic ages. But, in light of the pivotal status of this cultural rift within his own philosophy, we can see why he thought “the Greeks remain the supreme cultural event of history” (T IX 47). Among “the Greeks of the tragic age,”34 virtue and beauty were unified in an attitude that, despite its sickening displays of cruelty and violence, nevertheless showed Nietzsche a certain “gratitude” and “generosity” that would characterize the “grand declaration of war” (T Foreword) he called the revaluation of all values. This study articulates Nietzsche’s vision of ethics and aesthetics as inextricably woven into the wreckage of the human body and, in this, reveals the

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point of departure for his revaluation of all values. The critique he provides of morality is vast and indeed has been a staple of Nietzsche scholarship. The realm of aesthetics in his thinking has also had an abundant treatment, but the foregoing illustrations of Dionysian pessimism can provide another avenue into his views on art and artists. Indeed, when Nietzsche speaks of ­“Dionysian pessimism” (GS 370) in The Gay Science, it is in the context of raising the question he thinks most appropriate to aesthetics. To decide the “value” of a work of art, we should ask, he says, “is it hunger or superabundance that has here become creative?” (GS 370).35 We have seen how this question plays into his interpretations of both morality and aesthetics. Regarding the latter, an aesthetics of “super-abundance” has, to some extent, been illustrated in the “overflowing health” Nietzsche identified with tragic poetry. If an interpretation of morality can be symptomatic of the cultural physiology that led Nietzsche to speak of master-and-slave morality, then I wonder if there is something like a master-and-slave aesthetics. I think there could be at least to the extent that, having imagined what he meant by Dionysian pessimism, we are brought to the edge of “an opportunity” that remained only another “promise and proclamation” (HH II 261). “‘Toward a Physiology of Art’” was the title he entertained for a “main work” (CW 7) he never wrote within the fragmented project of the revaluation. Our little excursion displays an outline of something like what might be a master aesthetics to the extent that the savage health of Dionysian pessimism gives rise to tragic art. But what would a slave aesthetics look like? Presumably it would consist in something like the genealogy of decay that, for example, gave rise to “aesthetics” as a Socratic branch of philosophy. Within a physiology of art, Socratic ­aesthetics would only be an illustration of philosophy’s antagonism to art since it must reject exactly what Nietzsche found essential to artistic creation: namely, intoxication. Accordingly, Nietzsche’s aesthetics would give serious attention to intoxication since “no art results before that happens” (T IX 8). To imagine a master-and-slave aesthetics within what Nietzsche meant by a “physiology of art” would require suspending the Socratic “sobriety” that ranks artists according to the moral agenda of the “detached spectator.” This agenda hinges on “a misunderstanding of the body” (GS Preface 2), and, aside from what it may provide as a form of “theatre,” Nietzsche’s aesthetics would begin with “the richer, clearer, more tangible phenomenon” of the body as the site “to be discussed first, methodically.”36 Sexuality, then, as “the oldest and most primitive form of intoxication” (T IX 8), would have a significant role in

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Nietzsche’s aesthetics. After all, in chapter 2 we saw sexual ecstasy illustrated as emblematic of the annihilation of the rational self; that is, it undermines the instinct of self-preservation’s perspective of utility. And we pursued this volatile intoxication through the tragic poet’s expression of life’s perfection as the opportunity to be destroyed. Yet there is a vast range of potential stimulants in the creation of tragedy, and since the “body and physiology [are] the starting point,”37 then “the sweetness and plenitude of the aesthetic state,” though woven into “sexual excitement,” point to “the still more delicate problems of the physiology of aesthetics, which is practically untouched and unexplored so far” (GM III 8).38 Essentially, then, our look at the physiological conditions through which Nietzsche describes the creation of tragic poetry provides an outline for approaching a master aesthetics. But it is only a general one, since we should remember that intoxication, sexuality, and cruelty “and a blending of these very delicate nuances of animal well-being . . . [constitute] the aesthetic state.”39 This “state” is not exclusive to the tragic poet but belongs to any artist whose work exhibits the “great health (GS 382) that, prompted “by gratitude and love . . . will always be an art of apotheoses” (GS 370). A master aesthetics would move toward showing how the excess peculiar to both master morality and all “of beautiful, all of great art belongs here: the essence of both is gratitude” (CW Epilogue). In light of Nietzsche’s fairly high estimation of artists like Goethe, Stendhal, Heine, Raphael, La ­Rochefoucauld, and Montaigne,40 what is the gratitude he attributes to them? How is this gratitude woven, for example, into what he called “the form of grand style” (T IX 11)? Nietzsche’s anticipated physiology of aesthetics would have come to terms with these “delicate problems” and pursued a “master aesthetics” generally guided by a Dionysian standard “of abundance, out of the overflowing riches of strength” (CW Epilogue). On the other hand, a slave aesthetics would look to a work of art and wonder; “is it hunger . . . that has here become creative’” (GS 370). Here we find the artists who seek “redemption from themselves through art and knowledge, or intoxications, convulsions, anaesthesia, and madness” (GS 370). Aside from Nietzsche’s identifying such malnourished types as “romantics,” he opens a horizon into the procreant strength of aggregate passions that, rife with self-loathing, revenge, and various, sparkling hatreds are also intoxicating avenues to “perfection.” In this gallery we find Nietzsche’s sketches of Hugo, Schiller, “Les frères de Goncourt (T IX 1), Dante, Zola, Delacroix, and Baudelaire.41 I have only mentioned literary artists about whom Nietzsche spoke in voices of admiration and disdain. But what about those occupying the realm

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most dear to him—the musicians? The “delicate problems” pervading “the physiology of aesthetics” (GM III 8) are initiated in The Case of Wagner, but there was clearly much more to be done (CW 7). What standard would Nietzsche employ within an aesthetics that persuades him to laud Mozart or Beethoven and to express his gratitude for Wagner’s quintessential example of a “Protean character of degeneration that . . . conceals itself in the chrysalis of art and artist” (CW 5)? Does Wagner reveal a “gratitude” and “generosity” typical of utility and hence the self-preservation typical of decay and ­exhaustion? “There is an aesthetics of decadence” (CW Epilogue), Nietzsche tells us. So a work of art could point to the suffering symptomatic of an intoxicated gratitude for the fact that one is, or perhaps it is symptomatic of “those who suffer from the impoverishment of life” (GS 370). Nietzsche’s physiology of aesthetics allows us to imagine a kind of forensics which, just as the “virtues” we embrace reveal our “physiological” status, so it is in the realm of aesthetics. That is, our judgments of the ugly or beautiful are themselves symptoms of our own physiological “worth.” Whatever the questions that arise within this imaginary enterprise, it seems that “answers” cannot be provided by artists themselves since they “always need at the very least protection, a prop, an established authority: artists never stand apart; standing alone is contrary to their deepest instincts” (GM III5). These deepest instincts are united in a need to create art; a “compulsion to transform into the perfect” (T IX 9). Our look at the tragic poet provides, at best, an outline for what, in a physiology of aesthetics, a healthy art and artist might display. But what if the artist is unhealthy? What are the intoxicants peculiar to sickness? What are the “delights” of exhaustion and decay? Or, to rephrase the question, what is the generative energy that, from the perspective of sickness and decay, is an ecstatic narcotic the “beauty” of which has a toxic effect on us? “There is no such thing as pessimistic art—Art affirms,” Nietzsche says. “But Zola? But the Goncourts?—The things they display are ugly: but that they display them comes from their pleasure in the ugly—It’s no good! If you think otherwise, you’re deceiving yourselves.—How liberating is Dostoevsky!”42 Our imaginary voyage into the attitude of Dionysian pessimism may clarify why Nietzsche says there “is no such thing as pessimistic art.” Maybe he identifies pleasure in ugliness not with Socratic pessimism per se, but as somehow being “in physiological accord” (T II 2) with the preconditions that spawned it. When it comes to art, Dionysian or otherwise, we have to look at “the womb, the soil, sometimes the dung and manure on which, out of which, it grows” (GM III 4). This study allows us access to the “Dionysian” yes which,

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as an ecstatic generosity and gratitude, pervades, in one way or another, Nietzsche’s views on Greek antiquity. But wider questions concerning how Dionysian pessimism allows “an aesthetics of decadence” (CW Epilogue) to mesh with “the advent of nihilism,”43 or reveals the application of “the physiology of ­aesthetics” (GM III 8) to that “Musician’s Problem” (EH CW) called The Case of Wagner, are only anticipated here at the close of our study.

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Notes

Introduction 1. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, in Twilight of the Idols; and The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. ­ ollingdale with an introduction by Michael Tanner (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1990), 116. HereH after cited in brackets in the text as T followed by the section number. 2. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. and ed.with ­commentaries by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 1992), 293. Hereafter cited in brackets in the text as B followed by the section number. 3. Nietzsche, “Philosophy in Hard Times,” in Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870’s, trans. and ed. with an introduction by Daniel Breazeale (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1979), 107. This reference is a translation of the text found in Nietzsche, Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1967–). All further references to Werke direct the reader to the locations of translated unpublished text, and it is henceforth abbreviated as KGW followed by the volume and section numbers. The reference above is found at KGW III4 29[197]. 4. Like the application of ascending and descending life as aesthetic categories he directed at Wagner, as well a whole range of artists and art forms. 5. The critiques of morality and Christianity, the will to power, the revaluation, the master race, the overman, or the perspectivism that would lead to that philosophical wink called postmodernism. 6. This reference is taken from Unpublished Writings from the Period of Unfashionable ­Observations, trans. with an afterword by R. T. Gray (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 117. This text is a translation of Nietzsche, Werke, vol. III4. Therefore all references to this ­translation will direct the reader to their location in KGW, followed by the abbreviation UW. The location for the quote just cited is KGW III4 19[75]. 7. Michel Foucault, “An Aesthetics of Existence,” in Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977–1984, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman (New York: Routledge, 1980), 49. 8. “Philosophy” is meant here as what flourished “after Socrates” (KGW III4 19[28]: UW). 9. KGW III4 23[35]: UW. In his Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), James Porter suggests that Nietzsche’s portrait of Greek antiquity is awash in the anachronistic prejudices permeating the philology of the nineteenth century. This, as well as Nietzsche’s own antipathy toward “modernity,” leaves his vision of “the tragic age” possessing, at best, “an apparent validity” (156). In this remarkable yet rarely noted study, Porter demonstrates that Nietzsche’s perception of Greek antiquity was formulated at an early age and, moreover, never really changed throughout his life. One of the central contentions of Porter’s book is that Nietzsche provides yet another idealized version of Greek culture which, instead of valorizing the epoch from Socrates onwards, concentrates on a plethora of other subjects such as Dionysus, the pre-Socratics,

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and, indeed, “the tragic age,” to name a few. My concern here is not to validate ­Nietzsche’s ­philology, but rather to illustrate the considerable importance of what he called “the tragic age” for interpreting his philosophy. Porter sees Nietzsche’s “tragic age” as a product of an aesthetic imagination that, like so much of the history of philology, promotes the illusions we need in order to conceal “the sheer banality of contemporary existence when it is bereft of all such ideality” (288). Nietzsche’s apparent failures as a philologist are, I suggest, the reasons for his ­success as a philosopher. That is, his desire to find possibilities for the future may well have led him to cultivate a new illusion of Greek antiquity, but this is where Porter would have us stop. Nietzsche sought this new illusion, with all the philological warts Porter points to, not just to piss in the ears of philologists (though this is part of the story), but more to direct us to an age when something like greatness, courage, and sacrifice occurred long before the Socratic and Christian eras he thought had sown the seeds of Western nihilism. 10. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, 727. Hereafter cited in brackets in the text as E followed by the part and section numbers. 11. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. with commentary by Walter Kaufmann (New York: ­Vintage Books, 1974), 77. Hereafter cited in brackets in the text as GS followed by the section number. 12. Not to mention an interpretative clue to other regions of his thinking. 13. From, for example, Richard Oehler’s Nietzsche und die Vorsokratiker (Leipzig: Dürr’schen Buchhandlung, 1904), to Dale Wilkerson’s more recent Nietzsche and the Greeks (New York: ­Continuum, 2006). 14. Cf. chapter 1, note 26. 15. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Pre-Platonic Philosophers, trans. and ed. with an introduction and commentary by Greg Whitlock (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 144. References to Nietzsche’s lectures on the “pre-Platonic philosophers” will be to Whitlock’s text and hereafter cited in endnotes initially referring to their page location in KGW. Following the reference to KGW, The Pre-Platonic Philosophers is designated as PPP followed by the page number on which the translation is found. The location of the quote cited is KGW II4 353. Cf. also BT 14. 16. M. S. Silk and J. P. Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 17. Critical philological appraisals of Nietzsche’s estimation of Greek antiquity are also found in Nietzsche and Antiquity: His Reaction and Response to the Classical Tradition, ed. Paul Bishop (New York: Camden House, 2004), 260–75; Greg Whitlock’s commentary in Nietzsche’s The PrePlatonic Philosophers; Porter’s Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future and The Invention of Dionysus: An Essay on “The Birth of Tragedy” (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000). 18. John Sallis, Crossings: Nietzsche and Space of Tragedy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 19. Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, vol. 2 of The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1990). 20. Alexander Nehamas, Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato and Socrates (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999) and The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). 21. Julian Young, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 22. KGW III4 21[19]: UW. 23. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale with commentary by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Press, 1968), 225. Further references to this text are hereafter cited in endnotes with first its location in KGW then as WP followed by the section number in WP. The location of the quote cited above is KGW VII3 41[4]. 24. KGW III4 23[41]: UW. 25. KGW VIII2 9[102]: WP 801.

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Chapter 1   1. He refers to the “Attempt at a Self-Criticism” as a “belated preface (or postscript).” Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Walter Kaufmann, in The Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. and ed. with commentaries by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 1992), 17. Hereafter cited in brackets in the text as BT followed by the section number from which the reference is taken. If the reference is taken from “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” it will be cited as BT SC, followed by the section number.   2. Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, trans. with an introduction by ­Marianne Cowan (Chicago: Regnery, 1962), 31. All references to this translation will be found in ­endnotes throughout. These will initially refer to their page location in the Nietzsche Werke: Kritische ­Gesamtausgabe, henceforth abbreviated as KGW. Following the reference to KGW, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks is designated as PTA followed by the page number on which the translation is found.   3. KGW VIII3 18[12]: WP Preface 3.   4. I’m thinking, for example, of the will to power, eternal recurrence, the overman, the critique of Christianity, the general physiological dynamics of culture, and the spiritual sickness of nihilism, to name a few.   5. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, 479. Hereafter cited in brackets in the text as GM followed by the essay and section numbers.   6. Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, in Twilight of the Idols; and The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. ­Hollingdale with an introduction by Michael Tanner (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1990), 147. Hereafter cited in brackets in the text as A followed by the section number.   7. The point here is that whether or not we think Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity is just, it rests on his encounter with Greek antiquity. As we shall see, this encounter makes the attack on Christianity (its profound polemical impact throughout the twentieth century notwithstanding) entirely predictable.   8. Cf. also Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, translated by R. J. ­Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 103. Hereafter cited in brackets in the text as D followed by the section number.   9. Nietzsche, “The Struggle Between Science and Wisdom,” in Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870’s, trans. and ed. with an introduction by Daniel Breazeale (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1979), 131. Hereafter cited in endnotes with first, its location in KGW, then as SW followed by the section # in SW. 10. Nietzsche, D 11. 11. Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale with an introduction by Richard Schacht (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 124. Hereafter cited in brackets in the text as HH followed by the volume and section numbers. 12. Letter to Richard Wagner, November 1872, translated by Christopher Middleton in Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Christopher Middleton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 110. This reference is a translation of the text found in Nietzsche, Briefwechsel: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1975–). All further references to Briefwechsel are henceforth abbreviated as KGB followed by the volume and letter numbers. The letter above is found in KGB II3 letter 274. 13. For a concise and informative description of this period in Nietzsche’s life, see Greg ­Whitlock’s introduction to Nietzsche’s The Pre-Platonic Philosophers, trans. and ed. with an introduction by Greg Whitlock (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001). 14. KGW IV1 6[18]: SW 194. 15. KGW III2 299: PTA 28, 29.

