Introduction to Philosophy

Read to p. 275.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Our textbook covers quite a lot of the life of Nietzsche, his works and influence. But I would like to stress two aspects of his work that deserve more emphasis. The first is the distinction Nietzsche makes between the Dionysian and the Apollonian principles. He makes it in his first work, titled The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music.

We will have achieved much for the study of aesthetics when we come, not merely to a logical understanding, but also to the immediately certain apprehension of the fact that the further development of art is bound up with the duality of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, just as reproduction depends upon the duality of the sexes, their continuing strife and only periodically occurring reconciliation. We take these names from the Greeks who gave a clear voice to the profound secret teachings of their contemplative art, not in ideas, but in the powerfully clear forms of their divine world.

With those two gods of art, Apollo and Dionysus, we link our recognition that in the Greek world there exists a huge contrast, in origins and purposes, between visual (plastic) arts, the Apollonian, and the non-visual art of music, the Dionysian. Both very different drives go hand in hand, for the most part in open conflict with each other and simultaneously provoking each other all the time to new and more powerful offspring, in order to perpetuate for themselves the contest of opposites which the common word "Art" only seems to bridge, until they finally, through a marvelous metaphysical act, seem to pair up with each other and, as this pair, produce Attic tragedy, just as much a Dionysian as an Apollonian work of art.

In order to get closer to these two instinctual drives, let us think of them next as the separate artistic worlds of dreams and of intoxication, physiological phenomena between which we can observe an opposition corresponding to the one between the Apollonian and the Dionysian.
(Trans. by Ian C. Johnston of Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC, Canada.)

These two principles set up dynamics of Nietzsche's entire philosophical thought. It underlies his critique of Christianity.

Have I been understood?— What defines me, what sets me apart from the whole rest of humanity is that I uncovered Christian morality. That is why I needed a word that had the meaning of a provocation for everybody. That they did not open their eyes earlier at this point, I regard as the greatest uncleanliness that humanity has on its conscience; as self-deception become instinctive; as a fundamental will not to see any event, any causality, any reality; as counterfeiting in psychologicis to the point of criminality. Blindness to Christianity is the crime par excellence—the crime against life.

[....] The Christian has so far been the "moral being"—a matchless curiosity—and as the "moral being" he was more absurd, mendacious, vain, frivolous, and more disadvantageous for himself than even the greatest despiser of humanity could imagine in his dreams. Christian morality—the most malignant form of the will to lie, the real Circe of humanity—that which corrupted humanity. It is not error as error that horrifies me at this sight—not the lack, for thousands of years, of "good will," discipline, decency, courage in matters of the spirit, revealed by its victory: it is the lack of nature, it is the utterly gruesome fact that antinature itself received the highest honors as morality and was fixed over humanity as law and categorical imperative.— To blunder to such an extent, not as individuals, not as a people, but as humanity!— That one taught men to despise the very first instincts of life, sexuality, as something unclean; that one looks for the evil principle in what is most profoundly necessary for growth, in severe self-love [Selbstsucht: the word is pejorative, like "selfishness."] (this very word constitutes slander); that, conversely, one regards the typical signs of decline and contradiction of the instincts, the "selfless," the loss of a center of gravity, "depersonalization" and "neighbor love" (addiction to the neighbor) as the higher value—what am I saying?—the absolute value!

What? Is humanity itself decadent? Was it always?— What is certain is that it has been taught only decadence values as supreme values. The morality that would un-self man is the morality of decline par excellence—the fact, "I am declining," transposed into the imperative, "all of you ought to decline"—and not only into the imperative.— This only morality that has been taught so far, that of un-selfing, reveals a will to the end; fundamentally, it negates life.

This would still leave open the possibility that not humanity is degenerating but only that parasitical type of man—that of the priest—which has used morality to raise itself mendaciously to the position of determining human values—finding in Christian morality the means to come to power.— Indeed, this is my insight: the teachers, the leaders of humanity, theologians all of them, were also, all of them, decadents: hence the revaluation of all values into hostility to life, hence morality—

Definition of morality: Morality—the idiosyncrasy of decadents, with the ulterior motive of revenging oneself against life—successfully. I attach value to this definition.
(From the posthumously published Ecce Homo)

Thus Christianity fosters what Nietzsche calls a "slave morality."
Just as Marxism may have value as a critique of capitalism, could it be that Nietzsche's philosophy has some value as a critique of Christianity? This would bear discussion.