CONTENTS

Abstract
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Schopenhauer
Chapter 2: The Birth of Tragedy
Chapter 3: Music versus Language
Chapter 4: Art as Philosophy
Chapter 5: Ethics
Chapter 6: Art versus Truth
Chapter 7: Science and Metaphysics
Chapter 8: The Psychology of Art
Chapter 9: Art as Applied Physiology
Chapter 10: Erotics of Art
Conclusion
Post Scriptum
Addendum I: Nietzsche and Keats
Addendum II: Cassette contents
Bibliography
Footnotes
Feedback (Click to read comments and add yours)

ABSTRACT

This study is an examination of Schopenhauer's and Nietzsche's theories of art (with greater emphasis on the latter) and especially the part whereof that it is intricately woven with the assumption of a copula between aesthetics and metaphysics. This assumption will be discussed within a wider philosophical context that will demonstrate its relatedness, as a reaction to, or an enhancement of, other areas of philosophical interest that inevitably impinge upon the aesthetics/metaphysics binary. These areas are epistemology, ethics, psychology, psychobiology, science and erotics.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful towards all those that have preceded me in their critical appreciation of Nietzsche for the obvious reasons. I feel inclined to bestow individual praise upon the following works: Silk & Stern's, Nietzsche on Tragedy, for the exhaustiveness and meticulousness with which they tackled every single aspect in Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy; Julian Young's Nietzsche's Philosophy of Art, for its succinctness, clarity, and observations that relate Nietzsche's relevance today; JR Hollingdale's, Nietzsche, for a wide range of observations; Erich Heller's, The Importance of Nietzsche, for a series of extremely useful comparative approaches; Gillespie & Strong's (ed), Nietzsche's New Seas, for an excellent selection of deconstructionalist and hermeneutic essays on Nietzsche; and, most importantly, Ellen Dissanayke's opus mirabilis, Homo Aestheticus, which has been an epiphany with an effect comparable only to Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude for my dissertation tutor, Laurence Coupe, for his humorous and inspiring (albeit post-modern) lecturing on the domain of literary theory.

Epigraph

To say it once again: today I find it an impossible book - badly written, clumsy and embarrassing, its images frenzied and confused, sentimental, in some places saccharine-sweet to the point of effeminacy, uneven in pace, lacking in any desire for logical purity, so sure of its convictions that it is above any need for proof, and even suspicious of the propriety of proof, a book for initiates, 'music' for those who have been baptized in the name of music and who are related from the first by their rare and common experiences in art, a shibboleth for first cousins in artibus - an arrogant and fanatical book that wished from the start to exclude the profanum vulgus of the 'educated' even more than the 'people'; but a book which has a strange knack of seeking out its fellow revelers and enticing them on to new secret paths and dancing places. What found expression here was a strange voice of something like a mystical and maenadic soul, stammering laboriously and at random in a foreign tongue, almost unsure whether it wished to communicate or conceal. It should have been singing this 'new soul', not speaking!

INTRODUCTION
I was in love with art, passionately in love, and in the whole of existence saw
nothing else than art - and this at an age when, reasonably enough, quite
different passions possess the soul.

Nietzsche contra Wagner

1
'To be human is to go beyond physics'1- thus spoke Diderot. But, perhaps, one has to have something Ubermenschlich (superhuman) in order to indulge to such degree in the intellectual debauchery of metaphysics. Superhuman, or, simply, an artist: the case with Nietzsche, the advocate of non-theological metaphysics, the advocate of the metaphysics of art.

In the metaphysics of art nothing is more positively true than the negation of the affective fallacy, or, to wax rhetorical, the affirmation of the affective infallibility. Thus the metaphysics of art have swung far from notions of 'objective criticism' perhaps because the subject of the metaphysical condition has transcended criticism in his tremendous sensibility of appreciation.

On the other hand, there is a certain amount of audacity in the term metaphysics of art as there is a certain amount of audacity in the term metaphysics. For Lord Bowen (1835-1894) a metaphysician is a 'blind man in a dark room - looking for a black hat - which isn't there2'. The metaphysician of art -or should I say the metaphysical artist- might, indeed, partake of the same predicament, only that his search is accompanied by the sound of his voice humming a favourite tune, and that when he fails to find the hat he can only murmur in indifference: je m'en fou ! - and go on humming his favourite tune for as long as he has a breath to breathe and a voice to sing.

2
Each of the two words that comprise the title of this dissertation carries an enormous load of connotative meaning, which is the result of aeons of human civilization. Two of the biggest branches of philosophy -metaphysics and aesthetics- are merged into one. Indeed, their combination equals an overload of interrelations, contradictions and juxtapositions that could inadvertently end up in a semantic explosion, or, even, a pyrotechnical display where signifiers and signifieds rave in the tunes of nominal aphasia3. In order to further justify my choice of title, I shall invoke the sheer perlocutionary force of this utterance. I explain myself: It duly has an exaggerated ring to it as I find this is the only one that sufficiently encapsulates the awe of the artistic psyche at work. Moreover, this particular choice is neither irrelevant, nor arbitrary. The concept of the metaphysics of art occupies a significant place in the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.

Even though the emphasis will be on Nietzsche, Schopenhauer will occupy a significant part as he has been extremely influential to the development of the Nietzschean philosophy of art. My approach will be multidisciplinary combining philosophical analysis, literary and music criticism, psychology, science and psychobiology. Apart from strictly academic material, I shall refer to articles of the daily press that bear a relevance to the subject and, at the same time, embody in the shape of specific individuals the concepts I shall be trying to investigate. Psychological analysis will also be crucial in my text as I believe that the idiosyncraticity of the author and the texts under scrutiny fully justify this approach.

3
I justify scholars like Julian Young who advocated that a holistic approach is necessary when one talks about Nietzsche's philosophy of art. For, indeed, art is the central axis on which Nietzsche's philosophy revolves as it relates directly to his metaphysics which has been, according to Schopenhauer, the branch of philosophy that has traditionally recruited philosophers. Furthermore, as hermeneutics has taught us, we cannot really comprehend the meaning of a part until we have grasped its place in the whole to which it belongs. Similarly, the comprehension of the work will be enhanced if we comprehend the author. The author is not altogether dead. Non omnis moriar4 is undoubtedly the most appropriate utterance that should accompany a writer of metaphysics in the grave.

So, what sort of philosopher Nietzsche was? What drove him into this profession which during his lifetime gave him little, if not none, worldly benefits? This is indeed a burning question for students of any philosophy and particularly relevant to students of Nietzsche's philosophy. It goes deep into the motivation that lead somebody into philosophizing. Thus, if we know why someone is doing something then it is easier for us to understand what he is doing.

4
There are two kinds of philosophers. The most common is the ones that encountered philosophical problems as students, through the work of others, and being intelligent, they may be good at coming to grips with. If they excel, the academia offers them the possibility of making it a career. Thus, they acquire the material means of surviving and supporting their family and at the same time enjoying the respect that such a post entails. It becomes another way of making one's living in this world by adapting to the laws of offer and demand that regulate the employment market. The above, however, is a response to extrinsic rather than intrinsic needs. It does not necessarily entail spirituality. As Nietzsche says: 'one can be even a great scholar without possessing any spirit at all'5.

On the other hand, for Nietzsche philosophy was an imperative need, the unique conceivable mode of existence. It derived from the very depths of the abysses he was trying to gauge and his attempts to tame them so that they will meekly transform themselves into words and tones. The sheer passion of his scripture has very few parallels; indeed, it seems as if for him writing is a very literal means of extending his life to the length of another daybreak. I find fully justified the statement that Nietzsche's scripture has the passion of a religious document; perhaps, by means of a theological style, he gives an alternative direction to his deeply religious and unbelieving at the same time nature. For him, a leap of faith, was a leap of faith in art. A salto salvante, in a concrete reality which could be empirically experienced, as opposed to a salto mortale to Christianity's 'hangman's metaphysics6'.

5
Ever since I started reading Nietzsche I had this peculiar feeling that his writing style, as well as the essence of the ideas he was trying to convey, had something intensely musical. And, in specific, after the reading of his work I found myself in a similar mood as in the mood that followed my listening to music. Later on, as I delved deeper and deeper into Nietzsche and Nietzsche-related literature the clues proliferated and it seemed that I was not the only one who has experienced such strange intuitive apercus7. Indeed, it dawned on me that for Nietzsche writing ('speaking') was some sort of sublimation for his poor compositional talent, "it should have been singing this 'new soul', not speaking!8", and again his prose appears to be 'music to those who have been baptized in the name of music9'. Nietzsche even refers to Schiller implying that the genesis of creative writing is due to a pre-existing musical mood: 'in the state prior to the act of writing, he does not claim to have had within him an ordered causality of ideas, but rather a musical mood10'. And he goes on to add: 'For me...a certain musical atmosphere of moods precedes it {writing} and the poetic idea only comes afterwards11'. Thus, the wheel has come full circle - a musical mood being the raw material for creative writing, and creative writing once read producing a musical mood.

To my knowledge I am the only one to make such vast an assertion given Nietzsche's status as an adroit manipulator of words and concepts but, mutatis mutandis, I strongly believe in its validity. And of course, this is more obvious in The Birth of Tragedy, which seems to be a seminal text, a manifesto in the metaphysics of art and the metaphysics of music in particular. Thus, BT, shall be the text to be scrutinized in this study, though not to the detriment of Nietzsche's prolific references in art and music in other volumes of his work.