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16. KGW VIII2 11[375]: WP 427. 17. I am speaking here of Nietzsche’s perception of Plato’s and Aristotle’s misunderstanding of their own philosophical ancestors. Nietzsche will, of course, extend this criticism to how both also misunderstand tragic art as well, since both philosophy (specifically, cosmology) and tragedy were created during what Nietzsche called the earlier, tragic age of Greek culture. 18. Whitlock, introduction to Nietzsche, Pre-Platonic Philosophers, xxxviii. 19. In this vein, we will see that with the demise of Socrates, “the series of original and exemplary sages is completed” (KGW II4 360: PPP 151), and that Plato represents a more virulently unhealthy direction for philosophy. For more detail on Nietzsche’s philological distinction regarding the “prePlatonic philosophers,” see Greg Whitlock’s introduction, as well as his commentary on Nietzsche’s “Socrates” lecture, in his Pre-Platonic Philosophers. 20. KGW II4 215: PPP 5. For an informative treatment of Nietzsche’s perception of this epoch as “classical,” see Herman Siemens’s “Nietzsche and the ‘Classical’: Traditional and Innovative Features of Nietzsche’s Usage, with Special Reference to Goethe,” in Nietzsche and Antiquity: His Reaction and Response to the Classical Tradition, ed. Paul Bishop (New York: Camden House, 2004), 391. 21. KGW III2 303: PTA 34. 22. KGW IV1 6[48]: SW 144. 23. KGW III2 303-04: PTA 34. 24. We do, however, find references to both in the unpublished work. Abandonment of the term “pre-Platonic” may hinge on how his earlier identification of Plato with philosophy’s decline ultimately had to include Socrates as well (T II 2). The lack of reference to the “pre-Socratic” thinkers is perhaps explicable through Nietzsche’s seeing Socrates as a physician of culture who, like his predecessors, sought to protect his culture (KGW III2 304: PTA 35). This “protection” gained profound momentum as “Socratism” via the “seduction” of Plato, who, taking up this agenda, only promoted the cultural disease both he and Socrates believed they were fighting (T II 10). The term “prePlatonic” includes Socrates, not just for chronological reasons, but because Nietzsche sees Socrates as one who (in spite of the damage he represents) attempts to affirm this life on earth. Nietzsche was ill at ease with the term “pre-Socratic” since he saw Socrates as the last decayed manifestation of the earlier “great possibilities of the philosophical ideal” (KGW VIII3 14[100]: WP 437). In order to avoid confusion and in spite of Nietzsche’s reservations, I will use the term in its generally accepted meaning and will clarify when these reservations demand satisfaction. 25. KGW II4 360: PPP 151. 26. This was my conclusion in Nietzsche as Cultural Physician (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 79. When he compares Socrates to his predecessors, Nietzsche places Socrates at the lowest rank as one who promoted and affirmed life. However, as a culturally destructive force, Socrates is peerless (KGW VIII3 14[111]: WP 430). Nietzsche’s perception of Socrates is a compelling and deeply interesting study because of the demands it places on those of us who grew up with Socrates as a philosophical hero as well as for those with a genuine love for intellectual history. Interest in Nietzsche’s critique of Socrates has seen various degrees of intensity over the last century. The following is a sample: Dale Wilkerson’s Nietzsche and the Greeks (New York: Continuum, 2006); David N. McNeill’s “On the Relationship of Alcibiades’ Speech to Nietzsche’s ‘Problem of Socrates,’” in Bishop, Nietzsche and Antiquity, 260–75; Philip Pothen’s Nietzsche and the Fate of Art (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002); Greg Whitlock’s commentary in Nietzsche’s Pre-Platonic Philosophers; Matthew Rampley’s Nietzsche, Aesthetics and Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Alexander Nehamas’s Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato and Socrates (Princeton: ­Princeton University Press, 1998); Randall Havas’s “Socratism and the question of aesthetic ­justification,” in Nietzsche, Philosophy and the Arts, ed. Salim Kemal, Ivan Gaskell and Daniel ­Conway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 92–127; chap. 3 of my Nietzsche as Cultural Physician; chap. 3

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of Paul R. Harrison’s The Disenchantment of Reason: The Problem of Socrates in Modernity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994); John Sallis’s Crossings: Nietzsche and the Space of Tragedy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Werner Dannhauser’s Nietzsche’s View of Socrates (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974); Hermann-Josef Schmidt’s Nietzsche und Sokrates: Philosophische Untersuchungen zu Nietzsches Sokratesbild (Meisenheim am Glan: Hain, 1969); chap. 13 of Walter Kaufmann’s Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 4th ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974); Ernest Sandvoss’s Sokrates und Nietzsche (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966); Richard Oehler’s Nietzsche und die Vorsokratiker (Leipzig: Dürr’schen Buchhandlung, 1904). 27. Throughout Nietzsche’s intellectual life the language of “physiology” and its categories of “sickness” and “health” permeate his writings and bear both a metaphorical and a pseudo-biologicalscientific status. Certainly his distinction between its “vital” and “decadent” epochs is central to Nietzsche’s interpretation of Greek culture. Though this “physiological” criterion takes hold before The Birth of Tragedy, it pervades his later articulation of will to power and therewith his critique of Western philosophy as, among other things, symptomatic of Western cultural nihilism. For a thorough investigation into Nietzsche’s application of the language of “physiology,” see Gregory Moore’s Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); see also Dale Wilkerson’s Nietzsche and the Greeks and my Nietzsche as Cultural Physician. 28. KGW III4 19[51]: UW. 29. KGW III4 23[9]: UW. 30. KGW III2 299: PTA 28. 31. KGW II4 360 29–30: PPP 151. 32. For example, in Untimely Meditations. 33. KGW III4 21[19]: UW. 34. KGW III2 299: PTA 28. 35. KGW IV1 6[11]: SW 191. 36. In the vein of “physiology,” I think that, despite its considerable repetition of points I raised in Nietzsche as Cultural Physician, Dale Wilkerson’s Nietzsche and the Greeks rightly pursues the significance of this theme along with the importance of Nietzsche’s encounter with Greek antiquity. See especially chap. 4. 37. KGW VIII3 14[94]: WP 435. 38. In light of the treatment Nietzsche received at the hands of the philological profession, he consistently took revenge on it in such statements as these. But his criticism of philology is not reducible to vengefulness. It can also be seen in terms of what Nietzsche considered its genuine and many failings—not the least of which was the superficial approach to the philosophers of the tragic age (KGW III2 299: PTA 29) and the “laughable poverty of instinct displayed by German philologists whenever they approach the Dionysian” (T X 4). The original emergence of philosophy and tragic art among the Greeks as symptomatic of profound cultural health is something of which Nietzsche was genuinely convinced. The lack of appreciation for this age among philologists allowed him to both take shots at the profession and make what he considered legitimate criticism. It should also be noted that Nietzsche is not without praise for the old profession into which he blundered (E II 2). See, for example, the foreword to the second of his Untimely Meditations, section 5 of the preface to Daybreak, and section 102 of The Gay Science. The reference to “schoolmen” above is, of course, to the Christian attitude toward the “pagan” Greeks. 39. Nietzsche will, of course, pick on Plato as the foremost example of that “philistinism of the ­Socratic schools” (T X 3), which would permeate the future of philosophy. But he will also point to Aristotle as one who, in assessing the pre-Socratics, “seems not to have had eyes in his head” (HH I 261). 40. KGW IV1 6[11]: SW 191.

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41. KGW III4 21[19]: UW. 42. KGW III2 299: PTA 29. 43. KGW III4 19[35]: UW. 44. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Homer’s Contest,” in The Portable Nietzsche, tran. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin Books, 1984), 34. Hereafter, all references to this translation will be found in endnotes throughout. These will initially refer to their page location in KGW, followed by HC and the page number on which the translation is found. The location for the quote just cited is KGW III2 279. 45. Ibid. Cf. James I. Porter’s “Nietzsche, Homer, and the Classical Tradition” and Martin A. Ruehl’s “Politeia,” in Bishop, Nietzsche and Antiquity. For a wonderfully informative investigation into Nietzsche’s perception of Homer and, indeed, Nietzsche as a philologist in relation to nineteenth-century philology, see James I. Porter’s Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000). 46. KGW III2 278: HC 33. 47. KGW III2 275: HC 32. 48. KGW III2 278: HC 33. 49. KGW III2 299: PTA 29. 50. KGW III2 277: HC 32. 51. KGW III2 278: HC 33. 52. KGW III2 303: PTA 34. 53. KGW III2 279: HC 34. 54. Nietzsche’s italics: T X 3. 55. Though he will reserve this phenomenon as an attitude specific to Christianity, we will see it foreshadowed when we look at Nietzsche’s perception of “the malicious Socrates” (GM III 7) and his “innocent” (B 190–91) disciple Plato. 56. KGW VIII3 15[10]: WP 851. 57. In a letter to Hans von Bülow (December 1882), he speaks of being designed “for lengthy torment and skewering over a slow flame, and don’t even know enough to lose my mind in the process.” The translation of this letter is from Nietzsche: A Self-Portrait from His Letters, ed. and trans. Peter Fuss and Henry Shapiro (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 69. The German text is located at KGB III1 290. 58. Having said this, he indicates how the very term “classical” is basically inadequate since “it is far too trite” (GS 370). This is another example of Nietzsche’s animosity toward the philologists, who have misunderstood the Greeks and have asserted the “classical age” in what for Nietzsche was an age of decline. In this regard, see, for example, GS 356. 59. I will refer to “Dionysian pessimism” for the remainder of this work. In my introduction I referred to it as an “attitude,” and we are presently at the start of what in this chapter will consist of a very rudimentary sketch of it. Suffice it to say for now at least that this is an attitude stimulated to gratitude and joy at the “pessimistic” knowledge of suffering and our finitude. 60. KGW III2 278: HC 33. 61. Of course, this capacity and the enthusiasm to revel in it are also a path to the destruction of a warrior aristocracy. 62. As well as value of the life of the very institutions that sustain one’s culture. 63. The context of the quote is Nietzsche’s referring to a new future generation prepared to ­engage in the task of culture as embodied in Richard Wagner’s art. In the quote, the young ­Nietzsche resorts to an interpretation of the tragic age as a model for the future of German/European culture. In this same section, he also refers to tragedy as “the art of metaphysical solace” (BT 18). This Schopenhauerian

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and (given its “therapeutic” tone) somewhat Aristotelian perception of tragedy will later be abandoned in favour of a Dionysian perspective which is, at best, only anticipated in The Birth of Tragedy. 64. Not to mention his condemnation of Christianity and of much of Western culture after Socrates and Plato. 65. In a very certain sense, these are the values of those whose lives were a “preparation for death.” This idea is, of course, taken up by Plato in the Phaedo (63a), where it is attributed to the philosophical life. Here we find an example of why Nietzsche will see as Plato “as pseudo-Greek, as anti-Greek” (T II 2) and central to a revaluation of the values of his own culture. 66. KGW III2 278: HC 33. 67. KGW III2 306: PTA 37. 68. For more detail regarding the more primitive origins of the contemplative type, see G III 10 and D 42. 69. KGW IV1 6[7]: SW 189. 70. Nietzsche, from “Additional Plans and Outlines,” in Philosophy and Truth, 150. The location for the quote just cited is KGW III4 144. 71. KGW III2 297: PTA 25. 72. KGW II4 215: PPP 5. 73. Ibid. 74. KGW III2 301: PTA 31. 75. KGW III4 19[10]: UW. 76. KGW III2 309: PTA 42. 77. KGW VIII3 14[100]: WP 437. 78. KGW VIII2 11[375]: WP 427. 79. KGW IV1 6[9]: SW 190. 80. We will have more to say on this later, but it is worth noting here that in the young ­Nietzsche’s identification of the dynamic of all being as the necessity of destruction and creation, we find an initial expression of his own later attempt to break with the “self ”-centered tradition of metaphysics and, with his conception of the will to power, to stand within the tragic tradition of cosmology. 81. KGW III4 19[51]: UW. 82. KGW II4 352: PPP 143. Greg Whitlock comments upon the influence of Aristoxenus’s “crude and uncomplimentary image of Socrates” on the young Nietzsche in his translation of ­Nietzsche’s Pre-Platonic Philosophers, 259. And James Porter points to the influence of Aristoxenus’s view of Sophocles upon the young Nietzsche in his Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future, 155. 83. Cf. note 24 above. 84. I will speak more about the significance of Socrates’ social status for Nietzsche in chapter 3. 85. Though this might be less “excavation” and more a process of fabrication. Cf. Porter, ­Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future, 156. 86. KGW II4 213: PPP 4. 87. KGW IV1 6[10]: SW 190. 88. KGW III2 328: PTA 66–67. 89. KGW II4 217: PPP 8. 90. In contrast to Socrates, “in whom, through a hypertrophy, the logical nature is [excessively] developed” (BT 13), we find a “superfetation of the logical” (T II 4). It is worth noting too that the word indicating one who is wise “lacks,” Nietzsche says, “the eccentric meaning.” That is, it had neither the quietist nor ascetic connotations we usually identify with the “intellectual.” 91. KGW III2 310: PTA 43.

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  92. KGW II4 217: PPP 8. Precisely this “bringing forth” is a theme often identified with the midwifery of the Socratic mission, which, from Nietzsche’s point of view, is a practical, i.e., “plebeian” activity through which a technique is employed to generate the happiness of an “individualizing ethics that seeks to preserve individuals.” KGW III4 19[20]: UW.   93. KGW II4 218: PPP 8.   94. KGW III2 310: PTA 43.   95. Ibid.   96. Ibid.   97. Ibid.   98. KGW III4 19[33]: UW.   99. KGW IV1 6[4]: SW 188. 100. KGW III4 29[197]: UW. 101. KGW III4 19[11]: UW. 102. KGW III4 29[197]: UW. 103. KGW II4 217: PPP 8n6. 104. KGW II4 217: PPP 8. 105. KGW III2 310: PTA 43. 106. KGW II4 354: PPP 145. 107. KGW II4 217–19: PPP 8–9. 108. KGW III2 310: PTA 43. 109. KGW III2 310: PTA 43. 110. Ibid. 111. Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” in Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale with an introduction by J. P. Stern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 144. Hereafter cited in brackets in the text as UM III followed by the section numbers. 112. KGW III4 19[35]: UW. 113. KGW III2 295: PTA 23. 114. Ibid. 115. KGW III4 19[70]: UW. 116. KGW III4 23[35]: UW. 117. KGW III4 19[36]: UW. 118. KGW III4 23[1]: UW. 119. KGW III4 19[51]: UW. 120. KGW IV1 6[18]: SW 194. 121. KGW VIII2 11[375] WP 427. For some of Nietzsche’s early speculations as to why a “spiritual reform” (KGW IV1 6[30] SW 198) did not occur, see KGW IV1 6[11–32] SW 191–98. Eleven years later, these early conjectures will be the symptoms of a “neuroses of health” (BT SC 4). 122. KGW III4 19[3]: UW. 123. KGW III4 19[51]: UW. 124. KGW III4 23[21]: UW.

Chapter 2    1. Cf. D 544, KGW II4 355: PPP 145–46 and KGW III4 19[60]: UW.    2. KGW III4 21[19]: UW.    3. KGW VIII3 14[94]: WP 435.    4. In spite of his observations on the poisonous effect of “the ascetic ideal” in the context of Christianity (GM III), it was not something Nietzsche felt should be utterly rejected. ­Asceticism,

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he says, also “belongs to the most favorable conditions of supreme spirituality” (GM III 9). Consequently, the Apollinian principle requiring that we “organize the chaos” (UM II 10) within ourselves is something he strongly urges upon modernity. But in the case of Socrates, Nietzsche sees this principle degenerate into a value judgment against the body and therefore into a toxic ideal essential to nihilism.   5. KGW III4 19[185]: UW. He also calls this the origin of our “metaphysical world as well.” Here the young man who will later set fire to “metaphysics” expresses his consistent view that a willingness to suffer and risk death for something we deem more significant than ourselves is the mark of nobility and great art. Indeed, he indicates that without the “generosity” peculiar to the former, the latter is somehow artificial.   6. Ibid.   7. Cf. T II 5.   8. KGW VIII3 14[117]: WP 800.   9. The element of risk as described here unifies the characteristics of “master morality” (B 260). 10. That slavery was part and parcel of the ancient world is not the issue here. As was noted above, the physical courage peculiar to Dionysian pessimism is the heart of virtue during the tragic age and, for Nietzsche, has nothing to do with any conception remotely attached to the values of our democratic institutions. 11. KGW VIII2 11[375]: WP 427. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. KGW VIII2 11[36]: WP 858. 15. KGW III2 301: PTA 31. 16. KGW VIII3 14[111]: WP 430. 17. Like a deity—and, of course, this is an old story. 18. In 1888, both are still “conceived as forms of intoxication, which I introduced into aesthetics” (T IX 10), while the future of art is “necessarily tied to the antagonism between these two natural artistic powers” (KGW VIII3 14[14]: WP 1050). 19. KGW VIII3 14[89]: WP 1052. 20. KGW VII3 41[6]: WP 1051. 21. KGW VIII2 11[375]: WP 427. 22. The character of which we be shortly be pursuing. 23. Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share, vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Zone Books, 1988), 21. 24. This perception of the morality of the most ancient Greek warrior classes is one of the sources for Nietzsche’s antagonism to everything that passes as the morality of “modernity,” not to mention his scorn at all utilitarianism (B 225, 228). 25. Cf. KGW III4 19[83]: UW. 26. KGW II4 354: PPP 145. 27. KGW VIII2 10[167]: WP 804. 28. KGW VIII1 7[7]: WP 819. 29. KGW VIII3 14[36]: WP 798. 30. KGW VIII2 9[102]: WP 801. 31. KGW VIII1 8[1]: WP 805. 32. KGW VIII1 8[1]: WP 806. 33. KGW VIII1 8[1]: WP 805. 34. KGW VIII2 10[168]: WP 852. 35. For the purposes of brevity we will be referring to this drive simply as “preservation.”

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36. Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1997), 48. 37. KGW VIII2 9[91]: WP 533. 38. KGW VIII1 7[60]: WP 481. 39. KGW VIII3 14[152]: WP 515. 40. KGW VIII3 14[36]: WP 806. 41. KGW VIII1 2[106]: WP 1049. 42. KGW VIII3 14[14]: WP 1050. 43. Ibid. 44. KGW VIII1 7[54]: WP 617. 45. KGW VIII1 7[2]: WP 678. 46. KGW VIII2 11[99]: WP 12. 47. KGW VIII3 14[14]: WP 1050. 48. Homer, Iliad I.41–67, trans. A. T. Murray (London: William Heinemann, 1930), 7. 49. KGW VIII3 14[14]: WP 1050. 50. KGW VIII3 14[46]: WP 799. 51. KGW VIII3 14[174]: WP 652. 52. KGW VIII3 14[174]: WP 702. 53. KGW VIII3 14[46]: WP 799. 54. KGW VIII3 14[14]: WP 1050. 55. In this vein, I agree with Bruce Benson in his recognition of the Apollinian decay into “the optimism of Socratic dialectic” in his Pious Nietzsche: Decadence and Dionysian Faith (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 105. But I tend to think Benson’s interpretation of Nietzsche and askêsis moves along an Apollinian contour that goes back to at least The Birth of Tragedy. 56. The idea that Apollo’s status fades compared to that of Dionysus is found in Walter Kaufmann’s Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 4th ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 129, 235; in Hugh Lloyd-Jones’s, “Nietzsche and the Study of the Ancient World,” in Studies in Nietzsche and the Classical Tradition, ed. James C. O’Flaherty, Timothy F. Sellner, and ­Robert Meredith Helm (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1976), 1–15; M. S. Silk and J. P. Stern’s Nietzsche on Tragedy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 118; Gilles Deleuze’s, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 14. The idea that Apollo is dissolved into Socratism is accurate enough, but this doesn’t ­explain why Apollo’s status is undiminished even as late as Twilight of Idols in aesthetic matters. 57. More on this very shortly. 58. James Porter tells us the Dionysian/Apollinian thesis we find in The Birth of Tragedy is not, as some commentators assert, actually abandoned. This puts the idea of Apollo’s fading significance in Nietzsche’s philosophy into some doubt. See his The Invention of Dionysus: An Essay on The Birth of Tragedy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000) 22. In his Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 247–48, Porter pursues the “incoherence” of ­Nietzsche’s approach to the tragic age as an extension of the “conceits about antiquity” that flourished among Nietzsche’s philological contemporaries. Porter criticizes Nietzsche primarily as a philologist who, while aware of the prejudices peculiar to philology, does not escape them himself. Unlike Porter, I am in no position to judge Nietzsche as a philologist. Indeed, I take Nietzsche’s portrait of Greek antiquity at face value. But whatever the flaws in Nietzsche’s philology, Porter is right in seeing this “philology” as something Nietzsche marshals in his philosophical critique of all things modern. For more criticism of Nietzsche as a philologist, see Paul Bishop, ed., Nietzsche and Antiquity: His Response and Reaction to the Classical Tradition (New York: Camden House, 2004). 59. Apollo’s role within the ethical will be seen in the next chapter.

