Superficial—Out of Profundity: Nietzsche's Unwritten Birth of Tragedy by Gordon Bearn

#literature #seedling

Citation

Bearn, Gordon C. F. “Superficial—Out of Profundity: Nietzsche’s Unwritten Birth of Tragedy.” Waking to Wonder: Wittgenstein’s Existential Investigations, SUNY, 1997.

Quotes

Collations

The Great Health of the Free Spirit

In this unwritten book, Dionysus anticipates the figure of the death of God, and Apollo anticipates what Nietzsche was to call the great health or the love of fate, amor fati. The mature Nietzsche thought of tragedy and tragic knowledge as a way of moving beyond nihilism, of discovering the precious value of what is near (HH preface, par. 5), the value of "little things" that had once seemed of no consequence:

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it ... but love it. (EH ii, par. 10; see WP par. 1016 [1888])

Nietzsche's philosophy, no less than Wittgenstein's, "leaves everything as it is."

The semipopular view that Nietzsche aims to transcend the ordinary is a mistake.

The telos of convalescence is a "tremendous overflowing security [Sicherheit] and health ... great health" (HH I, P par. 4).

Nietzsche's four-staged genealogy of the free spirit per Bearn

The anatomy of convalescence is presented as a genealogy of the free spirit in four stages, which I have named "hearth health," "sickness,'' convalescence," and finally, "the great health of the free spirit."

The Seven Prefaces of 1886 display the genealogy of the free spirit. (i) The artificial metaphysical comfort of the family hearth succumbs to (ii) the sickness of nihilism, the hateful assault on everything that had seemed so comforting. (iii) Convalescence proceeds in two phases: a first cooler phase in which the convalescent lives without any love of metaphysical comforts but also without any hatred.

The second warmer phase of convalescence discovers the natural warmth of the spots of sunlight on the wall, the bloom and magic of things that are nearest. And (iv), the final phase of great health lives these moments of natural warmth as a way of life. This spirit freed from the tradition that seeks metaphysical comforts is surprised by a new happiness and a new love for all that is delicate. The great health is a life attuned to what is near.

In this way The Birth of Tragedy maps the etiology of that sickness which is one stage in the genealogy of the free spirit Nietzsche articulated in the 1886 prefaces. It also presents a form of the goal of the convalescence: the great health.

Hearth Health

Those who will become free spirits do not begin by being sick, but by being healthy. Although they feel healthy, they are in fact bound by "what fetters fastest": by their dutiful reverence for their elders, their country, their teachers, and for "the holy place where they learned to worship" (HH I, P par. 3). They are fettered by all those ideals that warm one on the family hearth. These ideals are normally taken to be of the highest value

"their highest moments themselves will fetter them the fastest, lay upon them the most enduring obligations"

I have called this stage "hearth health" to indicate that the warmth of this health derives from the artificial heat of the family's fireplace. It will contrast with the natural warmth of the great health.

Per Nietzsche, favoring a heavenly world over an earthly world chains people to the hearth health

Nietzsche would have associated these fetters with what some philosophers have called metaphysics, with deflating the value of this earthly world and inflating the value of another, heavenly world.

"Christianity is Platonism for 'the people'" (BGE P)

This approach to metaphysics elaborates the hearth health from which future free spirits set out.

Per Nietzsche, the main faith of metaphysics is that evil and good come from different worlds

"fundamental faith of metaphysicians ... the faith in opposite values" (BGE par. 2)

As Nietzsche sees it, metaphysicians think they know where the nasty comes from; it originates in our embarrassingly human urges. But then where can the true, the good, and the beautiful come from? Not from this (nasty, illusory, changing) human world. Hence, the metaphysician's quest for what makes the good good faces a decision: either there is no metaphysical accounting for the goodness of the good or we will find ourselves inventing a second world, a world designed to possess just those features that we require of metaphysical explanations.

The good is wholly different from the evil, and the origin of evil is in this world; so the origin of good must be in another world, in the other worldly.

The fundamental faith of the metaphysician is that opposite values must have opposite genealogies. The value of the true, the good, and the beautiful must therefore be grounded not on the details of this world but on those of another world, revealed to us in our "highest moments" (HH I, P par. 3). And the obligations revealed to us in these moments fetter us fastest.

Sickness

Nietzsche refers to the stage of sickness as the "great liberation,"

This great liberation comes "suddenly" and tears us away—with nearly suicidal consequences—from the hearth virtues that had been granted the highest value.

