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Nietzsche, nihilism and tragedy
No matter the stance taken, awkward concerns persist around just how much we should put in front of ourselves.
Given our current unbridled enthusiasm and fatalistic attitude, we won’t stop in our pursuit of more to ask questions - it seems we will only realise if oversaturation has occurred when it already has.
As production ploughs on, it is at least worth more deeply considering these issues before it’s too late. These three articles have discussed issues around the transfer and trade of artworks. What do you think the future of art is, and how does this affect artists, platforms, dealers, galleries and museums, and others?
TRAGEDY: A NIETZSCHEAN SOLUTION TO NIHILISM JOE GREENWAY (UPPER SIXTH)
Friedrich Nietzsche
He argues that, with the emergence of scientific rationality in the Enlightenment,
religion and its morality have been
‘killed’. The universal law of God that has given so many people purpose in life has been destroyed and we are left with nihilism – the rejection of all traditional values and beliefs and the acceptance that life is meaningless. So how are we to live in such a world? How are we to reinvigorate our culture? And above all,
how are we to find meaning and purpose in such a bleak existence?
Or so proclaimed Friedrich Nietzsche famously in his work The Gay Science. Predominant in Nietzsche’s work is this despair over what he sees as the
decadence of modern culture.
Rivers of ink have been spilled debating these questions, focusing primarily on Nietzsche’s later works like Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
whereby he prophesizes the coming of the Overman (Übermensch) who will commence a ‘revaluation of all values’ that will conquer nihilism.
Less known is a solution Nietzsche proposed in his first professional work, The Birth of Tragedy – namely, tragedy. Looking beyond the fact that this was a book that was ‘effectively to end his career as a professional classicist,’ the arguments raised in this book, behind the jungle of metaphors, are fairly persuasive.
If Nietzsche’s argument here can be summed up in one quote it is that ‘only
as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally
justified.’ Given the immensity and ubiquity of suffering in the world, human life cannot be given moral justification. It cannot be judged it within a moral framework – if we try to, then we reach the very bleak and miserable conclusion of nihilism, that ‘what is best is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing.’ Existence, Nietzsche argues, can only be affirmed in an ‘aesthetic’ sense. Central to defeating nihilism – to regenerating contemporary culture and finding purpose in life, is the creation of art. Art alone justifies existence – not science, not morality, not religion: ‘Life is worth living, says art, the most beautiful seductress; life is worth knowing, says science.’
But surely, one would argue, we’ve had art for millennia – surely Nietzsche need only look back a century, to the Renaissance and its distinctive artistic rebirth? Well, this is the wrong kind of art according to Nietzsche, and the answer as to why lies in the very birth of art – ancient Greek tragedy.
Nietzsche argues that art has its origins in the twin impulses of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The Apollonian drive is named after the Greek god of light, dream, and prophecy: Apollo, and represents rational knowledge, moderation, individuality, and visible form. By contrast, the Dionysian drive is named after Dionysius, the god of intoxication, and strives for mysticism, excess, union, and lack of form. Nietzsche sees representation art forms like painting and sculpture as embodiments of the Apollonian, while non-representation art like music is primarily Dionysian. The
perfect art and the ideal culture are comprised of a shifting yet balanced fusion of the Apollonian and the Dionysian.
The best example of this, for Nietzsche, is the Attic tragedy of the 5th Century B.C. Nietzsche exhibits a shameless admiration for what he sees as the free and spontaneous creativity of Greek tragedy.
He, like many other so-called ‘German Hellenists,’ painted a picture of Ancient Greece as an idyllic lost world of harmony and innocence – a world of ‘serenity’ (Heiterkeit). Greek tragedy is satirical of nihilism – it comes to terms with the suffering caused by life, and in doing so, conquers nihilism. When Greek spectators watched the majestic tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles,
they witnessed the full spectrum of the human condition and thus
affirmed it – they accepted the suffering inherent in life, yet the tragedy provided ‘metaphysical consolation’ that there remained pleasure in life, and most importantly, aesthetic value.
Contemporary culture is vastly and horrifically different. For starters, gone is the teary-eyed, nostalgic Nietzsche and his beloved Greek tragedies. Instead, we have a passionately enraged Nietzsche, scathing of what culture has become. He argues that the aggressive scientific rationalism that began with Socrates has suppressed the Dionysian spirit and attempted to reconstruct art on a purely Apollonian basis. This hollow culture of reason
and science has created an art
devoid of true meaning – it has become transparent, logical and realistic: boring and useless in Nietzsche’s opinion. Having lost both the aesthetic value of existence, and the religious value of existence, we are left in a truly nihilistic age.
The solution to all this is a rebalancing of the Apollonian and Dionysian movements within the modern age. Wherever one impulse has dominated over the other, Nietzsche argues there has been cultural calamity. Primacy of the Apollonian produces a disciplined, secular, and militaristic culture like that of Rome, whereas the sole rule of the Dionysian gives what Nietzsche sees as the pessimism and passivity of Buddhism, wholly focused on the fundamental futility of individual existence. To revitalize modern culture,
which represents an excess of
Apollonian and rationalist influence, we must cultivate the Dionysian and its nonrepresentational arts like music. Above all, we must rediscover the nature of Greek tragedy, this ‘redeeming and healing seductress’; this perfect mixture of the Apollonian and Dionysian; this perfect antithesis to nihilism. In doing so, we must capture this Hellenic ‘will’ and spontaneous creativity at the heart of tragedy to truly save ourselves. Yes, Nietzsche argues, ‘God is dead,’ but ‘dare
