Exceedingly Nietzsche

Aspects of Contemporary Nietzsche Interpretation

David Farrell Krell, David Wood

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781135175368
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Originally published in 1988, this collection brings together a wide range of original readings on Friedrich Nietzsche, reflecting many aspects of Neitzsche in contemporary philosophy, literature and the social sciences. The Nietzsche these contributors discuss is the Nietzsche who exceeds any attempt at determinate interpretation, the Nietzsche whose capacity for renewing thought seems limitless. This is a powerful collection of essays and a major contribution to modern Nietzsche interpretation.

• PART ONE •
MUSIC, MADNESS AND METAPHYSICS

• 1 •
Dionysus—In Excess of Metaphysics

JOHN SALLIS

I shall be concerned with a figure, one that is different from most, perhaps from almost all, others; a figure drawn, or rather withdrawn, in such a manner that it can have no direct image, even though, on the other hand, it can become, in its way, manifest. This figure could be considered the most perfectly metaphysical, the original an sich, so compactly an original, so thoroughly an sich, as to withhold itself from direct disclosure in an image. And yet by virtue of this very withdrawing it can instead be considered a transgressive figure, a figure which veers off toward the limit of metaphysics, that exceeds metaphysics, a figure in excess of metaphysics. The name of the figure is Dionysus. The text in which the figure is drawn: Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy.¹

Dionysis—in Euripides’ Bacchae Pentheus declares him an impostor, a deceiver, a seducer. Yet such is his power that all the women of Thebes have flocked to Mt Kithairon to take part in the revels of the god; even those women whom Pentheus has had put in chains and thrown into the dungeon have escaped, the chains on their legs snapping apart, the doors of the dungeon swinging open. When Pentheus then imprisons the stranger in the darkness of the stables he discovers how hopeless it is to try to confine this Dionysian figure: an earthquake, shaking everything loose, leaves the entire palace in ruins. The stranger recounts exactly what happened when Pentheus sought to chain him: Pentheus suddenly found himself engaged in binding not the stranger but a bull; instead of constraining the stranger, he ended up, ridiculously, trying to put a rope around the knees and hooves of the bull. Pentheus’ outrage against the god is soon repaid in full: Pentheus is torn to pieces by the Dionysian throng, among whom is his own mother in a state of frenzy. Or again, in a Homeric hymn, Dionysus is seized by certain Tyrrhenian pirates who bind him as a slave only to find that the chains fall away, that he breaks all bonds, that he cannot be bound. Stories also abound concerning the practices of his votaries—stories, for example, of how the Maenads could tear goats or deer to pieces with their bare hands and then devour the raw flesh. But also stories of how, on the other hand, they demonstrated deep sympathy with the beasts, often suckling kids and fawns. The apparent contradiction disappears as soon as it is recognized that in both instances it is a matter of a disruption of the limits that would delimit the individual. In one instance it is a matter of exceeding those limits, that is, of a bond with what otherwise would be the other:

Under the magic of the Dionysian not only is the bond between man and man reestablished, but nature which has become alienated, hostile, or subjugated, celebrates once more its reconciliation with its lost son, man. (§1)

In the other instance it is a matter of dissolution, of tearing to pieces, as Dionysus himself was each year torn to pieces by the Titans. It is a matter, on the one hand, of expanding the limit indefinitely and, on the other, of contracting it indefinitely—a matter of expanding or contracting indefinitely, that is, limitlessly—hence in both cases a matter of disrupting the limit.

Near the beginning of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche schematizes the Dionysian in the most classical manner: the Dionysian is, first of all, one of the ‘artistic energies which burst forth from nature itself without the mediation of the human artist’ (§2). Thus it is a matter of dividing the Dionysian according to the classical opposition between nature and art and the classical concept of mimesis. There is, first of all, a natural Dionysian state which would then be mimetically reproduced in Dionysian art. Let us, for the moment, follow the lines of this classical schema and consider first the natural Dionysian state.

