StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

Attic tragedy: the metaphor is the message - Essay Example

Cite this document
Summary
If scholars continue to consider The Birth of Tragedy a flawed, contradictory argument it is more a consequence of Nietzsche’s sometimes confusing analysis than his passion for the subject of Greek Tragedy; his writing has a breathless quality to it and barrels along with the excitement of an intellectual Whodunnit…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER93.4% of users find it useful
Attic tragedy: the metaphor is the message
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "Attic tragedy: the metaphor is the message"

Attic Tragedy: The Metaphor is the Message If scholars continue to consider The Birth of Tragedy a flawed, contradictory argument it is more a consequence of Nietzsche's sometimes confusing analysis than his passion for the subject of Greek Tragedy; his writing has a breathless quality to it and barrels along with the excitement of an intellectual Whodunnit. In fact, it is a Whodunnit, for Nietzsche's intent is to explain the beginnings of tragedy and then to reveal who killed it. This journey from birth to death may contain some misrepresentations and hyperbole but it never lacks a compelling story-line, fascinating us with an Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy which Nietzsche resolves before introducing his villains: Euripides and Socrates. If, along the way, it is clear that Nietzsche preferrs the voice of Dionysus to Apollo, we should not be surprised; the Greek God of wine and revelry allowed humans a means of accepting that "their entire existence . . . was based on a veiled substratum of suffering and knowledge."(26)1 The Dionysian voice and force expresses what is not apparent but which is elemental. While Apollo represents the rationality of appearance, Dionysus represents a deeper and more revelatory, necessary ingredient of tragedy: metaphor. Birth: Epic and Tragic To overcome their awareness of how tenuous existence was and to draw meaning from chaos, the Greeks imagined Gods that reflected human desires, unlike the Sky-Gods of Judeo-Christianity and Islam. In pre-Attic Greece, Rhapsodists such as Homer created Epics in which the Gods interacted with men. Such Gods, Nietzsche asserted, ". . . provide a justification for the life of man by living it themselves."(23) But because these Gods are, in fact, human creations, their existence is an illusory act which has the quality of dream more than reality. This does not invalidate their necessity but, in Nietzsche's analysis, satisfies only one aspect of the human condition or aesthetic: appearance. Writers of epics employed these Gods to create a world that explained the relationship of men to Gods but not men to men. It strove to be rational, like Apollo ("an ethical deity" of "moderation" and "self-knowledge"),(26) and to make Olympian order out of human chaos: the Wisdom of Apollo absolving Orestes of matricide, for example, although, as Nietzsche wrote, it is "redemption through illusion."(44) This is not to say that Nietzsche is disdainful of the Apollonian voice; he considers it an intrinsic part of the process that culminated in the aesthetic of Tragedy. To accomplish this culmination, Nietzsche argues that the changing role of the Chorus as well as the development of the Satyr in Greek Drama revealed another voice, antithetical to but not dismissive of Apollo: the voice of Dionysus. One could make a case that the voice and force of Dionysus is the irrational, but that would be incomplete, for Nietzsche charts its quite rational development in Parts 7 and 8 of The Birth of Tragedy. In asserting that "tragedy arose from the tragic chorus,"(36) he reminds us that the chorus represented "the populace as against the noble realm of drama proper," (Ibid) i.e. the Apollonian voice: appearance/illusion. He presses on to stress another component of Tragedy's birth: the Satyr. This figure, more to Nietzsche's temperament, is "a product of a longing for the primordial and the natural."(40) It is not Rousseau's Natural Savage but an expression of "the primal relationship between the thing itself ['the core of things'] and the world of appearances."(41) By uniting the ecstasy, the primal 'oneness,' of the Dionysian voice with the rational of the Apollonian, Nietzsche arrives at his (not always apparent) thesis: ". . . it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified."(32) By this he seems to imply that appearance/illusion and ecstasy alone are not enough but that in combination they allow one to construct a valid picture of humanity and, consequently, produce tragedy: human essence cannot be explained by appearance without metaphor. Nietzsche makes this clear when he writes, "For the true poet the metaphor is not a rhetorical figure but a representative image . . . in place of a concept."