Symptom of sickness: Hatred of what was once loved

"'Better to die than to go on living here'—thus responds the imperious voice and temptation: and this 'here,' this 'at home' is everything it had hitherto loved" (HH I, P par. 3). This is a "sickness that can destroy the man who has it" (HH I, P par. 3). The symptoms of this sickness include a suspicion and contempt of all that once was loved, a "hatred of love'' itself

Symptom of sickness: Praising things once considered evil

Nietzsche reports that persons suffering from this sickness may praise those things that were formerly considered evil,

Thus granting priority to contradiction and pain is an instance of the weakness that Nietzsche speaks about in 1886: the weakness of hiding from one's sickness by taking what was formerly considered bad, evil, apparent, and making it over into the good and the true (HH I P par. 3).

My thoughts

Greatest symptom of sickness: Nihilism

but he cautions that this simple inversion of received values manifests a lack of courage for "the question mark of a more perilous curiosity"

The more perilous thought is that nothing is of any value at all, not what was formerly considered good, but neither what was formerly considered evil.

This skeptical thought is the one Nietzsche came to call nihilism: "that there is no truth, that there is no absolute nature of things nor a 'thing in itself.' This, too, is merely nihilism—even the most extreme nihilism" (WP par. 13: 1887). Nietzsche understood the genesis of nihilism in terms of the first two stages of the genealogy of the free spirit: "one interpretation has collapsed; but because it was considered the interpretation it now seems as if there were no meaning at all in existence, as if everything were in vain" (WP par. 55: 1887).

The thought that God is dead, that we are wandering through an infinite nothing, neatly fits the potentially fatal sickness that Nietzsche describes in this preface: Nietzsche's sickness unto death (HH II, P par. 3).

I suggested we construe the sickness from which these convalescents are recovering as the sickness of nihilism, so we might try to discover the meaning of this bloom and magic by looking at Nietzsche's discussion of how to overcome nihilism.

Convalescence

Nietzsche notes that between the sickness and the great health there is what he calls a "midway condition," "long years of convalescence" [Genesung] (HH I, P par. 4). I follow Nietzsche in distinguishing two phases of this convalescence, one colder and one warmer: two phases in the coming to health of those suffering from skepticism, from nihilism.

The second, warmer phase of convalescence. Although enjoying a sunny happiness [Sonnenglück], the temperature of the first phase of convalescence is not quite warming; it is "cool" (HH I, P, par. 4). This is the paradoxically cool sunshine of the higher altitudes. The second phase of convalescence brings the patient back to the earth where the sun warms.

Cold convalescence

The first, colder phase of convalescence.

In this phase one neither hates nor loves, but looks on all values with a certain coolness and a certain distance. The great liberation proceeds further. One is so disengaged from what one formerly loved that it can be viewed without hatred, contempt, and suspicion. Or the contempt is tempered. It becomes tender (HH I, P par. 4). Nietzsche tells us that this phase of convalescence has three elements, that it is characterized by [1] a pale, subtle happiness of light and sunshine, [2] a feeling of bird like freedom, bird like altitude [Vogel Umblick], bird like exuberance, and a third thing in which curiosity is united with a tender contempt. (HH I, P par. 4)

Like a bird, this convalescent can soar high above what was troubling the sick spirit. Nothing that seemed valuable on the family hearth seems so now. But this is no longer the source of a feverish hatred. What others trouble [bekümmern] themselves about is no longer of any concern to the colder convalescent (HH I, P par. 4). Like a bird, the colder convalescent has "seen a tremendous number of things beneath him" (HH I, P par. 4).

The convalescent is just as confident as the feverish had been that everything is in the last resort false, but the convalescent is no longer frightened by that thought. The convalescent smiles gently at what others take so seriously.

At this height, everything is far away. Everything is small.

Everything is flat. Nothing matters. This is the mood equally of a scientist sure that ours is a world of valueless facts

In terms of Nietzsche's genealogy of the free spirit: even the cool birdlike detachment that flattens the earth can only flatten the earth because of its height.

What Human, All Too Human describes as a potentially fatal sickness is the abolishing of the so called true world, that is, the metaphysical world and theological values absorbed at the family hearth. During the convalescent's colder phase, the bird's eye view of a completely flat world is the thought that, without the true world, nothing is real: everything is merely apparent, flat.

