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Tragedy

            It is an eternal phenomenon:  the insatiable [gierige] will always finds a way, by means of an illusion spread over things, to detain [festzuhalten] its creatures in life and to compel them to live on.  One is chained by the Socratic joy of knowing and the delusion of being able thereby to heal the eternal wound of exis­tence; another is ensnared by art's seductive veil of beauty flut­tering before his eyes; yet another by the metaphysical consolation that beneath the whirl of appearances eternal life flows on indestruc­tibly -- to say nothing of the more common and almost more forceful illusions the will has at hand at every moment. (BT:18)

            Thus writes Nietzsche in the 1872 version of The Birth of Tragedy.  By 1886, when he appends an "Attempt at a Self-Criticism" to the book's second edition, he has concluded that the "insatiable will" is an unfortunate holdover from Schopenhauer's metaphysics (BTSC:6), and that "metaphysical consolations," which earlier he had praised, should be "sent to the devil" along with metaphysics itself (BTSC:7), Socrates's "delusion," and "art's seductive veil."  Despite these reserva­tions, however, the later Nietzsche continues to endorse The Birth's attempt "to view science through the lenses [unter der Optik] of the artist, and art through those of life" (BTSC:2), and to raise the yet more difficult question, "viewed through the lenses of life, what is the significance of morality?" (BTSC:4).

            Because my central concern is with Zarathustra, I make no attempt, as I examine The Birth of Tragedy, to remove the lenses provided by Nietzsche's later works.   On the contrary, I approach it explicitly through the "Attempt at a Self-Criticism."  In so doing, I attempt to excise the elements of Wagnerian romanticism and Schopenhauerian pessimism pervasive in the 1872 text but dis­avowed by the Nietzsche of 1886 (BTSC:6); I seek thereby to ex­pose some of the features Nietzsche's mature affirmation will have to avoid, and some it will have to exhibit.

The Tragic Disposition

            When he first published The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche was known (to those who knew of him at all) as a classical philol­ogist.  His academic colleagues expected from his first book an erudite treatise, full of scholarly footnotes, on the development of a literary genre.  That is not what they  found:  for Nietzsche, tragedy is not primarily a literary genre, and the question of its birth not an antiquarian issue.

            That tragedy is not simply a form of drama is indicated by a question early in the "Self-Criticism":

The most successful [wohlgerathenste], most beautiful, most envied type of humanity to date, those most apt to seduce us to life, the Greeks -- what then?  They of all people should have found tragedy necessary [hatten die Tragödie nötig]?  Even more -- art [Mehr noch -- die Kunst]?  What was Greek art for [Wozu -- griechische Kunst]? (BTSC:1)

            The Greeks required not only tragedy, Nietzsche tells us, but also art.   This suggests that some form of tragedy is inde­pendent from art; in Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (1876), Nietzsche names this form the tragic disposition [Gesinnung]:

if humanity itself must someday die out -- and who can doubt that! -- it has as its highest task for all coming ages the goal of matur­ing, individually and as a whole, in such a way that it meets its incipient demise [Untergange] with a tragic disposition; within this highest task lies everything ennobling about humanity; from its ultimate rejection [Abweisen] would result the most dismal [trübste] picture any friend of humanity could place before his soul. [...]  There is only one hope and one guarantee for the fu­ture of humanity:  it is that the tragic disposition not die out. (WB:4)

            Given that "tragedy," for Nietzsche, does not merely iden­tify a literary genre -- given that the "tragic disposition" is a feature of whatever in humanity Nietzsche deems noble -- it should come as no surprise that Nietzsche, in considering the birth of tragedy, is not pondering a question for literary his­torians.  His deeper concerns are introduced with a question:  "Is pessimism necessarily the sign of decline, decay [Verfall], failure [Missrathensein], of exhausted [ermüdeten] and weakened instincts? -- as it was for the Indians, as it certainly appears to be for us, 'modern' men and Europeans?" (BTSC:1).

