On The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche

In his preface to Wagner, Nietzsche, “convinced that art represents the highest task and the truly metaphysical activity of this life,” reveals his intentions to elevate the problem of aesthetics with the underlying idea being that our world is one of chaotic disarray and only through tragic art can man hope to find escape from this innate suffering. In doing so, Nietzsche hopes to remedy a stagnating German society “unable to consider art more than a pleasant sideline” by instilling a sensational passion which he believes to be critical to Germany’s future. Nietzsche does so through an examination of Greeks culture with particular emphasis on the Greek tragedy, which he believed to have successfully attained man’s redemption from suffering through art. Despite a propensity for sensational language and emotional appeals resulting in a lack of robust logical clarity, Nietzsche succeeds in his reconstruction of redemption through tragic art assuming the validity of his analytical framework of interdependent dual art drives and initial premises regarding the fundamental awfulness of existence.

Through the first four chapters, Nietzsche constructs the Apollonian and Dionysian duality conceived as two opposite art worlds of dreams versus intoxication respectively, the interplay of which provide the foundational driving force behind the development of art. The Apollonian dream world is characterized by agreeable and friendly illusionary appearances of immediate understanding. In this setting, man puts his faith in the “principium individuationis,” which describes the divorce between man and the unintelligible reality shielded behind what Nietzsche terms a “veil of maya.” In opposition, the Dionysian world of intoxication is defined by an intense abundance of emotions that culminate in a breakdown of the barriers between man and man as well as between man and nature, dissolving the principium individuation. In this state, man is absorbed “as a member of a higher community” into something Nietzsche terms “primordial unity,” a mass state of drunken ecstasy. The two artistic energies are described to have “burst forth from nature herself, without the mediation of the human artist” yet towards which all artists strive.

Nietzsche immediately qualifies the art drives as being perceived “not merely by logical inference, but with the immediate certainty of vision.” In other words, they are envisioned structures which Nietzsche personally finds in all humans. As such, Nietzsche effectively asks his readers to assume his framework of analysis for sake of understanding his view of aesthetics. Unlike Kantian philosophy, there is no robust logical foundation upon which to rest Nietzsche’s assumptions, making it difficult to reconstruct the argument; instead, Nietzsche, and his readers as an extension, rely on an intuitive and sensational appeal to grasp the validity, and even the very existence, of these art drives. This may engender problems as the potential invalidity of this dual art drive system renders incomprehensible Nietzsche’s remaining analyses that build off this foundation.

Nevertheless, Nietzsche proceeds to examine the development of the Apollonian and Dionysian impulses in the Greek case. On one hand, there exists Apollonian tendencies towards precise forms, logical contours, and vivid colors. On the other, the Dionysian finds its roots in feverish festivals of extravagance. It is with the Greeks that the Dionysian impulse is first realized as art in the form of music, the emotional power of which are decisively un-Apollonian. Immersed within Dionysian music, the veil of maya disappears as the soul merges with nature. Subsequently, nature, the essence of which necessitates formal and symbolic expression, manifests itself through the body as dance. Inevitably, the Apollonian Greek will realize the familiarity of dance for the omnipresent Dionysian world has always surrounded him, veiled only by his Apollonian consciousness. This leads into an examination of Greek Apollonian culture as exemplified in the Olympian gods. The world of Olympian gods offers no moral or spiritual guidance, instead only glorifying the “fantastic excess of life” both good and evil. Per Nietzsche, this conundrum is best explained in the folk wisdom of demigod Silenus, who revealed that the most desirable of all things to man is first, to not be born, and second, to die soon. Because they “knew and felt the terror and horror of existence,” the Greeks have created Apollonian illusions of glory to forestall their acute perception of suffering and strive for “consummate immersion in the beauty of mere appearance,” what Nietzsche terms naïve.