My thoughts

Warm convalescence

It again grows warmer around him, yellower, as it were; feeling and feeling for others acquire depth, warm breezes of all kinds blow across him. It seems to him as if his eyes are only now open to what is near [Nahe]. He is astonished [verwundert] and sits silent: where had he been? These near and nearest [nahe und nächsten] things: how changed they seem! what bloom and magic [Flaum und Zauber] they have acquired! (HH I, P par. 5)

Convalescents are to come down from the height of cosmic distance, cosmic irony, from which bird's eye view [Vogel Umblick] all earthly things must seem tiny and of no importance. On the surface of earth the world is not flat; it has a terrain. Here the sunlight the convalescents had begun to enjoy in the cold, thin, upper atmosphere can finally warm them. And for short spells this winter sun gives them an occasional taste of what Nietzsche calls "health": the magical delicacy of the near, nearest (HH I, P part. 5).

My thoughts

If a convalescent can't see the wonder of the things that are nearest, he is still in cold convalescence

Where had he been? He had never seen these near, nearest things. He hadn't seen them in the colder phase of convalescence when he had looked down on all things from his birdlike altitude that shrinks everything, so that nothing is worthy either of love or hate. Certainly he had overlooked them when—in his sickness—he had steamed with a feverish hatred of the theological values and the metaphysics of the family hearth.

Warm convalescence reveals something the free spirit sees for the first time: the things that are nearest

But it is essential to an understanding of Nietzsche that these nearest things were also veiled from him before his sickness, and by the very things that, in his sickness, he had reacted so contemptuously against. On the family hearth, before his sickness, he had absorbed the fundamental faith of metaphysicians in opposite values, and there is no need to infer from this hearth health to the veiling of the things that are nearest. To open one's eyes to the heavenly metaphysical world just is to close one's eyes to things that are nearest. Only in the warmer phase of convalescence

are the near, nearest things disclosed at all. Here they are disclosed for the first time, but they are disclosed as having been there from the very beginning.

Nihilism is a transitional stage

Nihilism is a "transitional stage," because the nihilist is incompletely liberated from the hearth side values of the Platonic or Christian tradition (WP par. 13: 1887).

Warm convalescence arrives when the primacy of metaphysical and theological value is let go

The warmer phase of convalescence arrives when the convalescent finally casts off the last hearth value: the belief that if there were anything of value at all, that value would have to be meta physically or theologically grounded. To cast that off is to recognize that by abolishing the metaphysical world we have thereby abolished the merely apparent world. Nietzsche can still write that "the 'apparent' ['scheinbare'] world is the only one: the 'true world' ['wahre Welt'] is only added by a lie" (TI iii, par. 2). But Nietzsche's scare quotes show that he is talking about what the tradition had thought of as the true and the apparent world. The world that the tradition devalued as merely apparent is the only world there is. So it is no longer merely apparent.

Nietzsche's antimetaphysical stance, not only issues in nihilism, but also that it can defuse that very nihilism, the existential sickness

Spots of sunlight

What Nietzsche calls the "spots of sunlight" of the warmer phase of convalescence are the first taste of the sunshine of this health (HH I, P par. 5). The bloom and magic [Flaum und Zauber] of the near, nearest things comes into view in these spots of sunshine.

Per Nietzsche, without the metaphysical grounding of Platonic or Christian heavens, things become fragile and, therefore, precious

Nietzsche has observed that without the metaphysical grounding provided by Platonic or Christian heavens, the persistence of the things of this world will be revealed in their fragility. This is not the robust, confident pragmatic or neopragmatic world of the man of affairs, immune to doubt, invulnerable to disaster. This is a more delicate, perhaps even more feminine world shadowed by the threat of insecurity, whose security comes, if at all, as a magical spell. It is for these reasons that when the things nearest come into the "spots of sunlight," they are cherished (HH P par. 5).

when the healthy state of a natural object is to be fragile, or scarce, or delicate, then that very fragility will contribute to our wonder. The delicacy of the things nearest is of precisely that sort. They are not wonderful in spite of lacking metaphysical grounding; their value is constituted by their lack of such grounding. Their wonder is their fragility.

you want again to become a good neighbor to the nearest things

Without the weight of metaphysics, all the anchors of our lives can drift. And while that can indeed seem a sickness, nihilism, Nietzsche saw further.