6
What transpires after the study of Nietzsche is his conception of the function of art as something inherently life-affirming even at moments when the horror and terror of existence is most intensely felt. It is this unique possibility of the artist to transmute his pain into art that ultimately gives a life-affirming value in suffering as big as the aesthetic exaltation that will be derived from the ensuing contact with the work of art itself. And music is considered to be the highest of the arts; it is not by chance that the full title of Nietzsche's aesthetico-metaphysical manifesto is The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music. Thus, he unites art (music) and tragedy in another interpenetrating duality.

7
Indeed, it is my profound love and empathy for Nietzsche, music and tragedy (in the wider sense) that has made me write this. Or should I say that my love for Nietzsche, music and tragedy is my love for one and the same thing?

8
What will ensue is not a hermeneutics of art but an erotics of art - if 'ethics and aesthetics are one and the same'12erotics of art and metaphysics of art are one and the same as well.

CHAPTER 1
SCHOPENHAUER

1
Undoubtedly, one would commit a grave error if he were to talk extensively about Nietzsche without referring to Schopenhauer. Nietzsche, having encountered the former's magnum opus The World as Will and Representation (or Idea as it is sometimes translated) at a young age had had a unique epiphany. His works, BT to a major extent, abound in prolific and longwinded references to Schopenhauer. Indeed, he assimilated Schopenhauer to the extend of ventriloquism. Therefore, I shall briefly discuss the major concepts relating to Schopenhauer's philosophy in general and then, to a greater extend, his own philosophy of art.

The key tenet in Schopenhauer's philosophy is the Will: (Idea being a direct adoption from Plato) the inaccessible metaphysical substratum of all natural phenomena. He bestows this name upon more or less everything, from the power of gravity to the fatal attraction that brings two human beings together - a kind of conceptual panacea for every conceivable disease of our interpretative apparatus. Everybody is primarily a subject of the 'will', viewing the external world, the animate and inanimate objects, either as threats to one's existence or as potential satisfiers of one's desires. The implicit atomism of the above leads us into another of Schopenhauer's favourite concepts, the heavy artillery so to speak, of his pessimistic Weltanschauung: it is the principium individuationis, according to which 'we mortal millions live alone' without any possibility of fellow feeling. The world of the principium individuationis is the Darwinian world of terror and suffering, of the survival of the fittest, in which nature arbitrarily bestows and withdraws life. In existentialist terminology this would be described as the human condition.

And here comes more evidence Schopenhauer's rampant pessimism, as, for him, life is essentially an oscillation between pain, anxiety and boredom; and even things that satisfy our will are essentially negative as they bring about satiation. In other words an elaboration on the good old Latin theme of post coitum omne animal triste est13. Thus, we are trapped in a sisyphean nightmare wherein desire is doomed to be followed by either satiation or frustration, experiencing our life as the inescapable prisonhouse of the will. One here could exclaim: 'thank Will!' (instead of 'thank God!'), man is an animal alright; but an animal metaphysicum. And I would like to minimally modify Schopenhauer's dictum by means of a monolexical addition: animal aestheticum metaphysicum.

2
So, lo and behold, here comes the winged chariot of art with the delightful load of the Mouses14, the revival of the deus ex machina that purges us from the tragic tyranny of the will and transports us to the cathartic world of disinterestedness, the world of pure aesthetic contemplation. Yes, it is from Kant that Schopenhauer inherited the concept of disinterested aesthetic contemplation, but it is much to his credit that he has taken it a step further.
I explain myself: humans plagued by the insistent torment of the will long for a release from its insidious bondage. And the only alternative to death (for this is the release par excellence), according to Schopenhauer, can be found in art. But how, exactly, art acquires this attribute? I shall answer this question by relating Schopenhauer's definition of the beautiful and his theory on, what I call, aesthetic cosmology.

Schopenhauer defines The Beautiful as 'the essential and original forms of animate and inanimate nature - in Platonic language, the Ideas; and these can be apprehended only by their essential correlate, a knowing subject free from will; in other words, a pure intelligence without purpose or ends in view15'. As a result of this the will is absent at the time when a subject operates in the aesthetic mode, and as the will is the cause of all suffering we automatically dispense with suffering altogether. And he goes on to add what I consider a contradiction, or, at its best, a fallacious misuse of language: 'This is what explains the feeling of pleasure {my italics} which accompanies the perception of the Beautiful16'. This statement is contradictory with what he claims a few lines below, namely that happiness and satisfaction are negative in nature and that by taking away the possibility of suffering one takes away also the possibility of enjoyment. And my aporetic remark to Mr Schopenhauer is: how is it possible if, having bypassed the will (and therefore the possibility of experiencing suffering or enjoyment) one is able to feel pleasure as a result of the aesthetic mode of perception? In a further refinement of his theory Schopenhauer explains this pleasure as a form of oblivious absorption in the object of contemplation whereby one is freed from oneself by becoming a pure intelligence. But still, this does not explain his ambiguous semantics.
I shall have to abort further treatment of the above point of controversy in order to relate Schopenhauer's aesthetic cosmology. And, inevitably, it has to do with the omnipresent concept of the will. The will then, can be perceivable to us through, what Schopenhauer calls, its self-objectification. The will's self-objectification in the world is roughly divided in four categories: inorganic matter, plant life, animal life and human life. This constituting a developmental chain in more complex forms of being. And here comes the crux: as every object in the world of phenomena has to belong in one of these categories then its aesthetic value is analogous to the complexity of the category to which it bears a stronger affiliation. A corollary of this being the diversification of the abstraction 'art' into the 'more concrete' abstractions of individual arts. For example the art most closely related with inorganic matter is architecture.

At the pinnacle of will's self-objectification, as an analogy to intelligent human life, stands language, and, more specifically, the verbal arts. Of them, poetic drama being the non plus ultra of the linguistic medium's possible refinement. This because it combines the esoteric, the elegant expression of psychological states, and the exoteric, the unfolding of action, characterization, fate. And, in its turn, tragedy being the non plus ultra of poetic drama. But why tragedy?

3
First, what is tragedy? Tragedy is ' the description of the terrible side of life17' everything sinister and deflating, everything that turns awry, everything that adds suffering to those that deserve exaltation and bestows honours to those that deserve suffering. Tragedy is being in a position where you have to utter unanswerable and harrowing aporias like: 'Why should a dog, a rat, a horse, have life/ and thou no breath at all18?' And why? Because it hints at a possible reconciliation with the prospect of our personal ceasing of existence, it liberates us from the oppression of the will by intimating a world in which living can be seen as no longer desirable - and these heightened by the aesthetic effect of tragedy. Furthermore, precisely by means of the aesthetic effect, it hints on a different world that we can only intuitively apprehend, which annihilates the will-to-live. And it is this moment that constitutes the most metaphysical instantiation of a tragedy.

In the light of the above we have to see instances like the time when Gloucester, blinded and painfully aware of his unjust treatment of his lawful son Elgar, is being attacked by Oswald, and not only makes no effort to save himself but says: 'Now let thy friendly hand/ Put strength enough to't19'. It is an unconditional acceptance and embracing of what Schopenhauer calls 'complete knowledge of the real nature of the world' that has been acquired by ' the noblest man, after a long conflict and suffering, finally renounce for ever all the pleasures of life and...cheerfully and willingly give up life itself20'. In every great tragedy we have such moments when the will-to-live is totally and wholeheartedly denied. But perhaps the most characteristic example is found in ancient Greek tragedy, and in specific, in Sophocles', Oedipus Coloneus: 'not to be born is, past all prizing, best, and, failing that, to die soon'.

4
But, having talked about verbal arts, there appears to be one art which deservedly leads a solo career in Schopenhauer's account of the objectification of the will in the world and, following this, the representation of the world in art's mimetic attempt of the Platonic Ideas.

All arts portray what already exists in the world by means of imitating Ideas. That is to say, they have nothing to do with the will itself, but draw on the second level of reality which is the Platonic Ideas. Hence all of them objectify the will only indirectly. There is one art in which we do not recognize the copy, the repetition, of any Idea of the inner nature of the world. Therefore, it could still exist even if there were no world at all. At this point one might have already guessed that I am talking about music. Music is different from other arts insofar as it is not a copy of the Ideas but a copy of the will itself. And that is how Schopenhauer explains the dramatic emotional effect of music for 'other arts speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence21'. He expands on his justification of the emotional effects of music in more detail by saying:
'it never expresses the phenomenon , but only the inner nature, the in-itself of every phenomenon, the will itself. Therefore music does not express this or that particular and definite pleasure, this or that affliction, pain, sorrow, horror, gaiety, merriment, or peace of mind, but joy, pain, sorrow, horror, gaiety, merriment, or peace of mind themselves...'22

And since music is directly a copy of will itself it therefore expresses the metaphysical to everything physical in this world. But Schopenhauer goes even further than that claiming that another implication of music being a direct copy of the will is that we could call the world embodied music! He supports his argument by considering this the reason why every scene from everyday life seems to acquire a higher significance if it be accompanied with the analogous melody: 'to the man that gives himself up entirely to the impression of a symphony, it is as if he saw all the possible events of life and of the world passing by within himself...23'

What I consider, though, to be Schopenhauer's most metaphysical statements about music are firstly, the one relating music in the more concrete terms of human, intelligent existence: 'Music is an unconscious exercize in metaphysics in which the mind does not know it is philosophizing'24 and secondly, one that goes even further than that, maintaining what could be characterized as the hagiography of the musical creator:

'Since music is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the Gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man'25.