Nietzsche sees this dream state as “infinitely preferable, more important, excellent, and worthy of being lived” compared to its counter waking state. Considering this redemption through illusion via the Apollonian art drive, Nietzsche is further “impelled to the metaphysical assumption” that a more absolute reality, a “primal unity” marked by suffering and chaos, exists beneath the empirical reality that manifests itself through illusion into something able to be experienced by man. Assuming this, the dream world exists as a “mere appearance of mere appearance.” Thusly, Nietzsche sets up the fundamentally interdependent relationship between the opposing Apollonian and Dionysian drives, for only by realizing that “his entire existence rested on a hidden substratum of suffering and of knowledge” conceded by the Dionysian is the Apollonian Greek able to develop his naïve illusion as a counterbalance. Though dependently necessary, the two forces exist in a state of constant push and pull “mutually augmenting one another.”

Again, Nietzsche continues to appeal not to logic but to sensation to qualify a deeper layer of existence, which he cognizes by means of a parallel in the art impulses. Nietzsche assumes that because the art impulses call for redemption through illusion, it must also be the case that primal unity also necessarily generate its own illusion. Without relying on coherent logical inference, Nietzsche conjures this relationship of dual projection apparently out of his instinctive vision for which he provides minimal, abstract, and inconsistent explanation. Furthermore, the assumption that this deeper layer of existence is fundamentally marked by despair and suffering (as embodied in the wisdom of Silenus) appears groundless and arbitrary; nevertheless, Nietzsche begins his analysis already fully convinced of this assumption. Nietzsche remarks his purpose in writing to redeem man from this potential nihilism, yet if we cannot assume that existence is fundamentally dreadful, then the motivation for Nietzsche’s writing disappears for there is no suffering to redeem man from.

Despite not making a very compelling case for nonbelievers who do not share his initial assumptions, Nietzsche succeeds in constructing the materialization of redemption through tragedy using his system of art drive duality. In chapters 7 and 8, Nietzsche traces the origins of Greek tragedy through its tragic chorus, a group of performers voicing action in unison. Drawing parallels to immersion within music, Nietzsche argues that the audience is similarly “nullified in the presence of the satiric chorus,” shattering barriers between man and uniting him nature. It is here that the chaotic absurdity of Dionysian reality enters the Dionysian man, who, having “looked truly into the essence of things,” is rendered frustrated and unable to act in the face of the inevitability of suffering. At this critical stage, art enters as a saving force that transforms this nausea into “notions with which one can live,” effectively becoming necessary for existence. Via the theater, the Greek man, having discarded his own reality in favor of the primordial unity, comes to embrace the highest emotional intensity. This process besieges the entire audience as the concentric arc structure of Greek theaters afforded all present spectators to project oneself as a chorist. The dramatist (as opposed to a poet who can only work with mere projections) contributes by composing not a whole person but a character consisting of a collection of characteristics, bringing to life the “host of spirits” that represent the chorus. In this state, the collective consciousness, afforded by the Dionysian excitement of the chorus, witnesses these spirits as one with themselves and sees the self merge with the character, sharing his pain and redemption from his fall to reintegration into the primordial reality. In Nietzsche’s rendition of the tragedy, the chorus is Apollonian as a projection of the spectator and Dionysian as a merged collective consciousness. Likewise, the tragic hero is a projection of the chorus and in his fall is reunited with the collective consciousness. Through this dual projection mechanism, the spectator is redeemed through the fall and redemption of the tragic hero. In this manner, Nietzsche envisions the redemption of man through Greek tragedy as remedy against the threat of a chaotic, meaningless world.

To follow Nietzsche’s progression for the birth of tragedy, one must first assume that the art drives exist as fundamental structures of our existence and interact interdependently in a system of dual projection (with our empirical existence in the center), as well as, perhaps more importantly, that “true” reality is characterized by horror and suffering. Instead of relying on consistent reasoning, these underlying premises are abstractions construed through Nietzche’s emotional intuitions, which are assumed to be universal. Yet for Nietzsche, the Apollonian world of logic is counterbalanced by the Dionysian world of emotional sensationalism, much of which his philosophy appeal to. Considering this, Nietzche’s potential preference for and attraction to the Dionysian world, while rendering a rigorous scholarly replication of his philosophy particularly difficult, may explain the style of writing and even justify the inconsistencies.