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The Anatomy of Nietzsche's Transformation of Dionysus Thomas Drew Philbeck

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The Anatomy of Nietzsche's Transformation of Dionysus Thomas Drew Philbeck Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2007 The Anatomy of Nietzsche's Transformation of Dionysus Thomas Drew Philbeck Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES THE ANATOMY OF NIETZSCHE’S TRANSFORMATION OF DIONYSUS By THOMAS DREW PHILBECK A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2007 Copyright © 2007 Thomas Drew Philbeck All Rights Reserved The members of the Committee approve this dissertation of Thomas Drew Philbeck defended on May 25th, 2007. _____________________________ Mariarmen Martinez Professor Directing Dissertation _____________________________ John Marincola Outside Committee Member _____________________________ David Kangas Committee Member _____________________________ David Johnson Committee Member Approved: ______________________________________________________ David Johnson, Chair, Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii To Garland H. Allen iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABBREVIATIONS………………………………………………………….…………...v ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………..vi PREFACE………………………………………………………………………………viii INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………...……...1 CHAPTER I: SCHOPENHAUER AND THE WILL……………….………….……..10 CHAPTER II: NIETZSCHE’S PHILOSOPHY OF BECOMING……………...……55 CHAPTER III: ROMANTICISM, PHILOLOGY, AND CULTURE………………...101 CHAPTER IV: NIETZSCHE’S “UNTIMELY” HISTORICAL MOVE………...……141 SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS…………………………………………..……….182 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………….….…………………………………………………….193 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH…………………………………………………………..201 iv ABBREVIATIONS Nietzsche Books BT The Birth of Tragedy UM Untimely Meditations HA Human, All Too Human GS The Gay Science BGE Beyond Good and Evil D Daybreak Z Thus Spoke Zarathustra GM On the Genealogy of Morals TI Twilight of the Idols AC The Anti-Christ EH Ecce Homo Essays and Lectures “Attempt” Attempt at Self-Criticism, Preface to BT 2nd publication, 1886 DW The Dionysian Worldview GrS The Greek State HC Homer’s Contest HCP Homer and Classical Philology PPP The Pre-Platonic Philosophers PTG Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks OS On Schopenhauer OT On Teleology WPh We Philologists Kant CPR Critique of Pure Reason Schelling STI System of Transcendental Idealism v Schopenhauer WWR World as Will and Representation Volume 1 WWR 2 World as Will and Representation Volume 2 FR Four-fold Root of Sufficient Reason PP Parerga and Paralipomena Anthologies NCT Nietzsche and The Classical Tradition NA Nietzsche and Antiquity Others DK Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker – Diels/Kranz TM Truth and Method – Hans Georg Gadamer NPF Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future – James Porter MVD “The Modern View of Dionysus from Nietzsche to Girard” – Albert Henrichs NR The Nietzsche Reader – Keith Ansell Pearson and Duncan Large NT Nietzsche on Tragedy – Silk and Stern vi ABSTRACT This dissertation considers the construction and conception of Dionysus in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, especially the components of his thought that present the god to the modern era. The structure of the dissertation provides four ‘genealogical moments’ in Nietzsche’s adoption and transformation of the deity. These moments are intended to distinguish Nietzsche’s Dionysus from earlier Romantic and Renaissance treatments of the god, and to demonstrate the interdisciplinary elements of his composition. The first two chapters articulate the combination of philosophical and philological influences that seize Nietzsche’s attention and become part of the philosophical structure of Dionysus. They argue that Nietzsche’s Dionysus is a response to the tradition of German Idealism, especially the problematic of subjectivity. Arthur Schopenhauer’s influence is critical, though Nietzsche reaches back to Greek philosophy before Plato in order to find a suitable cosmological perspective in which to ground his figure of Dionysus. Employing and transforming Schopenhauerian notions of subjectivity, I argue that Nietzsche creates an image of Dionysus that he supports with Heraclitean Becoming and Democritean Atomism. The final two chapters argue that Nietzsche’s transformation of Dionysus is complete once he reconfigures the purpose of the deity, making him a radical critique of nineteenth-century historical method. Nietzsche’s Dionysus also emerges out of a particular matrix of the nineteenth-century Zeitgeist, wherein Nietzsche is influenced by the historical methods of his colleague