If one were to use Saussurian terminology then he would summarize the Schopenhauerian metaphysics of music thus: 'if the analogy with language holds for it, music seems to be a mode of the signifier without the signified'26. Concepts are abstract cerebrations, which are somewhat lifeless, whereas music exists as a thing in itself.

5
But how did Schopenhauer's philosophy affect art? And especially music? Well, remember the part in my introduction (5) in which I speak about the 'musical mood' that pre-exists creative writing and, more importantly, vice versa? That is precisely what Wagner claims to have been the impetus and the inspiration behind one of the controversial works in classical music, and certainly the most experimental in his time, the opera, Tristan and Isolde27.

Wagner immediately became an apostle of the Schopenhauerian Evangel and declared himself unable to finish work in progress in order to incorporate Schopenhauerian principles in the name of music. The result was the aforementioned opera which will be discussed in more detail.

The musical device that has been utilized by Wagner was already a commonplace in music. But it is the sheer length during which this device remains operative that has made Wagner famous. What I am talking about is the use of dissonance in the form of suspension, the holding over of a tone from one chord to the next so that it will make the chord dissonant and delay the resolution. Music is based on this fundamental binary opposition and interplay of dissonance/consonance. What is so idiosyncratic with Wagner's masterpiece is the fact that every chord contains two dissonances, one of them is resolved and the other not, the same happens without exception until the and of the opera when we have the final -and also the first- resolution.

We could say that Wagner has achieved a translation in musical terms of Schopenhauer's major doctrine of the inherent fluctuation of the human will from desire to temporary satisfaction and then to desire again - from which the only resolution is the cessation of physical existence. And, indeed, browsing through Schopenhauer one could find, to reverse the terms, the verbal analogy of Wagner:

'Now the constant discord and reconciliation of its {the will's} two elements which occurs here {the melody} is, metaphysically considered, the copy of the origination of new desires and then of their satisfaction...'

But the similarities do not end here. In the plot we see reflected the principium individuationis from which one can only escape through the loss of oneself in sexual love temporarily/imperfectly, and eternally/perfectly through the loss of self by means of offering oneself to 'breastless creatures under ground28'. In specific, it is a love story (I should mention here that Schopenhauer apart from the metaphysics of art has written extensively on the metaphysics of sexual love) about two youths that share an undeclared love which they assume impossible to satisfy, finally resorting in a suicide pact. The attendant, however, who is meant to bring the lethal liquid brings a love potion instead. This results in an outburst of their love which they will satisfy to the uttermost extent - only to realize that their desire for unity is unfulfilable in this world of 'phenomena'. Naturally, their only alternative is to have a shot at the noumenal world thereby achieving not only release from their unfulfillable longing but a complete merging with the other. I consider this instance whereby love and death exist simultaneously, what has been named by Wagner Liebestod (literally a conflation of the two German words for love and death), the non plus ultra of the romantic stock-in-trade. Liebestod is a concept many a romantic what enthuse about, had it been known by Keats especially it would have been a revelation. In a letter to his sweetheart Fanny (1819) he says: 'I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.'

6
Herewith, I regretfully abandon Keats, Wagner, and ultimately Schopenhauer, only to return with the aim of implicitly and explicitly comparing and juxtaposing Schopenhauer's philosophy of art with Nietzsche's, in the chapters that will analyze in more detail the various aspects of the latter's aesthetics.

CHAPTER 2
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY

"Only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified"

The Birth of Tragedy

1
A natural procession from Schopenhauer would be Nietzsche's book that bears the highest marks of Schopenhauerian influence as well as having the highest focus in my study: The Birth of Tragedy. The argument of this book is extremely complicated, allusive and elusive. The breadth of scope reflects Nietzsche's aversion towards a monomaniac academic style - what Silk & Stern call 'philistine compartmentalism29'. From a plan30 of the period we learn that the book was going to cover four large areas: ethics, aesthetics, religion and mythology.

I shall commence my voyage in the rough sea of BT by first clarifying the key duality of Dionysian/Apollonian, and then moving from the fatherland of lyric poetry to the island of tragedy, so as to reach the final destination of this voyage which is the harbour of music. Then I shall move into the conceptual neighbourhoods of the metaphysics of art in a more abstract form, so as to compare and contrast them with notions of morality, science, truth, psychology, biology and ultimately erotics.

2
The binary opposition of the interdependent concepts Dionysian/Apollonian is perhaps the trickiest one in the history of philosophy. It is a conceptual ambush that I would wish to avoid by deviating but, alas, one has to fight the monster. And I say these things because Nietzsche himself has been extremely controversial, vague and ambiguous in his handling of the above opposition, resulting in endless logomachy of interpretative activity. A good starting point is tracing their etymological origins and their connotative breadth in ancient Greece.

They both belong to the Greek polytheistic system of the Olympian dodekatheon31. Apollo is the deity of light personifying order, measure, number and the subjugation of undisciplined instinct. He is the ruler of the inner world of phantasy and dream. Dionysus, on the other hand, is the complete opposite, exhibiting liberation, drunkenness, unbridled license, intoxication and orgiastic celebration. In BT Dionysus stands for the emotional element in art - the Dionysian art par excellence being music, whereas Apollo for the form creating force representing the representational arts and especially sculpture. In other words, the rational versus the irrational, form versus content.

The best metaphorical explanation of this duality is given by Nietzsche, and it is obvious that for him it is an archetypal duality, something that sounds remarkably close to the oriental yin/yang. The artistically creative intercourse of these elements is likened to the duality of the sexes with their constant conflicts and occasional reconciliations32. In other words a work of art must needs have a mixture of both in order to come into existence with the Dionysian, however, always predominating.

Why should the Dionysian predominate? For a number of reasons, the most important of which being the fact that the term 'Dionysian' (in the way it is used in BT and as it will be made apparent as my argument unfolds) is nothing but a synonym for the term 'metaphysical'; therefore, Dionysian art is metaphysical art. I believe this to be a key statement that will lead to an improved comprehension of the Dionysian within the sphere of the metaphysics of art.

So, the Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy will be further examined by means of relating it to specific arts and their metaphysical anatomy. The fundamental binary here is language (in the form of lyric poetry and tragedy) and music, although its boundaries being quite unclear as both of these language-based arts share a strong affinity with music. The next chapter will investigate this affinity.

CHAPTER 3
MUSIC VERSUS LANGUAGE

I wondered whether music might not be the unique example of what might
have been - if the invention of language had not intervened - the means of communication between souls.

Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past

1
During the first year of life, one cannot distinguish tones from approximations to words: the precursors of music and language cannot be separated. Lyric poetry reflects this primary unity of the two media. However, it is considered to be a Dionysian art as the lyric poet is first and foremost a composer and musician. By etymology (lyre - musical instrument), a lyric poet could only perform his verse by the accompaniment of lyre - the words themselves being of secondary importance. At this point I would like to remind the reader of the concept of the 'musical mood' which has been already discussed. And I do this in order to relate the verbal idea as following the musical idea: music precedes language. But lyrical poetry, as it was developed by Archilochus, does its 'utmost to imitate music'33. Thus, for Nietzsche, there were two currents in ancient Greece: one of them in which language imitated the world of phenomena and the other in which imitated the world of music.

But language, as it can only imitate the world of phenomena, it can never match the cosmic importance of music, which, in Schopenhauerian nomenclature, is an immediate reflection of the will. This, of course, being a rehashing of Schopenhauer's metaphysics of music. The only difference being that Nietzsche uses a convoluted periphrasis, which bears more affinity to poetry than philosophy. Instead of saying 'will' he says: '{music} refers to the primal contradiction and the primal suffering within the primal Oneness, and thus symbolizes a sphere beyond and prior to all phenomena34'.

2
If lyric poetry is a Dionysian art of moderate proportions then tragedy is the utmost possible Dionysian development of a language-based medium. What constitutes the copula linking tragedy with music is the origin and function of the chorus. Its origin is a moot point but Nietzsche's thesis is that in a more primitive form tragedy consisted only of a chorus. Its function is clearly Dionysian but the term used is 'metaphysical consolation' which I believe seconds my thesis of the synonemic relation between metaphysical and Dionysian:

'The metaphysical consolation (with which, as I wish to point out, every true tragedy leaves us), that whatever superficial changes may occur, life is at bottom indestructibly powerful and joyful, is given concrete form in the satyr chorus...'35

What is even more astonishing, and what will enable me to support my contention a fortiori, is that the above quotation is engulfed between two pieces of text that discuss the central idea of the Dionysian in tragedy; and, specifically, the word 'Dionysian' occurs seven times within a single page with the complementary epithets of 'chorist', 'wisdom', 'music', 'tragedy', 'state', 'reality', 'man'!

A corollary of the Dionysian condition induced by tragedy is the overcoming of the curse of individuation, whereby the spectator experiences the dissolution of the fixed boundaries between men, and between man and nature, becoming oblivious of his personal afflictions and achieving a reunification with the primitive forces of nature. Thus, the ancient Greek theatre is transformed into a temple, sharing an equal social status with the proto-christianic church, which provides metaphysical consolation for the 'horrors and terrors' of existence.

