Sizzlin-S-minilla

“On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense” exemplifies the foundation of Nietzsche’s thought upon which “The Birth of Tragedy” and “Human, All Too Human” rest. The themes in “The Birth of Tragedy” are clearly elaborations of a more general philosophical insight--one illustrated in Nietzsche’s essay, written a year later, “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense.” In this composition, he returns to his roots of thought--from which he starts going in a different direction, separate from the “The Birth of Tragedy [’s]”path of aesthetic theodicy. One outgrowth of this new sensibility that will be largely focused on in the following paper is “Human, All Too Human.” In this piece, an entirely different Nietzsche from “The Birth of Tragedy,” emerges. His new attitude towards science and art will be further discussed in the following. By a thorough investigation of “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense,” it will become clear that the seed for Nietzsche’s love for science, and distaste for metaphysics--in “Human, All Too Human”--is present throughout his earlier writings. Nietzsche’s shift of aestheticism to abstraction, from “The Birth of Tragedy” to “Human, All Too Human” is not a dialectical one, but rather, a change in temperament--an experimental journey down a new path--a choice made between perspectives posed in “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense.” In this way, his seemingly incompatible views can be reconciled by their shared origin. Nietzsche creates a choice for the reader in “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense,” by bringing him or her to accept that all different perspectives are equally ungrounded (that language itself is a systematic falsification of reality--that all ways of viewing the world rest on illusions), and that one must inexorably decide to deceive oneself some way or another. Nietzsche does not make any obvious normative judgments as to whether the illusion of rationality or art is better, but he does compare and contrast their utilitarian value. This implicit fork-in-the-road is a good point of departure to begin inspecting “The Birth of Tragedy,” and “Human, All Too Human.” After these two works have been touched on, a return to Nietzsche’s original either/or in “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense,” will be in due time.SECTION 1: Nietzsche’s View on Art in “The Birth of Tragedy”In “The Birth of Tragedy,” Nietzsche argues that good art can bring about psychic balance by fusing together two distinctly different human tendencies. Humans naturally urge to categorize, divide, and systematize the world, while at other times, humans urge to do the opposite--to deindividuate--to unify everything into one unintelligible chaos of difference, and indifference. The tendency to individuate, and view the world in its correspondence with one’s thoughts, is called Apollonian. This tendency is represented by the eye, which individuates. The Apollonian Greeks perceived everything in their own image; their gods left nothing unexplained. Nietzsche explains that this tendency originates in dreaming and is applied naturally as imagery and plastic art such as sculpture, painting and epic poetry. This tendency’s antithesis--one’s natural urge to join a primal unity, is Dionysian--and originates in drunkenness. Nietzsche’s metaphysical prejudices of the time brought him to find the Dionysian arts, such as music, lyrical poetry, and other rhythmic/melodic forms, representative of “true” reality, and thus higher than the Apollonian. The Dionysian tendency to deindividuate is analogous to Schopenhauer’s underlying will of which all phenomena are manifestations. These individuated manifestations, according to Schopenhauer, fight relentlessly against each other for the prolongation of their own existence. Individual manifestations come and go, but the underlying will self-perpetuates eternally. All things are thus related in a primal unity. This account leads to Schopenhauer’s global pessimism, because he sees the human condition as nothing other than a fluctuation between anxiety and boredom. One is anxious to be fulfilled, but fulfillment is fleeting--since boredom sets in and new wishes arise. Life is a contradiction; one wishes to live without suffering, but suffering is inevitable. Nietzsche shares many similarities with Schopenhauer, largely because Schopenhauer was such a great influence to Nietzsche as an up and coming philosopher. In “The Birth of Tragedy,” Nietzsche openly shares Schopenhauer’s metaphysics (just not his pessimism), but later, in “Human, All Too Human,” Nietzsche grows increasingly suspicious of Schopenhauer. It is quite important, for now, to understand “The Birth of Tragedy” as a reply to Schopenhauer’s pessimism. The Greek influence on the book is chiefly due to Nietzsche’s admiration for their ability to acknowledge reality in its fundamental absurdity, and still justify living pleasantly. Nietzsche knew from such stories as The Myth of Silenus (BOT pg. 113) that the Greeks were well aware of the intrinsic meaninglessness of life. In the story, according to Nietzsche depiction of it in “The Birth of Tragedy,” the demigod Silenus tells King Midas that non existence is preferable to human existence. Still, the Greeks avoided nihilism. Nietzsche’s analysis of early Greek culture led to his discovery of the saving grace, and pinnacle of aesthetic redemption and theodicy--attic Tragedy. It was through an even more thorough investigation that Nietzsche revealed the psychological tension underlying it. Another important characteristic of Nietzsche’s understanding of aesthetic forms is that the Apollonian originates in the Dionysian (a baby is first born into a world of complete unintelligibility, and then, as he or she develops, a world of intelligibility becomes revealed through language). Thus, all art is originarily grounded in, and dependant on, the Dionysian tendency to return to a primal unity by deindividuation. Either one of these tendencies, devoid of