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  60. KGW VIII3 14[14]: WP 1050.   61. Ibid.   62. KGW III4 23[9]: UW.   63. KGW III4 23[8]: UW.   64. KGW VIII2 9[151]: WP 656.   65. KGW VIII3 14[14]: WP 1050.   66. Ibid.   67. KGW VIII1 8[1]: WP 805.   68. KGW VIII3 14[170]: WP 811.   69. KGW III4 19[60]: UW.   70. KGW VII3 40[21]: WP 492.   71. KGW VIII3 14[170]: WP 811.   72. Plato, Republic 608a.   73. KGW VIII3 14[117]: WP 800.   74. Pablo Neruda, “Every Day You Play,” in Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, trans. W. S. Merwin (London: Jonathan Cape, 2004), 41.   75. KGW VIII2 9[102]: WP 801.   76. KGW VIII3 14[157]: WP 778.   77. KGW VIII3 14[117]: WP 800.   78. KGW VIII2 9[102]: WP 801.   79. KGW VIII3 14[117]: WP 800.   80. Ibid.   81. Ibid.   82. KGW VIII1 7[3]: WP 803.   83. KGW VIII2 9[102]: WP 802.   84. KGW VIII3 14[120]: WP 808.   85. Ibid.   86. KGW VIII1 8[1]: WP 805.   87. KGW VIII2 10[167]: WP 804.   88. KGW VIII3 14[120]: WP 808.   89. Ibid.   90. Ibid.   91. KGW VIII3 17[5]: WP 807.   92. KGW VIII1 8[1]: WP 805.   93. KGW VIII3 14[170]: WP 811.   94. Nietzsche’s critique of the malnourished “modern artist” (KGW VIII3 16[89]: WP 813) stands upon his perception of the healthy tragic poet. This study is concerned with the latter as a preparation for another one into that “windfall” (CW Epilogue) of decadent art, Richard Wagner.   95. KGW VIII3 14[170]: WP 811.   96. KGW VIII3 14[117]: WP 800.   97. KGW VIII3 14[170]: WP 811.   98. Ibid.   99. Ibid. 100. Ibid. 101. Plato, Republic 608a. 102. KGW VIII2 9[102]: WP 801. 103. KGW VIII1 8[1]: WP 805. 104. KGW VIII3 14[14]: WP 1050.

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Notes to Pages 62–67

105. KGW VIII3 14[120]: WP 808. 106. KGW VIII1 7[6]: WP 774. 107. KGW VIII3 14[94]: WP 435. 108. KGW VIII3 15[10]: WP 851. 109. Ibid. 110. KGW VIII2 10[168]: WP 852. 111. Ibid. 112. Ibid. 113. KGW VIII3 17[3]: WP 853. 114. Morality is meant here in terms of a code which, unlike that of master morality, will judge life in a negative fashion because, thanks to the body, we are woven into suffering and death. 115. KGW VIII3 15[10]: WP 851. 116. KGW VIII2 10[168]: WP 852. 117. Cf. also BT 24 and BT SC 5. In 1872, he spoke of this justification in The Birth of Tragedy, saying, “it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified” (BT 5). As a young man he saw that the very best, most potent justification for existence lies not in moral or “objective” solutions to the problem of evil and catastrophe, but rather in “our significance as works of art” (BT 5). At that time, this justification, so rife with “Dionysian premonitions,” was marred by “Schopenhauerian formulations” (BT SC 6); not to mention that, having prostrated himself before Wagnerian opera, Nietzsche “began to rave about ‘the German spirit’” (BT SC 6). Yet, after he had “spoiled the grandiose Greek problem” (BT SC 6), the idea of artistic justification, initially expressed in The Birth of Tragedy, remained a consistent and radical departure from any moral or rational explanation for the “gruesome, evil, problematic aspect of ­existence” (BT SC 1). Ten years later, in The Gay Science, he repeats his observations on the “aesthetic phenomenon” but, rather than referring to it as a “justification” for our suffering and destruction, he finds that this phenomenon makes existence “bearable for us” (GS 107). From the standpoint of the gratitude peculiar to tragedy, in The Gay Science the aesthetic turns all the “seriousness” surrounding the “truth” about suffering and death into a joke. It is also noteworthy that, in The Birth of Tragedy, he saw the justification for existence in terms of “our significance as works of art” (BT 5). Again, in The Gay Science, he repeats the idea of this “significance” in saying “art furnishes us with eyes and hands and above all the good conscience to be able to turn ourselves into such a phenomenon” (GS 107). These references to turning ourselves into works of art (BT 5, GS 107) anticipate what Foucault will later call an “aesthetics of existence.” See Michel Foucault, “An Aesthetics of Existence,” in Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977–1984, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman (New York: Routledge, 1980), 49. 118. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 365. 119. Ibid., 304. 120. In this vein, one should compare Aristotle’s perception of good character in ­Poetics XV, trans. Leon Golden with commentary by O. B. Hardison Jr. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: ­Prentice-Hall, 1968), 25–27, and the great-souled man in Nicomachean Ethics IV, trans. ­Christopher Rowe with an introduction and commentary by Sarah Broadie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 148–51. 121. KGW III4 21[19]: UW. 122. KGW VIII2 10[168]: WP 852. 123. KGW VIII2 11[415]: WP 853. 124. Jack Gilbert, “A Brief for the Defense,” in Refusing Heaven (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 3. 125. KGW VIII3 14[14]: WP 1052. 126. KGW VIII2 10[168]: WP 852.

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135

127. Ibid. 128. KGW VIII3 14[120]: WP 808. 129. KGW VIII2 10[168]: WP 852. 130. KGW IV1 6[25]: SW 136. 131. KGW III2 303: PTA 33.

Chapter 3    1. KGW VIII3 14[111]: WP 430.    2. KGW VIII2 11[375]: WP 427.    3. KGW VIII3 14[134]: WP 461.    4. Ibid.    5. It seems odd to hear the toxic pessimism of Socratism being identified with “cheerfulness.” But for Nietzsche this “cheer” is a pose he believed Epicurus perceived when the latter judged the Socratics— namely, “Plato and the Platonists”—to be “actors, there is nothing genuine about them” (B 7).    6. As indicated above, “philosophy” is understood here as that most closely identified with the turn from cosmology toward the centrality of the “self ” as manifest in the dialectics of Socrates.    7. KGW VIII2 11[375]: WP 427.    8. KGW VIII3 14[116]: WP 428.    9. I want to give this comparison more attention in another study. But for now it is worth bearing in mind that Nietzsche’s observations on Socrates as, among other things, an actor (B 7), a corrupter of youth (B Preface), and a “typical decadent” (E B:1) are also directed at Wagner. Cf., for example, CW 8, CW postscript II, and CW 5.   10. KGW VIII2 10[112]: WP 374.   11. Ibid.   12. Plato, Phaedo 118a, trans. G. M. A. Grube, in Plato: Complete Works, ed. J. M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 100.   13. In this vein, the term “Socratism” is much like “Christianity” for Nietzsche in that the latter designates the general symptoms of cultural decay he saw within both the ancient Greek and Hebrew cultures. And just as Nietzsche will distinguish Jesus of Nazareth from Christianity and Judaism, we will also see that he makes a similar distinction between Socrates and “Socratism.”   14. KGW VIII3 14[92]: WP 432.   15. KGW VIII2 11[375]: WP 427.   16. KGW VIII3 14[111]: WP 430.   17. KGW IV1 6[11]: SW 191.   18. KGW VIII2 9[102]: WP 802.   19. KGW II4 353: PPP 144.   20. KGW II4 352: PPP 143.   21. In light of the “gay” culture in Athens and the impossibility of Platonic philosophy without it (T IX 23), Socrates’ access to the nobility is strange since, at the time, ugliness was, Nietzsche says, objectionable and “among Greeks almost a refutation” (T II 3).   22. KGW VIII2 11[353]: WP 928.   23. Ibid.   24. KGW VIII3 14[157]: WP 778.   25. KGW VIII3 14[146]: WP 441.   26. KGW VIII2 11[38]: WP 1022.   27. KGW VIII3 15[10]: WP 851.   28. KGW VIII2 11[375]: WP 427.

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Notes to Pages 77–85

29. KGW VIII3 14[92]: WP 432. 30. For Nietzsche, this incapacity to resist stimulation is typical of weakness and exhaustion (KGW VIII2 10[18]: WP 71) and is characteristic of the individual who cannot trust “any instinct or free wingbeat; he stands … armed against himself ” (GS 305). Constantly provoked by whatever both attracts and repels him, this type is ill at ease and feels “as if his self-control were endangered” (GS 305). 31. KGW VIII3 14[94]: WP 435. 32. KGW VIII3 14[92]: WP 433. 33. KGW II4 353–54: PPP 144. 34. KGW II4 355: PPP 146. 35. Ibid. 36. KGW III4 19[60]: UW. 37. KGW VIII3 14[100]: WP 437. 38. KGW II4 360: PPP 151. In his desire to preserve his culture Socrates stands within the nexus of his predecessors going back to Thales (KGW III2 301: PTA 31), but his attitude toward the body and, therewith, this world demarcates him from those we generally call the pre-Socratics, and for Nietzsche this places him at the lowest rank among the original philosophers of Greek antiquity. This is illustrated further through chap. 3 in my Nietzsche as Cultural Physician (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995). 39. KGW VIII2 11[375]: WP 427. 40. KGW IV1 6[18]: SW 194. 41. KGW II4 354: PPP 145. 42. KGW III2 310: PTA 43. 43. KGW VIII3 14[146]: WP 441. 44. KGW VIII2 11[375]: WP 427. 45. KGW III4 19[20]: UW. 46. KGW VIII1 2[104], WP 431. 47. KGW VIII2 11[375], WP 427 48. In both the artistic and ethical gestures. 49. KGW III4 19[20]: UW. This will be developed throughout the remainder of this chapter. With regard to the devolution of Apollo, see for example, BT 14 and KGW IV1 6[14]: SW 193. 50. KGW VIII3 14[92], WP 432. 51. KGW VIII2 11[375], WP 427. 52. KGW VIII3 14[157], WP 778. 53. Cf. chapter 1, “A Matter of Taste.” 54. KGW II4 217: PPP 8. 55. KGW III4 19[51]: UW. 56. KGW III2 311: PTA 44. 57. KGW III4 23[35]: UW. 58. KGW III4 19[2]: UW, cf. also KGW IV1 6[15]: SW 193. 59. KGW IV1 6[13]: SW 192. 60. KGW IV1 6[21]: SW 195. 61. Another way to put this is to say that dialectics is a technique which is simultaneously a revelation of my rational identity and an affirmation of the validity of its own goal. That is, its very activity proceeds as the “proof ” for precisely what it seeks to confirm, namely, the necessity to further examine and explore the rational self manifest within the very method. 62. KGW III2 310: PTA 43. 63. KGW II4 217: PPP 8.

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Notes to Pages 85–92

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64. KGW III2 310: PTA 43. 65. KGW IV1 6[4]: SW 188. 66. This makes the death of Socrates a very interesting “case” for Nietzsche. I will pursue this further as we proceed through this chapter, but have given it a more detailed treatment in chapter 3 in my Nietzsche as Cultural Physician. 67. KGW II4 352: PPP 143. 68. KGW VIII1 2[104], WP 431. 69. KGW VIII2 9[102], WP 801. 70. KGW II4 354: PPP 145 Here the term “ethical” is meant in the sense of the pursuit of knowledge of the good as a means to personal happiness. In asserting that happiness is the benefit of knowing the good, then, Socrates, from Nietzsche’s point of view, is promoting an essentially self-serving interpretation of virtue. This overestimation of personal happiness in the realm of virtue leads to the three elements pervading Nietzsche’s critique of Socrates as (a) a misunderstanding and revaluation of the values of the tragic age leading to (b) the acceleration of cultural decay, and hence (c) the rejection of art (BT 13), science (HH I 261), and the “generosity” of the virtue typical of the earlier, “most courageous period” (BT SC 1). 71. KGW VIII3 14[92], WP 432. 72. KGW VIII3 14[92], WP 433. 73. KGW VIII3 14[92], WP 432. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid. 77. KGW VIII2 11[375], WP 427. 78. KGW VIII3 14[94], WP 435. 79. KGW VIII2 11[375], WP 427. 80. KGW VIII1 2[104], WP 431. 81. KGW IV1 6[21]: SW 195. 82. KGW IV1 6[14]: SW 193. 83. KGW VIII3 14[92], WP 433. 84. The Socratic roots of this idea of preserving and maintaining the “self ” right up to our own day are admirably articulated in Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, vols. 2 and 3 (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), and in his The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981–1982, ed. Frédéric Gros, François Ewald, and Alessandro Fontana, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Picador, 2005). 85. KGW VIII3 14[111], WP 430. 86. KGW III4 19[27]: UW. 87. KGW IV1 6[14]: SW 193. 88. KGW VIII3 14[111], WP 430. 89. KGW IV1 6[21]: SW 195. 90. The death of Socrates, for example, has been seen as just one such sacrifice for the sake of the future of Athens. We will be looking at this sacrifice shortly in part II of this chapter. 91. KGW VIII3 14[92]: WP 432. 92. KGW III2 303: PTA 35. 93. KGW III2 303: PTA 34. Cf. also chapter 1, note 44. 94. KGW II4 361: PPP 151. 95. KGW VIII3 14[134]: WP 461. 96. For example, whether or not Nietzsche’s portrait of Socrates is historically accurate or fair, etc. This would take us too far afield and would also repeat what I and others have already written

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Notes to Pages 92–102

concerning Nietzsche’s relationship to Socrates. Regarding the scholarship in this area, the reader should look at chapter 1, note 26.   97. KGW IV1 6[17]: SW 193.   98. KGW II4 360: PPP 150.   99. KGW VIII3 14[94]: WP 435. 100. KGW VIII3 14[111]): WP 430. 101. Ibid. 102. Nietzsche’s caricature of Plato (KGW VIII2 10[112]: WP 374) does not, any more than that of Socrates, negate his great respect for these figures. It has to be remembered that, aside from the polemical value of pointing out their roles in the decay of ancient Greek culture, Nietzsche sees Socrates and Plato as, like himself, men of their times. In each case, perhaps it is a matter of measuring the degree to which they were capable of “a special self-discipline” (CW Preface). 103. This is the context within which Nietzsche will see Plato as having been “seduced by the roturier Socrates” (KGW VIII1 2[104], WP 435). Plato is lured into the plebeian idea that one’s advantage, i.e., happiness, is guaranteed through one’s being “virtuous” and that this is a formula to saving one’s culture. Nietzsche sees this as essentially naive since cultures require a sense of something for which it should risk suffering and possible destruction. Providing a technique through which personal happiness coincides with virtue and the goals of culture is the exact reverse of the mores of the tragic age and, for Nietzsche, guarantees cultural decay. 104. KGW II4 354: PPP 144. 105. KGW VIII1 7[2]: WP 572. 106. KGW VIII3 14[100]: WP 437. 107. Ibid. 108. KGW VIII3 14[129]: WP 434. 109. Plato, Phaedo 64a, in Plato, 55. 110. Cf. chapter 2, “Progeny.” 111. “Know thyself ”; KGW IV1 6[14]: SW 193. 112. KGW VIII3 14[92]: WP 433. 113. KGW IV1 6[25]: SW 196. 114. KGW VIII3 36[11]: WP 443. 115. KGW VIII3 14[111]: WP 430. 116. KGW II4 354: PPP 145; cf. also BT 15. 117. KGW VIII3 14[111]: WP 430. 118. KGW VIII1 2[104]: WP 431. 119. Ibid. 120. KGW VIII1 8[1]: WP 805. 121. KGW VIII3 14[92]: WP 432. 122. KGW III4 29[7]: UW. 123. Cf. also KGW III4 19[228]: UW. 124. KGW III2 279: HC 34. 125. KGW VIII3 14[14]: WP 1050. 126. KGW VIII2 10[168]: WP 852. 127. KGW VIII3 15[10]: WP 851. 128. Anne Simpson, “If,” in Quick (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2007), 109. 129. KGW VIII3 14[47]: WP 821. 130. Ibid. 131. Federico Garcia Lorca, “Play and Theory of the Duende,” in Deep Song and Other Prose, ed. and trans. Christopher Maurer (New York: New Directions Books, 1980), 52.