3
The issue becomes more opaque if we consider Nietzsche's equation of the metaphysical music with the Dionysian music; since, having purely Dionysian music would have been impossible as Dionysian implies a lack of formal structure. On the one hand, he rages against formal austerity of the baroque era which cannot function without the 'arithmetical abacus of the fugue and contrapuntal dialectics36', and, on the other, he includes Bach in the conceptual vicinity of Dionysian music37! Musicologically speaking, Bach's compositions are of extreme formal elaboration and discipline but with a unique power of intimating the highest forms of emotion. Especially the way the tragic emotion is exhibited in, inter alias, his two great Passions - St John and St Matthew38 - is almost unparalleled. Music critics generally consent on the fact that Bach in these works was a precursor of Wagnerian music dramas - a century before their appearance. Hence, the empathy Nietzsche feels towards Bach. And we know by now that, if Nietzsche feels empathy for you, he will call you 'Dionysian'. Perhaps, as an attempt to explain this apparent contradiction, what Nietzsche meant is a Dionysian effect by means of Apollonian structure. But he failed to make this clear to us.

Another issue of discontent is the fact that Nietzsche limits his conception of music to very few names, and even then, hardly ever discussing the formal aspect of their work. This is especially annoying with Wagner, about whom he raves without cessation. At the BT he only hints at the Wagnerian device of chromaticism39 when he discusses the lyric poet who: 'sings us through the full chromatic scale {my italics} of his passions and desires40'. Thus, he excludes from his discussion the figures of such imminent and original composers as Mozart and Chopin41, the former known for his lightness of expression and the latter for his extreme sensitivity of spirit.

But why does music is considered a sine qua non in Nietzsche's philosophy of art? Is there any personal motivation apart from the theoretical concoctions that have already been mentioned? Is it perhaps, that Nietzsche sees art as a substitute for philosophy? Art as the way of practicing philosophy par excellence?

CHAPTER 4
ART AS PHILOSOPHY

This is an artist as an artist should be, modest in his requirements: there are only two things he really wants, his bread and his art - panem et Circen...
Twilight of the Idols I. 17

1
The most apparent reason, which has to do with extrinsic rather than intrinsic factors, is that two of Nietzsche's 'idols' practiced religiously the metaphysics of music. Music was the pinnacle in Schopenhauer's philosophy and the most important thing in Wagner's life. On addition to that it was in ancient Greece where the art of music was an integral part of formal education.

But the above would not suffice if Nietzsche himself was not an aficionado of music. In fact, music has been his first creative activity, and, improvising on the piano was his last, a long time after he had lost the will or the ability to express himself by means of language. His statements about music are numerous and categorical. Some of them indicate a polemical mood towards language, a supreme irony here as he was one of the few great masters of the German language. And if he hasn't got the right to criticize language who does? It is only fear that his criticisms of language should be listened to with due attention.

2
So why against language? Why against words? It is quite simple, because philosophy as such, is mediated through, and owes its existence to, language. And how can such a feeble medium serve the purpose of such a high discipline? (let us remember the etymology of philosophy: 'love of wisdom') It simply can't; something which numerous philosophers, including Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, have pointed out. For Wittgenstein, 'philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language42'. But that is what he thinks philosophy should be not what philosophy is or has been for centuries. Similarly, for Nietzsche the predominance of language is experienced as a form of superimposed claustrophobia:

We read contradictions and problems into everything because we think only within the forms of language ...We have to cease to think if we refuse to do it in the prisonhouse of language; for we cannot reach further that the doubt which asks whether the limit we see is really a limit...All rational thought is interpretation in accordance with a scheme which we cannot throw off43.

3
Seen from a different point of view language is flawed as it is a theistic legacy. Let us remember the Bible 'in the beginning was the word' a statement which could no longer be valid as God for Nietzsche is dead. And this is what brought philosophy to its death throes. If God is dead there is nobody to impose and order values. Theological transcendence is no longer possible since theological metaphysics have been declared defunct. Therefore, one is threatened by nihilism unless he is ready to abandon philosophy and adopt a different discipline that has not bumped against an intellectual impasse. And this can be discovered in the ancient Greek culture that preceded the development of philosophy. However, one needs to believe passionately in whatever discipline might be adopted as the way out of the nihilistic abyss:

The essential thing...seems...to be a protracted obedience in one direction: from out of that there always emerges and has always emerged in the long run something for the sake of which it is worthwhile to live on earth, for example virtue, art, music, dance, reason, spirituality - something transfiguring, refined, mad and divine44.

4
The true answer is not the systematization of philosophy 'I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity45' but the creative liberty of artistic expression which knows no conceptual boundaries and can suffer no bruises against language. The main thesis is that, in fact music is philosophy in the sense that it can intimate us a higher form of knowledge, a wisdom, a gnosis46. Quoting again from Nietzsche:

Has any one ever observed that music emancipates the spirit? gives wings to thought? and that the more one becomes a musician the more one becomes a philosopher {my italics}? The gray sky of abstraction seems thrilled by flashes of lightning... and the world is surveyed as if from a mountain top. - With this I have defined pathos...47.

And, indeed, at this point Nietzsche follows Schopenhauer's footsteps, as, for Schopenhauer, 'music is an unconscious exercize in metaphysics in which the mind does not know it is philosophizing48'. Music critics second the idea that music can be conceived is a form of philosophizing along the lines of primum vivere deindre philosophari49 (music perceived as a means of enhancing life), Malcolm Boyd50, in specific, refers to Bach's oeuvre (and especially the Art Of Fugue51 )as existing 'in a world far removed from the musica humana of our own, where music, mathematics and philosophy are one {my italics}'.

5
Nietzsche goes as far as maintaining that the only touchstone his intellectual faculty possesses in order to distinguish what is good, is artistic creativity (the following quotation being the continuation of Nietzsche's above quotation on music): 'everything that is good makes me productive. I have gratitude for nothing else, nor have I any other touchstone for testing what is good'52. This, though, leads us to the discussion of ethics as a discipline which Nietzsche treated at its best with paradigmatic indifference, and, at its worst, with a voice more polemical that a serpent's tongue.

CHAPTER 5
ETHICS

'Art and not morality is represented as the actual metaphysical activity of mankind'
The Birth of Tragedy

1
Nietzsche's philosophy arouse out of a reaction against centuries of pseudo-moral justifications of existence. And I say 'pseudo' because there is nothing in the universe justifying a moral interpretation. In specific, on our planet there seems to reign a state of bellum omnium contra omnes, life is extremely precarious, and to use an anthropomorphism, life is really cheap. Nietzsche turned away from all this 'routine moralistic clapltrap about virtue, happiness and knowledge53' and devoted himself to art and the thought of art; this involving an attempt to perceive the world from an aesthetic viewpoint, to find a way of life that would 'raise nobility, glory and tragic beauty to the place that had been occupied by moral goodness and by faith54'.

And here lies one of Nietzsche's points of fundamental divergence from Schopenhauerian cogitations: Nietzsche is indifferent towards the amorality of the universe, for him it is sufficient that the universe can be interpreted in an aesthetic way; whereas, for Schopenhauer, the universe, conceived as will, is not simply amoral - it is immoral. Hence, Schopenhauer is more of a humanist, and one can see his pessimism ultimately springing from specifically this sort of humanism.

2
If one wants to object further to Nietzsche's aesthetic interpretation then it has to be said that his interpretation is still an interpretation, the same way the moral interpretation of the world is an interpretation. And, as we, poor mortals, do not posses 'knowledge' of 'the truth', all interpretations -all propositions as Wittgenstein55 would have it- are of equal value. Thus, I retort to Nietzsche's dictum that 'morality is only an interpretation of phenomena, more precisely a misinterpretation56'.

On the other hand, we can understand Nietzsche's polemics with the aid of the historical knowledge that religion has been repressing art for centuries. In our times, though, there are certain individuals that, notwithstanding their participation in a theistic tradition they dare transcend the old boundaries of religion. What will follow is an example that seems to belie Adorno when he says that 'a metaphysics of art demands that art be strictly separated from religion':

'My vocation is to try and make art accessible because I believe that this is the way of coming in touch with the well-spring of your own being, where God is... all experience of art is an indirect experience of God.57'{my italics)

What I find so amazing in this statement is the similarity it bears to the atheistic doctrines about art that I have been discussing so far. What sister Wendy says about art, namely being 'an indirect experience of God' is similar to Schopenhauer's doctrine of music as being an 'immediate copy of the will' (however she restricts herself to 'indirect' rather than 'immediate', as, if she had done otherwise, it would constitute, in religious terms, a blasphemy), only that, in Schopenhauer's terms, the equivalent of 'God' is the 'Will'. Furthermore, 'coming in touch with the spring of your own being' could be conceived as the analogy of the Nietzschean primal unity that can be found in the Dionysian experience of art.

3
But the main aporia still remains: is a moral interpretation of the world more justified than an aesthetic interpretation? Is it, above all, more true? And if it is true, it is true to what? Who can guarantee the alethiological validity of the concept of truth? And how do we know whether truth is true to life?

CHAPTER 6
ART VERSUS TRUTH

Truth is ugly. We possess art lest we perish of the truth.
Will To Power No. 916

1
In the times of neoclassicism when nothing was in a state of flux there were an abundance of truths easily prescribed and economically dispensed by the Ideological State Apparatuses of the time. General ignorance, dogmaticism and obscurantism made sure that there rose no dissenting voices. And these 'truths' covered the whole range, from metaphysical to religious, from moral to rational. There was a belief in the absoluteness of truths until Hegel and Darwin reminded humans of the Heraclitean and Aristotelean doctrines of ta panta rei and gignesthai 58 who accustomed modern man to the idea of becoming. And if everything evolves, then truth cannot remain a frigid fossil. But, even so, how can we speak about truth in an age when the ultimate prescriber of truth(s), according to Nietzsche, has perished?