the other, is insufficient as a means of offering stable mental health. The two tendencies do offer some pleasures on their own: the Apollonian brings forth a moderate--calm and trance-like aesthetic state of consciousness, and the Dionysian--a pleasurable ecstatic and energized state, but constant (Dionysian) self annihilation is nauseating, and constant (Apollonian) teleological lucidity of all natural phenomena comes with a nagging sense of illusion. Nietzsche claims that the pre-Socratic Greeks attained psychic balance by marrying the Apollonian and Dionysian in Attic tragedy. He spends a lot of time discussing, in detail, how exactly this was done--but for now, all that is important is a basic understanding of Nietzsche’s general attitude towards art when writing “The Birth of Tragedy.” He felt that the rational life-view, the natural enemy of intuition, beginning with Socrates, is a nihilistic denial of life--that in its essential ignorance of the natural artistic forms (Apollonian, Dionysian), it cannot reconcile the inevitabilities of life, but must remain forever bound to a futile attempt to know the world and correct it. In “The Birth of Tragedy,” Nietzsche contrasts the intuitive “man of instinct”--who has a conciliatory attitude towards reality, and justifies life as an aesthetic phenomenon through Tragedy’s redemptive nature--with the “theoretical man”--who cannot make sense of artistic redemption, since Tragedy’s metaphysical solace is not something that can be rationalized. The tragic Greeks relied on metaphors, myths, and symbols, to relate to the world--while Socrates insisted on transparency and clarity; intolerant of Tragedy’s enigmatic character. Logical relations directed his premium on argumentation. The man of knowledge, in his demand of an account, cannot comprehend the intuitive wisdom of the Tragic Greek. Nietzsche describes Euripides’ failed attempts of writing “Tragic” plays through a corrupted Socratic perspective. These plays did not offer a healthy way to embrace one’s fate as a human being. Euripides ended up paving the way for the theoretical man’s rule over life by creating a new, more reasonable, form of cultural entertainment: Attic comedy. In “The Birth of Tragedy,” Nietzsche argues that the modern theoretical man’s rule over life must be replaced by a conciliatory outlook of aesthetic redemption--similar to that of the tragic pre-Socratic culture. Art can give human beings metaphysical solace by revealing the true nature of reality in a graspable way.SECTION 2: Nietzsche’s View on Art in “Human, All Too Human”Nietzsche shows a radically different attitude towards art in his later piece “Human, All Too Human.” In the first section of the book, called “Of First and Last Things,” he explains how artists and poets serve as nothing other than a reminder of an earlier primitive stage in humanity--an Apollonian tendency to accept one’s first plausible hypothesis as true. This is contrasted with “The Birth of Tragedy,” in which Nietzsche argues that art reminds humanity of its true origin--the Dionysian. The ancient naiveté of the intuitive Greeks, in “The Birth of Tragedy,” is conceived of as a means of gaining insight into reality--while in “Human, All Too Human,” it is shown to be nothing other than an unsophisticatedly erroneous, and deceptive, way to make the world seem perfectly fit for human beings. Nietzsche argues that poets and artists impose false imaginary causes to their moods and states of mind. Such causal inferences are based on (Apollonian) dream logic, in which one posits a cause to explain the excitement of one’s sensibilities while asleep. As Nietzsche says in aphorism 13, “the dream is the seeking and positing of the [supposed] causes of the[e] excitement of the sensibilities.” (HATH 18) While dreaming, one is not at all skeptical of one’s hypotheses, as one is while awake. The first plausible explanation of a sensation that occurs is accepted as the truth. For instance, one may infer, in a dream, that one’s feet are coiled by a snake, when, in actuality, straps are tied around one’s ankles. (HATH 18) Such causes are inferred because during the day one learns that sense impressions are occasioned by a cause. The mind, then, is provided by the imagination, borrowed images (sight-impressions) from the day, to serve as causes for the chaotic sense data (sleeping position, breathing, outside noises, blood pumping, twitching limbs, etc.) of the sleeping body. The dream seems real when a dreamer believes that the cause is experienced first, then the sensual experience itself, when really the cause is inferred from the effect, after the effect. This dream-logic inference is done so quickly and naturally, that the order in which the sensation and the cause are experienced seems either simultaneous or reversed. He claims that “for many millennia mankind also drew [dream-logic conclusions] when awake: the first causa that entered the mind as an explanation of anything that required explaining satisfied it and was accounted truth.”(HATH 18) In “The Birth of Tragedy,” Nietzsche claims that the Apollonian tendency originates from, and, if used correctly--redeems the Dionysian tendency humanity is grounded in--whereas in “Human, All Too Human,” he argues that all artistic delineation is done in an Apollonian way; including Dionysian arts. Art tells humans nothing about reality--it can only go so far as to elucidate a strictly human method of representing the world in man’s image.SECTION 3: What Accounts for these Differences?What can account for this change in Nietzsche’s aestheticism from “The Birth of Tragedy” to “Human, All Too Human?” Is this a necessary dialectical transition, or an experimental move? -It is an experimental one. Nietzsche is testing the wasters of aesthetic and rational perspectives. In an essay written one year after “The Birth of Tragedy,” called “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense,” Nietzsche begins re-weighing the advantages and disadvantages of the intuitive life view, compared to the theoretical life view. He begins by arguing