Nietzsche and The Birth of Tragedy.

We open upon a question, or perhaps we question upon an opening, a space between two works, a space of conflicting tendencies; of convergences and divergences; of affinities and animosities; of joyous celebration and the most profound suffering. We are, as it were, at the site of a profound reckoning; at the site, or the opening, of an incredible closeness, a seeming overlap of projects and terminologies; and yet at the same time, we are faced with a gap and an insurmountable distance. The Birth of Tragedy, “it might be said” gives voice to Nietzsche’s ‘ambivalence’ toward Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation or perhaps it might be said, along with Zarathustra: “too slowly runs all speech for me: into your chariot I leap, storm!”[1] If we are attentive to the work undertaken in the Birth of Tragedy we encounter an honest reckoning with the problematic established in the work of Schopenhauer, as such, it articulates itself in terms of, and indeed borrows from the Schopenhauerian framework. Schopenhauer’s problematic is ultimately insufficient, or runs “too slowly” for the trajectory of Nietzsche’s argument, however, by conducting a kind of ‘internal criticism’ Nietzsche can overcome the failures of The World as Will and Representation.[2] This overcoming will make manifest the shortcoming of Schopenhauer’s work leading Nietzsche to lament in his “Attempt at Self-Criticism:”
That I appended hopes where there was no ground for hope, where everything pointed all too plainly to an end.[3]
As such the Birth of Tragedy is in many ways a response to the Schopenhauerian hope for an ultimate satisfaction, or an end. It is an explicit aversion to the Schopenhauerian plunge into the ‘naïve’ illusion of knowledge as the only possible deliverance from life, which is constantly changing, and into the security of faith,[4] which is the denial of the will. For Schopenhauer our suffering resides in the contradiction between the endless striving of singular will and its endless appearances, the endless becoming of individuation, which is only terminated in death. Schopenhauer, unable to locate being, unable to arrest the flow of becoming as such, denies the will as the only way to resolve the tension, bringing willing to an end through a kind of resignation, which puts an end to suffering. It therefore becomes apparent that Nietzsche’s engagement with the Greeks is not a disinterested one, but rather an attempt to demarcate a metaphysics of affirmation, a way of affirming life in its ‘here’ and ‘now.’ Nietzsche is not concerned with resolving the tension, with putting an end to the contradiction, but rather to affirm it. We are, as it were, at the site of an invitation to dance, or perhaps to sing, in the face of our miseries and sufferings and affirm life.
The Dionysian and Apollonian dualism, which is central to The Birth of Tragedy, is part of Nietzsche’s inheritance from Schopenhauer, that is to say that the dualism is a definite re-appropriation of the Schopenhauerian distinction between ‘Will’ and ‘representation.’ The gap, however, which manifests itself between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer resides, both in the character, and the treatment of the duality. The way of the world ‘as will,’ if we are attentive to Schopenhauer’s formulation, is different from its phenomena, different from its objectification, from its representation. The will,[5] as such, is singular, however, in its appearance, according to the principle of sufficient reason, manifests as a plurality; the will, however, as it is in itself, contains no such plurality. Rather the will is simply an aimless, blind striving, and a force, which manifests itself through recourse to pockets of matter.
For all striving spring from want or deficiency, from dissatisfaction with one’s own state or condition, and is therefore suffering so long as it is not satisfied. No satisfaction, however, is lasting; on the contrary, it is always merely the starting-point of a fresh striving. We see striving everywhere impeded in many ways, everywhere struggling and fighting, and hence always suffering. Thus that there is no ultimate aim of striving means that there is no measure or end of suffering.[6]
That there is no end to the striving of the singular will means that there is no way of truly satisfying the will, or rather there is no way to synthesize the will with its appearance in space and time. There is no end to the suffering of the movement of life, however, Schopenhauer, through recourse to his Ideas,[7] which are open to a kind of aesthetic perception, grants access to the realm of permanence, in a kind of absolute passivity of the pure will-less subject of knowledge.[8]
For Nietzsche the dualism of the Dionysian and the Apollonian are two opposed artistic energies, or forces, “involving perpetual strife with only periodically intervening reconciliations.”[9] As such, if we attend to these forces, alongside Nietzsche we see that the Dionysian is seemingly close to the Schopenhauerian conception of the ‘will’ as the basis upon which the Apollonian, or representations, in the Schopenhauerian sense, are formed. As such Nietzsche’s “beautiful illusion”[10] that is the artistic creation of the Apollonian energy is a restatement of the Schopenhauerian conception of the veil of Maya. In The World as Will and Representation, suffering seems to reside in the necessity of individuation, while the momentary satisfaction of the endlessly striving Will occurs when, through the aesthetic perception the subject becomes a kind of absolute perception. For Nietzsche the Apollonian is the individuating force: “Apollo himself is the glorious divine image of the principium individuationis, through whose gestures and eyes all the joy and wisdom of ‘illusion’ together with its beauty speak to us.”[11] Conversely, the Dionysian, which is a kind of self-forgetting, is the energy, which in this forgetting affirms the oneness of man, or the affinity of man with other men. These energies play off one another and culminate or find their most perfect balance in the Attic tragedies of Greece. Both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, however, give to music an extremely special status:
“As what does music appear in the mirror of images and concepts?” It appears as will, taking the term in the Schopenhauer’s sense, i.e, as the opposite of the aesthetic, purely contemplative, and passive frame of mind.[12]
There is an immanence to music which is readily recognized by both Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, such that music appears as a kind of Dionysian articulation of the will.
Nietzsche’s account of Greek tragedy is an attempt to locate and find a way out of the Schopenhauerian resignation, a way to speak about life differently than both Silenus and Schopenhauer.
…Oh, wretched ephemeral race, children of chance and misery, why do you compel me to tell you what it would be most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is-to die soon.[13]
Nietzsche locates in the attic tragedies a movement, a synthesis of the warring energies, a kind of symbiosis of the Dionysian and the Apollonian, one which is brought about through the development of the chorus. Just as in Schopenhauer where it is the will which is represented, similarly in Nietzsche, it is always Dionysus who is depicted as suffering; it is the Dionysian which gets symbolized through the Apollonian. While Nietzsche’s account agrees in many ways with the account of Schopenhauer it differs in the type of metaphysical comfort that Nietzsche sees flowing from the tragic Chorus:
The metaphysical comfort—with which, I am suggesting even now, every true tragedy leaves us— that life is at the bottom of things despite all the changes of appearances, indestructibly powerful and pleasurable…
With this chorus the profound Hellene, uniquely susceptible to the tenderest and deepest suffering, comforts himself, having looked boldly right into the terrible destructiveness of so-called world history as well as the cruelty of nature, and being in danger of longing for Buddhistic negation of the will. Art saves him through art—life.[14]
Art saves, or rather maintains the tension between the opposing forces, art lays bare the absurdity of existence and manifests the power of the Dionysian through Apollonian images. The real is presented in its rawness to a public, which is no passive spectator but an active participant in the rhythmic dance, in the play of reality. We can see in this movement that there is no resolution, or satisfaction, nor is there a striving to satisfy, but rather an affirmation of life as such.