Nonetheless, even if the idols themselves have perished, the images of the idols have survived - as it appears to be more difficult to dispense with the simulacra of ghosts than with ghosts themselves:

Truth is a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms and anthropomorphisms - in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are.59

What becomes increasingly more problematic is a redefinition of truth, nay, I should have said the impossibility of defining truth, truthfully, in any sense whatsoever. Thereby, I declare truth the most arid philosophical concept ever concocted as it is, and will probably remain for ever, inaccessible to the limited capacities of our mental apparatus. But how art relates to this context?

2
According to Keats, as he says in his Ode on a Grecian Urn: 'Beauty is truth, Truth beauty - that is all/ ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' But signifiers of abstract concepts are often very tricky in their semantic variation in synchronic, idiolectical terms, let alone in diachronic, intercultural terms. The point I am trying to make with the above is that what Keats meant by 'truth' is positively not the kind of Darwinian, horror-and-terror-of-existence truth that Nietzsche implied in the statement that has been used as an epigraph for this chapter. And that is why I think that Hollingdale,60 when he juxtaposes the two statements, taking that truth in each of them means exactly the same thing, is making an oversimplification for reasons of literary effect.

It becomes apparent that for Nietzsche the 'sublime metaphysical illusion' (a bombastic periphrasis for 'artistic illusion' I believe) is not just the only means to counteract the sheer gravitas of truth, but it can contribute to truth itself. If we accept the relativity and flexibility of truths then an aesthetic way of knowing could open new vistas: 'This sublime metaphysical illusion {my italics} is an instinctual accompaniment to science, and repeatedly takes it to its limits, where it must become art: which is the true purpose of this mechanism.'61What is intimidated here is an incredulity towards the so-called empirically verifiable truths, in other words the impossibility of knowing without feeling. And, perhaps, I will have to go a bit out of the way here, but I will not regret quoting this: '{a man} by virtue of his suffering knows more than the shrewdest and wisest can ever know...62'; but not far at all if I quote this: 'The most abstract the truth you want to teach the more you must seduce the senses to it63'.

3
In an attempt to escape from this rampant aestheticism and recapture the binary illusion/truth, I would like to return to BT. Despite the plethora of ambiguities one trend is discernible therein: that art is an illusion but an illusion that has redeeming power and requires a highly spiritual nature in order to function as redeeming. It is, perhaps, exactly this redemptive power of art that makes people like John Arras maintain that in BT 'art functions as a medium of truth'64. And we should pay close attention to this as it might be easily misconstrued as art being identified with truth. Adorno cryptically elaborates on this by saying that 'art is true to the degree to which it is an illusion of the non-illusory'65. How do I comprehend this? Unfortunately, Adorno doesn't really clarify this obfuscating remark but I shall attempt an interpretation using as little imagination as possible.

Art, is what now sustains the metaphysical condition which has become viable only by means of art: this being the only non-illusory alternative after the advent of nihilism, that is to say, the impossibility of theological metaphysics. Thereby, the non-illusory (art as viable reality) becomes tautologous with the illusion (of metaphysics) par excellence. I think Nietzsche makes it clearer when he almost identifies the metaphysics of art with truth: 'The will to illusion... counts as more profound.., 'metaphysical' than the will to truth ... art is worth more than truth.'66 An attempt to rationalize the above statement is by claiming that the metaphysical in art rests in its ability to create new forms, thereby signaling the possibility of the non-existent.

But what claims to base its foundations solely on grounds of objective truth? What else, the biggest deception of them all: science.

CHAPTER 7
SCIENCE AND METAPHYSICS

There is speculation. There is pure speculation. And there is metaphysics.

1
The inclusion of a scientific section in a humanities study might seem dissonant with the spirit of the faculty, but even if it does, it certainly wouldn't be to the mature Nietzsche. (I say that because at the time of BT he maintained a strong metaphysical position which he later dispensed with). Having developed a profound respect for science in his later years he ends up castigating non-scientific methods that claim knowledge dismissing them as: 'abortion and not yet science: which is to say metaphysics, theology, psychology, epistemology.67' But even in the case of Nietzsche not seconding my approach one would be monolithically absurd not supporting a synectic approach in a world of such diversification. Philosophy and science sometimes converge to the extent of total amalgamation, and it has been argued that the only people that should be allowed to philosophize in our age should be scientists.

Philosophers and scientists attempting to explain soul in a scientific way is certainly not a phenomenon of our times. Descartes, for example, hypothesized that the precise interface between body and soul was to be found in a cone-shaped organ in the mid-brain, known as the pineal gland. Nowadays, scientists dismiss this idea as unfounded.

The latest theory relating to the above has been advocated by Francis Crick which, in its turn, has been the receiver of much adverse criticism and scorn. Crick's argument, not much different from Descartes', is that the soul is physically based on the head. He posits that human consciousness is nothing but the rich result emerging from the interaction of billions nerve cells (neurons) in the brain. He attempts to explain the human ability for self-reflexivity by hypothesizing the existence of 'awareness neurons' and that by discovering what is special about them we could reveal the physical basis of consciousness.

In the concluding part of his book he claims that: 'The aim of science is to explain all aspects of the behaviour of our brains, including those of musicians {my italics}, mystics, and mathematicians'68 and he feels confident that there will be a day when this will constitute a concrete reality. But no matter how ambitious science is, it can never replace the western mythology of metaphysics because of a tragic flaw: science, with the aid of the fundamental law of causality, can only help us understand the phenomena of the world, not the world in itself. And Nietzsche, at the metaphysical times of BT seems to have grasped this idea: 'This sublime metaphysical illusion {my italics} is an instinctual accompaniment to science, and repeatedly takes it to its limits, where it must become art: which is the true purpose of this mechanism.'69What is remarkable here is that the seeds of self-incredulity and epistemological becoming have already been sown: the metaphysical state has lost much of its conceptual rigidity by becoming metaphysical illusion, but notably it is a sublime illusion, this relating to the alethiological validity of art which has been discussed in the chapter 'Truth versus Art'.

2
A different approach to a scientific explanation of the soul has been taken by Frank Tipler in his book, The Physics of Immortality, in which he puts forth the metaphor of the soul as a computer program run on the computer of the brain. According to his theory the totality of the human body could be directly translated into bits of information - three followed by 45 zeros worth to be exact70. He envisages a time when resurrection could take place simply by downloading every bit of information of the dead person in the computers of the future.

The most interesting finding in Tipler's book, is the unbelievably Nietzsche-sounding statement that: 'The universe must be capable of sustaining life indefinitely because we physicists now that a beautiful postulate is more likely to be correct than an ugly one.'71 I find in this statement the same deep structure that applies to Nietzsche's fundamental 'aestheticosmological' tenet: 'only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified'72. Even a surface analysis can render amazing similarities. Tipler uses the following verbal structures juxtaposed with Nietzsche's analogies in parenthesis: 'the universe' (existence and the world), 'must be capable' (only) 'sustaining life indefinitely' (eternally), 'a beautiful postulate' (aesthetic phenomenon), 'is more likely to be correct' (justified). The connotative difference being that there is a more pronounced aesthetic Darwinism in Tipler's statement. But, even so, we must not forget the other Nietzschean dictum: 'aesthetics is nothing but applied physiology'73 which reduces beauty to an unequivocal biologism.

Nothing, perhaps, would be more appropriate to conclude this section, than Nietzsche's own topographical placement of the soul: 'I am body entirely, and nothing beside; and soul is only a word for something in the body74'. Indeed, this statement being as anti-metaphysical as anything could be, expressed in the monistic terms that must have seriously disconcerted his dualist contemporaries.

CHAPTER 8
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ART

'Psychologist's casuistry'
Twilight of the Idols X 15

1
Part of Nietzsche's and Schopenhauer's fame is due to the fact that they had been the precursors of psychology in its modern form firstly systematized by Freud. Moreover, they were both renowned for their insightful psychological remarks in a mummer of areas apart from the psychology of art. One could interpret the metaphysics of art is a misinterpretation of the psychology of art. But this is one concept that will be further discussed in a different chapter.
So, let me first survey the Freudian ideas on the theme of art and artists as I believe in their usefulness despite their limitations - perhaps acting as a foil to my judgments. It should be noted from the beginning that Freud apart from his of love of literature and sculpture had little if anything to do with music. And in order to dispense with the above euphemism I shall say that he was deeply unmusical75.

2
Freud, then, links play, dreams and creative fantasy as regressive, wish-fulfilling procedures that functions as sublimations for an unsatisfying, and apparently unsatisfiable, reality. An artist will turn away from reality because he76 cannot come to terms with the instinctual renunciation that society demands. The most celebrated single quotation that includes many aspects of the Freudian art theory is the following:

An artist is once more in rudiments an introvert, not far removed from neurosis. He is oppressed by excessively powerful instinctual needs. He desires to win honour, power, wealth, fame and the love of women; but he lacks the means for achieving these satisfactions. Consequently, like any other unsatisfied man, he turns away from reality and transfers all his interest, and his libido too, to the wishful constructions of his life of phantasy, whence the path might lead to neurosis77.

Consequently, for Freud, if one managed to fully satisfy one's instincts there wouldn't be any place for 'finer and higher satisfactions78' as their intensity is low and they cannot be compared with the primal instincts whose satisfaction convulses our physical being. Therefore the arts, including music, would become otiose. With only two drives, Eros and Thanatos, he rated creativity as a secondary phenomenon. It has been a great misfortune for music that Freud was deeply unmusical; it is even a greater misfortune that his views on art were so narrow. Instead of art, he predicated his philosophy of life in science. The only mitigation that I can conceive is, firstly, his hinting at a reality which does not encompass psychological insights based strictly on our animal nature - what he calls 'metapsychology79'; and secondly, his acceptance that art can induce the so-called 'oceanic feeling' which bears remarkable similarities with Nietzsche's Dionysian state of rapture.

