Two important readings in concert this coming week: Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Idea (just the Introduction, and Book III) and two essays from Nietzsche that you have not had assigned before even though they are contained in our The Birth of Tragedy book. We will have Calls & OCF on these.
Schopenhauer:
Schopenhauer is a precursor to Nietzsche. But he’s also a vital follow-up to Kant, as well as to the German Idealists’ (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel) emphasis on the ‘will’ that drives both Nature (as realm of necessity) and Freedom (as realm of consciousness). His thought also anticipates (with variations) much of what comes in Heidegger and in French Existentialism on issues of Angst, Abyss, and Nothingness.
- Consider how he compresses, dramatizes, and intensifies the philosophical points of reference through which you’ve recently tracked the emergence of ‘Aesthetics’ in Winckelmann, Burke, and Schiller: subjectivity, nature, teleology, beauty, and the truth of the world. Consider how he manages to evoke a mood opposite of Winckelmann, draws on a dash of Plato, yet implies that Reason is not per se primary.
- Consider how his title names an intensification of and supplement to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: The world as I know it is a field of Representation (the phenomenal world of appearances), The world as such in its ground is pervasively Will (the noumenal world). Consider how the first obtains on the basis of the second and is the lens through which we endure the ceaseless striving of reality and selves.
- Consider how Art (as an event of representation, yet more) can offer a momentary relief from the pervasive realm of will/desire. Consider how aesthetic experience involves us with objects of representation, though ones somehow not bound by the parameters of space/time. Examine how, for Schopenhauer, there is a collaboration of Platonic Ideas and Kantian Disinterestedness (in an emancipating way) in our experience of works of art (perhaps especially music), and how Beauty offers consolation.
Nietzsche:
- In “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense” (1873) Nietzsche famously states that truth is “a mobile army of metaphors” (146) and that people “have an unconquerable urge to let themselves be deceived” (151) by the pretense of ‘intellect’ and the assurances of good ‘feelings’ and reassuring ‘concepts.’ Ever zealous in their “drive to truth”, people subject themselves to the “rule of abstractions” (146) and the purported correctness that science (in broad sense) offers, and along the way forget to practice the genuine power of imagination (148). Man “forgets himself as a subject, and indeed as an artistically creative subject” (148). So the core problem is that the urge for truth plays out as an urge to be deceived (150-51). Nature, language, imagination, and intuition are key points of reference for Nietzsche’s argument, as is the ‘appearance’ factor in scientific knowledge. One sometimes wonders if his closing reflection on the ‘man of reason’ and the ‘man of intuition’ relates to what he elsewhere calls the Apolline and Dionysiac drives in ancient Greece (open question). As you work through his argument try to sort out how issues of art/imagination are central to the problem of deception, on one hand, and possibly a corrective force on the other.
- “The Dionysiac World View” (1870) is like an abstract for The Birth of Tragedy. In an electrifying style, he traces the dialectical course of ancient Greek art and culture in terms of the drives represented by the gods – Apollo and Dionysos. Apollo goes with the power and phenomena of dreams, images (semblance), beauty, rhythm, optimism, virtue, and order; man ‘plays with dreams.’ Dionysos goes with intoxication, nature, clearmindedness, the divine in man, harmony, ecstatic festival and excess as truth; man becomes ‘a work of art.’ Both drives — the ‘beautiful dream’ and the ‘intoxication of suffering’ (126) — are in a state of becoming, and it seems that the primary variable (constant?) in the story of their relation is the Will, the issue Nietzsche learned from Schopenhauer (and perhaps it riffs on Hegel’s ‘Spirit’ factor). It can be hard to know if Nietzsche likes or dislikes the phenomena he is describing – ex: the Babylon case of hetaerism on p.123, Greek cheerfulness on p.125, beautiful semblance on p.128, etc. But it is clear that he marvels at the emergence of Tragedy (126) and celebrates the dynamic unity of the Apolline and Dionysiac. See what you think his position is and the extent to which he is/is not concerned to take a ‘correct’ position on these things but 2 rather an embrace of whatever is life affirming. What do we learn from his focused discussion of Music, especially in relation to the Will (136)? Are there any differences from Schopenhauer (whom he adored early on) in these issues of Will and Art? How are traditionally ‘religious’ themes applied and adapted in his discussion (salvation, transfiguration…)? Is he speaking back to Aristotle’s Poetics? And does this Nietzsche essay set up the thinking that he spells out more directly (if you agree) in the ‘Truth and Lying’ essay?
