Nietzsche varied greatly from his other highly-esteemed and well revered philosophical counterparts. His obsession with bringing light to the dark and destitute actuality of life brought him to the forefront of the Western philosophical canon because his ideas brought about something entirely new. Nietzsche’s work invigorated sentiments discomfort, distaste, contempt from those who read his work, but simultaneously awoken parts of us that have been withering away in darkness for entirely too long. In this essay, I will attempt the support the thesis that “Nietzsche does not think philosophy exists to make us better human beings—but it can make us more profound ones.”
19th century German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche is one of the greatest European intellectuals not only of his time but this still reigns true to this day. His first work was titled “The Birth of Tragedy”, which primarily brought to critique the dance of the Apollonian and Dionysian conceptions within Ancient Greek Tragedy. In simple terms, the duality of the Apollonian and the Dionysian is the clash and compromise of the rational and the irrational. Nietzsche has a great obsession with the Greek God Dionysus, the god of wine, amongst many other things. As Nietzsche self proclaims, “Herewith I again stand on the soil out of which my intention, my ability grows – I, the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus” (Twilight of the Woods, Nietzsche). Zeus was the father of Dionysus, who conceived with a mortal women names Semele. In a great fit as Zeus was known to be succumbed to, he threw a furious maelstrom of lighting to simile and as as result killing her, Dionysus still in the womb. Zeus then attached the fetus of Dionysus to his thigh, providing for and nurturing him until we was able to survive on his own devices as a fully developed infant. This is why Dionysus was referred to as ‘the twice-Born’ one (Academy of Ideas). He was also known as the god of suffering and death, as virtually anyone who is to come into his direct vicinity is to be affected by his devilish ways. Semele’s sister took care of the infant until the point when she threw both herself and her child off a cliff to their immediate death. Dionysus was the god of irrational, indulgence, deviation, revolution, in the most hedonistic senses of the words. Through Ancient Greek mythology, stories pertaining to Dionysus portray him to come into people’s lives in a frenzied, almost violent manner. To further elaborate, “All of antiquity extolled Dionysus as the god who gave man wine. However, he was known also as the raving god whose presence makes man mad and incites him to savagery and even to lust for blood. He was the confidant and companion of the spirits of the dead…The flowers of spring bore witness to him, too. The ivy, the pine, the fig tree were dear to him. Yet far above all of these blessings in the natural world of vegetation stood the gift of the vine…Dionysus was the god of the most blessed ecstasy and the most enraptured love. But he was also the persecuted god, the suffering and dying god, and all whom he loved, all who attended him, had to share his tragic fate.” (Walter Otto, Dionysus: Myth and Cult).
Why was Nietzsche so infatuated with the notions circa Dionysus? What was the cause of intrigue of this madness? According to Nietzsche, it is madness itself, which is the essence of life itself. Nietzsche made an entire career of critiquing the work of the infamous Classical Greek philosopher, Socrates, and subsequently Plato as he was his disciple, and it was due to his extreme obsession with knowledge. Socrates more than anything emphasized reason, and order, and these fall under the umbrella of what is considered Apollonian. Apollo was the god of the sun, as well as light and knowledge. The Apollonian concept revolves around constructs of order and reason; “ The Apollonian, which corresponds to Schopenhauer's principium individuationis ("principle of individuation"), is the basis of all analytic distinctions. Everything that is part of the unique individuality of man or thing is Apollonian in character; all types of form or structure are Apollonian, since form serves to define or individualize that which is formed; thus, sculpture is the most Apollonian of the arts, since it relies entirely on form for its effect. Rational thought is also Apollonian since it is structured and makes distinctions” (The History Guide: Lectures on Twentieth Century Europe, Kreis, 2012). Nietzsche proclaimed that we will never know the truth and what is considered to be the objective truth is actually an elaborate illusion of metaphors made to comfort the masses, as portrayed in The Birth of Tragedy. The only real truth is that we will never know the truth, and death. Because of these views, his Socratic critique stems from his view of Socrates essentially being a pseudo intellectual that has elaborately devised a life view that is seemingly enlightening and borderline effervescent and otherworldly whereas this cannot be further from the truth.