The oceanic feeling is usually compared with the states of mind described by the mystics in which the subject feels at one with the world and with him or her self. It is almost invariably a solitary experience. Freud describes the oceanic feeling as 'a feeling of indissoluble bond of being one with the external world as a whole'. He compares this with the height of being in love, a state in which 'the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away'....it represents a regression...a return to a total merger with the mother'80.

But, at this point we are in danger of intruding into the conceptual domain of the erotics of art which will be fully developed in my eponymous chapter. Now, I shall move on to the mature part of Nietzsche's life, in which his metaphysics of art become 'applied physiology'; a discipline that has one foot in psychology and the other in biology.

CHAPTER 9
ART AS APPLIED PHYSIOLOGY?

1
In the course of my exposition I have been largely occupied with the notion of the metaphysics of art. However, as the end draws nigh, I feel inclined to repudiate the alethiological validity of many of my (ultimately Nietzsche's) arguments. And, indeed, that would be most decorous as the grand master himself has done the same thing dismissing his youthful paens to metaphysical art with the earthly compromise (?) of physiology - ultimately a necessary sacrifice to the omnipotent principle of Ananke. He even replaced in his earlier works the word 'psychological' (in the sense of relating to the psyche - ultimately 'soul') with the word 'physiological'81.

Traditionally, the reasons for the existence of art have been sought in metaphysics, theology, history, sociology - but never in biology. It was never thought of as inherent in human nature, as something sine qua non of the human psychobiological constitution. Modern approaches have shed more feeling, more 'body', in the detachedness of traditional aesthetics. The postmodern view, for example, that art represents meaning deferred and desire unsatisfied is evidence of a subversive undercurrent attesting to the idea that at least some of the intense pleasures of aesthetic experience are insistently bodily, and that therefore, physicality cannot be totally discounted as irrelevant. Inevitably, the critical vocabulary has been extended by terms like jouissance and desire.

2
And the physicality of art is indisputable; Herbert von Karajan -an accomplished pilot of full-size aircrafts- participating in an experiment, made this amply obvious. The experiment consisted of him flying an airplane and then directing Moussorgsky's Night on the Bald Mountain. The outcome was that when he was directing the musical piece his heartbeat was much faster that when he was landing the plane. And, indeed, great art should have extreme physical effects, not as a matter of exceptional circumstances, but as a matter of course:
The experience of great art disturbs one like a deep anxiety for another, like a near escape from death, like a long anaesthesia for surgery: it is a massive blow from which one recovers slowly and which leaves one changed in ways that only gradually come to light.82

Perhaps one may consider the above descriptions simplistically naive. Perhaps, call it 'affective fallacy', but one may committing a fallacy oneself if we take into account that their judgment is predicated upon the traditional approach that held the aesthetic experience to be something 'mental' or 'spiritual', with no bodily referents whatsoever.

3
Ellen Dissanayke, in her book, Homo Aestheticus, argues that 'artistic proclivities are inherent in human psychobiology83' and she polemically supports the idea of the arts' usefulness in life:
To say that religion or art or music are useful seems to me not in the least to devalue them but on the contrary it improves our estimation of their value. I believe that these 'spiritual' and creative activities are even more important, in the literal, practical sense, than the more mundane ones that are the concern of politics, business, and industry.84

And, indeed, wouldn't that encapsulate the ideas and feelings of Nietzsche about art? Wouldn't the concept 'Homo Aestheticus' come as a welcome addition to Nietzsche's vocabulary? Wasn't he the one that in the whole of existence saw nothing else but art? (See the epigraph in my introduction). And isn't his re-evaluation of art as applied physiology most germane with the practical utility of art in the physical world by means of physical effects?
This is an extremely remarkable re-evaluation and indeed most apposite to the master's suspiciousness towards his own suspicion of suspecting. Julian Young, in his discussion of BT, concludes that what Nietzsche is attempting there is simply an exaggeration on a purely psychological state - psychological in the modern sense of describing a mental state. He concurs on the fact that the metaphysical and the Dionysian are used as synonyms and he insists on taking 'metaphysics' as a metaphor.85 It makes sense, if one thinks that access to one's own inner psychological depths is difficult enough without postulating another form of reality outside the human psyche. I strongly endorse the position advocated by Young, only to add that, had not there been the exaggeration of metaphysics, we wouldn't have had the Nietzschean insight into the artistic 'psyche'.

CHAPTER 10
EROTICS OF ART

'All beauty excites to procreation'
Plato

1
Perhaps, before I develop any other arguments, I should divulge one of my hidden agendas. The fact that this dissertation is structured on musical terms.86The key signature in my text is set by the epigraph in the introduction and it symbolizes emotion, pathos, erotics. Thus, this chapter is the one of the return to the tonic, the tonal centre of the piece which sounds perfectly consonant - the resolution after a long voyage through the dissonances (thematic irregularities) of all the other keys (chapters).

2
I shall begin by talking about Plato. He says, with an innocence for which one must be Greek and not 'Christian', that there would be no Platonic philosophy at all if Athens had not possessed such beautiful youths: 'it was the sight of them which first plunged the philosopher's soul into an erotic whirl and allowed it no rest until it had implanted the seed of all high things into so beautiful a soil87'. The entire higher culture of classical France also grew up on the soil of sexual interest.

In my chapter on psychology I talked about the oceanic feeling and its concomitant effect of feeling merged with the surroundings, in unity with something one really can't tell what. I quoted Freud saying that the boundaries between ego and object melt away. Similarly, when the aesthetic experience is taking place, the spectator projects his personality into the object of contemplation, and, if possible, vice versa. The result of this is a feeling of happiness of an equal intensity with the feeling of being in love. What else could Eros be but the promise of happiness? And art? Beauty in art implies the imitation of all that is happy. Art is according to Stendal, a promesse de bonheur. 'A promise that is constantly being broken'88.

For mature Nietzsche a promise that cannot be kept along the lines of a heavy liebestod orientated romanticism that has flourished in Germany. The culture of the South is the only one that can eroticize art without eroticizing death at the same time:

'Here another kind of sensuality, another kind of sensitiveness and another kind of cheerfulness make their appeal. This music is gay, but not in the French or the German way having this 'southern, tawny, sunburnt sensitiveness' that 'has found no means of expression in Europe89'.

From the heavy/dark/cerebral romantic to the light/lightdrenched/sensual romantic. What Nietzsche meant when he said il faut mediterraniser la musique90 is il faut mediteranniser le monde. And ultimately, sensibiliser-erotiser le monde.

3
Frequently, in Nietzsche's works occurs the word femina. It seems that for Nietzsche everything is a woman; music is a woman, life is a woman, truth is a woman. The first thought is that he could just as well have called himself Sigmund Freud. His, hitherto, 'untainted' aestheticization of the universe thereby acquires a less genteel facade: the one of sexual interest. Even if we take woman as a metaphor then the relationship between art and artist is still erotic: 'Art which perpetually creates new objects of attraction and desire. Art is the arch-seducer to life91.'

If it is by means of the physical, the erotic, that one can experience the metaphysical illusion then the metaphysical artist par excellence is the dancer. (Nietzsche has numerous references to dance/dancers/dancing). It involves not only the supreme aesthetic beauty of dance qua dance, not only the strongly pronounced erotic that is an inevitable concomitant of an art that exists on the body, but also the feeling of omnipotence derived from the very truthful illusion of overcoming gravity. Besides that, dance could be declared the art that bears the higher affinity to music. In one of the most celebrated Dionysian festivities in ancient Greece, the Eleusynian mysteries, dance had a key role. And I believe that it is this giving a metaphysical sense in life by means of the physical that is implied in Mukhamedov's statement: 'You see, if I was dismissed {from the ballet}, I would not know what to do. It would feel like having no arms, legs or head.'92

4
In the question (because that is now the question): Is a non metaphysical transcendence possible? I would answer: It is, in the form of aesthetically induced transcendence... In the form of an ultra-refined erotics of art...

CONCLUSION

Oh my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but
exhaust the limits of the possible.

Pindar, Pythian iii

1
As Nietzsche himself says, BT has been a book in which he tried to express new ideas by means of Schopenhauerian and Kantian formulas. And what he means by that is Schopenhauer's conception of music as a direct copy of the will (a conceptual monstrosity according to Heckman93) and Kant's commitment to a noumenal reality and disinterested aesthetic contemplation. On the other hand, it constitutes a breach of these formulas insofar as it proclaims the necessity to evaluate, and when I say evaluate I don't mean evaluate only in the academic sense of evaluating philosophy, or music, but evaluate people, and most importantly life itself . The philosophic discourse of aesthetics is only his excuse to do this. In specific, what constitutes a shift from Kantian formulas is the doing away with the concept of disinterested contemplation. Moreover, whereas for Schopenhauer art was a means of escape from life, for Nietzsche it was a means of affirming life. When Nietzsche interrogates the nature of tragedy, he interrogates the utility of tragedy with relation to life. It is better to feel that life is tragic than to be indifferent to it. Ultimately, in order to understand Nietzsche, one has to be a 'victim of the same passion!' 94

However, if we consider this book a failure because of its extensive traits of ambiguity, contradiction, conceptual plagiarism, incoherence, and youthful impetuousness, then it is failure that is worth a thousand petty 'successes'. It might be a source of inspirational criticism of ancient Greek tragedy, but that is not the main locus of its historic significance. What it all boils down to, as I pointed out in my introduction when I talked about tragedy 'in the wider sense' (part 7), is not tragedy but man's tragic condition - the human condition. I can do nothing else but fully condone Silk & Stern when they place Nietzsche's book in its philosophico-historical context: 'If Kierkegaard is the first existentialist and Schopenhauer the first to present aesthetics as an alternative to existence, Nietzsche's book, by identifying aesthetics with the existential, is the first essay in post-Christian existentialism.'95

2
Nietzsche, having experienced in depth the nihilism that his cogitations imply, felt the impetus of overcoming the abyss, as an imperative moral obligation96 for a man of his stature, so, he became -and this is my favourite metaphor- an architect of the abyss. As another major existentiaslist put it, in his seminal work, one does not discover the absurd without being tempted to write a manual for happiness97; Nietzsche's manual for happiness is the experience of feeling through art. He must give the void its colours98 so that we shall be kept entertained during our chute99. However, the struggle against such conceptual incubi is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Nietzsche happy100.

