The Good Health of Ugly. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, "Attempt at a Self-Criticism," 4

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. The original text is reproduced below.]

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Birth of Tragedy

Attempt at a Self-Criticism

4

Nietzsche asks what the Dionysian is, and what is the origin of Greek tragedy. This is a "difficult psychological question." We need to know if the Greeks' sensitivity to pain remained constant or if it changed radically. And we inquire, does the Greek craving for beauty stem from a deeper emotional suffering? But if the Greeks craved beauty out of some inherent privation, then how do we explain their craving for the ugly: "the good, severe will of the older Greeks to pessimism, to the tragic myth, to the image of everything underlying existence that is frightful, evil, a riddle, destructive, fatal?" If we reverse the logic, then we would have to say that joy, strength, health, and flourishing are the cause for the Greek desire for the ugly.

We also wonder what is the significance of Dionysian madness. It is the source of tragic and comic art. But if it is the source of the comic, would that mean there are neuroses of health and youthfulness?

Nietzsche also wonders about Dionysus' form of satyr. Why is he both god and billy goat?

Also, why is there a Greek chorus? Did the Greeks experience "visions and hallucinations shared by entire communities or assemblies at a cult?"

The Greeks as a people flourished at the time they developed tragedy. So was it madness that drove them to tragedy and pessimism?

While on the contrary, were the Greeks driven to optimism and logic during times when their culture was weakened?

Could it be possible that, in spite of all "modern ideas" and the prejudices of a democratic taste, the triumph of optimism, the gradual prevalence of rationality, practical and theoreticalutilitarianism, no less than democracy itself which developed at the same time, might all have been symptoms of a decline of strength, of impending old age, and of physiological weariness? (Kaufmann, 21d)

These are the grave questions that Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy will pursue. But there is yet a graver question in our inquiry: What is morality's significance from the perspective of being alive?

From the original text:

4

Indeed, what is Dionysian?— This book contains an answer: one "who knows" is talking, the initiate and disciple of his god. Now I should perhaps speak more cautiously and less eloquently about such a difficult psychological question as that concerning the origin of tragedy among the Greeks. The question of the Greek's relation to pain, his degree of sensitivity, is basic: did this relation remain constant? Or did it change radically? The question is whether his ever stronger craving for beauty, for festivals, pleasures, new cults was rooted in some deficiency, privation, melancholy, pain? Supposing that this were true—and Pericles (or Thucydides) suggests as much in the great funeral oration—how should we then have to explain the origin of the opposite craving, which developed earlier in time, the craving for the ugly; the good, severe will of the older Greeks to pessimism, to the tragic myth, to the image of everything underlying existence that is frightful, evil, a riddle, destructive, fatal? What, then, would be the origin of tragedy? Perhaps joy, strength, overflowing health, overgreat fullness? And what, then, is the significance, physiologically speaking, of that madness out of which tragic and comic art developed—the Dionysian madness? How now? Is madness perhaps not necessarily the symptom of degeneration, decline, and the final stage of culture? Are there perhaps—a question for psychiatrists—neuroses ofhealth? of the youth and youthfulness of a people? Where does that synthesis of god and billy goat in the satyr point? What experience of himself, what urge compelled the Greek to conceive the Dionysian enthusiast and primeval man as a satyr? And regarding the origin of the tragic chorus: did those centuries when the Greek body flourished and the Greek soul foamed over with health perhaps know endemic ecstasies? Visions and hallucinations shared by entire communities or assemblies at a cult? How now? Should the Greeks, precisely in the abundance of their youth, have had the will to the tragic and have been pessimists? Should it have been madness, to use one of Plato's phrases [allusion to Plato's Phaedrus, 244a], that brought the greatestblessings upon Greece? On the other hand, conversely, could it be that the Greeks became more and more optimistic, superficial, and histrionic precisely in the period of dissolution and weakness—more and more ardent for logic and logicizing the world and thus more "cheerful" and "scientific"? How now? Could it be possible that, in spite of all "modern ideas" and the prejudices of a democratic taste, the triumph ofoptimism, the gradual prevalence of rationality, practical and theoreticalutilitarianism, no less than democracy itself which developed at the same time, might all have been symptoms of a decline of strength, of impending old age, and of physiological weariness? These, and not pessimism? Was Epicure an optimist—precisely because he was afflicted?— — It is apparent that it was a whole cluster of grave questions with which this book burdened itself. Let us add the gravest question of all. What, seen in the perspective [Optik] of life, is the significance of morality? ...

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. in Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Transl. & Ed. Walter Kaufmann. New York: The Modern Library, 1966.

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