(42) In the ecstatic force lives the metaphor, and through metaphor what is not apparent can be revealed. Moreover, without the Dionysian component, Nietzsche cannot imagine tragedy; the Apollonian force would never have achieved it. Of the Apollonian Greeks, he writes, ". . . their entire existence, with all its beauty and moderation, was based on . . . suffering and knowledge, revealed to them by the Dionysian. . . Apollo could not live without Dionysus!"(26) In that statement - itself ecstatic - we apprehend Nietzsche's allegiance to Dionysus, his passionate belief in the cathartic good brought about by embracing the irrational/ecstatic elements, a subjectivity that "becomes a complete forgetting of the self."(17) Not until reality has become metaphor can it be Tragedy. Death: The Villains One of Nietzsche's misrepresentations referred to earlier is his depiction of Socrates. While one must have villains in a Whodunnit, by writing that "a profound illusion entered the world in the person of Socrates" and that the philosopher believed "rational thought . . . is capable of . . . correcting being,"(73) Nietzsche does seem to be stacking the deck. Moreover, his judgment of Euripides in considered by some to be excessively harsh.2 Nevertheless, one can understand why Nietzsche considered the two to be villains when he writes, ". . . of aesthetic Socratism, the chief law of which is . . . 'to be beautiful everything must first be intelligible.'"(62) This is a Socratic slap in Dionysus' face, a lopping off of his head, because it denies what Nietzsche believes to be the god's contribution to Tragedy: the subjugation of objectivity. Also, Euripides gives his characters "paradoxical thoughts" rather than "Apollonian contemplations, fiery emotions rather than Dionysiac ecstacies."(62) What Nietzsche seems to object to (his justifications for casting the two Athenians as murderers of tragedy are not always clear, frankly) is an abandonment of the darkness of human existence, its relentless chaos, and its replacement by appeals to "the good" or "virtue." Such is Nietzsche's understanding of the nature of tragedy, willful or not, that he cannot tolerate such simplicities because they are moral and Nietzsche does not see human existence in tragedy as needing a moral justification; it already has a far more profound one: metaphor. As he writes: "[W]e must see Greek tragedy as the Dionysiac chorus, continually discharging itself in an Apolline world of images."(43) It is a sometimes elusive distinction, one must admit, but there it is. In attacks that could be considered ironical coming from a philosopher, what Nietzsche most dislikes about Socrates is his dismissal of art and worship of science, of logic. One senses that the German despises attempts to compartmentalize the human condition, sneers at Socratic pursuits, because the world as Nietzsche sees it is, frankly, messy and should be accepted as messy. Socrates to him is guilty of creating an illusion in his single-minded pursuit of truth and beauty. Nietzsche would agree with Hegel, who asserted in Phenomenology of Mind that "Philosophy must beware of wishing to be edifying."(Hegel, 74)3 Finally, Nietzsche dispatches his villain with a most pointed question: "Might art even be a necessary correlative and supplement to science"(71) Requiescat In Pace Though sometimes confusing because passionate, Nietzsche nevertheless makes his case for the need of antithesis in The Birth of Tragedy. The Apollonian voice is required to describe what is apparent, even if its does so by what Nietzsche considers illusion. Without the ecstatic and troubling voice of Dionysus, however, drama - or art - could never have become Tragedy in Attic Greece. In being able to reveal human chaos, the often inchoate angst of the human condition, Dionysus provides us a most valuable tool - metaphor, because it is through metaphor that what is not apparent can be revealed. Works Cited 1. All parenthetical citations (with the exception of Hegel) refer to: Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Penguin Putnam, New York, 1993. 2. Tanner, Michael. Introduction. The Birth of Tragedy, By Friedrich Nietzsche. 1872. Penguin Putnam, New York, 1993. xxi. Tanner's analysis of Nietzsche's treatment of Socrates and Euripides is amusing and insightful. 3. The Hegel quotation is taken from the website: http://www.class.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/ToC/Hegel%20Phen%20ToC.htm. Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“Attic tragedy: the metaphor is the message Essay”, n.d.)
Attic tragedy: the metaphor is the message Essay. Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/philosophy/1533928-attic-tragedy-the-metaphor-is-the-message
(Attic Tragedy: The Metaphor Is the Message Essay)
Attic Tragedy: The Metaphor Is the Message Essay. https://studentshare.org/philosophy/1533928-attic-tragedy-the-metaphor-is-the-message.
“Attic Tragedy: The Metaphor Is the Message Essay”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/philosophy/1533928-attic-tragedy-the-metaphor-is-the-message.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Attic tragedy: the metaphor is the message