3
Now, the time is ripe to explain the puzzling introductory statement that appears to synthesize metaphysics aesthetics and ethics into a single entity. But first I shall discuss the Wittgensteinein dictum. In what way, then, is ethics and aesthetics one and the same? It is more simple than one could imagine, in the sense that a society that functions well aesthetically also functions well ethically. In other words, a healthy society will produce healthy art and vice versa - art seen as the moral fulcrum. This is a morality whose only criterion is the optimization of existence: 'Art is moral. But the morality is not of any creed..., but of life itself'101. {my italics}. And now let me add the third thread of this tri-partite entity. One could verbalize the quintessence of Nietzsche's philosophy of art (or Nietzsche's philosophies of art as Young has it102) quite minimally: a youthful infatuation with metaphysics with a concomitant repudiation of ethics that lead to the human all-too-human affirmation of erotics. Thus, the wheel has come full circle and the cryptic part 8 of my introduction has (hopefully!) been divested of its veil of mystery.

4
If one is to consider this dissertation as something creative then there are strong personal undercurrents that lead me to it: having had first hand experience of the transcendental feeling affecting the creator of music at the moment of composition I longed to describe it and provide a theoretical background for it. The philosophy of Nietzsche came to me naturally and spontaneously to affirm discursively my extra-discursive thoughts and feelings. There is no disinterestedness here, no cold intellectual detachment, but a blind will to 'go beyond the phraseology of aesthetics103', to metamorphose the mathematically analytic, and oftentimes anaesthetic, science of aesthetics into something overbrimming with the force and urgency of life: a form of linguistic acrobatics on the extra-linguistic silk thread of joie de vivre. Ultimately, my ambition is the comprehension of myself; and it is by means of this effort, I hope, that I might assist some people into achieving a greater self-knowledge of their active or latent artistic passions.

POST SCRIPTUM

At this point I believe the reader should be made aware of the origins of the text in this particular font which has be chosen to introduce my dissertation. It has its origins in -where else!- Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy (part I-3) and it belongs to the introductory chapter entitled 'Attempt at a Self-Criticism'. The reasons that drove me to this decision are two. Firstly, I consider its effect extremely musical - thus introducing the reader into what Nietzsche described as 'musical mood'. The second reason is that, as an attempt at a self-criticism, it is also true for my text, except where it talks of a voice stammering in a 'foreign tongue' - that is twice true.

I would also like to say a few words in order to justify my audio attachment. I found its inclusion an imperative gesture as, had I obviated this necessity, I would have either been hypocritical to the whole ideology underlying my argument, or, at the least, negligent. Thus, I hope that my abstract cerebrations have become more substantiated, by the support of concrete, sensory evidence.

Now, as there is nothing more to be said, the reader is strongly advised to willfully transform into a listener, and try to comprehend with the ear what my words have failed to convey through the mind.

The rest is music.

E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle...

ADDENDUM I
NIETZSCHE AND KEATS

I have already referred to Keats twice. Firstly, as a writer of love letters in my chapter about Schopenhauer; and, secondly, as a speculative epistemologist speaking about the nature of truth in his poem Ode on a Grecian Urn in my chapter that bears the heading Art versus Truth. But what I consider Keats's most paradigmatic aesthetico-metaphysical statement, and perhaps the most stunning in English poetry, is the one that can be found in Endymion. The opening lines of this poem could have been -rather than Pater Nosters or Ave Marias- Nietzsche's bedtime prayer. What is even more remarkable is that these lines could very well lend themselves for a 'prayer' as their rhythmical patterns are quite similar to the ones of prayers. And I believe that the whole idea of making a religion out of art would not sound the least strange to Nietzsche himself!

And, indeed, if everybody that had been regurgitating Pater Nosters and Ave Marias, within the iconolatric Christian tradition, had been reciting Endymion instead, then we might have been living in a happier -and certainly more beautiful- world. What I will venture is a comparative analysis between Keatsian verse and Nietzschean prose and ideas. I hope that the similarities will become easily discernible. As the reader will probably notice part of the poem has been italicized. It is these words that I shall try to relate to Nietzsche. Intrinsically, they can apply not only to Nietzsche, but any creator of the his stature and sensibility. At this point I find it hard to resist the temptation of reiterating these oft-quoted lines, and, indeed, I shall do it without the slightest vestige of guilt:

ADDENDUM II
CASSETTE CONTENTS

-Cassette 1-
SIDE A                                      SIDE B
1. Wagner Tristan & Isolde 1. Bach St Matthew's Passion
Prelude & Liebestod Chorus: Wir setzen uns mit Tranen nieder
Berliner Philarmoniker Concertus Musicus Wien, Nicolaus Harnoncourt
Karajan 2. Bach St Matthew's Passion
2. Mahler Symphony No. 5 Chorus: Kommt ihr Tochter
Adagietto, Berliner Philarmoniker Concertus Musicus Wien, Nicolaus Harnoncourt
Claudio Abaddo 3. Bach St John's Passion
opening chorus
English Chamber Orchestra
Benjamin Britten
4.Bach St Matthew's Passion
Aria: Erbarme mich, mein Gott
Concertus Musicus Wien, Nicolaus Harnoncourt

-Cassette 2-

SIDE A                                SIDE B

1. Chopin Nocturne No.1 in B flat minor 1. Vivaldi Cello Concerto No.1 in C minor
2. Chopin Nocturne No.2 in E flat 1st mvt. Hungarian State Opera Chamber
pianist: Artur Rubinstein Orchestra. Cellist: Gyorgy Kertesz
3. Satie gymnopedie No. 1 2. Mozart Requiem: Lacrymosa
pianist: Daniel Varsano Berliner Philarmoniker, Karajan
4. Part of the Soundtrack of 3. Nick Drake: Cello song
Kieslowski's movie 4. Nick Drake: Fruit Tree
'The Double Life of Veronica' 5. Doors: The End

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY SOURCES

BOOKS
Baldick C. : The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, OUP, 1992
Boyd Malcolm: Bach, Dent, 1983
Camus Albert: The Myth of Sisyphus, Justin O' Brien (tr), Penguin, 1975
Freud Sigmund: Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Standard Edition, Vol XVI, Hogarth Press, 1963
Freud Sigmund: Formulations in the two Principles of Mental Functioning, SE, Vol. XII, Hogarth Press, 1958
Freud Sigmund: Civilisation and its Discontents, SE, Hogarth Press,Vol.XXI, 1961
Lodge D.(ed) : Twentieth century Literary Criticism, Longman, 1972
Nietzsche F.: Twilight of the Idols, Penguin, 1969
Nietzsche F.: Beyond Good and Evil, Penguin,1990
Nietzsche F.: Untimely Meditations, CUP, Hollingdale RJ (tr), 1983
Nietzsche F.: The Birth of Tragedy, Penguin, 1993
Nietzsche F: Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Hollingdale (tr), Penguin, 1969
Nietzsche F.: The Case of Wagner,(Vol. 8) Gordon Press, New York, 1974
Nietzsche F.: On Truth and lie in an exra-moral sense, in the Portable Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann (ed & trans), New York, Viking Press, 1954
Orage A.R.: Nietzsche in Outline and Aphorism, A.C. McClurg & Co, Chicago, 1912
Palmer P. J.: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Penguin 1983
Proust Marcel: Remembrance of Things Past, Chato & Windus, 1981
Schopenhauer A. : The World as Will and Idea, Trubner & CO., 1883 (v.III - out of four)
Schopenhauer A. : The World as Will and Representation, Dover Publications, N.Y.,1966 (v.I, II - out of two)
Schopenhauer A. : Essays from the Parerga & Paralipomena, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1951
Shakespeare W.: The Complete Works, W.J. Craig (ed) Guernsey Press, 1992
Shelley P.B.: Poems, Penguin, 1986
Tipler Frank: The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Ressurection of the Dead, Macmillan, 1995
Wittgenstein L.: Tractatus Logicophilosophicus, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975
Wittgenstein L.: Philosophical Investigations, Basil Blackwell, 1976, Oxford

ARTICLES
THE GUARDIAN & THE OBSERVER:
Hollingdale R. J. : The ugly truth about Nietzsche, 19 March 1992
Martin Wroe: Art star Sister Wendy happy in silent role, 8 May 1994
Hollingdale R. J. : Happy Birthday Friedrich, 12 October 1994

THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
Highfield R. : Concocting a computer heaven, 22 January 1995