My thoughts

Difference between warm convalescence and the Great Health

The spots of sunlight that warm this second phase of convalescence are the first signs that the convalescent has also made this promise. Moreover the only difference between the warmer phase of convalescence and the great health is that what comes in "small doses" during recovery is always at hand when the spirits of the convalescents are finally free (HH I, P par. 5). The warmer convalescents were "half turned toward life"; the free spirits are fully turned toward life (HH I, P par. 5).

Future free spirits become free spirits by learning how to judge using their own higher goals

the future free spirits had to learn that all value judgments manifest the perspective of the person judging, and in order to become free, these spirits would have to learn to judge in accord with their own "higher goals," not the artificial warmth of the hearth, but the great health: the warm sunshine that lights up the value, the significance, the meaning of the earth (HH I, P par. 6).

So the free spirits learn that their problem is "the problem of order of rank" (HH I, P par. 7). They learn to "transfer seriousness" (WP par. 1016: 1888) from the things heretofore considered of highest value to those "little things" (EH II par. 10) the things nearest to us (HH I, P par. 5) that were formerly considered of no value at all.

The solution to the problem of an order of rank will involve the discovery of our own virtues, those settled dispositions conducive to the great health.

we cannot prove, or make certain, that our own virtues are either ours or virtuous. At best we can trust them without care, with security, with that "overflowing security" [Sicherheit] of the great health (HH I, P par. 4).

Certainty vs. security

Certainty is a matter of evidence supporting a conclusion, silencing doubt, delivering knowledge

Security is rather a lack of care, safety; it is less a matter of evidence than an affair of the heart

Closer to faith than to knowledge

Nietzsche scorns the positivistic "demand for certainty"

The Great Health itself is fragile and, therefore, precious

The overflowing security (HH I, P par. 4) that characterizes Nietzsche's "great health" cannot, on this account, be freed from the risk of sickness. Discovering the precious bloom of what is normally overlooked remains a task. The great health, which is astonished and wonders at what is precious, is itself fundamentally fragile.

There is a love of life that requires complete freedom from all risk of disaster, a comfortable happiness resting on certain knowledge of what is right and wrong. On Nietzsche's account this is inaccessible. The different kind of love, producing a new happiness, is a love of what is precisely not immune to disaster, of what is delicate. This happiness, this great health, is a security within the shadow of risk, of fragility. It is the overflowing security with which we greet the downy magic of what is nearest with gratitude (HH I P par. 4 and 5).

Principle of sufficient reason

principle of sufficient reason is that nothing happens without reason, that there is a reason for everything; nothing is beyond reason's reach. Nietzsche declares that when we suspect that this principle has suffered exception we will feel tremendously terrified. But why?

When the principle of sufficient reason suffers an exception, the world becomes absurd and terror ensues

When the principle of sufficient reason suffers exception this cannot be for a reason, for in that case it would not have suffered exception in the first place. So giving up the principle and discovering an exception to the principle are the same thing. When the principle suffers exception the game of reason is over.

The end of the principle of sufficient reason, the revelation of the absurdity of the world, comes all at once.

Suddenly all that we thought reasonable and justified takes on the appearance of being simply due to brute, unintelligible contingency. The light of reason becomes blind fate. The Birth of Tragedy assumes that confrontation with this absence of sense is terrifying, and this reaction is preserved as the "sickness that can destroy the man who has it" in the 1886 geneology of the free spirit.

When the principle of individuation has suffered exception, ecstasy is induced (but Nietzsche changed his mind on this)

Whereas terror is induced by the appearance that the principle of sufficient reason has suffered exception, ecstasy is induced by the appearance that the principle of individuation has suffered exception.

But Nietzsche has revalued what he still calls rapture or ecstasy [Entzücken] (GS par. 338: 1882). The loss of one's self—a lapse in the principle of individuation—is no longer seen as our longing for unification with the Ur Eine. It is seen as a danger and threat to Nietzsche's own virtues. So The Gay Science (1882) rejects precisely what The Birth of Tragedy (1872) yearns for, and maintains

Ecstasy is the feeling of unifying with the unity of humanity and nature

This is the experience that Nietzsche describes as feeling joined to the primordial unity [Ur Eine] of the world, uniting all humanity and all of nature in one primordial unity

What the author of the "Attempt at a Self Criticism" would like to do away with is, in one word, "metaphysics" (BT SC par. 7). This means that in the unwritten 1886 version of The Birth the figure of Dionysus must lose its association with ecstasy, with the musically mediated union of the self with the metaphysical ground of the world, the Ur Eine.