However, Nietzsche acknowledges that the Dionysian cannot exist independent of the Apollonian, as they are impossibly intertwined and each one’s existence is contingent upon the other, creating an almost yin-yang composition of harmony. The pursuit of the Apollonian absolute is in vain, as us humans simply do not have the capacity nor the resources to ever know the truth. The answer is to indulge down here, on Earth, not to restrain for a potentially-existing plane of dimension. The Apollonian, in Nietzsche's perspective, is similar to Catholicism, which he also had a great contempt for. It rids the human of its old, animal self, and how wrong would it be to deny one of their own intrinsic nature? Nietzsche commands us to welcome it, embrace it even. The hardships in life, the intertwined nature of these themes of Classical Greek tragedy is evident in our everyday humdrum affairs. Take beauty and terror for example; when we see something beautiful, a woman, a painted masterpiece, we are awestruck, and we quiver before it. We cry at our joys. We laugh at our pains. The Apollonian worldview is a facade catered to the masses, and Nietzsche dedicated his life to lift the veil, to expose the illusion. All that we know is that we are alive and we will die and this Earthly life is all that is guaranteed, so take full advantage of it. Indulge yourself into your pleasures, succumb to your temptations, stare at the void of life without fear, do not blind yourself to the darkness but welcome it. To come back to the thesis, that philosophosphy exists to make us more profound rather than good, Nietzsche means not for us to pursuit our moral betterment but rather the geological and cosmological beyondment.
But what exactly is moral betterment? And why should we not pursuit it and rather improve our profoundness? Nietzsche explores this topic in his book On the Genealogy of Morals, a series of three essays that encompass the idea of morality. His first essay “‘Good and Evil, Bad and Evil’” expands upon the dichotomous nature of what he coined ‘master mentality’ and ‘slave mentality’. Master mentality refers to self-perception of good that the wealthy, smart, lively, happy Masters deem themselves to be, whereas they saw the Slaves as bad, as their weakness and oppression were unequivocally undesirable. As a result, the Slaves perceive themselves as bad because the lack the perspective and insight to think otherwise. This is the case until the ‘slave revolt’ comes about, where the Slaves have a revolution in their mentality because they realize their power in perception, and one’s perception is one’s reality. They then perceive their services to be a voluntary good and almost find a united strength in the group suffering, and subsequently they view the Masters as evil for perpetuating the oppression. His next essay, “‘Guilt’, ‘Bad Conscience’, and the Like”, sought the roots, the genealogy, of morality and consequences. In his findings, Nietzsche reveals that guilt not based on breaking supposed moral code but rather it is a construct of the mind, a void that must be filled by punishment to satisfy the psyche. A ‘Bad Conscious’ is the result of the evolutionary consequence of the advancement of society; the more developed and advanced society becomes, the more we have grown to suppress our intrinsic nature and animal self. And when we act upon our intrinsic nature that we have tried so hard to expel from the essence of our existence, it results in a form of self punishment, guilt, and bad consciousness. Nietzsche’s final essay, “What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals?”, is an attack of the extreme self-discipline of the modern era. As mentioned before, the progress of the development and advancement of society inversely parallels the suppression of our natural, animalistic tendencies. This has formed as a sort of jail cell for us humans as a species at large, forcing the emergence and over-compensation of the Apollonian and destruction of the free will, of the Dionysian. The Dionysian nature that exists within in us is a monster that needs to be fed, to be nourished. Starvation of our inner Dionysiac forces it into starvation and as it withers away, we are left in a state of over-composed, Apollonian statues of what we believe out to be the best way to live our life; in pursuit of perfection.
Yet most of us are entirely unaware of these concepts that Nietzsche dedicated his life to; Apollonian, Dionysian, master mentality, slave mentality, the origination of morality and guilt, to name a few. And as a result our society is entirely unaware that we are clones of the Greek god Apollo, and if we are not then that is what we strive to be, and if we do not strive to be then it is ultimately what we are encouraged and inevitably forced to be. Nietzsche was all too aware of nineteenth century European, particularly German, asceticism and he epitomized using philosophy as a tool to nurture his profound nature. He felt as if he had insight and the truth of the actuality world and wanted everyone to know, scattering the seeds of his knowledge in hopes to grow the Ubermensch, the overman. The Socratic worldview is an illusion, he would proclaim, and the truth was that there is no truth to be found. The best life is the profound, free, Dionysian one.