A note written in the Fall of 1869 provides a point of departure Nietzsche writes: In those orgiastic festivals of Dionysus there prevailed such a degree of being-outside-oneself [Ausser-sich-sein], of ekstasis, that men acted and felt like transformed and enchanted beings.² Add to this a phrase from The Birth of Tragedy: Nietzsche writes of ‘the rapture [Verzückung] of the Dionysian state with its annihilation of the ordinary bounds and limits of existence’ (§7). The Dionysian state is, then, one of ecstasy, a state of being utterly outside oneself. And yet the concept, the figure, of being-outside-oneself releases a strange logic, especially if it is not stabilized by a dialectic of appropriation. In Dionysian ecstasy, in being-outside-oneself, one transgresses the limits that ordinarily would delimit one’s self, one’s individuality, one’s subjectivity. These limits separating man from man and man from nature would be annihilated, and man would be reunited with both man and nature. The Maenads would mother all creatures, suckling even kids and fawns.

But kids and fawns were also torn to pieces by the Maenads, as Dionysus himself was each year torn to pieces by the Titans, and as Pentheus was torn to pieces by his own mother. The logic is such that, in transgressing the limits that would separate ‘inside’ from ‘outside’—the limits that would delimit one’s own subjectivity—one would also disrupt that delimitation. The ‘inside’ would not simply remain intact, but rather the subjective would vanish into Selbstvergessenheit: as Dionysian emotions ‘grow in intensity the subjective vanishes into complete Selbstvergessenheit’ (§1). More precisely, Dionysian ecstasy, being-outside-oneself, would be a matter not simply of relating an inside to an outside but rather of shifting the ‘inside’ into the ‘outside’, displacing it, disrupting the very logic of the opposition inside/outside. The Dionysian, this ecstasy bursting forth from nature itself, would be a deconstruction indeed of subjectivity.

Because it is sheer ecstasy, the Dionysian is utterly opposed to the other of those artistic energies which burst forth from nature itself, namely the Apollonian. In the Apollonian, especially in Apollonian art, beautiful images serve as transfiguring mirrors in which one appears to oneself more perfect, more complete, shining in a higher truth. In other words, in the Apollonian image one is given a measure by which to measure oneself, a measure by which to draw around oneself the limits of an individuality, even if one never entirely measures up to it. The drawing of this limit and the drawing of oneself into it constitute Apollonian self-knowledge.

But to this Apollonian measure the votaries of Dionysus oppose excess (Übermaβ). Or rather, as ecstasy, the Dionysian state is excess itself, what one could call excess as such, were not such excess precisely such as to disrupt the very operation of delimitation that every ‘as such’ presupposes. It is the exceeding of any limit by which one’s individuality would be delimited, by which the self would be defined and constituted as an interior space of self-possession. This exceeding, this being in excess of subjectivity, is at the same time the dissolution of subjectivity, the utter disruption of determinate selfhood, being torn to pieces. The Dionysian state is an abysmal loss of self, and this is why Nietzsche consistently relates it to terror, dread, suffering (Schrecken, Entsetzlichkeit, Leiden); not because the Dionysian state produces or discloses terror, dread, and suffering, but because the Dionysian is as such (I write here under erasure) that abysmal loss of self, loss of self-possession and its measure, that one undergoes in various degrees and in various connections when one is struck with terror, possessed by dread, or overcome with suffering.

In the history of Greece the Apollonian culture was overwhelmed by the intrusion of the Dionysian festival. Here is how Nietzsche describes this intrusion:

And now let us consider how this world built on appearance [Schein] and moderation [Mäβigung] and artificially dammed up, there rang out in every more alluring and magical ways the ecstatic sound of the Dionysian festival; how in these all of nature’s excess (Übermaβ] in pleasure, suffering, and knowledge became audible, even in piercing shrieks… The muses of the arts of ‘appearance’ [‘Schein’] paled before an art that, in its frenzy [Rausch], spoke the truth. The wisdom of Silenus cried ‘Woe! woe!’ to the ser...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Notes on the Contributors
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• • PART ONE • MUSIC, MADNESS AND METAPHYSICS
• • PART TWO • WOMEN, MEN AND MACHINES OF WAR
• Index