Ecstasy is revealed through music

Nietzsche's praise of Wagnerian music in this book rests on the thought that Wagner's music overpowers the individuality of the listener, uniting the listener with the primordial unity [Ur eine].

this is death through ecstatic union with the heart chamber of the world will. It is such passages that rely most heavily on Schopenhauer's view that music represents "what is metaphysical, the thing in itself" normally veiled by the principle of individuation (BT par. 16, p. 100).

Ecstasy can be understood as our acquaintance with that which "explains" the lapse in the principle of sufficient reason: the principle suffers exception because the world in itself is ultimately contingent, inexplicable, beyond reason's reach. Moreover this paradoxical explanation of the inexplicable can only be revealed by music

Language can never adequately render the cosmic symbolism of music, because music stands in a symbolic relation to the primordial contradiction and primordial pain at the heart of the primordial unity [den Urwiderspruch und Urschmerz im Herzen des Ur Eine], and therefore symbolizes a sphere which is beyond and prior to all phenomena [über alle Erscheinung und vor aller Erscheinung]. (BT par. 6, p. 55)

Socratic optimism

Socratic optimism is the death of tragedy because it fills the abyss with reason, scientific reason.

Socratic optimism appears in our own time as scientism: "... the unshakable faith that thought, using the thread of causality, can penetrate the deepest abysses of being [die tiefsten Abgründe des Seins], and that thought is capable not only of knowing being but even of correcting it" (BT par. 15, p. 95). This faith structures "our whole modern world"

Nietzsche advocated against socratic optimism and for the rebirth of tragedy

Nietzsche, like Heidegger and like Wittgenstein, set himself against the Socratic optimism of the scientist. His view was that after 2,000 years the limits of Socratic optimism were being reached, and that now the time was ripe for a rebirth of tragedy at the hands of a musical Socrates who understood the limits of science, the limits of logos.

perhaps ... what is not intelligible to me is not necessarily unintelligent? Perhaps there is a realm of wisdom from which the logician is exiled? Perhaps art is even a necessary correlative of, and supplement for, science? (BT par. 14, p. 93; see par. 15, p. 98)

Science ... speeds irresistibly toward its limits where its optimism, concealed in the essence of its logic, suffers shipwreck. For the periphery of the circle of science has an infinite number of points; and while there is no telling how this circle could ever be surveyed completely, noble and gifted men nevertheless reach, ere half their time and inevitably, such boundary points on the periphery from which one gazes into what defies illumination. When they see to their horror [Schrecken] how logic coils up at these boundaries [Grenzen] and finally bites its own tail—suddenly the new form of knowledge [Erkenntniss] breaks through, tragic knowledge which, merely to be endured, needs art as a protection and remedy. (BT par. 15, p. 98)

Per Nietzsche, scientific culture has reached its limits

Nietzsche thought that the scientific culture of his day was already reaching its limits, and this in two ways: "[a] once by fear of its own consequences which it at length begins to surmise and [b] again because it no longer has its former naïve confidence in the eternal validity of its foundation" (BT par. 18, p. 113).

(b) More directly, the limits of scientific culture are being discovered by the practice of science itself.

Nietzsche acknowledges Kant's discovery that the "thread of causality"—far from penetrating the "deepest abysses of being" (BT par. 15, p. 95)—is only able to reveal the structure of appearance, not things as they are in themselves (BT par. 18, p. 112).

Consider the physiology of sensation. If scientific investigations of perception reveal that the same perception might be caused by a variety of different stimulations, then we can begin to doubt our perceptions, generally [überhaupt]. But if we are doubting our perceptions for these nonlocal reasons, there will be no way to keep these doubts from infecting our understanding of perception itself and so, the very basis of science. These grounds for doubt do not concern local matters—like the bad lighting here or that I am jaundiced—they concern the general structure of our perceptual systems, so we will not be able to corral the doubt. And the doubt threatens to consume even the knowledge of our perceptual systems that was the ground of this doubt in the first place. Therewith the optimism of science disappears.