Jacob Burckhardt and attempts to evince the anthropological mechanisms of philology. Finally, I argue that Nietzsche’s reconstitution of history in terms of psychological modalities of being solidifies Dionysus in his modern form and represents Nietzsche’s overall response to the Idealist metaphysical problematic of subjectivity. vii PREFACE This project began with an inspiration that now seems quite distant from the final product. In Nietzsche’s writings, especially those that put forth his notion of Dionysus and the Dionysian, I noticed several structures of reasoning that appeared analogous to some Eastern philosophical principles, especially in Buddhism. Still, while it seemed that he espoused similar structures of thinking with Eastern philosophies, he certainly showed some contempt for Buddhism in explicit statements from his later writings. This encouraged me to look for Eastern influence in Nietzsche’s background to try and work out the contradictions. Immediately, Schopenhauer’s influence on Nietzsche began to answer my questions concerning Nietzsche’s incomplete considerations of Eastern philosophies. Schopenhauer was certainly one of the most knowledgeable of his generation, in terms of the appreciation of Hinduism and Buddhism, and it is clear that Nietzsche did not reach this level of familiarity with them. Armed with Schopenhauer’s influence on Nietzsche’s philosophy and especially on the seemingly eastern contexts of Nietzsche’s Dionysus, I began to visualize how Dionysus, presented in the twentieth-century as a god of epiphany and violence by Karl Kerenyi, Walter Otto, Marcel Detienne, and many more, may have had his origins in Nietzsche’s work. This, of course, appeared not just to be a consequence of Nietzsche’s work, but to be the extension of Schopenhauer’s easterly, if not Eastern, perspective. My first instinct was to wonder whether or not Eastern philosophical principles were necessary for a relevant conception of Dionysus. After all, it is old hat that the ancient Greeks thought that Dionysus was a wandering god who had moved late into the Greek mainland. Never mind that recently archaeologists have placed Dionysus in Greece as early as the 12th century BCE. Apparently, the archaic and classical Greeks did not know this, or it stands to reason Herodotus would not have equated Dionysus with Osiris and exclaimed that the viii Dionysian worship was directly attributable to Egyptian influence. At any rate, the project to see if the ancient Dionysus and modern Dionysus were both dependent upon Eastern ideals presented itself as unique and intriguing. It is here that I would like to thank the members of my committee, who encouraged me to do research and especially to continue to focus on the tangible aspects of such a project. In working to find the correlations between the ancient and modern Dionysus, as well as the correlations between modern classical scholarship and Nietzsche’s Dionysus, I realized that, in order to begin the project I wanted, I would need to know exactly where Nietzsche’s Dionysus originated. Naturally, I went to the library, scoured the Internet, and thumbed multitudes of journal articles. Though I found synopses that were relevant, and some texts that devoted several pages to Dionysus, I found no text that was primarily devoted to delivering the intellectual composition of Dionysus and demonstrating how and where Nietzsche created his version of the deity. Since this step was missing from the beginning, I listened to my committee and pursued this area as the main focus of my dissertation. Though the final product is very narrow and somewhat distant from the grand vista of my original thought, I have learned a great deal from this experience and from taking the opportunity to fill in a gap in the record about one of philosophy’s and mythology’s most interesting characters. I certainly could not have accomplished this on my own. I would especially like to thank Maricarmen Martinez for her steadfast encouragement and productively insightful criticisms. Without them, this project would not have been possible. I would also like to thank David Kangas for his invaluable guidance during the early stages of this project, when it was easiest to go astray. A special thank you to David Johnson and the Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities for the financial support and assistantships that have made my goals possible, and thank you to John Marincola for his always uplifting demeanor. Everyone should be so pleasant to work with. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their support and their ix patience. They never restricted me from following a path of my own, and that is a rarer gift than one would suppose. x INTRODUCTION The goal of this dissertation is to establish the ideas and events in Nietzsche’s
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