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Nietzsche on Suffering, Affirmation, and Modern Tragedy

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Nietzsche on Suffering, Affirmation, and Modern Tragedy NIETZSCHE ON SUFFERING, AFFIRMATION, AND MODERN TRAGEDY ________________________________________________________________________ A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board ________________________________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy ________________________________________________________________________ by Mary Kate Brennan May 2019 Examining Committee Members: Dr. Kristin Gjesdal, Advisory Chair, Philosophy Dr. Susan Feagin, Philosophy Dr. Lara Ostaric, Philosophy Dr. Andrew Huddleston, External Member, Birkbeck, University of London Dr. Paul Kottman, External Member, The New School for Social Research © Copyright 2019 Mary Kate Brennan All Rights Reserved ii ABSTRACT From the point of view of philosophy of art, tragedy is deeply perplexing: On the one hand, it depicts events that are painful, depressing, and difficult to watch. On the other, it is a genre that has been continually replicated, revered, and even enjoyed since the ancient Greeks. Writers like Aeschylus, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Beckett hold a place of high regard—they are authors of important works and worthy of our attention. In contemporary aesthetics, this problem is referred to as the paradox of tragedy. This, though, is not a new problem. Instead, philosophers since Aristotle have asked why we, the human species, create, seek out, contemplate, and take pleasure in tragedy. In my dissertation, I examine Nietzsche’s response to this problem in The Birth of Tragedy. His answer is as simple as it is subtle: tragedy is valuable because it allows us to affirm life. In his 1872 work, Nietzsche argues that tragedy was born out of the ancient Greek’s need to affirm life in the face of suffering. However, he is not entirely clear how, exactly, this affirmation is supposed to work. Put another way, the goal of my dissertation is to understand how tragedy can allow a spectator to find life valuable or meaningful, despite portraying actions and events that would seem to lead to the opposite effect. How can the end result of tragedy be an overcoming of suffering if its primary subject is pain and human misery? How can we walk away from Antigone’s needless death feeling that life is worth living? In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche famously claims that “only as an aesthetic phenomenon do existence and the world appear justified” (BT 24, see also BT 5). For iii Nietzsche, art, at its best, has the potential to make life appear worth living—art can justify life. What remains unclear, however, is why the Greeks needed this justification of their lives in the first place. Nietzsche’s assertion about tragedy’s life-affirming abilities rests on an assumption, namely that life itself is something that needs justification. The dissertation begins with an account of why the life of the ancient Greeks need affirming to begin with, which I identify in Nietzsche’s famous recounting of the Wisdom of Silenus: “the very best thing is utterly beyond your reach not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is to die soon” (BT 3). I continue by analyzing Nietzsche’s account of the ancient Greek response to this fundamental need: tragedy. In particular, I give an account of how, precisely, the Apolline and Dionysian artistic forces, which Nietzsche claims are combined harmoniously in tragedy, come together to provide the ancient Greek spectator with life affirmation. Nietzsche’s discussion of tragedy is couched in terms of the ancient Greeks, focusing on tragedies that have a chorus. This seems to leave little room in his account for tragedies without a chorus. Interestingly, Nietzsche’s discussion of modern tragedy contains several mentions of Shakespeare. This is made more interesting by the fact that, in his preparatory notebooks, Nietzsche intended to include an entire chapter on Shakespeare in The Birth of Tragedy, but ultimately chose to leave it out. An analysis of Nietzsche’s comments on Shakespeare makes it possible to identify a different paradigm of tragedy, including a different mode of life affirmation, operative in Shakespearian tragedy. This alternative paradigm is better suited for speaking to audiences of Nietzsche’s own declining culture. In this way, Nietzsche’s writings on Shakespeare iv highlight the historically sensitive nature of his theory of tragedy. While life affirmation may operate one way in ancient Greek tragedy, and in a similar way in Wagnerian opera, the cultural differences between ancient Greece and nineteenth-century Germany require different notions of life affirmation through tragedy. This project aims to show that despite leaving Shakespeare out of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche’s writings on Shakespeare can help us understand not only that art must be understood as situated culturally and historically, but also how life affirmation must change in different time periods and cultures. v DEDICATION For Buster and Biscuit. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I could not have completed this dissertation without the guidance, mentorship, support, friendship, and love of numerous people. For this, I am deeply grateful. First and foremost, I need to thank my dissertation adviser, Kristin Gjesdal for guiding me through this process. Without her consistent mentorship and support I would not be the scholar that I am today. Kristin has been incredibly generous with her time, offering thoughtful and thorough critiques of my work, providing me with priceless opportunities to meet other scholars working in my area, and offering a source of inspiration. I have been lucky to have her as a role model. She has taught me the importance of intellectual and personal generosity, work ethic, and attention to detail. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work as the editorial assistant to The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism when Susan Feagin was Editor. When it came time to form my dissertation committee, Susan was kind enough to lend her expertise in the philosophy of tragedy to my project. In my time working with Susan at The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, she not only taught me the ins and outs of academic publishing, but was also generous enough to read and comment on my work. Her keen eye, sharp mind, and gregarious nature made her a pleasure to work with and learn from. My most sincere thanks go to Lara Ostaric for her comments, time, and support. I am grateful to Paul Kottman for lending his expertise to my project, which has benefited my research. I would also like to thank Andrew Huddleston for his encouragement and thoughtful commentary on my work. His writing on Nietzsche has been a model for my own. vii Current and former members of the Temple University Philosophy Department have been supportive, welcoming, and encouraging. In particular, I would like to thank Miriam Solomon, department chair and former director of graduate studies, for her guidance and assurance throughout my time in the program. Espen Hammer, Colin Chamberlain, Owen Ware, and David Wolfsdorf all deserve thanks for generously providing feedback and guidance on my work. I would also like to thank Peter Logan and Petra Goedde at The Center for Humanities at Temple, where I was fortunate enough to spend two years as a fellow. My fellow graduate students have made a huge impact on my life at Temple. My endless thanks go to Meryl Llumba, who copy-edited this dissertation and provided comments on earlier versions of this work. James Taplin has been a wonderful friend; his decision to write his dissertation on Nietzsche only made our friendship stronger. I would like to thank John Dyck, who started the graduate program the same year as me, for his constant emotional support and friendship. Former Temple student and self-professed Nietzsche-enthusiast, Tom Hanauer has been an invaluable intellectual support, not to mention wonderful friend. In general, the community of graduate students has made Temple a wonderful place to be. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I would like to thank my family. When I was trying to decide between following in my father and grandfather’s footsteps and becoming a lawyer or my pursuing my own passion for philosophy, my parents are the ones who convinced me to pursue the latter. They have always been there for me and supported me in whatever I wanted to do. I’d like to thank my sister, Allison, for being an viii amazing sibling and for being interested in (or at least pretending to be) what I have to say about philosophy. My husband, Daniel, has been a constant support throughout this process and has consistently put up with me during all of the natural periods of frustration and anxiety that are part of graduate school. Finally, I want to thank my furry little research assistants, Buster and Biscuit, who have quite literally kept me company during the writing of this dissertation. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii DEDICATION ................................................................................................................... vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................. vii INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................. xi CHAPTER 1. THE WISDOM OF SILENUS: SUFFERING IN THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY ............. 1 2. LIFE JUSTIFICATION
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