Per Nietzsche, a culture based on socratic optimism will lead to a political disaster

(a) Nietzsche discerns a "disaster slumbering in the womb" of that culture he refers to equally as Socratic, Alexandrian, Theoretical, Scientific, and Modern (BT par. 18, p. 112). But whereas we would likely think of military or ecological disaster, Nietzsche discerned a political disaster caused by the fact that Socratic culture "requires a slave class" (BT par. 18, p. 111). He does not demonstrate why a Socratic culture requires a slave class, so we are on our own. A Socratic culture will place those who have been educated, those who know, in positions of power. But the decisions of those who know will be implemented by those who do not know, but only obey. Such a culture is headed for disaster because the fact of a slave class is destined to collide with the rhetoric of the "dignity of man" (BT par. 18, p. 111). Nietzsche predicts that this collision may incite the slave class to conjure up a "Euripidean deus ex machina" (BT par. 18, p. 111). Possibly Nietzsche was predicting that Socratic cultures would turn to dictators promising to solve all the problems of the slave class at one stroke, with one final solution.

Socratic cultures are unable to fill in the Dionysian abyss

In this way, the Socratic attempt to fill in the Dionysian abyss, finally opens it up again, thus revealing Nietzsche as a "philosopher of tragic knowledge" (P par. 37). And with the reopening of the Dionysian abyss the terror returns, terror at the thought that the principle of sufficient reason has suffered an exception. The sickness of nihilism can be slowed by Socratic cultures, but in the end, Socratic culture serves only to increase the virulence of nihilism.

Continue with: In one of its uses, "tragedy" names the contingency, the inexplicability, which Nietzsche associates with Dionysian terror.

Unsorted

there is another antimetaphysical version of The Birth of Tragedy, an unwritten 1886 edition.

Nietzsche's prefatory "Attempt at a Self Criticism," which was published with the second edition of The Birth of Tragedy (1886), anticipates both the metaphysical and the antimetaphysical interpretations of that book. This "Self Criticism" describes and unequivocally denounces the metaphysical elements of his first literary project.

So Nietzsche seems to have been the first of his readers to notice that his first book could be criticized from the antimetaphysical standpoint of the author of his later works.

The Birth of Tragedy argues that tragedy, and hence tragic knowledge, should be construed as the offspring of the "fraternal union" (BT par. 24) of the two art deities: Apollo and Dionysus.

Metaphysicians want to understand the origins or essences of things, that is, what makes anything the kind of thing that it is

We have measured the value of the world according to categories that refer to a purely fictitious world. (WP par. 12: 1887–87)

The death of God can only seem to deprive the earth of its significance if we persist in assuming that there can be no value except theological value. Sacrilege delivers its familiar frisson, but only for those who still believe. So enjoying the shiver of sacrilege is a sign rather of faith than of its overcoming.

The true world—we have abolished. What world has remained? The apparent perhaps? But no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one. (TI iv, par. 6)

"To the poet and sage, all things are friendly and hallowed, all experiences profitable, all days holy, all men divine."

The common people [Das Volk] attributes wisdom [weise] to such serious men of "faith" ["Glaubens"] who have become quiet, meaning that they have acquired knowledge and are "secure" ["sichere"] compared to one's own insecurity [Unsicherheit]. Who would want to deny them this word [i.e., wisdom] and this reverence. (GS par. 351: 1887)

What Nietzsche does want to deny is that knowledge and wisdom can be nonprecariously acquired.

The trust in life is gone: life itself has become a problem. Yet one should not jump to the conclusion that this necessarily makes one gloomy. Even love of life is still possible, only one loves differently. It is the love for a woman that causes doubts in us. The attraction of everything problematic, the delight in an x ... flares up again and again like a bright blaze ... over all the danger of insecurity [Unsicherheit], and even over the jealousy of the lover. We know a new happiness. (GS P par. 3)

What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing [nicht zu sein, nicht zu sein]. But the second best for you is—to die soon.

But Nietzsche's first book associates Dionysus not only with this particular form of terror, but also with ecstasy.

In 1886 Nietzsche set himself against "romantic pessimism" and against the romantic music of Wagner, a composer he had come to think of as a "decaying, despairing romantic" (HH II P par. 7, par. 3). Whereas Wagner's music had been the young Nietzsche's access to an ecstatic union with the "innermost abyss of things" (BT par. 21, p. 126), the author of the seven prefaces thought of this union simply as the "greedy, spongy desire" of a typical romantic.

