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:
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
[eternally justified]
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
[infinity of art]
A bower quite for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
[Art as health - affirmation of
life]
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
[tragedy as life-affirming]
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
[the solitude of the genius 'to
live alone one must
be an animal or a God - says Aristotle. There is
yet a third case: one must be both - a philosopher'
Twilight of the Idols (1968) p.23] .
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
[the abysses of the philosopher
in his quest for
truth 'and when you gaze long into an abyss
the abyss also gazes into you. Beyond Good and Evil
(1990) p.146 ']
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.
[Art as the only answer to the
human condition]

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
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