Download
1 / 16
160 likes | 362 Views
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Early: origin and nature of Greek tragedy; Apollonian spirit and Dionysiac spirit Critique of 'historicism' (i.e. Humanities at the university) (Dionysiac aesthetic) (Defence of classical tradition). 1. Origin of Greek Tragedy.
E N D
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) • Early: origin and nature of Greek tragedy; Apollonian spirit and Dionysiac spirit • Critique of 'historicism' (i.e. Humanities at the university) • (Dionysiac aesthetic) • (Defence of classical tradition)
1. Origin of Greek Tragedy • The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872) • against: • Winckelmann and Goethe(Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
Greek ideal of beauty(Johann Heinrich Tischbein, Goethe in Roman Campagna, 1807)
The Birth of Tragedy (1872) • Ursprung vs Anfang • The timeless generator: 'The Real and Original Being' – 'thing in itself' – 'unhappy creator' – 'creative principle' – 'imagination' • Division: Dionisos (music) and Apollo (speech) • Fluctuation in 5 Ages of ancient Greek history: bronze (presocratics), Homeric (world), Dionisiac intermezzo, Doric art, Attic tragedy (fusion)
Tragedy: chorus and actor • Diosysus' festivals in Diosysia (dance and chorus) • The actor, second and third actor in 5th c BC • Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides • Nietzsche's view
Birth of tragedy • Apollonian ('logical') assessment of existence: (Buddhism) • Irrational hope and joy • Criticism & art POSE as Apollonian, when in fact... etc. • Example: the Dionysiac spirit in George Eliot's essay, or in Taine
2. Nietzsche's critique of 'decadence' and 'historicism' • Untimely Meditations, 1876'The Cultural Philistine''On the Use and Abuse of History' • Human, All Too Human, 1878'From the Soul of Artists and Writers'
Decadent Historicism • 3 types of history: monumental, antiquarian, critical • Jacques Derrida's Grammatology, 1974
Nietzsche's attack on subjectivity • Beyond Good and Evil, 1886 • Descarte's cogito • 'Prejudices of Philosophers' • 'The Free Spirit' • Boscovich's atom
Ambiguity of Nietzsche's style • The will to truth which will still tempt us to many a venture, that famous truthfulness of which all philosophers so far have spoken with respect - what questions has this will to truth not laid before us! What strange, wicked, questionable questions! That is a long story even now - and yet it seems as if it had scarcely begun. Is it any wonder that we should finally become suspicious, lose patience, and turn away impatiently? that we should finally learn from this Sphinx to ask questions, too? Who is it really that puts questions to us here? What in us really wants "truth"?('On the Prejudices of Philosophers' in Beyond Good and Evil)
Nietzsche's impact on later thinkers • Derrida's Grammatology • Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilisation, 1965 • criticisms of exclusion and power structrues(e.g. Prof. Sikorska's Voices against Silence) • Alex Callinicos, 'The Jargon of Postmodernity' • Eugene Lunn's definition of modernism
Callinicos & Lunn • Eugene Lunn, Marxism and Modernism, 1982 • Aesthetic of Self-Consciousness or Self-Reflexiveness • Simultaneity, Juxtaposition, or 'Montage' • Paradox, Ambiguity, Uncertainty • 'Dehumanization' and the Demise of [the notion of] the Integrated, Individual Subject or Personality
Possible exam questions • Nietzsche and... (Derrida, Foucault)- Nietzsche as grammatologist- Nietzsche as critic of objectivity and logic • (Discuss Nietzsche's birth of Greek tragedy.)
