From a talk at the Barnes Philosophy Club.

1. Nietzsche on art and life
Nick Aldridge

2. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
(1844-1900)
Friedrich Wilhelm
Nietzsche was a
German philologist,
philosopher, cultural
critic, poet and
composer.

3. Nietzsche and Schopenhauer
Schopenhauer Nietzsche
Is life worth
living?
No: underlying will =
brutal suffering
Ditto.
Can we overcome
the will/truth?
Truth comes first: the
will cannot be
overcome.
Maybe we can
overcome truth
through artistic illusion
Tone of response Vengeful relish Despair and fighting
What about
identifying with
the “will”?
Must reject will as evil,
but find solace in
altruism, asceticism.
Yes: can re-energise
and deepen human
experience.

4. God is dead
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have
killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the
murderers of all murderers? …What festivals of
atonement, what sacred games shall we have to
invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too
great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods
simply to appear worthy of it?”

5. Apollo and Dionysus

6. Apollo and Dionysus
Apollonian Dionysian
Why this God? Light, fantasy, calm, beauty
(Awkwardly also of music)
Chaos and intoxication: a
chorus of drunken revelers.
Art forms Sculpture, also poetry Music, singing, dancing,
Experience-
metaphor
Dreams
(Philosopher can see life as a
dream. Dreams have meaning.)
Drunkenness,
(With revelry, sexual
licentiousness)
Content Beautiful forms, structure
(representation)
Intoxicated visions of
Primordial Unity (the will)
Emotion evoked Reassuring: comforting veil.
Image of self as opposed to world
and others.
Ecstasy and terror, awe. Self-
forgetting & reconciliation
with nature & others. Mystic
oneness.
Truthfulness No – a veil of maya (appearance),
like a fragile boat on stormy seas
Yes – veil of maya torn to
tatters.”Drunken reality”

7. Oedipus Rex
• Oedipus is cast out of
Thebes as a baby.
• Unwittingly kills father
(in a skirmish) and
returns to marry the
Queen, his mother.
• When they find out, she
hangs herself and he
blinds himself.

8. Prometheus
• Prometheus , a Titan,
brought fire down from
heaven to human beings.
• Zeus punished him by
chaining him on a
mountain and sending a
vulture to feed on his liver
during the day.

9. Transfiguration, Raphael
Apollo: Visionary world
of appearances: radiant
floating in pure bliss,
serene contemplation.
Redeeming Vision
Dionysis: Possessed boy,
despairing bearers,
terrified disciples: primal
and eternal pain
Necessary Suffering

10. Menander’s comedies
Same tone as modern romantic comedies, in
which love is nearly thwarted by grouchy parent
Stock characters:
• Cooks with familiar jokes
• “Angry old man", the domineering parent
• Bragging soldier
• Wise slave
• The kind shrewd prostitute

11. Wagner and rebirth of tragedy
“the Meistersingers will acquaint men, even in the
remotest ages to come, with the nature of Germany’s
soul... It’s very ripest fruit”
Wagner at Bayreuth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97eRAFwkYgQ

12. Saying “yes” to life:
"to the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint,
all things are friendly and sacred, all
events profitable, all days holy, all men
divine"
Ralph Waldo Emerson, History, 1841

13. Nietzsche with two friends
Lou
Salomé
Paul Rée Nietzsche

15. Falling out with Wagner
•“Denial, Christianity,
medievalism”
•Embraced the “ascetic
ideal...using Schopenhauer
as his front man”

16. A dialogue of self and soul, W.B. Yeats
"I am content to live it all again,
And yet again…
I am content to follow to its source
Every event in action or in thought,
Measure the lot, forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blessed by everything,
Everything we look upon is blessed."

17. Doric Temple (Athens)

18. Oedipus at Colonus
• Death of exiled Oedipus in Athens, while sons
are at war over Thebes, and daughters weep
• “the lightless depths of Earth bursting open in
kindness to receive him” (1886–1887).
• “The sound of reconciliation from another world
echoes most purely perhaps in Oedipus at
Colonus.”

19. emotions in Archilochus
Soul, my soul, don't let them break you,
all these troubles. Never yield:
though their force is overwhelming,
up! attack them shield to shield...
Take the joy and bear the sorrow,
looking past your hopes and fears:
learn to recognize the measured
dance that orders all our years.