The Big Brother Metaphor

Before we go into a discourse on the Big Brother metaphor, let us first define what a metaphor is.... A metaphor is defined as a representation of an understanding of one theory or concept in terms of another because of the existence of some correlation or similarity between them (What is a metaphor).... The big brother metaphor is a model for decreasing the privacy of a person or an entity.... The big brother metaphor is also very crucial in the prevention of crimes, with the help of technology....
11 Pages (2750 words) Essay

Metaphors and Blends

Blending is another term whose function is mainly to integrate two concepts and this may be defined as conceptual integration or a ‘basic mental operation whose uniform structural and dynamic properties apply over many areas of thoughts and action, including metaphor and metonymy'....
9 Pages (2250 words) Essay

The Use of Metaphor

In order do to this, the The Use of metaphor in Psychology Introduction When a client enters the therapeutic process they are inundated with emotions and thought patterns that are often negative.... The physical metaphor also provides an opportunity for clients to “learn by doing” in order to learn from their experience.... In conclusion, Erikson was able to use metaphor to help clients move past issues to something more concrete in their understanding....
2 Pages (500 words) Article

Metaphors For HCI

The utilization of a metaphor allows foreign and abstract concepts to be easily and readily understood and grasped.... This paper will explore the importance of metaphors for… Additionally, it will expound on Lifestreams which is a better alternative to the desktop metaphor. Metaphors are very significant for Human Computer Interaction (HCI).... This is primarily because they enable the users to utilize their comprehension of everyday situations and Metaphors for HCI Reber (1992) defined a metaphor as a linguistic device that illustrates an concept via analogy....
2 Pages (500 words) Assignment

Metaphor Review

One of the key identities of this metaphor is for organization to know how they should relate as partners when they acquire new business and also to understand key business decisions.... One of the problems the gatekeeper discusses is more about how important a sales person is important in the organization and how it is important not to just employ… The gatekeeper reflects that most importantly that it is good to scrutinize the people being recruited for the job in the gatekeeper metaphor the most critical issue is how to protect the organization from the mediocre minds so as not to infiltrate unqualified and mediocre minds and this is the sole responsibility of working as a gatekeeper ( Ning, Yu....
3 Pages (750 words) Case Study

Conceptual Metaphors and the Ford Hybrid Escape

The use of the conceptual metaphor is a powerful tool because it reaches the very core of the way we interpret the world around us.... he use of the conceptual metaphor is a powerful tool because it reaches the very core of the way we interpret the world around us.... Generally speaking, a conceptual metaphor is defined as a metaphor “that is so basic in the way people think about something that they fail to perceive that it is a metaphor” (“Conceptual Metaphor”, 2007)....
8 Pages (2000 words) Essay

Characteristics of Culture Metaphor

… The paper "Culture metaphor" is a perfect example of an essay on culture.... The paper "Culture metaphor" is a perfect example of an essay on culture.... Characteristics of metaphor are a base for describing and understanding the essential features of society.... Culture metaphor can be used to analyze the ethnic group, nations, clumps of nations and even continents....
1 Pages (250 words) Essay

A Teaching Metaphor - the Use of Metaphors in Classroom

Again the way the metaphor is put across cuts across the relationships of the teacher with literature language and spoken language.... In the school community, the metaphor is also applicable to the fact that it will influence the way the children interact with each other.... By definition a metaphor is a comparison and the understanding of concepts and if they have any correlation or similarity between two concepts (Carlson, 2001).... For early childhood teachers, metaphor is a difficult language since for it to be understood by these young learners, it must make sense to them....
6 Pages (1500 words) Assignment
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us