THE TIMES AND THE SUNDAY TIMES

White M. : Sound in Mind, 17 January 1993 Chamberlain L. : Does art give life meaning?, 19 August 1993
John Cornwell: Is mind merely matter?, 15 May 1994
Matt Ridley: All souls have a nerve, 16 May 1994
Richard Gregory: Life and Soul, 22 May 1994
Goodkin J. : Irek Mukhamedov, 24 December 1994
Antony Clare: Notes that pluck at our heart strings, 27 December 1994

THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS
Nicholas Davey: Nietzsche's Aesthetics and the question of Hermeneutic Interpretation, Vol.26, No1, Autumn 1986, p.328
Richard White: Art and individuality in Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, Vol.28, No1. Winter 1988, p.59
Edward Halper: Is creativity good?, Vol.29,No. 1, Winter 1989, p.47
Peter Heckman: The role of music in Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, Vol.30, No.4, October 1990, p.351

SECONDARY SOURCES
Adorno T.: Aesthetic Theory, Routledge, 1976
Crick F.: The Astonishing Hypothesis, The Scientific Search for the Soul, Simon & Schuster, 1994
Dissanayke Ellen: Homo Aestheticus, The Free Press, New York, 1992
Easthope A.: British Poststructuralism, Routledge, 1988
Easthope A. & McGowan K.: A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader, Open UP, 1992, Buckingham
Gillespie M.A. & Strong T.B. (ed): Nietzsche's New Seas, University of Chicago Press, 1991
Heidegger M.: Nietzsche (Volumes I & II), Harper Collins, 1991
Heller E.: The Importance of Nietzsche, University of Chicago Press, 1988
Hollingdale R.J.: Nietzsche, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973
Magee B.: The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, OUP, 1983
Ricoeur Paul: The Conflict of Interpretations , reprinted from Freud and Philosophy: An essay on Interpretation, Denis Salvage (tr), New Haven Conn., 1970
Claude Levi Strauss: The Raw and the Crooked, Cape, 1970
Satler W.M.: Nietzsche the Thinker, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., New York, 1968
Scruton Roger: Modern Philosophy and the Neglect of Aesthetics, as found in The Symbolic Order, Peter Abbs (ed), The Falmer Press, 1989
Silk M.S.& Stern J.P.: Nietzsche on Tragedy, CUP, 1981
Storr A.: Music and the Mind, The Free Press, 1992, New York
Young J. : Nietzsche's philosophy of art, CUP, 1992

FOOTNOTES

1 The Sunday Times, 15 May 1994

2 The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, p.45

3 Aphasia in which the primary symptom is an inability to recognize words and to speak the right word (CollinsDictionary p.1019)

4 Horace, Odes, 6

5 Twilight of the Idols (1986) p.61

6 Allusion to the Twilight of the Idols (1968), p.53

7 An example of this can be found in the Introduction to BT by Michael Tanner, p.xxvi 'and to ask them {readers of the BT} how they have been affected by it is like asking how one has been affected by an overpowering piece of music'

8 The Birth of Tragedy (1993) p.6

9 The Birth of Tragedy, 1993, p.6

10 The Birth of Tragedy (1993) p.29

11 The Birth of Tragedy (1993) p.29

12 Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logicophilosophicus 6.421

13 Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, p.7

14 I am referring to the nine ancient Greek deities each one representing a particular art.

15 Schopenhauer (1951) The Metaphysics of Fine Art (essay), p.83

16 ibid, p.83

17 Schopenhauer (1966 Vol. I) p.252

18 King Lear Act V sc.iii 308-10

19 King Lear Act IV Sc. VI 255

20 Schopenhauer (1966 Vol. I) p.253

21 Schopenhauer (1966 Vol.1) p.257

22 ibid, p.261

23 Schopenhauer 1966, p.262-3

24 ibid, p.264

25 Claude Levi Strauss (1970) p.18

26 Easthope Antony (1988) p.124

27 Please refer to the accompanying musical material.

28 Allusion to Eliot's Whispers of Immortality

29 Silk & Stern (1981) p.61

30 Silk & Stern (1981) p.43

31 Literally: twelve gods.

32 The Birth of Tragedy (1993) p.14

33 The Birth of Tragedy (1993) p.33

34 ibid p.35

35 ibid p.39

36 ibid p.95

37 ibid p.94

38 Please refer to the accompanying musical material.

39 The chromatic scale is twelve note scale which includes both the white and black keys of the piano. Wagner used such notes extensively in chords and harmonic progressions in order to achieve the effect of a desire striving after its fulfilment. The use of this device is unorthodox for the musical establishment of Wagner's time, insofar as it disrupts the predictable hierarchy of tones that was essential to traditional tonality. A further development of this system will take place in the beginnings of the 21st century with the atonal music of Schonberg expanded in his book 'Harmonielehre'.

40 Ibid p.28

41 Please refer to the accompanying musical material.

42 Philosophical Investigations No. 109

43 Will to Power No.522

44 Beyond Good and Evil (1990) p.111

45 Twilight of the Idols (1968) p.25

46 Supposedly revealed knowledge of various spiritual truths, especially that said to have been possesed by the the ancient Gnostics. Its etymology is from the Greek word for knowledge. I find it very apt in this case as we could draw a parallel with Dionysian knowledge.

47 The Case of Wagner (1974) p.2-3

48 Schopenhauer (1966) p. 264

49 Live first and philosophize afterwards

50 Bach (1983) p.208

51 It is Bach's last opus. He wrote at the time when he was blind and dying. It is a series of highly contrapuntal pieces for strings that have set the standard for contrapuntal composition. Their achievement lies in that up to five different voices can sustain five different melodies without any sense of them jarring with each other. The intricate mathematics applied there match in intensity the depth of feeling.

52 The Case of Wagner (1974) p.2-3

53 The Birth of Tragedy (1992) p. xxi

54 Roger Scruton (1989) p.27

55 Wittgenstein Tractatus Logicophilosophicus 6.4

56 Twilight of the Idols (1968) p.55

57 The Observer, 8 May 1994 (My italics). In an interview of Sister Wendy, the popularizer of art in her famous television series.

58 'Everything is in a state of flux' and 'becoming' respectively.

59 Nietzsche (1954) p.46-7

60 In his article : The ugly truth about Nietzsche, Guardian, 19 March 1992

61 The Birth of Tragedy (1993) p.73

62 The Case of Wagner (1974) p.77-78

63 Beyond Good and Evil (1990), p.99

64 British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol.30, No.4, October 1990, p.350

65 Aesthetic Theory (1976) p.192

66 Hollingdale (1973) p.155 (from an unused draft for a preface for a new edition of the BT)

67 Twilight of the Idols (1968) p.36

68 Crick Francis (1994) p.259

69 The Birth of Tragedy (1993) p.73

70 The Sunday Telegraph, 22 January 1995

71 The Sunday Telegraph, 22 January 1995

72 The Birth of Tragedy (1993) p.32

73 Nietzsche Contra Wagner, II

74 Zarathustra, I.4

75 Funnily enough this is an attribute that Freud shares with another major psychologist and antagonist - Jung. The only reference of Jung to music is in his autobiography where he describes the singing of kettle. This, he wrote, 'was like polyphonic music, which in reality I cannot abide' (source: A. Storr: Music and the Mind p.155)

76 Excuse my exclusive use of the masculine personal pronoun. I find it stylistically the lesser of many evils as politically correct alternatives tend to sound unidiomatic as well as interruptive to the natural flow of the text. That, however, does not mean that, had there been a linguistically sound alternative, I wouldn't have used it.

77 Freud: Introductory Lectures On Psychoanalysis SE, Vol XVI, Hogarth Press,1963, p.376

78 Freud: Civilisation and its Discontents p.79-80

79 This concept acquires a rather imminent place towards the end of his pessimistic book: Civilisation and its Discontents

80 Antony Storr (1992) p.95

81 Twilight of the Idols (1986) p.193 (Appendix D)

82 Ellen Dissanayke (1992) p. 25 (herself quoting it from Jacques Barzan: The Use and Ubuse of Art)

83 ibid p. xix

84 ibid p.xi (quoted from J.Z. Young , Programs of the Brain, 1978)

85 Joung Julian (1992) p.52

86 The same thing has been done by Nietzsche in his Twilight of the Idols. An analysis of Nietzsche's musical politics can be found in Michael Allen Gillespie's essay: Nietzsche's Musical Politics in Gillespie & Strong: Nietzsche's New Seas (1991) p.120

87 Twilight of the Idols (1986) p.80

88 Adorno (1976) p.196

89 The Case of Wagner (1974) p.3-4

90 ibid p.5

91 Orage (1912) p.59

92 The Sunday Times, 24 December 1994

93 British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol.30, No.4, October 1990, p.351

94 The Guardian, 19 March 1992

95 Nietzsche on Tragedy (1993) p.296

96 'Moral obligation' might sound rather falacious after my examination of Nietzsche's putative amorality, but it makes sense, if we consider that he felt moral obligation only towards beauty. Again aesthetics identyfying itself with ethics.

97 Albert Camus The myth of Sisyphus (1975) p.110

98 ibid p.103

99 Allusion to a book by Camus, literally 'fall'

100 Allusion to The Myth of Sisyphus: 'one must imagine Sisyphus happy'.

101 Orage (1912) p. 66

102 Julian Young (1992) p.1

103 Nietzsche on Tragedy (1993) p.77

104 Twilight of the Idols (1968) p.23

105 Beyond Good and Evil (1990) p.146