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Notes to Pages 102–112

139

132. KGW VIII2 10[168]: WP 852. 133. Garcia Lorca, “Play and Theory of the Duende,” 53. 134. Pablo Neruda, “Every Day You Play,” in Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, trans. W. S. Merwin (London: Jonathan Cape, 2004), 43. 135. Cf. Plato, Republic 607b. 136. KGW VIII3 14[92]: WP 432. 137. Nietzsche, “Philosophy in Hard Times,” in Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870’s, trans. and ed. with an introduction by Daniel Breazeale (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1979), 107. Cf. KGW III4 29[197]. 138. KGW IV1 6[4]: SW 188. 139. KGW VIII1 8[1]: WP 805. 140. KGW VIII2 9[102]: WP 801. 141. Plato, Republic 377 b–c. 142. Ibid., 392 b–c. 143. Ibid., 607a. 144. KGW III2 299: PTA 28. 145. KGW II4 353: PPP 144. 146. KGW VIII3 14[134]: WP 461. 147. KGW VIII3 14[129]: WP 434; cf. also B 7. 148. KGW VIII3 14[94]: WP 435. 149. Cf. also KGW II4 360: PPP 150. 150. KGW VIII2 11[375]: WP 427.

Tomorrow and the Day After Tomorrow    1. KGW III4 21[19]: UW.    2. This will be pursued in a little more detail below.    3. KGW VIII2 10[109]: WP 317.    4. Ibid.    5. KGW VIII2 10[111]: WP 881.    6. Ibid.    7. Letter to Georg Brandes, May 23, 1888. The translation of this letter is from Nietzsche: A Self-Portrait from His Letters, ed. and trans. Peter Fuss and Henry Shapiro (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 118. The German text is located at KGB III5 letter 1036.    8. KGW III4 19[10]: UW.    9. Whose attempt at a “master race” would have horrified Nietzsche as a depravity perpetrated by imbeciles.   10. Nietzsche to Franz Overbeck, summer 1883, in Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Christopher Middleton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 214. See KGB III1 letter 451.   11. Nietzsche to Franz Overbeck, September 18, 1881, in Selected Letters, 179. See KGB III1 letter 149.   12. “Know thyself.”   13. See also Z II 4.   14. KGW VIII2 11[411]: WP Preface 4.   15. KGW VIII2 11[411]: WP Preface 2.   16. Nietzsche to Franz Overbeck, February 11, 1883, in Selected Letters, 206. See KGB III1 letter 373.   17. KGW VIII3 14[9]: WP 247.

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18. KGW VIII2 11[411]: WP Preface 3. 19. Nietzsche to Heinrich Köselitz, July 25, 1882, in Selected Letters, 189. See KGB III1 letter 272. 20. KGW IV1 6[21]: SW 195. 21. KGW VIII2 11[375]: WP 427. 22. KGW VIII2 11[411]: WP Preface 4. 23. KGW VII2 26[9] WP 854. 24. Billy Collins, “The First Night,” in Ballistics (New York: Random House, 2008), 24. 25. Nietzsche to Franz Overbeck, March 22, 1883, in Selected Letters, 210. See KGB III1 letter 393. 26. KGW IV1 6[18]: SW 194. 27. KGW VIII2 11[411]: WP Preface 3. 28. Leonard Cohen, “Last Year’s Man,” from Songs of Love and Hate (1971). 29. KGW III4 32[67]: UW. 30. KGW III4 21[19]: UW. 31. KGW VII3 41[4]: WP 419. 32. KGW III4 23[41]: UW. 33. KGW VIII2 9[102]: WP 801. 34. KGW III4 21[19]: UW. 35. The reference is at the tag end of section 370 in The Gay Science. The distinction here ­between hunger and abundance is echoed again at T IX 19–20. But it is also virtually equivocal with decay and exhaustion versus abundant vitality. 36. KGW VIII1 5[56]: WP 489. It is not hard to make the case that the body is Nietzsche’s point of departure no matter what facet of his thinking one chooses. And his aesthetics would be no different. 37. KGW VII3 40[21]: WP 492. 38. As I noted above, these aesthetics remained one of the features of his wider and largely ­unwritten project called the revaluation of all values. 39. KGW VIII2 9[106]: WP 801. 40. To name a few. 41. Again, to name only a few. 42. KGW VIII3 14[47]: WP 821. 43. KGW VIII2 11[411]: WP Preface 2.

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Bibliography

Primary Sources Briefwechsel: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. 24 vols. Edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1975–84. Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. 40 vols. Edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1967–.

Translations of Nietzsche’s Published Works Beyond Good and Evil. In The Basic Writings of Nietzsche, translated and edited with commentaries by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House, 1992. The Birth of Tragedy. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche. The Case of Wagner. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Ecce Homo. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche. The Gay Science. Translated with commentary by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1974. Human, All Too Human. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale with an introduction by Richard Schacht. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. On the Genealogy of Morals. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche. “Schopenhauer as Educator.” In Untimely Meditations. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated with an introduction by R. J. Hollingdale. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1975. Twilight of the Idols; and The Anti-Christ. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale with an introduction by Michael Tanner. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1990. Untimely Meditations. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale with an introduction by J. P. Stern. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Translations of Nietzsche’s Unpublished Works “Additional Plans and Outlines.” In Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870’s, translated and edited with an introduction by Daniel Breazeale. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1979. “Homer’s Contest.” In The Portable Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin Books, 1984. Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. Translated with an introduction by Marianne Cowan. Chicago: Regnery, 1962.

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“Philosophy in Hard Times.” In Philosophy and Truth. The Pre-Platonic Philosophers. Translated and edited with an introduction and commentary by Greg Whitlock. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001. “The Struggle Between Science and Wisdom.” In Philosophy and Truth. “Thoughts on the Meditation: Philosophy in Hard Times.” In Philosophy and Truth. Unpublished Writings from the Period of Unfashionable Observations. Translated with an afterword by R. T. Gray. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. The Will to Power. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale with commentary by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Press, 1968.

Translations of Nietzsche’s Correspondence Nietzsche: A Self-Portrait from His Letters. Edited and translated by Peter Fuss and Henry Shapiro. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971. Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche. Edited and translated by Christopher Middleton. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.

Secondary and Other Sources Ahern, Daniel. Nietzsche as Cultural Physician. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Christopher Rowe with an introduction and commentary by Sarah Broadie. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. ———. Poetics. Translated by Leon Golden with commentary by O. B. Hardison Jr. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968. Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share. Vol. 1. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Zone Books, 1988. Benson, Bruce. Pious Nietzsche: Decadence and Dionysian Faith. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. Bishop, Paul, ed. Nietzsche and Antiquity: His Reaction and Response to the Classical Tradition. New York: Camden House, 2004. Collins, Billy. “The First Night.” In Ballistics. New York: Random House, 2008. Dannhauser, Werner. Nietzsche’s View of Socrates. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974. Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. Foucault, Michel. The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981–1982. Edited by Frédéric Gros, François Ewald, and Alessandro Fontana, translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Picador, 2005. —–—. The History of Sexuality. 3 vols. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. —–—. Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977–1984. Edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman. New York: Routledge, 1980. —–—. The Use of Pleasure. Vol. 2 of The History of Sexuality. Gilbert, Jack. “A Brief for the Defense.” In Refusing Heaven. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Harrison, Paul. The Disenchantment of Reason: The Problem of Socrates in Modernity. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Havas, Randall. “Socratism and the Question of Aesthetic Justification.” In Nietzsche, ­Philosophy and the Arts, edited by Salim Kemal, Ivan Gaskell, and Daniel Conway. Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press, 1998.

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Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper, 1962. Homer. Iliad. Translated by A. T. Murray. London: William Heinemann, 1930. Kaufmann, Walter. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. 4th ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974. Levinas, Emmanuel. Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo. Translated by Richard A. Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1997. Lloyd-Jones, Hugh. “Nietzsche and the Study of the Ancient World.” In Studies in Nietzsche and the Classical Tradition, edited by James C. O’Flaherty, Timothy F. Sellner, and Robert ­Meredith Helm. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1976. Lorca, Federico Garcia. “Play and Theory of the Duende.” In Deep Song and Other Prose, 42–53. Edited and translated by Christopher Maurer. New York: New Directions, 1980. McNeill, David. “On the Relationship of Alcibiades’ Speech to Nietzsche’s ‘Problem of Socrates.’” In Bishop, Nietzsche and Antiquity. Moore, Gregory. Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Nehamas, Alexander. The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault. Berkeley: ­University of California Press, 2000. —–—. Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato and Socrates. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. Neruda, Pablo. Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. Translated by W. S. Merwin. London: Jonathan Cape, 2004. Oehler, Richard. Nietzsche und die Vorsokratiker. Leipzig: Dürr’schen Buchhandlung, 1904. Plato. Phaedo. Translated by G. M. A. Grube. In Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997. —–—. Republic. Translated by G. M. A. Grube and C. D. C. Reeve. In Plato: Complete Works. Porter, James. The Invention of Dionysus: An Essay on “The Birth of Tragedy.” Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. —–—. “Nietzsche, Homer, and the Classical Tradition.” In Bishop, Nietzsche and Antiquity. —–—. Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Pothen, Philip. Nietzsche and the Fate of Art. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. Rampley, Matthew. Nietzsche, Aesthetics, and Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Ruehl, Martin. “Politeia.” In Nietzsche and Antiquity: His Reaction and Response to the Classical Tradition, edited by Paul Bishop. New York: Camden House, 2004. Sallis, John. Crossings: Nietzsche and Space of Tragedy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Sandvoss, Ernest. Sokrates und Nietzsche. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966. Schmidt, Hermann-Josef. Nietzsche und Sokrates: Philosophische Untersuchungen zu Nietzsches Sokratesbild. Meisenheim am Glan: Hain, 1969. Siemens, Herman. “Nietzsche and the ‘Classical’: Traditional and Innovative Features of Nietzsche’s Usage, with Special Reference to Goethe.” In Bishop, Nietzsche and Antiquity. Silk, M. S., and J. P. Stern. Nietzsche on Tragedy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Simpson, Anne. “If.” In Quick, 109. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2007. Whitlock, Greg, trans. and ed. The Pre-Platonic Philosophers. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001. Wilkerson, Dale. Nietzsche and the Greeks. New York: Continuum, 2006. Young, Julian. Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

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Index

abundance aesthetics and, 56–60, 65, 68, 103, 119, 120 annihilation and, 40–45 Apollo and, 52, 75 art and, 104, 119, 120 Athenian aristocracy and, 74–76 beauty and, 57 body and, 56–60 desire and, 56–58, 75–76 Dionysian pessimism and, 39–45, 63, 68, 75, 91 Dionysus and, 80 ethics and, 39–45, 60, 68 generosity and, 102, 103 good and, 42 health and, 40–41, 42–45, 56–60, 66, 74–75, 102 intoxication and, 56–60, 102 joy and, 42–44, 48, 56–60 love and, 41, 44, 81, 112–13 morality and, 119, 120 perfection and, 61 philosophy and, 104 pleasure and, 42–44 power and, 57 self and, 40–45, 48, 65 sexuality and, 61, 101 Socratism and, 104 strength, 120 strength and, 41, 59, 62, 74–76, 90, 98, 102 suffering and, 40–45, 60, 63, 66, 102 tragic age and, 39–45, 78–79, 98 tragic art and, 75 tragic poetry and, 56–60, 61, 63, 66, 101, 102, 119 utility and, 45 virtue and, 42, 66 warrior aristocracy and, 60 Achilles, 99–100, 103

Ahern_Index.indd 145

Aeschylus, 31 aesthetics. See also beauty abundance and, 56–60, 65, 68, 103, 119, 120 annihilation and, 21, 35, 55–56, 81 Apollo and, 5, 40, 49–55 art and, 103–4, 119–22 beauty and, 2, 34–35, 103 body and, 35, 48, 56–60, 76, 82, 100, 118–19, 119–20 cosmology and, 51–52 cruelty and, 118, 120 decay and, 100–101, 119, 121–22 desire and, 56–58 dialectics and, 103 Dionysian pessimism and, 4–5, 6, 34–35, 45–46, 65–69, 73, 76, 82, 100–102, 103, 118–22 Dionysus and, 42, 48–55 ethics and, 34–35, 45, 60, 65–69 existence and, 3, 53, 64–65 generosity and, 82, 103 good and, 34–35 gratitude and, 64–65, 120–21 Greek culture and, 2, 68–69 health and, 45, 51–52, 56–60, 119, 120 intoxication and, 48–55, 56–60, 101–2, 118, 119–20 joy and, 60, 64–65 knowledge and, 101 love and, 65 master-slave, 119–22 morality and, 64–65 nihilism and, 122 noble human beings and, 35 philosophy and, 68–69, 100–101, 118, 119 physiology of, 14, 45–46, 50, 119–22 Plato and, 59–60, 95–96 Platonism and, 95–96 rationality and, 64–65, 68–69, 100–101, 103

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146

Index

aesthetics (continued) scholarship on, 5–6 science and, 68 self and, 49–55, 61–63, 65, 69, 100–101, 102, 103 sexuality and, 118, 119–20 Socratism and, 5, 40, 42, 68–69, 73, 95–96, 100–101, 103–4, 119 strength and, 57 suffering and, 35, 60, 66, 102 tragic age and, 14, 34–35, 45, 68–69, 81, 95, 100 tragic art and, 35, 50, 51–52, 53–55 tragic poetry and, 48–49, 56–69, 100–102, 107, 120 truth and, 104 utility and, 103 values and, 73 virtue and, 2, 35, 68–69 warrior aristocracy and, 45 amor fati. See love Anaxagoras, 79 Anaximander, 31 annihilation. See also suffering abundance and, 40–45 aesthetics and, 21, 35, 55–56, 81 Apollo and, 52 art and, 104 Athenian aristocracy and, 77–78 beauty and, 35, 71, 81 body and, 35–39, 40, 41, 44–45, 54, 77–82, 96, 107 cosmology and, 30 desire and, 78, 79, 89 Dionysian pessimism and, 6, 19–20, 32, 35, 37, 39, 40–45, 55–56, 77, 85, 91, 92, 95–96, 97, 105, 106, 107, 108–10 Dionysus and, 13, 39–40, 60 ethics and, 21, 35–39, 40–45, 81 existence and, 107, 110 freedom and, 37, 62 future and, 84, 90, 95–96, 107, 110 generosity and, 77, 84, 92–93, 106, 107, 108 good and, 35–39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 67 gratitude and, 108–9 happiness and, 107 health and, 40–41, 42–45 intoxication and, 60, 65, 78, 105 joy and, 42–44, 48, 53–54, 64–65, 66 knowledge and, 65, 97, 101 love and, 81 morality and, 19–21, 38, 64–65

Ahern_Index.indd 146

noble human beings and, 17, 18, 19–20, 21, 31, 37–39, 61, 64, 67–68, 77, 106 perfection and, 64, 66, 107 philosophy and, 30, 85 Plato and, 93, 96 Platonism and, 96 pleasure and, 42–44, 78 preservation and, 49, 50 rationality and, 64–65, 85, 105, 109, 120 resentment and, 17 self and, 48, 49, 50, 53, 54–55, 61, 65, 95–96, 109, 120 sexuality and, 43, 53, 54–55, 101, 104, 120 social rank and, 77–78 Socrates and, 92–93 Socratism and, 73, 80–81, 85, 90, 93, 106–7 strength and, 66 tragic age and, 19–21, 30, 35–39, 73, 78, 81, 85, 86, 89, 96, 98 tragic art and, 30, 53–55, 71, 73 tragic poetry and, 30, 35, 47–48, 55–56, 62–65, 66–68, 84, 101, 120 truth and, 101 values and, 55, 71 virtue and, 19–21, 55, 61, 62, 63–65, 66, 71, 77, 85, 87, 90, 106, 108 warrior aristocracy and, 37, 40–45, 62, 66, 67, 106 Western culture and, 109 wisdom and, 62, 106 Apollo abundance and, 52, 75 aesthetics and, 5, 40, 49–55 annihilation and, 52 art and, 3, 39–40 Athenian aristocracy and, 75 beauty and, 5, 96–97 cosmology and, 51–52 cruelty and, 52 desire and, 75 dialectics and, 53 Dionysian pessimism and, 115–16 Dionysus and, 2, 9, 49–55 freedom and, 50 health and, 51–52 intoxication and, 49–55, 60, 101 Plato and, 96–97 preservation and, 49–55, 60 rationality and, 50–51, 53, 82–83, 97 self and, 49–55 sexuality and, 51

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Index

Socrates and, 40, 52, 75, 82–83 Socratism and, 2, 50–51, 53, 96–97 strength and, 50, 75 suffering and, 52 tragic art and, 50, 51–52, 53–55, 75, 96–97 tragic poetry and, 3, 67, 101, 102 truth and, 40 virtue and, 5, 96–97 will to power and, 51–52, 54 Aristotle, 2, 10, 17–18, 48–49, 64, 67 art. See also tragic art; tragic poetry abundance and, 104, 119, 120 aesthetics and, 103–4, 119–22 annihilation and, 104 Apollo and, 3, 39–40 Aristotle and, 67 beauty and, 121 body and, 101, 104, 119–20 cruelty and, 118 decay and, 121 desire and, 6 dialectics and, 104 Dionysian pessimism and, 6, 104, 119–22 Dionysus and, 3, 39–40 existence and, 104, 121 future and, 104 generosity and, 121 good and, 104 gratitude and, 120–21 happiness and, 103 health and, 104, 120 intoxication and, 101, 102, 104, 118, 119–20, 121 joy and, 5, 104 knowledge and, 2, 103–4, 120 love and, 120 morality and, 119 perfection and, 104, 113, 120, 121 pessimism and, 121 philosophy and, 3, 32, 104, 119 physiology of, 119–22 Plato and, 2, 32, 56–58, 100 preservation and, 121 rationality and, 3, 101, 104 self and, 3, 103–4, 121 sexuality and, 101, 104, 118, 119–20 social rank and, 104, 119 Socrates and, 9, 34–35, 40, 52, 54 Socratism and, 101, 103–4, 119 strength and, 120 suffering and, 56, 121