We have pointed towards the gap, the difference, or space which separates Nietzsche from Schopenhauer. The space which animates, the difference between the search for ends and the affirmation of trajectories. The relation between The World as Will and Representation and The Birth of Tragedy, is the difference between being and becoming, the difference between the denial and the affirmation of life. In many ways the Nietzschean critique of Socrates, which is a novel development of The Birth of Tragedy, is simultaneously a critique of Schopenhauer. Socrates, the origin of the profound illusion, the faith that being can be sought in the world of illusion; this seeking for truth can be nothing other than a denial of life and therefore a kind of nihilism. Schopenhauer betrays himself by seeking to arrest the flux, by failing to recognize the possible affirmation of becoming. “Our Schopenhauer was such a Dürer Knight; he lacked all hope, but he desired truth. He has no peers.”[15]








[1] Friedrich Nietzsche. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book For All and For None. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin Books, 1978. pp. 84.
[2] Paramount amongst its failures, at least for Nietzsche, resided in its pessimistic conclusion, or more specifically in the conclusion that ultimately the only salvation from the suffering of the world is to deny the will altogether. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World As Will and Representation, trans E.F.J. Payne. New York: Dover Publications, 1966. pp. 405.
[3] Friedrich Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1967. pp. 24.
[4] Schopenhauer makes the proximity of this faith to the Christian faith, explicit, this fact alone seems to point to the fact that the critique of Schopenhauer and Socrates, made by Nietzsche, also holds as a critique of Christianity. (World 407)
[5] Schopenhauer is both an ontological monist, that is his Will is singular, and an epistemological dualist.
[6] Schopenhauer. The World As Will and Representation. pp. 309.
[7] Nietzsche seems to avoid the Ideas altogether perhaps he refers to this when he claims that “he (Schopenhauer) had found a way out on which, however, I cannot follow him.” (Birth 51.)
[8] Schopenhauer. The World As Will and Representation. pp. 195.
[9] Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy. pp. 33.
[10] Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy. pp. 34.
[11] Ibid., pp. 36.
[12] Ibid., pp. 55.
[13] Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy. pp. 42.
[14] Ibid., pp.59.
[15] Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy. pp. 123.