            Taken together, the passages I have cited introduce the problem that motivates The Birth of Tragedy:   the situation in Nietzsche's Europe is compared to the historico-social developments of ancient Greece and of ancient India.  The basis for the association of the three is a feature common to all:  pessimism.  According to Nietzsche, Indian pessimism is symptomatic of exhaus­tion, decline, and failure [Missrathen­seins], whereas its Greek counterpart is among the features of "the most successful [wohl­gerathenste] [...] type of humanity to date."  Nietzsche suggests the fundamental difference between the two pessimisms through yet another series of questions:

 Is there a pessimism of strength?  An intellectual predilection for the hard, gruesome [schauerliche], evil, problematic aspects of ex­istence that arises from well-being [Wohlsein], overflowing health, from the fullness of existence? [...] A seductive, striving [versücherische] courage that sees clearly [des schärfsten Blicks] and demands the fearsome as the enemy, the worthy enemy on whom it can test its strength?  from whom it wants to learn what it means "to be afraid"? (BTSC:1)

            Pessimism -- like the radical nihilism with which it is so closely related -- may be a sign of strength or of weakness, of health or of sickness.  Hence, Nietzsche's non-antiquarian con­cern:  assuming that Europe is becoming increasingly pessimistic, what does its pessimism signify?  It "certainly appears to be" a sign of morbidity, but even if it now is, must it remain so?  Whether or not it must so remain, it will so remain, Nietzsche fears, unless the tragic disposition can come to flourish in Europe, as it did in Greece but not in India.  What is required is a rebirth of tragedy:  hence, Nietzsche's concern with the birth of tragedy, not as a unique occurrence now past, but rather as a recurring possibility. 

            If we are to resurrect tragedy, Nietzsche suggests, we must first understand it, comprehending both its birth from "the tragic myth" and "the extraordinary phenomenon of Dionysus," and its death, caused by "the Socraticism of morality, dialectic, satisfaction [Genügsamkeit], and the equanimity [Heiterkeit] of the theoretical man" (BTSC:1).  I reconstruct Nietzsche's cir­cumscription by returning to the passage that opens this chapter, in order now to examine it in detail.

            It is an eternal phenomenon:  the insatiable will always finds a way, by means of an illusion spread over things, to detain its creatures in life and to compel them to live on.  One is chained by the Socratic joy of knowing and the delusion of being able thereby to heal the eternal wound of existence; another is ensnared by art's seductive veil of beauty fluttering before his eyes; yet another by the metaphysical consolation that beneath the whirl of phenomena eternal life flows on indestruc­tibly -- to say nothing of the more common and almost more forceful illusions the will always has at hand. (BT:18)

            The first three forms of illusion are reserved for the "more nobly endowed natures" who have perceived "the burden and gravity of existence with deep displeasure."  Less reflective or insight­ful humans are more easily satisfied:  in Schopenhauer's words, "Human life, like all bad merchandise, is covered over by a gaudy paint job" (I:58).  Those who are taken in by the paint job find life simply worth living, they require no further justification.  Nietzsche's nobler natures, on the other hand, recognize that life is burdensome, but also that their choice is between life and nothing; illusions are required if they are to be "detained in life."

           Differently put:  the nobler natures are those who are aware, at least subliminally, of the wisdom of Silenus, which Nietzsche identifies as reflecting "Greek folk wisdom."  Silenus, a companion of Dionysus, is captured by King Midas and forced to reveal "the best and most desirable of all things for man."  His answer:

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. (BT:3 [Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, 1224ff])

            Silenus tells us we do best by dying as soon as possible.  Why do we reject his advice?  All of us, some of the time, some of us, all of the time, and most of us, most of the time, are presumably taken in by life's gaudy paint job, or perhaps by promises of afterlives.  Nietzsche suggests that those of us who are not, when we are not, rely, respectively, on three forms of illusion:  some embrace the Socratic delusion, some focus on an Apollinian veil, some resign themselves to Silenian consolation.

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Socratic Delusion