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147

tragic age and, 6, 13–14, 32 tragic poetry and, 3, 121 truth and, 104 utility and, 104, 121 virtue and, 6, 35, 104 will to power and, 57 The Art of Living (Nehamas), 6 Athenian aristocracy, 74–76, 77–78, 79, 84 “Attempt at a Self-Criticism” (Nietzsche), 8, 12 Bataille, Georges, 43 beauty. See also aesthetics abundance and, 57 aesthetics and, 2, 34–35, 103 annihilation and, 35, 71, 81 Apollo and, 5, 96–97 art and, 121 body and, 35, 48, 77, 105 decay and, 71, 121 desire and, 56, 69 dialectics and, 103 Dionysian pessimism and, 71, 77, 110, 113, 115–16, 118 Dionysus and, 80–81 ethics and, 34–35, 100 generosity and, 105, 113 good and, 34–35 gratitude and, 110 Greek culture and, 2 health and, 77 intoxication and, 57 joy and, 113 knowledge and, 56, 59–60 noble human beings and, 34, 110 philosophy and, 95, 100 Plato and, 59–60, 94 power and, 57 preservation and, 49 rationality and, 59–60, 103 self and, 49, 103 sexuality and, 48 Socratism and, 35, 118 strength and, 56 suffering and, 35, 113 tragic age and, 16, 34–35, 71, 80, 81, 118 tragic art and, 16, 73, 96–97 tragic poetry and, 68 values and, 71 virtue and, 3, 5, 14, 35, 69, 96–97, 110 warrior aristocracy and, 16, 45

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148 The Birth of Tragedy (Nietzsche) aesthetics in, 5 Apollo in, 50, 53 “Attempt at a Self-Criticism” (Nietzsche) in, 8, 12 criticism of, 9–10 dialect in, 3 Dionysus in, 39–40, 50 Greek culture in, 1, 8, 9–10 philology and, 9–10 body. See also self abundance and, 56–60 aesthetics and, 35, 48, 56–60, 76, 82, 100, 118–19, 119–20 annihilation and, 35–39, 40, 41, 44–45, 54, 77–82, 96, 107 art and, 101, 104, 119–20 Athenian aristocracy and, 77–78 beauty and, 35, 48, 77, 105 Christianity and, 107 cruelty and, 54, 77 decay and, 80, 84 desire and, 76–77, 79, 81, 88, 97, 106–7 dialectics and, 85 Dionysian pessimism and, 7, 35, 40, 41, 44–45, 55, 60, 76–82, 86, 89–90, 91, 100, 105, 107, 114, 118 ethics and, 35–39, 40, 41, 44–45, 55, 56, 69, 76, 81–82, 89, 100, 118–19 existence and, 92–93, 97, 105, 106–7, 109, 113 future and, 79, 80, 94 generosity and, 37–39, 41, 44–45, 77, 82, 86, 87, 89–90, 91–92, 101–2, 103, 105, 107, 109, 114, 118 good and, 35, 40, 41, 55, 87 gratitude and, 113 happiness and, 80, 90, 95–96 health and, 77, 78–79 intoxication and, 77–78, 90, 96, 105 joy and, 114 knowledge and, 90, 98 love and, 113 mind and, 3, 34 morality and, 38, 69, 79–80, 82, 94, 103 noble human beings and, 37–39, 77 pessimism and, 79, 89 philosophy and, 81–82, 83, 85, 100, 106 Plato and, 31, 36, 78, 94–96, 97, 98–99 Platonism and, 94–96, 98–99, 100 pleasure and, 77–78

Ahern_Index.indd 148

Index preservation and, 85 rationality and, 31, 79, 80, 83, 85, 98–99 self and, 40, 41, 54, 63, 81–82, 88–89, 93, 94, 95–96, 98 sexuality and, 54 social rank and, 36, 77–78 Socrates and, 52, 79–80, 92–93 Socratism and, 36, 38–39, 76–82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89–90, 93, 94, 98–99, 100, 101, 103, 105, 106–7, 118 soul and, 77, 90 strength and, 59, 90 suffering and, 35–39, 40, 41, 44–45, 55, 63, 66, 77, 78–79, 80–81, 83, 87, 92, 97, 107, 113 tragic age and, 31, 35–39, 76–82, 86, 87, 95, 96, 98, 100 tragic art and, 77, 118 tragic poetry and, 35, 48, 56–60, 66, 101–2 truth and, 94, 105 utility and, 90, 98–99 values and, 55, 80–81, 82 virtue and, 35–39, 66, 77, 80, 82, 86, 87, 88, 90, 97, 100, 105, 107, 118 warrior aristocracy and, 38, 77 will to power and, 60 wisdom and, 84 The Case of Wagner (Nietzsche), 120, 121 Christianity body and, 107 Dionysian pessimism and, 3 God and, 115 modernism and, 8–9 nihilism and, 9 Plato and, 9 Socratism and, 32, 107, 114 suffering and, 111, 112 cosmology aesthetics and, 51–52 annihilation and, 30 Apollo and, 51–52 decay of, 34–35 desire and, 31 Dionysian pessimism and, 6, 32, 33, 34, 117 ethics and, 79 existence and, 71 future and, 12 Greek culture and, 4, 6 health and, 51–52, 71, 79 intoxication and, 51–52, 71

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joy and, 6 knowledge and, 30–31 morality and, 79 philosophy and, 8, 22–25, 29, 30–33 Plato and, 32 preservation and, 49–50, 51–52 rationality and, 31, 70–71, 79 self and, 22–25, 49–50, 51–52, 70–71, 95 social rank and, 32, 71 Socratism and, 32, 70–71 tragic age and, 11, 12, 14, 22–25, 29, 30–33, 51–52, 70–71, 83, 84 tragic art and, 30–33, 51–52 tragic knowledge and, 32 tragic poetry and, 31, 32, 34 truth and, 49–50 utility and, 83 values and, 8, 34 warrior aristocracy and, 31, 33, 34, 71, 79 will to power and, 24–25 wisdom and, 29, 84 Crossings (Sallis), 5 cruelty aesthetics and, 118, 120 Apollo and, 52 art and, 118 Athenian aristocracy and, 75 body and, 54, 77 dialectics and, 86 Dionysian pessimism and, 118 dreams and, 116 joy and, 15–16, 46, 47 pessimism and, 15 philosophy and, 86 Platonism and, 96 social rank and, 75 Socrates and, 75 Socratism and, 86 tragic age and, 15–16, 17, 39, 96, 118 tragic art and, 75 tragic poetry and, 6, 46, 118 truth and, 100 virtue and, 39, 86 warrior aristocracy and, 15–16, 17, 75 culture, 27. See also Greek culture; tragic age death. See annihilation decay aesthetics and, 100–101, 119, 121–22 art and, 121 beauty and, 71, 121

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Index

149

body and, 80, 84 of cosmology, 34–35 desire and, 83 of Dionysian pessimism, 73–74, 76, 87–93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 104–7, 118 of Greek culture, 6, 9–14, 31–32, 41, 49, 68–69, 70–76, 80, 81, 82, 91 morality and, 82 pessimism and, 70–71, 73, 80, 92–93 of philosophy, 9–14, 31–32, 70–71, 72–73, 88 Plato and, 9, 10, 49, 70, 71, 74, 87–88, 93, 94 Socrates and, 9, 32, 34–35, 70–74, 80, 82–83, 84, 85, 91, 92–93 Socratism and, 70–74, 81, 82–83, 84, 88, 104–7, 118, 119 of tragic art, 34–35, 71, 72 values of, 71 virtue and, 71 of Western culture, 8–9 wisdom and, 84 Delphic command, 53, 82–83 Democritus, 79, 97 Demosthenes, 31 desire abundance and, 56–58, 75–76 aesthetics and, 56–58 annihilation and, 78, 79, 89 Apollo and, 75 art and, 6 Athenian aristocracy and, 75–76, 77–78 beauty and, 56, 69 body and, 76–77, 79, 81, 88, 97, 106–7 cosmology and, 31 decay and, 83 dialectics and, 83, 87, 90, 94–95, 96, 99 Dionysian pessimism and, 77 dreams and, 116 freedom and, 69 generosity and, 89 happiness and, 89 health and, 56–58 intoxication and, 56–58, 61 joy and, 56–58 knowledge and, 94–95 morality and, 83 pessimism and, 76 philosophy and, 85, 101 Plato and, 76 power and, 100

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150 desire (continued) preservation and, 85 rationality and, 31, 92, 101 self and, 85, 89, 90, 101 Socrates and, 75–76, 86–87, 92 Socratism and, 76, 78, 81, 85, 87, 88, 106–7 strength and, 75–76 suffering and, 18, 102 tragic age and, 86, 89 tragic poetry and, 56–58, 61, 102 truth and, 69 virtue and, 6, 83, 86, 87, 88, 96, 97 in Western culture, 18 destruction. See annihilation dialectics aesthetics and, 103 Apollo and, 53 art and, 104 beauty and, 103 body and, 85 cruelty and, 86 desire and, 83, 87, 90, 94–95, 96, 99 Dionysian pessimism and, 115–16 existence and, 88 good and, 88, 89 happiness and, 88 intoxication and, 86 joy and, 109 knowledge and, 53, 79, 80, 94–95 morality and, 83 philosophy and, 34, 81, 83, 85, 99–100, 104 Plato and, 34 preservation and, 85, 95 rationality and, 53, 85, 88, 99 self and, 53, 79, 83, 87, 88, 90, 93, 95, 99 sexuality and, 86 Socrates and, 34, 35, 79, 80, 86–87 Socratism and, 53, 71, 83, 85, 87, 93, 99–100 suffering and, 109 taste and, 85, 86 tragic age and, 86–87 tragic art and, 71 truth and, 94 utility and, 83 virtue and, 79, 80, 81, 87, 88, 95, 96, 97, 99–100 warrior aristocracy and, 99–100 wisdom and, 85 Dionysian pessimism abundance and, 39–45, 63, 68, 75, 91

Ahern_Index.indd 150

Index aesthetics and, 4–5, 6, 34–35, 45–46, 65–69, 73, 76, 82, 100–102, 103, 118–22 annihilation and, 6, 19–20, 32, 35, 37, 39, 40–45, 55–56, 77, 85, 91, 92, 95–96, 97, 105, 106, 107, 108–10 Apollo and, 115–16 art and, 6, 104, 119–22 Athenian aristocracy and, 76 attitude of, 3–5, 6, 35, 37, 40, 62, 63, 77, 117 beauty and, 71, 77, 110, 113, 115–16, 118 body and, 7, 35, 40, 41, 44–45, 55, 60, 76–82, 86, 89–90, 91, 100, 105, 107, 114, 118 Christianity and, 3 cosmology and, 6, 32, 33, 34, 117 cruelty and, 118 decay of, 73–74, 76, 87–93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 104–7, 118 desire and, 77 dialectics and, 115–16 distance and, 6, 45, 92 eternal recurrence and, 110, 117 ethics and, 34–35, 39–45, 55, 65–69, 73, 76, 82, 100, 118 existence and, 4, 73, 107, 110, 113–17 freedom and, 37 future and, 5, 85, 90, 91–92, 95–96, 97, 110, 112 generosity and, 39, 40, 44–45, 77, 82, 84, 86, 91–92, 105, 106, 108, 113–17, 118, 121–22 good and, 40, 42, 43 gratitude and, 114, 118, 121–22 Greek culture and, 3, 5–6 happiness and, 109 health and, 40–41, 42–45, 55, 73, 97, 119 intoxication and, 42, 77, 105, 118 joy and, 3, 4, 5, 6, 39, 42–44, 59, 60, 105, 114, 117 knowledge and, 4 love and, 113 meaning of, 4–5, 6 modernism and, 3, 35 morality and, 19–20, 60, 76, 83, 117 nihilism and, 122 noble human beings and, 19–20, 63 philosophy and, 3–4, 22, 29, 31, 85 Plato and, 87–88, 93, 94 pleasure and, 42–44 preservation and, 91–92

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Index

rationality and, 105, 109 romantic pessimism and, 4 self and, 40–45, 55, 67, 90, 91–92, 95–96, 97, 98, 102, 105–6, 109, 118 sexuality and, 43, 118 social rank and, 29, 31, 90, 99–100, 106 Socrates and, 19 Socratism and, 3, 7, 71, 73–74, 77, 82, 85–86, 90–91, 93, 104–7, 118 soul and, 77 strength of, 43, 48, 54, 62, 73, 74–76, 90–91, 120 suffering and, 5, 6, 32, 35, 39, 40–45, 55, 59, 62, 85, 91, 92, 97, 108–10, 113 taste and, 29 tragic age and, 3–4, 6, 29, 31, 80, 81, 83, 100, 112, 117–18 tragic art and, 23, 32, 33, 34, 55, 117, 119 tragic poetry and, 5, 6, 62–65, 65–69, 90–91, 100–102 utility and, 44, 45, 55, 90, 91–92, 98–99, 103 values and, 4, 28, 55, 73, 93, 118 virtue and, 4, 6, 19–20, 42, 44, 55, 62, 69, 71, 77, 99, 110, 115–16, 117, 118 war and, 110, 112 warrior aristocracy and, 29, 33, 34, 35, 40–45, 55, 62 wisdom and, 4, 29, 44 Dionysus. See also Dionysian pessimism abundance and, 80 aesthetics and, 42, 48–55 annihilation and, 13, 39–40, 60 Apollo and, 2, 9, 49–55 art and, 3, 39–40 beauty and, 80–81 eternal recurrence and, 13 ethics and, 39–40 faith and, 1–2 generosity and, 41, 80 health and, 41, 50 intoxication and, 39–40, 46–55, 60 joy and, 48, 50, 109 knowledge and, 40 nihilism and, 13 philosophy and, 2–3, 40 pleasure and, 39 Schopenhauer and, 40 self and, 39–40, 47, 49–55, 69 sexuality and, 46–48, 50, 51, 53, 56 Socrates and, 40 Socratism and, 2, 42

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151

suffering and, 40–45, 109 tragic art and, 40, 48–49, 52, 53–55 tragic poetry and, 3, 56, 102 virtue and, 42, 80–81, 109 Western culture and, 1–2 distance. See also social rank Dionysian pessimism and, 6, 45, 92 existence and, 113 generosity and, 113 joy and, 117 social rank and, 37, 117 Socratism and, 85 tragic poetry and, 68 dreams, 51, 116 Empedocles, 26, 31, 79 eternal recurrence Dionysian pessimism and, 110, 117 Dionysus and, 13 future and, 114 gratitude and, 115 nihilism and, 13 sexuality and, 46, 47 tragic age and, 13 values and, 114, 115, 117 ethics. See also good; virtue abundance and, 39–45, 60, 68 aesthetics and, 34–35, 45, 60, 65–69 annihilation and, 21, 35–39, 40–45, 81 Athenian aristocracy and, 75 beauty and, 34–35, 100 body and, 35–39, 40, 41, 44–45, 55, 56, 69, 76, 81–82, 89, 100, 118–19 cosmology and, 79 Dionysian pessimism and, 34–35, 39–45, 55, 65–69, 73, 76, 82, 100, 118 Dionysus and, 39–40 generosity and, 37–39, 41, 44–45, 61–62, 82, 87 good and, 34–39, 40, 41, 43, 44 gratitude and, 98 Greek culture and, 68–69 health and, 40–41, 42–45 intoxication and, 88 joy and, 39, 42–44, 60, 98 knowledge and, 35–36 morality and, 38 noble human beings and, 37–39, 42 philosophy and, 68–69, 86, 100, 118 Plato and, 36, 95–96 Platonism and, 95–96

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152

Index

ethics (continued) pleasure and, 42–44 preservation and, 81–82 rationality and, 37, 38, 68–69, 82–83 science and, 68 self and, 40–45, 61–62, 69, 81–82, 84, 88 sexuality and, 43 social rank and, 36 Socrates and, 82–83 Socratism and, 68–69, 73, 81–82, 84, 86, 89, 93, 95–96, 100 suffering and, 35–39, 40–45, 60, 66 tragic age and, 34–45, 68–69, 81, 87, 95, 100 tragic poetry and, 68–69 utility and, 44, 45, 61–62, 98 values and, 73 virtue and, 35–37, 68–69, 90 warrior aristocracy and, 38, 40–45, 60 excess. See abundance existence aesthetics and, 3, 53, 64–65 annihilation and, 107, 110 art and, 104, 121 body and, 92–93, 97, 105, 106–7, 109, 113 cosmology and, 71 dialectics and, 88 Dionysian pessimism and, 4, 73, 107, 110, 113–17 distance and, 113 future and, 71, 107, 110, 112–13 generosity and, 98, 106–7, 113–17 gratitude and, 109, 110, 112–13, 114 intoxication and, 121 joy and, 116–17 justification of, 64–65 love and, 112–13 morality and, 64–65 nihilism and, 111, 112–13 perfection and, 64, 67 pessimism and, 92–93, 113 philosophy and, 71 Plato and, 97 preservation and, 65 rationality and, 64–65, 92, 109 self and, 65, 92–93, 97, 109, 113–14 Socrates and, 92–93 Socratism and, 73, 92–93, 105, 106–7, 109, 113–14 solution to, 64–65 suffering and, 92–93, 97, 108–10, 111, 112–13, 116–17, 121 tragedy and, 116

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tragic age and, 73, 98 tragic art and, 71 tragic poetry and, 64–65, 67, 101–2, 120 truth and, 97 utility and, 92–93 virtue and, 107, 117 faith, 1–2 Foucault, Michel, 3, 5–6, 25, 53 freedom, 37, 43, 50, 62, 69 future annihilation and, 84, 90, 95–96, 107, 110 art and, 104 body and, 79, 80, 94 cosmology and, 12 Dionysian pessimism and, 5, 85, 90, 91–92, 95–96, 97, 110, 112 eternal recurrence and, 114 existence and, 71, 107, 110, 112–13 good and, 93 gratitude and, 112–13, 114 Greek culture and, 8, 62–63, 107 love and, 112–13 nihilism and, 112–13, 115 pessimism and, 79 Plato and, 98 Platonism and, 97, 98 preservation of, 62–63 self and, 93, 94, 95–96, 97 Socrates and, 93 Socratism and, 78, 79, 90, 94, 98, 107 suffering and, 84, 95–96, 110, 112–13 tragic age and, 12, 81, 95, 96, 98 tragic poetry and, 12 tragic wisdom and, 12 truth and, 97 values and, 114–17 virtue and, 108 of Western culture, 2, 12, 98 The Gay Science (Nietzsche), 4, 119 genealogy, 17, 25–26, 119 generosity abundance and, 102, 103 aesthetics and, 82, 103 annihilation and, 77, 84, 92–93, 106, 107, 108 art and, 121 beauty and, 105, 113 body and, 37–39, 41, 44–45, 77, 82, 86, 87, 89–90, 91–92, 101–2, 103, 105, 107, 109, 114, 118