that neither view is a true expression of reality. He argues that language itself, through which reality supposedly is grasped, is not a representation of anything from without, of things themselves, but rather is necessarily distanced from absolute “truth.” In forming a concept, whether scientific or metaphorical (which Nietzsche would argue are ultimately the same) language systematically falsifies reality by arbitrarily ignoring certain characteristics of things to fit a preconceived notion. Sense data, which is fundamentally chaotic, is imposed upon by the human understanding. This selective perception begins with a nerve stimulus being translated into an image, feeling, or sound. By this point the original data is already manipulated greatly, but the mind goes further to imitate this sensation by a verbal expression. By the time this verbal expression is corresponded with a written word, the original entity that one believes is being represented is actually completely unknown. Nietzsche’s linguistic idealism in “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense,” is later explicated in “Human, All Too Human.” As he says in aphorism 11,“…mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world, a place it took to be so firmly set that, standing upon it, it could lift the rest of the world off its hinges and make itself master of it. To the extent that man has for long ages believed in the concepts and names of things as aeternae veritates he has appropriated to himself that pride by which he raised himself above the animal: he really thought that in language he possessed knowledge of the world. The sculptor of language was not so modest as to believe that he was only giving things designations, he conceived rather that with words he was expressing supreme knowledge of things; language is, in fact, the first stage of the occupation with science. Here, too, it is the belief that the truth has been found out of which the mightiest sources of energy have flowed. A great deal later - only now - it dawns on men that in their belief in language they have propagated a tremendous error.” (HATH 16)With this said what is important about a good life view, for Nietzsche, is not its ability to represent reality correctly, but its utility for life. Thus, he compares the different perspectives’ usefulness in dealing with life. Nietzsche acknowledges the intuitive man’s advantageousness, in his ability to attain positive happiness. This slight advantage, however, is accompanied by a serious disadvantage. The intuitive man does not recognize the means by which he achieves his happiness. He happens to find himself in an ideal situation and forgets that he suffered to get there. “Where the man of intuition, as it was once the case in ancient Greece, wields his weapons more mightily and victoriously than his contrary, a culture can take shape, given favourable conditions, and the rule of art over life can become established; all the expressions of a life lived thus are accompanied by pretence, by the denial of neediness, by the radiance of metaphorical visions, and indeed generally by the immediacy of deception.” (OTL 152) This conflicts with his earlier view that the sophisticated intuitive tragic Greek’s rule over life was a consciously orchestrated one, in marring the Apollonian and Dionysian. In “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense,” Nietzsche goes on to further describe the intuitive man’s denial of neediness. Practical tools--that were originally invented for survival--are assigned new purposes: to serve as only objects offering aesthetic pleasure.“Neither the house, nor the gait, nor the clothing, nor the pitcher of clay gives any hint that these things were invented by neediness; it seems as if all of them were intended to express siblime happiness and Olympian cloudlessness and, as it were, a playing with earnest things.” (OTL 153)Through this form of self-deception, the intuitive man does not learn from experience, and thus, “when he suffers, he suffers more severely.” (153) Nietzsche then discusses the man of concept and abstraction, who does not seek a positive aesthetic happiness, but rather, a negative gratification: the absence of pain. The slight disadvantage of rationality’s inability to experience positive indulgence is outweighed by its facility to use its “knowledge of how to cope with the chief calamities of life by providing for the future, by prudence and regularity.” (OTL 152) The rational man abstracts from the superficial attachments of individual human beings, to perform a “masterpiece of pretense” (OTL 153)--transcendence from misfortune. Of course, the rational perspective is not more metaphysically true--it is no more (or less) representative of reality, than the aesthetic. While Nietzsche’s view on the metaphysical significance of art does change throughout his works, his distrust in the scientific ideal of attaining absolute objective knowledge does not. Much later, in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche argues that an individual’s perspective of truth is the only truth attainable. Ultimately, one’s prejudices cannot be abstracted from. The speculative mode of thought is merely one of many infinitely biased perspectives--none of which are true to objective reality in itself. In aphorism five of Beyond Good and Evil, he argues that although scientists and philosophers “pose as having discovered and attained their real opinions through the self-evolution of a cold, pure, divinely unperturbed dialectic,” what really “happens at bottom is that a prejudice, a notion, an ‘inspiration,’ generally a desire of the heart sifted and made abstract, is defended by them with reasons sought after the event” (BGE I. 5). Thus, philosophical systems, according to Nietzsche, are founded not by reason itself--disinterested in the actual philosopher--but are “a confession on the part of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir” (BGE I.6). A philosopher does not discover objective values of the world from without, but creates a world in his or her own image.