The "Self Criticism" thus purges the Dionysian of the ecstatic union with the Ur Eine, and restricts it to the terror of discovering an exception to the principle of sufficient reason.

Literature notes

Nietzsche's four-staged therapeutic journey of the free spirit per Bearn

In the chapter "Superficial—Out of Profundity: Nietzsche's Unwritten Birth of Tragedy" in his book Waking to Wonder, Gordon Bearn explained how Friedrich Nietzsche outlined the four-phased therapeutic journey that people go through to become free spirits in a series of new prefaces he wrote for his older books in 1886.

Bearn named these phases as "hearth health," "sickness,'' convalescence," and "the great health of the free spirit."

  1. Hearth Health. In this phase, the free spirit is bounded in the metaphysical comfort of family and tradition.
  2. Sickness. This phase is ultimately experienced as nihilism and a hatred toward everything one once loved in the hearth health.
  3. Convalescence. This phase happens in two phases: cold and warm.
    1. Cold convalescence. This is marked by indifference—a lack of both love and hatred to metaphysical comforts.
    2. Warm convalescence. This is marked by a discovery of the warmth of ordinary things surrounding oneself experienced in brief moments.
  4. The Great Health of the Free Spirit. In this final phase, the moments of warmth becomes a way of life. The free spirit finds happiness and love for fragile things that are nearby.

The goal of convalescence is to arrive at the Great Health.

References

Bearn, Gordon C. F. “Superficial—Out of Profundity: Nietzsche’s Unwritten Birth of Tragedy.” Waking to Wonder: Wittgenstein’s Existential Investigations, SUNY, 1997.

Brown, Andrew James. “The Freedom to Be Tomorrow What We Are Not Today (Complete, Revised Version).” Caute, 2 Jan. 2023, https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-freedom-to-be-tomorrow-what-we-are.html.

Brown, Andrew James. “The Therapeutic Journey towards Becoming Free-Spirits.” Caute, 17 Oct. 2024, https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-therapeutic-journey-towards.html.

Nietzsche's Hearth Health

The therapeutic journey to become a free spirit begins in health. One is healthy because one has inherited values that provide warmth. These values are taken as highest. However, this health is based on bondage—to family, tradition, teachers, childhood religion, churches, etc.

Per Bearn, the warmth of the hearth health is artificial and contrasts with the natural warmth of the great health. In the hearth, the would-be free spirit is bounded by a metaphysical view that a far heavenly world is to be valued while this earthly world near to us is to be devalued. The highest moments where that heavenly world is revealed to us bind us the most to the hearth.

References

Bearn, Gordon C. F. “Superficial—Out of Profundity: Nietzsche’s Unwritten Birth of Tragedy.” Waking to Wonder: Wittgenstein’s Existential Investigations, SUNY, 1997.

Nietzsche's sickness

Per Nietzsche, the stage of sickness happens suddenly and begins to liberate us from the hearth. However, this great liberation is painful and could make one suicidal. Sickness has three primary symptoms:

  1. Hatred of what was once loved.
  2. Praising things once considered evil, converting them into what one considers good and true
  3. Nihilism. Per Nietzsche, the two earlier symptoms are a form of escape from the ultimate symptom of sickness, which is the thought that nothing is valuable, including what was once loved and what was once scorned.
    1. "one interpretation has collapsed; but because it was considered the interpretation it now seems as if there were no meaning at all in existence, as if everything were in vain" (WP par. 55: 1887).

When one loses belief in God, treats him as if he is dead, one experiences near-death of nihilism. Because the thing that once gave ultimate meaning to one's life is lost, then nothing is meaningful. Per Bearn, an individual experiencing nihilism is in a liminal phase because they are not yet completely liberated from the hearth's values.

References

Bearn, Gordon C. F. “Superficial—Out of Profundity: Nietzsche’s Unwritten Birth of Tragedy.” Waking to Wonder: Wittgenstein’s Existential Investigations, SUNY, 1997.

Nietzsche's convalescence

Nietzsche's convalescence is the phase that overcomes nihilism.

The warmer phase of convalescence arrives when the convalescent finally casts off the last hearth value: the belief that if there were anything of value at all, that value would have to be meta­physically or theologically grounded. To cast that off is to recognize that by abolishing the metaphysical world we have thereby abolished the merely apparent world.

Prompts

Literature source

@bearnSuperficialOutProfundity1997