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desire and, 89 Dionysian pessimism and, 39, 40, 44–45, 77, 82, 84, 86, 91–92, 105, 106, 108, 113–17, 118, 121–22 Dionysus and, 41, 80 distance and, 113 ethics and, 37–39, 41, 44–45, 61–62, 82, 87 existence and, 98, 106–7, 113–17 good and, 37–39, 44, 106 happiness and, 105, 107 intoxication and, 90 morality and, 103, 106 noble human beings and, 37–39, 61, 77, 84, 106 philosophy and, 85, 118 preservation and, 69, 85 rationality and, 103, 109 self and, 69, 84, 85, 103, 113–14, 118 social rank and, 69, 84, 106, 118 Socrates and, 92–93 Socratism and, 82, 85, 86, 87, 103, 105–6, 106–7, 113–14, 118 strength and, 1, 90 suffering and, 37–39, 63, 84, 92, 106, 107, 108, 113, 114–15 tragic age and, 37–39, 63, 84, 87, 95, 98, 108, 118 tragic poetry and, 63–64, 101–2, 103 utility and, 44, 69, 90, 103, 105–6, 109 values and, 55, 85 virtue and, 63, 77, 89, 103, 105, 106, 109, 114–15 warrior aristocracy and, 39, 69, 84, 85, 106 wisdom and, 84 gift. See generosity God, 109, 115 Goethe, 116 good. See also ethics; virtue abundance and, 42 aesthetics and, 34–35 annihilation and, 35–39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 67 art and, 104 beauty and, 34–35 body and, 35, 40, 41, 55, 87 dialectics and, 88, 89 Dionysian pessimism and, 40, 42, 43 ethics and, 34–39, 40, 41, 43, 44 freedom and, 43 future and, 93 generosity and, 37–39, 44, 106

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Index

153

knowledge and, 28, 35–36 morality and, 38 noble human beings and, 37–39 philosophy and, 28, 81, 85, 93–94 rationality and, 37 self and, 28, 40, 85, 93 social rank and, 36, 83 Socrates and, 85, 93 Socratism and, 85, 87, 93–94 suffering and, 35–39, 40, 41, 44, 87 taste and, 28 tragic age and, 22, 28, 41 tragic poetry and, 67 utility and, 85 virtue and, 35–37 warrior aristocracy and, 22, 40 in Western culture, 41 wisdom and, 28, 85 government, 111–12 gratitude aesthetics and, 64–65, 120–21 annihilation and, 108–9 art and, 120–21 beauty and, 110 body and, 113 Dionysian pessimism and, 114, 118, 121–22 eternal recurrence and, 115 ethics and, 98 existence and, 109, 110, 112–13, 114 future and, 112–13, 114 intoxication and, 121 joy and, 114 love and, 110, 112–13 morality and, 110, 120 nihilism and, 112–13 noble human beings and, 110 perfection and, 110 philosophy and, 118 social rank and, 110 Socratism and, 114, 118 suffering and, 108–9, 110, 112–13, 114, 121 tragic age and, 98, 114, 118 tragic poetry and, 64–65, 102, 110 utility and, 98 virtue and, 110 Greek culture. See also Athenian aristocracy; Socratism; tragic age; warrior aristocracy aesthetics and, 2, 68–69 beauty and, 2 in The Birth of Tragedy (Nietzsche), 1, 8, 9–10 cosmology and, 4, 6

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154

Index

Greek culture (continued) decay of, 6, 9–14, 31–32, 41, 49, 68–69, 70–76, 80, 81, 82, 91 Dionysian pessimism and, 3, 5–6 ethics and, 68–69 future and, 8, 62–63, 107 history of, 30–33 new way into, 1–2, 14–15, 71 philosophy and, 8, 9–14, 70–71, 72–73 physiology of, 9–14, 69 preservation of, 62–63 rationality and, 68–69 scholarship on, 5–6 Socratism and, 70–74, 107 suffering and, 111 tragedy and, 4, 11, 13–14 tragic art and, 13 virtue and, 2 happiness. See also joy annihilation and, 107 art and, 103 body and, 80, 90, 95–96 desire and, 89 dialectics and, 88 Dionysian pessimism and, 109 generosity and, 105, 107 intoxication and, 51 knowledge and, 85, 90 philosophy and, 1, 26, 76, 79, 85, 86, 88 Plato and, 95–96 Platonism and, 95–96, 97 preservation and, 86–87 rationality and, 83, 86–87, 88, 95–96, 97, 98–99, 109 self and, 85, 86–87, 95–96, 105 social rank and, 85 Socrates and, 79, 80, 84, 86–87, 91 Socratism and, 76, 79, 83, 85, 86, 88, 95–96, 97, 98–99, 103, 105, 107, 109 tragic poetry and, 47, 48 utility and, 105 virtue and, 83, 85, 86–87, 88, 89, 95, 97, 98–99 hatred, 15–16 health. See also physiology abundance and, 40–41, 42–45, 56–60, 66, 74–75, 102 aesthetics and, 45, 51–52, 56–60, 119, 120 annihilation and, 40–41, 42–45 Apollo and, 51–52 art and, 104, 120

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Athenian aristocracy and, 74–75 beauty and, 77 body and, 77, 78–79 cosmology and, 51–52, 71, 79 desire and, 56–58 Dionysian pessimism and, 40–41, 42–45, 55, 73, 97, 119 Dionysus and, 41 ethics and, 40–41, 42–45 intoxication and, 51–52, 56–60, 66, 71 joy and, 42–44, 56–60 pessimism and, 18–19, 73 philosophy and, 86 pleasure and, 42–44 preservation and, 51–52 self and, 40–41, 42–45, 51–52 sexuality and, 43, 50, 61 Socratism and, 73, 82, 86, 87 suffering and, 40–41, 42–45, 66 tragic age and, 10–11, 18–19, 33, 44, 62, 63, 66, 69, 71, 73, 78–79, 80, 81, 82, 87, 89 tragic art and, 18–19, 51–52, 55, 71, 119 tragic poetry and, 45–46, 56–60, 61, 62, 63–64, 66, 68–69, 101–2, 119, 121 virtue and, 66, 68–69, 77, 121 warrior aristocracy and, 19, 40–41, 42–45, 77 Western culture and, 77 Heidegger, Martin, 65 Heraclitus, 26, 54, 79 Hippocrates, 97 The History of Sexuality (Foucault), 5–6 Homer, 15, 16, 36 identity. See self individual. See self intoxication abundance and, 56–60, 102 aesthetics and, 48–55, 56–60, 101–2, 118, 119–20 annihilation and, 60, 65, 78, 105 Apollo and, 49–55, 60, 101 art and, 101, 102, 104, 118, 119–20, 121 Athenian aristocracy and, 77–78 beauty and, 57 body and, 77–78, 90, 96, 105 cosmology and, 51–52, 71 desire and, 56–58, 61 dialectics and, 86 Dionysian pessimism and, 42, 77, 105, 118 Dionysus and, 39–40, 46–55, 60 ethics and, 88

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Index existence and, 121 generosity and, 90 gratitude and, 121 happiness and, 51 health and, 51–52, 56–60, 66, 71 joy and, 46, 48, 53–54, 56–60, 105 knowledge and, 104 love and, 57–58 perfection and, 61, 120 philosophy and, 3, 86, 119 Plato and, 95 power and, 57 preservation and, 49–55, 60 rationality and, 105 self and, 49–55, 65, 104 sexuality and, 46–47, 51, 101, 119–20 Socrates and, 52 Socratism and, 73, 86, 105–6, 119 strength and, 57, 90, 120 suffering and, 41, 105, 121 tragic age and, 66, 73, 78, 81, 96 tragic art and, 51–52, 53–55, 71, 75 tragic poetry and, 6, 31, 46–48, 56–60, 61, 63–64, 65, 66, 67–68, 69, 101–2, 118, 120 virtue and, 86, 95, 104 warrior aristocracy and, 66 will to power and, 54

joy. See also happiness abundance and, 42–44, 48, 56–60 aesthetics and, 60, 64–65 annihilation and, 42–44, 48, 53–54, 64–65, 66 art and, 5, 104 beauty and, 113 body and, 114 cosmology and, 6 cruelty and, 15–16, 46, 47 desire and, 56–58 dialectics and, 109 Dionysian pessimism and, 3, 4, 5, 6, 39, 42–44, 59, 60, 105, 114, 117 Dionysus and, 48, 109 distance and, 117 ethics and, 39, 42–44, 60, 98 existence and, 116–17 faith and, 2 gratitude and, 114 health and, 42–44, 56–60 intoxication and, 46, 48, 53–54, 56–60, 105 knowledge and, 109

Ahern_Index.indd 155

155 love and, 65 morality and, 60, 64–65 nihilism and, 2 philosophy and, 1–2, 107 poetry and, 6 preservation and, 53–54 rationality and, 64–65 self and, 42–44, 48, 53–54, 109 sexuality and, 43, 46, 50, 53–54 social rank and, 117 Socratism and, 116 strength and, 1, 66 suffering and, 42–44, 48, 59, 60, 64–65, 108–9, 113, 116 tragic age and, 15–16, 98 tragic poetry and, 5, 6, 46, 56–60, 64–65, 101 utility and, 98 virtue and, 6, 66, 107, 109 warrior aristocracy and, 15–16, 42–44

knowledge aesthetics and, 101 annihilation and, 65, 97, 101 art and, 2, 103–4, 120 beauty and, 56, 59–60 body and, 90, 98 cosmology and, 30–31 desire and, 94–95 dialectics and, 53, 79, 80, 94–95 Dionysian pessimism and, 4 Dionysus and, 40 ethics and, 35–36 good and, 28, 35–36 happiness and, 85, 90 intoxication and, 104 joy and, 109 morality and, 65, 79, 94–95, 118 philosophy and, 1–2, 26–29, 30–31, 71, 73, 82–83, 85, 86 Plato and, 2, 59–60, 94–95, 98 Platonism and, 94–95, 98 preservation and, 94–96 rationality and, 59–60, 65 self and, 23–24, 28, 53, 71, 79, 81, 82–83, 85, 90, 94–96, 98, 99, 103–4, 106, 109 Socrates and, 79, 80, 82–83 Socratism and, 53, 81, 85, 86, 90, 98, 106, 113–14 strength and, 79 suffering and, 109

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156 knowledge (continued) taste and, 26–29 tragic age and, 23–24, 26–29, 30–31, 35–36, 81, 84 tragic knowledge, 14, 30, 32, 73 tragic poetry and, 69, 103 utility and, 26–28, 84 values and, 28 virtue and, 35–36, 69, 79, 80, 85 warrior aristocracy and, 23–24 wisdom and, 26–29, 81, 84 life. See existence love abundance and, 41, 44, 81, 112–13 aesthetics and, 65 annihilation and, 81 art and, 120 body and, 113 Dionysian pessimism and, 113 existence and, 112–13 future and, 112–13 gratitude and, 110, 112–13 intoxication and, 57–58 joy and, 65 nihilism and, 112–13 pessimism and, 113 strength and, 41 suffering and, 44, 81, 110, 112–13 master morality abundance and, 120 aesthetics and, 119 generosity and, 106 gratitude and, 110 noble human beings and, 87 pessimism and, 64–65 tragic poetry and, 66, 68 in warrior aristocracy, 19, 20–21, 38 mind, 3, 31, 34, 86 modernism, 3, 8–9, 35. See also Western culture morality abundance and, 119, 120 aesthetics and, 64–65 annihilation and, 19–21, 38, 64–65 art and, 119 body and, 38, 69, 79–80, 82, 94, 103 cosmology and, 79 decay and, 82 desire and, 83 dialectics and, 83

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Index Dionysian pessimism and, 19–20, 60, 76, 83, 117 ethics and, 38 existence and, 64–65 generosity and, 103, 106 good and, 38 gratitude and, 110, 120 joy and, 60, 64–65 knowledge and, 65, 79, 94–95, 118 master morality, 19, 20–21, 38, 64–65, 66, 68, 87, 106, 110, 119, 120 noble human beings and, 19–20, 21, 87 philosophy and, 83 Plato and, 94–95 preservation and, 94, 103 rationality and, 83, 95, 118 self and, 79, 88–89, 94, 95, 103 slave morality, 21, 119 social rank and, 85, 119 Socrates and, 79–80, 91 Socratism and, 38–39, 64, 71, 82, 83, 85, 87–88, 88–89, 95, 103, 119 strength and, 79 suffering and, 38, 64–65 tragic age and, 16, 19–21, 38, 39, 76, 83 tragic art and, 71 tragic poetry and, 64–65, 66, 68, 101 truth and, 94, 95 virtue and, 97 warrior aristocracy and, 16, 19–21, 24, 38, 71, 79, 83, 101, 117 in Western culture, 16, 21 wisdom and, 81 nature, 17 Nehamas, Alexander, 6 Nietzsche, Friedrich “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” 8, 12 The Birth of Tragedy, 1, 3, 5, 8, 9–10, 12, 39–40, 50, 53 The Case of Wagner, 120, 121 The Gay Science, 4, 119 “Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks,” 11 philosophy of, 108–9, 110, 112–13, 114–17 reputations of, 4 scholarship on, 5–6, 119 suffering of, 110–13, 114 Twilight of the Idols, 5, 25

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values revaluated by, 1, 7, 11, 73, 108, 109, 114–17, 118–19 Wagner and, 72, 120 Nietzsche on Tragedy (Silk and Stern), 5 Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Art (Young), 6 nihilism aesthetics and, 122 Christianity and, 9 Dionysian pessimism and, 122 Dionysus and, 13 eternal recurrence and, 13 existence and, 111, 112–13 faith and, 2 future and, 112–13, 115 gratitude and, 112–13 joy and, 2 love and, 112–13 philosophy and, 70, 73 Socratism and, 114 suffering and, 110–13 tragic age and, 13 noble human beings aesthetics and, 35 annihilation and, 17, 18, 19–20, 21, 31, 37–39, 61, 64, 67–68, 77, 106 beauty and, 34, 110 body and, 37–39, 77 Dionysian pessimism and, 19–20, 63 ethics and, 37–39, 42 generosity and, 37–39, 61, 77, 84, 106 good and, 37–39 gratitude and, 110 morality and, 19–20, 21, 87 self and, 42, 61, 67 social rank and, 110 suffering and, 37–39, 64, 67–68, 106 tragic age and, 17, 18, 21, 34, 96, 115 tragic poetry and, 64, 67–68 virtue and, 19–20, 34, 61, 77, 106, 110 Parmenides, 31 passion. See desire pathos of distance. See distance perfection abundance and, 61 annihilation and, 64, 66, 107 art and, 104, 113, 120, 121 existence and, 64, 67 gratitude and, 110 intoxication and, 61, 120 pessimism and, 113

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Index

157

self and, 61–62 sexuality and, 57–58, 61, 101 Socratism and, 107 tragic poetry and, 56–60, 61–62, 64, 66, 67, 84, 101, 120 virtue and, 62 warrior aristocracy and, 62, 66 pessimism. See also Dionysian pessimism art and, 121 body and, 79, 89 cruelty and, 15 decay of, 70–71, 73, 80, 92–93 desire and, 76 existence and, 92–93, 113 future and, 79 health and, 18–19, 73 love and, 113 master morality and, 64–65 perfection and, 113 philosophy and, 70–71, 72–73 Plato and, 76, 95–96 romantic pessimism, 4 self and, 92–93 Socrates and, 92–93 Socratism and, 70–71, 72–73, 76, 79, 81–82, 89, 90–91, 92–93, 95–96 of strength, 18–19, 19–20, 24, 35, 73, 90–91 suffering and, 18–19, 113 tragic age and, 15, 18–19, 68, 81 tragic art and, 18–19, 20, 48–49 tragic poetry and, 68 utility and, 92–93 of weakness, 18–19, 20 in Western culture, 18–19 will to power and, 19 philology, 9–10 philosophy abundance and, 104 aesthetics and, 68–69, 100–101, 118, 119 annihilation and, 30, 85 Aristotle and, 10 art and, 3, 32, 104, 119 beauty and, 95, 100 body and, 81–82, 83, 85, 100, 106 cosmology and, 8, 22–25, 29, 30–33 cruelty and, 86 culture and, 27 decay of, 9–14, 31–32, 70–71, 72–73, 88 desire and, 85, 101 dialectics and, 34, 81, 83, 85, 99–100, 104

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158

Index

philosophy (continued) Dionysian pessimism and, 3–4, 22, 29, 31, 85 Dionysus and, 2–3, 40 ethics and, 68–69, 86, 100, 118 existence and, 71 genealogy and, 25–26, 119 generosity and, 85, 118 good and, 28, 81, 85, 93–94 gratitude and, 118 Greek culture and, 8, 9–14, 70–71, 72–73 happiness and, 1, 26, 76, 79, 85, 86, 88 health and, 86 intoxication and, 3, 86, 119 joy and, 1–2, 107 knowledge and, 1–2, 26–29, 30–31, 71, 73, 82–83, 85, 86 morality and, 83 of Nietzsche, 108–9, 110, 112–13, 114–17 nihilism and, 70, 73 pessimism and, 70–71, 72–73 Plato and, 10, 32, 34, 70, 71, 72, 74, 76, 91 Platonism and, 97 poetry and, 3, 103 preservation and, 84–90, 104 rationality and, 3–4, 26, 28–29, 73, 83, 85 science and, 26–28, 97 self and, 1–2, 3–4, 22–25, 28, 73, 81–82, 82–83, 84–90, 96, 100, 104 sexuality and, 86 social rank and, 22, 25–26, 29, 30, 31, 76, 99–100 Socrates and, 10, 11, 34, 70–73, 76, 82–87, 91 Socratism and, 70–73, 76, 82–87, 93–94, 97, 99–100, 103–4, 118, 119 strength and, 10, 92, 94 suffering and, 83, 85 taste and, 26–29, 31 tragedy and, 8, 11, 84 tragic age and, 9–14, 22–33, 68–69, 84, 96 tragic art and, 11, 22–25, 30, 71, 72, 73 tragic knowledge and, 73 truth and, 95, 100, 103 utility and, 26–28, 84, 86, 106 values and, 28, 70–71, 74 virtue and, 81, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88–90, 95, 99–100, 103, 106, 107 warrior aristocracy and, 25–29, 99–100 Western culture and, 70, 87 wisdom and, 26–29, 71, 83, 106 “Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks” (Nietzsche), 11

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physiology, 9–14, 45–46, 50, 69, 119–22. See also health Pindar, 31 Plato aesthetics and, 59–60, 95–96 annihilation and, 93, 96 Apollo and, 96–97 art and, 2, 32, 56–58, 100 beauty and, 59–60, 94 body and, 31, 36, 78, 94–96, 97, 98–99 Christianity and, 9 cosmology and, 32 decay and, 9, 10, 49, 70, 71, 74, 87–88, 93, 94 desire and, 76 dialectics and, 34 Dionysian pessimism and, 87–88, 93, 94 ethics and, 36, 95–96 existence and, 97 future and, 98 happiness and, 95–96 intoxication and, 95 knowledge and, 2, 59–60, 94–95, 98 morality and, 94–95 pessimism and, 76, 95–96 philosophy and, 10, 32, 34, 70, 71, 72, 74, 76, 91 Platonism, 93–100 preservation and, 94–96 rationality and, 23, 31, 59–60, 94–96 The Republic, 104 self and, 23, 93, 94–96, 98 Socrates and, 72, 91, 93 Socratism and, 71, 76, 91, 93–96 soul and, 94–96 suffering and, 97 Thucydides and, 9 tragic age and, 13 truth and, 23, 94–96 values and, 74 virtue and, 20, 21, 95, 106 Western culture and, 70 Platonism, 93–100 pleasure, 39, 42–44, 57, 77–78. See also intoxication; joy; sexuality poetry, 3, 6, 103. See also tragic poetry postmodernism, 9, 23 power, 57, 64, 66, 100. See also will to power preservation annihilation and, 49, 50 Apollo and, 49–55, 60

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art and, 121 beauty and, 49 body and, 85 cosmology and, 49–50, 51–52 desire and, 85 dialectics and, 85, 95 Dionysian pessimism and, 91–92 ethics and, 81–82 existence and, 65 of future, 62–63 generosity and, 69, 85 of Greek culture, 62–63 happiness and, 86–87 health and, 51–52 intoxication and, 49–55, 60 joy and, 53–54 knowledge and, 94–96 morality and, 94, 103 philosophy and, 84–90, 104 Platonism and, 94–96, 97 rationality and, 85, 86–87, 102, 103, 109 self and, 41–45, 49–55, 61–63, 65, 69, 81–82, 83–90, 91–92, 94–96, 97, 99, 100, 101–2, 103, 104, 105, 107, 109, 111–12, 118, 120, 121 sexuality and, 49, 120 Socratism and, 81–82, 84–90, 100, 103, 105, 107, 109, 111–12, 118 strength and, 49, 54 tragic art and, 51–52, 53–55 tragic poetry and, 61–63, 101–2 truth and, 49–50 utility and, 83–84, 105, 120 virtue and, 81–82, 86–87, 88, 89, 99 war and, 111–12 will to power and, 51–52, 54 wisdom and, 83–84 Pythagoras, 26, 31 rank. See social rank rationality aesthetics and, 64–65, 68–69, 100–101, 103 annihilation and, 64–65, 85, 105, 109, 120 Apollo and, 50–51, 53, 82–83, 97 art and, 3, 101, 104 beauty and, 59–60, 103 body and, 31, 79, 80, 83, 85, 98–99 cosmology and, 31, 70–71, 79 desire and, 31, 92, 101 dialectics and, 53, 85, 88, 99 Dionysian pessimism and, 105, 109

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Index

159

ethics and, 37, 38, 68–69, 82–83 existence and, 64–65, 92, 109 generosity and, 103, 109 God and, 115 good and, 37 Greek culture and, 68–69 happiness and, 83, 86–87, 88, 95–96, 97, 98–99, 109 intoxication and, 105 joy and, 64–65 knowledge and, 59–60, 65 morality and, 83, 95, 118 philosophy and, 3–4, 26, 28–29, 73, 83, 85 Plato and, 23, 31, 59–60, 94–96 Platonism and, 94–96, 97 preservation and, 85, 86–87, 102, 103, 109 self and, 3–4, 23, 50–51, 70–71, 73, 85, 86, 86–87, 94–95, 95–96, 97, 99, 100–101, 102, 103, 109, 120 sexuality and, 120 Socrates and, 52, 79, 80, 82–83, 86–87, 92, 98 Socratism and, 28–29, 42, 50–51, 53, 64, 73, 81–82, 83, 85, 88, 94, 95–96, 97, 98–99, 103, 105, 109, 118 suffering and, 64–65, 85, 109 taste and, 83–84 tragic age and, 3–4, 26, 28–29, 37, 83–84, 86 tragic art and, 28–29 tragic poetry and, 64–65, 103 truth and, 94–95, 104 utility and, 83–84, 85, 105 virtue and, 23, 42, 80, 83, 86–87, 88, 94, 95, 97, 98–99, 103, 104 warrior aristocracy and, 28–29 wisdom and, 26, 81, 83–84 reproduction, 47, 48, 59, 102 The Republic (Plato), 104 resentment, 8–9, 17, 18 romantic pessimism, 4 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 17 Sallis, John, 5 Saturnalia, 67 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 12, 17, 18, 40 science, 26–28, 30, 68, 97 self. See also body abundance and, 40–45, 48, 65, 66 aesthetics and, 49–55, 61–63, 65, 69, 100–101, 102, 103

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160

Index

self (continued) annihilation and, 48, 49, 50, 53, 54–55, 61, 65, 95–96, 109, 120 Apollo and, 49–55 art and, 3, 103–4, 121 Athenian aristocracy and, 75 beauty and, 49, 103 body and, 40, 41, 54, 63, 81–82, 88–89, 93, 94, 95–96, 98 cosmology and, 22–25, 49–50, 51–52, 70–71, 95 desire and, 85, 89, 90, 101 dialectics and, 53, 79, 83, 87, 88, 90, 93, 95, 99 Dionysian pessimism and, 40–45, 55, 67, 90, 91–92, 95–96, 97, 98, 102, 105–6, 109, 118 Dionysus and, 39–40, 47, 49–55, 69 dreams and, 51 ethics and, 40–45, 61–62, 69, 81–82, 84, 88 existence and, 65, 92–93, 97, 109, 113–14 future and, 93, 94, 95–96, 97 generosity and, 69, 84, 85, 103, 113–14, 118 good and, 28, 40, 85, 93 happiness and, 85, 86–87, 95–96, 105 health and, 40–41, 42–45, 51–52 intoxication and, 49–55, 65, 104 joy and, 42–44, 48, 53–54, 109 knowledge and, 23–24, 28, 53, 71, 79, 81, 82–83, 85, 90, 94–96, 98, 99, 103–4, 106, 109 morality and, 79, 88–89, 94, 95, 103 noble human beings and, 42, 61, 67 perfection and, 61–62 pessimism and, 92–93 philosophy and, 1–2, 3–4, 22–25, 28, 73, 81–82, 82–83, 84–90, 96, 100, 104 Plato and, 23, 93, 94–96, 98 Platonism and, 94–96, 97, 98, 100 pleasure and, 42–44 postmodernism and, 23 preservation and, 41–45, 49–55, 61–63, 65, 69, 81–82, 83–90, 91–92, 94–96, 97, 99, 100, 101–2, 103, 104, 105, 107, 109, 111–12, 118, 120, 121 rationality and, 3–4, 23, 50–51, 70–71, 73, 85, 86–87, 94–95, 95–96, 97, 99, 100–101, 102, 103, 109, 120 sexuality and, 43, 47, 49, 53, 104, 120 social rank and, 75, 90, 105, 106 Socrates and, 75, 79, 82–83, 84, 86–87, 91, 92–93

Ahern_Index.indd 160

Socratism and, 1–2, 24, 41, 50–51, 53, 73, 78, 81–82, 84–90, 92–93, 94, 95–96, 98, 100, 103–4, 105–6, 107, 109, 111–12, 113–14, 118 strength and, 79 suffering and, 48, 63, 95–96, 102, 108–9 taste and, 28 tragedy and, 48 tragic age and, 3–4, 22–25, 28, 41, 84, 95, 96, 105 tragic art and, 51–52 tragic poetry and, 61–69, 95, 101–2, 103 truth and, 23, 94, 95, 97, 105 utility and, 45, 55, 61–62, 83–84, 90, 103, 105, 120 values and, 22–25, 28 virtue and, 23, 42, 61–69, 79, 81–82, 84, 85, 86–87, 88, 89, 97, 99, 105 war and, 111–12 warrior aristocracy and, 23–24, 40–45, 75 Western culture and, 84 will to power and, 24–25, 51–52, 54 wisdom and, 28, 81, 83–84 sexuality abundance and, 61, 101 aesthetics and, 118, 119–20 annihilation and, 43, 53, 54–55, 101, 104, 120 Apollo and, 51 art and, 101, 104, 118, 119–20 beauty and, 48 body and, 54 dialectics and, 86 Dionysian pessimism and, 43, 118 Dionysus and, 46–48, 50, 51, 53, 56 eternal recurrence and, 46, 47 ethics and, 43 health and, 43, 50, 61 intoxication and, 46–47, 51, 101, 119–20 joy and, 43, 46, 50, 53–54 perfection and, 57–58, 61, 101 philosophy and, 86 pleasure and, 43 preservation and, 49, 120 rationality and, 120 reproduction, 47, 48, 59, 102 self and, 43, 47, 49, 53, 104, 120 Socratism and, 86 suffering and, 43, 47, 48, 54–55, 59, 102 tragic art and, 48–49, 53, 54–55 tragic poetry and, 6, 46–48, 56, 61, 118, 120

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utility and, 120 virtue and, 86, 101 Silenus, 5, 106, 110 Silk, M. S., 5 slave aesthetics, 119–22 slave morality, 21, 119 slavery, 36 social rank. See also distance annihilation and, 77–78 art and, 104, 119 Athenian aristocracy and, 74–76, 77–78 body and, 36, 77–78 cosmology and, 32, 71 cruelty and, 75 Dionysian pessimism and, 29, 31, 90, 99–100, 106 distance and, 37, 117 ethics and, 36 generosity and, 69, 84, 106, 118 good and, 36, 83 gratitude and, 110 happiness and, 85 joy and, 117 morality and, 85, 119 noble human beings and, 110 philosophy and, 22, 25–26, 29, 30, 31, 76, 99–100 Platonism and, 99–100 self and, 75, 90, 105, 106 Socrates and, 25, 74–76, 83, 85, 91 Socratism and, 83, 99–100, 106, 107, 119 strength and, 36 suffering and, 36 taste and, 31 tragic age and, 22, 25–26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 36, 86, 105, 106 tragic poetry and, 65, 66, 68 utility and, 66, 90 virtue and, 65, 66, 99–100, 106, 107, 110 warrior aristocracy and, 22, 25–26, 29, 37, 61, 69, 71, 74, 84 wisdom and, 29, 83, 85 Socrates annihilation and, 92–93 Apollo and, 40, 52, 75, 82–83 art and, 9, 34–35, 40, 52, 54 Athenian aristocracy and, 74–76, 79, 84 body and, 52, 79–80, 92–93 cosmology and, 70–71 cruelty and, 75 death of, 19, 92–93, 99, 106–7, 112

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Index

161

decay and, 9, 32, 34–35, 70–74, 80, 82–83, 84, 85, 91, 92–93 desire and, 75–76, 86–87, 92 dialectics and, 34, 35, 79, 80, 86–87 Dionysian pessimism and, 19 Dionysus and, 40 equation of, 83, 86–87, 95, 97, 98–99, 104 ethics and, 82–83 existence and, 92–93 future and, 93 generosity and, 92–93 good and, 85, 93 happiness and, 79, 80, 84, 86–87, 91 intoxication and, 52 knowledge and, 79, 80, 82–83 morality and, 79–80, 91 pessimism and, 92–93 philosophy and, 10, 11, 34, 70–73, 76, 82–87, 91 Plato and, 72, 91, 93 rationality and, 52, 79, 80, 82–83, 86–87, 92, 98 self and, 75, 79, 82–83, 84, 86–87, 91, 92–93 Silenus and, 5 social rank and, 25, 74–76, 83, 85, 91 Socratism and, 70–73, 76 strength of, 84 suffering and, 86–87, 92–93 taste and, 86 tragedy and, 5, 9, 11 tragic art and, 75 tragic poetry and, 2, 68 utility and, 85, 92–93 values and, 70–71, 84 virtue and, 19, 79, 80, 84, 85, 86–87 Western culture and, 70 wisdom and, 83 Socratism abundance and, 104 aesthetics and, 5, 40, 42, 68–69, 73, 95–96, 100–101, 103–4, 119 annihilation and, 73, 80–81, 85, 90, 93, 106–7 Apollo and, 2, 50–51, 53, 96–97 art and, 101, 103–4, 119 attitude of, 78 beauty and, 35, 118 body and, 36, 38–39, 76–82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89–90, 93, 94, 98–99, 100, 101, 103, 105, 106–7, 118

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162

Index

Socratism (continued) Christianity and, 32, 107, 114 cosmology and, 32, 70–71 cruelty and, 86 decay and, 70–74, 81, 82–83, 84, 88, 104–7, 118, 119 desire and, 76, 78, 81, 85, 87, 88, 106–7 dialectics and, 53, 71, 83, 85, 87, 93, 99–100 Dionysian pessimism and, 3, 7, 71, 73–74, 77, 82, 85–86, 90–91, 93, 104–7, 118 Dionysus and, 2, 42 distance and, 85 equation of, 83, 86–87, 95, 97, 98–99, 104 ethics and, 68–69, 73, 81–82, 84, 86, 89, 93, 95–96, 100 existence and, 73, 92–93, 105, 106–7, 109, 113–14 future and, 78, 79, 90, 94, 98, 107 generosity and, 82, 85, 86, 87, 103, 105–6, 106–7, 113–14, 118 good and, 85, 87, 93–94 gratitude and, 114, 118 Greek culture and, 70–74, 107 happiness and, 76, 79, 83, 85, 86, 88, 95–96, 97, 98–99, 103, 105, 107, 109 health and, 73, 82, 86, 87 intoxication and, 73, 86, 105–6, 119 joy and, 116 knowledge and, 53, 81, 85, 86, 90, 98, 106, 113–14 morality and, 38–39, 64, 71, 82, 83, 85, 87–88, 88–89, 89, 95, 103, 119 nihilism and, 114 perfection and, 107 pessimism and, 70–71, 72–73, 76, 79, 81–82, 89, 90–91, 92–93, 95–96 philosophy and, 70–73, 76, 82–87, 93–94, 97, 99–100, 103–4, 118, 119 Plato and, 71, 76, 91, 93–96 Platonism and, 93–96 pleasure and, 43, 78 postmodernism and, 9 preservation and, 81–82, 84–90, 100, 103, 105, 107, 109, 111–12, 118 rationality and, 28–29, 42, 50–51, 53, 64, 73, 81–82, 83, 85, 88, 94, 95–96, 97, 98–99, 103, 105, 109, 118 scholarship on, 5–6 science and, 97 self and, 1–2, 24, 41, 50–51, 53, 73, 78, 81–82, 84–90, 92–93, 94, 95–96, 98,

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100, 103–4, 105–6, 107, 109, 111–12, 113–14, 118 sexuality and, 86 social rank and, 83, 99–100, 106, 107, 119 Socrates and, 70–73, 76 soul and, 78, 88, 89, 90 suffering and, 73, 78–79, 80–81, 82, 83, 85, 87, 90, 93, 107, 112, 115 tragic age and, 6, 13, 36, 118 tragic art and, 71, 101 tragic poetry and, 100–101, 103 truth and, 105, 106 utility and, 84, 86, 92–93, 98–99, 103–4, 105–6, 113–14, 118 values and, 73, 80–81, 82, 93, 118 virtue and, 35, 36, 42, 44, 78, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88–90, 94, 97, 98–100, 105, 106–7, 114, 118 war and, 111–12 Western culture and, 1, 105, 109 wisdom and, 81, 84, 85, 106 Solon, 31 soul, 77, 78, 88, 89, 90, 94–96 Stern, J. P., 5 strength abundance and, 41, 59, 62, 74–76, 90, 98, 102, 120 aesthetics and, 57 annihilation and, 66 Apollo and, 50, 75 art and, 120 Athenian aristocracy and, 74–76 beauty and, 56 body and, 59, 90 desire and, 75–76 of Dionysian pessimism, 43, 48, 54, 62, 73, 74–76, 90–91, 120 generosity and, 1, 90 intoxication and, 57, 90, 120 joy and, 1, 66 knowledge and, 79 love and, 41 morality and, 79 pessimism of, 12, 18–19, 19–20, 24, 35, 73, 90–91 philosophy and, 10, 92, 94 pleasure and, 57 preservation and, 49, 54 self and, 79 social rank and, 36 of Socrates, 84

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Index

tragic age and, 12 tragic poetry and, 101, 102 virtue and, 66 suffering. See also annihilation abundance and, 40–45, 60, 63, 66, 102 aesthetics and, 35, 60, 66, 102 Apollo and, 52 art and, 56, 121 beauty and, 35, 113 body and, 35–39, 40, 41, 44–45, 55, 63, 66, 77, 78–79, 80–81, 83, 87, 92, 97, 107, 113 Christianity and, 111, 112 desire and, 18, 102 dialectics and, 109 Dionysian pessimism and, 5, 6, 32, 35, 39, 40–45, 55, 59, 62, 85, 91, 92, 97, 108–10, 113 Dionysus and, 40–45, 109 ethics and, 35, 35–39, 40–45, 60, 66 existence and, 92–93, 97, 108–10, 111, 112–13, 116–17, 121 future and, 84, 95–96, 110, 112–13 generosity and, 37–39, 63, 84, 92, 106, 107, 108, 113, 114–15 good and, 35–39, 40, 41, 44, 87 gratitude and, 108–9, 110, 112–13, 114, 121 Greek culture and, 111 health and, 40–41, 42–45, 66 intoxication and, 41, 105, 121 joy and, 42–44, 48, 59, 60, 64–65, 108–9, 113, 116 knowledge and, 109 love and, 44, 81, 110, 112–13 morality and, 38, 64–65 of Nietzsche, 110–13, 114 nihilism and, 110–13 noble human beings and, 37–39, 64, 67–68, 106 pessimism and, 18–19, 113 philosophy and, 83, 85 Platonism and, 96–97 pleasure and, 42–44 rationality and, 64–65, 85, 109 resentment and, 18 self and, 48, 63, 95–96, 102, 108–9 sexuality and, 43, 47, 48, 54–55, 59, 102 social rank and, 36 Socrates and, 86–87, 92–93 Socratism and, 73, 78–79, 80–81, 82, 83, 85, 87, 90, 93, 107, 112, 115 soul and, 90

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163 tragedy and, 18, 116 tragic age and, 35–39, 73, 78–79, 98, 102 tragic art and, 17–18, 54–55, 71, 73, 75 tragic poetry and, 47–48, 55–56, 62–65, 66, 101, 102 tragic wisdom and, 62 truth and, 100, 110–11, 113 values and, 108 virtue and, 5, 35–37, 39, 55, 62, 63–65, 75, 87, 90, 106, 108, 109, 114–15 warrior aristocracy and, 40–45, 55, 60, 62 Western culture and, 18–19, 109

taste, 26–29, 31, 83–84, 85, 86 Thales, 10, 23 Thucydides, 9, 31, 97 tragedy. See also tragic age; tragic art; tragic poetry; tragic wisdom Aristotle and, 2, 17–18, 48–49, 64 existence and, 116 Greek culture and, 4, 11, 13–14 philosophy and, 8, 11, 84 self and, 48 Socrates and, 5, 9, 11 suffering and, 18, 116 tragic age and, 84 values and, 8 in Western culture, 18–19 tragic age. See also Greek culture abundance and, 39–45, 78–79, 98 aesthetics, 14 aesthetics and, 34–35, 45, 68–69, 81, 95, 100 annihilation and, 19–21, 30, 35–39, 73, 78, 81, 85, 86, 89, 96, 98 art and, 6, 13–14, 32 beauty and, 16, 34–35, 71, 80, 81, 118 body and, 31, 35–39, 76–82, 86, 87, 95, 96, 98, 100 cosmology and, 11, 12, 14, 22–25, 29, 30–33, 51–52, 70–71, 83, 84 cruelty and, 15–16, 17, 39, 96, 118 culture and, 27 degenerate age and, 9–14 desire and, 86, 89 dialectics and, 3–4, 86–87 Dionysian pessimism and, 3–4, 6, 29, 31, 80, 81, 83, 100, 112, 117–18 eternal recurrence and, 13 ethics and, 34–45, 68–69, 81, 87, 95, 100 existence and, 73, 98 future and, 12, 81, 95, 96, 98

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164

Index

tragic age (continued) generosity and, 37–39, 63, 84, 87, 95, 98, 108, 118 good and, 22, 28, 41 gratitude and, 98, 114, 118 hatred in, 15–16 health and, 10–11, 18–19, 33, 44, 62, 63, 66, 69, 71, 73, 78–79, 80, 81, 82, 87, 89 history of, 30–33 intoxication and, 66, 73, 78, 81, 96 joy and, 15–16, 98 knowledge and, 23–24, 26–29, 30–31, 35–36, 81, 84 mind and, 31, 86 morality and, 16, 19–21, 38, 39, 76, 83 nature and, 17 in Nietzsche, 6, 11–12, 117 nihilism and, 13 noble human beings and, 17, 18, 21, 34, 96, 115 pessimism and, 15, 18–19, 68, 81 philosophy and, 9–14, 22–33, 68–69, 84, 96 Plato and, 13 pleasure and, 78 rationality and, 3–4, 26, 28–29, 37, 83–84, 86 science and, 26–28 self and, 3–4, 22–25, 28, 41, 84, 95, 96, 105 social rank and, 22, 25–26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 36, 86, 105, 106 Socratism and, 6, 13, 36, 118 strength and, 12 suffering and, 35–39, 73, 78–79, 98, 102 taste and, 26–29, 83–84 tragedy and, 84 tragic art and, 11, 14, 16–21, 24 tragic poetry and, 12, 66 truth in, 22, 26 utility and, 26–28, 44, 83–84 values and, 4, 11, 15–16, 22–25, 28, 55, 71, 80–81, 82, 108, 115 virtue and, 19–21, 23, 29, 34–39, 42, 63, 66, 71, 80, 85, 86, 87, 88–89, 99, 105, 118 warrior aristocracy and, 14–21, 22, 33, 62–63, 66, 83 Western culture and, 12–13, 13–14 will to power in, 15–16, 17, 19 wisdom and, 12, 24, 26–29, 81, 83–84 tragic art. See also tragic poetry abundance and, 75 aesthetics and, 35, 50, 51–52, 53–55 annihilation and, 30, 53–55, 71, 73 Apollo and, 50, 51–52, 53–55, 75, 96–97

Ahern_Index.indd 164

beauty and, 16, 73, 96–97 body and, 77, 118 cosmology and, 30–33, 51–52 cruelty and, 75 decay of, 34–35, 71, 72 dialectics and, 71 Dionysian pessimism and, 23, 32, 33, 34, 55, 117, 119 Dionysus and, 40, 48–49, 52, 53–55 existence and, 71 Greek culture and, 13 health and, 18–19, 51–52, 55, 71, 119 intoxication and, 51–52, 53–55, 71, 75 morality and, 71 as necessary, 17–18, 21, 30, 45 pessimism and, 18–19, 20, 48–49 philosophy and, 11, 22–25, 30, 71, 72, 73 preservation and, 51–52, 53–55 rationality and, 28–29 self and, 51–52 sexuality and, 48–49, 53, 54–55 Socrates and, 75 Socratism and, 71, 101 suffering and, 17–18, 54–55, 71, 73, 75 tragic age and, 11, 14, 16–21, 24 tragic knowledge and, 32 virtue and, 75, 96–97 warrior aristocracy and, 16–21, 24, 34 will to power and, 17, 19 tragic insight, 4. See also Dionysian pessimism tragic knowledge, 14, 30, 32, 73 tragic poetry. See also tragic art abundance and, 56–60, 61, 63, 66, 101, 102, 119 aesthetics and, 48–49, 56–69, 63, 100–102, 107, 120 annihilation and, 30, 35, 47–48, 55–56, 62–65, 66–68, 84, 101, 120 Apollo and, 3, 67, 101, 102 art and, 3, 121 beauty and, 68 body and, 35, 48, 56–60, 66, 101–2 cosmology and, 31, 32, 34 cruelty and, 6, 46, 118 desire and, 56–58, 61, 102 Dionysian pessimism and, 5, 6, 62–65, 65–69, 90–91, 100–102 Dionysus and, 3, 56, 102 distance and, 68 ethics and, 68–69 existence and, 64–65, 67, 101–2, 120

07/03/12 4:36 AM

future and, 12 generosity and, 63–64, 101–2, 103 good and, 67 gratitude and, 64–65, 102, 110 happiness and, 47, 48 health and, 45–46, 47–48, 56–60, 61, 62, 63–64, 66, 68–69, 101–2, 119, 121 intoxication and, 6, 31, 46–48, 56–60, 61, 63–64, 65, 66, 67–68, 69, 101–2, 118, 120 joy and, 5, 6, 46, 56–60, 64–65, 101 knowledge and, 69, 103 morality and, 64–65, 66, 68, 101 as necessary, 64 noble human beings and, 64, 67–68 perfection and, 56–60, 61–62, 64, 66, 67, 84, 101, 120 pessimism and, 68 power and, 62, 64, 66 preservation and, 61–63, 101–2 rationality and, 64–65, 103 self and, 61–69, 95, 101–2, 103 sexuality and, 6, 46–48, 56, 61, 118, 120 social rank and, 65, 66, 68 Socrates and, 2, 68 Socratism and, 100–101, 103 strength and, 101, 102 suffering and, 47–48, 55–56, 62–65, 66, 101, 102 tragic age and, 12, 66 truth and, 103 utility and, 62, 66, 68, 103 values and, 34 virtue and, 61–69, 84, 103, 117 warrior aristocracy and, 31, 45, 66, 101, 117 will to power and, 62 wisdom and, 104 tragic wisdom, 4, 12, 24, 44, 62, 109 truth aesthetics and, 104 annihilation and, 101 Apollo and, 40 art and, 104 body and, 94, 105 cosmology and, 49–50 cruelty and, 100 desire and, 69 dialectics and, 94 existence and, 97 future and, 97 morality and, 94, 95

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Index

165

philosophy and, 95, 100, 103 Plato and, 23, 94–96 Platonism and, 94–96, 97 preservation and, 49–50 rationality and, 94–95, 104 science and, 30 self and, 23, 94, 95, 97, 105 Socratism and, 105, 106 suffering and, 100, 110–11, 113 in tragic age, 22, 26 tragic poetry and, 103 utility and, 105 virtue and, 104 warrior aristocracy and, 22, 26 Twilight of the Idols (Nietzsche), 5, 25 utility abundance and, 45 aesthetics and, 103 art and, 104, 121 body and, 90, 98–99 cosmology and, 83 dialectics and, 83 Dionysian pessimism and, 44, 45, 55, 90, 98–99, 103 ethics and, 44, 45, 61–62, 98 existence and, 92–93 generosity and, 44, 69, 90, 103, 105–6, 109 good and, 85 gratitude and, 98 happiness and, 105 joy and, 98 knowledge and, 26–28, 84 pessimism and, 92–93 philosophy and, 26–28, 84, 86, 106 Platonism and, 98–99 preservation and, 83–84, 105, 120 rationality and, 83–84, 85, 105 science and, 26–28 self and, 45, 55, 61–62, 83–84, 90, 103, 105, 120 sexuality and, 120 social rank and, 66, 90 Socrates and, 85, 92–93 Socratism and, 84, 86, 92–93, 98–99, 103–4, 105–6, 113–14, 118 taste and, 83 tragic age and, 26–28, 44, 83–84 tragic poetry and, 62, 66, 68, 103 truth and, 105

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166 utility (continued) virtue and, 44, 66, 98–99, 103, 106 warrior aristocracy and, 61 wisdom and, 81, 83–84 Zarathustra and, 44 values aesthetics and, 73 annihilation and, 55, 71 beauty and, 71 body and, 55, 80–81, 82 cosmology and, 8, 34 of decay, 71 Dionysian pessimism and, 4, 28, 55, 73, 93, 118 eternal recurrence and, 114, 115, 117 ethics and, 73 future and, 114–17 generosity and, 55, 85 knowledge and, 28 philosophy and, 28, 70–71, 74 Plato and, 74 revaluation of, 1, 7, 11, 73, 108, 109, 114–17, 118–19 self and, 22–25, 28 Socrates and, 70–71, 84 Socratism and, 73, 80–81, 82, 93, 118 suffering and, 108 taste and, 28 tragedy and, 8 tragic age and, 4, 11, 15–16, 22–25, 28, 55, 71, 80–81, 82, 108, 115 tragic poetry and, 34 virtue and, 4, 71 warrior aristocracy and, 15–16, 22, 23–24, 28, 34 of Western culture, 16, 21 wisdom and, 28, 109 virtue. See also ethics; good abundance and, 42, 66 aesthetics and, 2, 35, 68–69 annihilation and, 19–21, 55, 61, 62, 63–65, 66, 71, 77, 85, 87, 90, 106, 108 Apollo and, 5, 96–97 art and, 6, 35, 104 beauty and, 3, 5, 14, 35, 69, 96–97, 110 body and, 35–39, 66, 77, 80, 82, 86, 87, 88, 90, 97, 100, 105, 107, 118 cruelty and, 39, 86 decay and, 71 desire and, 6, 83, 86, 87, 88, 96, 97

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Index dialectics and, 79, 80, 81, 87, 88, 95, 96, 97, 99–100 Dionysian pessimism and, 4, 6, 19–20, 42, 44, 55, 62, 69, 71, 77, 99, 110, 115–16, 117, 118 Dionysus and, 42, 80–81, 109 ethics and, 35–37, 68–69, 90 existence and, 107, 117 future and, 108 generosity and, 63, 77, 89, 103, 105, 106, 109, 114–15 good and, 35–37 gratitude and, 110 Greek culture and, 2 happiness and, 83, 85, 86–87, 88, 89, 95, 97, 98–99 health and, 66, 68–69, 77, 121 intoxication and, 86, 95, 104 joy and, 6, 66, 107, 109 knowledge and, 35–36, 69, 79, 80, 85 mind and, 86 morality and, 97 noble human beings and, 19–20, 34, 61, 77, 106, 110 perfection and, 62 philosophy and, 81, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88–90, 95, 99–100, 103, 106, 107 Plato and, 20, 21, 95, 106 preservation and, 81–82, 86–87, 88, 89, 99 rationality and, 23, 42, 80, 83, 86–87, 88, 94, 95, 97, 98–99, 103, 104 self and, 23, 42, 61–69, 79, 81–82, 84, 85, 86–87, 88, 89, 97, 99, 105 sexuality and, 86, 101 social rank and, 65, 66, 99–100, 106, 107, 110 Socrates and, 19, 79, 80, 84, 85, 86–87 Socratism and, 35, 36, 42, 44, 78, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88–90, 94, 97, 98–100, 105, 106–7, 114, 118 strength and, 66 suffering and, 5, 35–37, 39, 55, 62, 63–65, 75, 87, 90, 106, 108, 109, 114–15 tragic age and, 19–21, 23, 29, 34–39, 42, 63, 66, 71, 80, 85, 86, 87, 88–89, 99, 105, 118 tragic art and, 75, 96–97 tragic poetry and, 61–69, 84, 103, 117 truth and, 104 utility and, 44, 66, 98–99, 103, 106 values and, 4, 71

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Index

warrior aristocracy and, 19–21, 29, 45, 55, 62, 66, 99–100, 106, 117 wisdom and, 106 Virtues of Authenticity (Nehamas), 6 Wagner, Richard, 4, 12, 72, 120 war, 110, 111–12 warrior aristocracy abundance and, 60 aesthetics and, 45 annihilation and, 37, 40–45, 62, 66, 67, 106 beauty and, 16, 45 body and, 38, 77 cosmology and, 31, 33, 34, 71, 79 cruelty and, 15–16, 17, 75 dialectics and, 99–100 Dionysian pessimism and, 29, 33, 34, 35, 40–45, 55, 62 ethics and, 38, 40–45, 60 freedom and, 62 generosity and, 39, 69, 84, 85, 106 good and, 22, 40 hatred in, 15–16 health and, 19, 40–41, 42–45, 77 intoxication and, 66 joy and, 15–16, 42–44 knowledge and, 23–24 morality and, 16, 19–21, 24, 38, 71, 79, 83, 101, 117 perfection and, 62, 66 philosophy and, 25–29, 99–100 pleasure and, 42–44 rationality and, 28–29 self and, 23–24, 40–45, 75 social rank and, 22, 25–26, 29, 37, 61, 69, 71, 74, 84 suffering and, 40–45, 55, 60, 62 tragic age and, 14–21, 22, 33, 62–63, 66, 83 tragic art and, 16–21, 24, 34 tragic poetry and, 31, 45, 66, 101, 117 truth and, 22, 26 utility and, 61 values and, 15–16, 22, 23–24, 28, 34 virtue and, 19–21, 29, 45, 55, 62, 66, 99–100, 106, 117 will to power of, 15–16, 17, 19 weakness, 18–19, 20, 74, 83, 89. See also strength Western culture. See also modernism annihilation and, 109

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167

decay of, 8–9 desire in, 18 Dionysus and, 1–2 existence and, 108 future of, 2, 12, 98 good in, 41 health and, 77 morality in, 16, 21 pessimism in, 18–19 philosophy and, 70, 87 Plato and, 70 resentment in, 18 self and, 84 Socrates and, 70 Socratism and, 1, 105, 109 suffering and, 18–19, 108, 109 tragedy in, 18–19 tragic age and, 12–13, 13–14 values of, 16, 21 will to power. See also power Apollo and, 51–52, 54 art and, 57 body and, 60 cosmology and, 24–25 intoxication and, 54 pessimism and, 19 preservation and, 51–52, 54 self and, 24–25, 51–52, 54 tragic age and, 15–16, 17, 19 tragic art and, 17, 19 tragic poetry and, 62 of warrior aristocracy, 15–16, 17, 19 wisdom annihilation and, 62, 106 body and, 84 cosmology and, 29, 84 decay and, 84 dialectics and, 85 Dionysian pessimism and, 29 generosity and, 84 good and, 28, 85 knowledge and, 26–29, 81, 84 morality and, 81 philosophy and, 26–29, 71, 83, 106 preservation and, 83–84 rationality and, 26, 81, 83–84 science and, 26–28 self and, 28, 81, 83–84 social rank and, 29, 83, 85 Socrates and, 83

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168 wisdom (continued) Socratism and, 81, 84, 85, 106 taste and, 26–29, 85 tragic age and, 26–29, 81, 83–84 tragic poetry and, 104 tragic wisdom, 4, 12, 24, 44, 62, 109

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Index utility and, 81, 83–84 values and, 28, 109 virtue and, 106 Young, Julian, 6 Zarathustra, 21, 44

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