In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him - Nietzsche
Let me try and contextualize this for everyone who isn't familiar with this quotation or its significance.This is from chapter 7 of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche's first major text. In this book, he is still quite solidly under the influence of Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy, and further, in this book he makes the claim that art is the medium that will allow us to move past the absurdity of existence (revealed only through the Dionysian experience of the tragic) and allow the Dionysiac man to tolerate his daily life.Taken out of context this quotation does not reflect at all the point that Nietzsche was making; not only does it not mention art or the tragic (leading us to believe that Nietzsche stopped simply at a declaration of absurdity and nihilism), but it does not clarify what the "truth" is. Without these key pieces, the quotation falls flat, and Nietzsche comes across as an absurdist existentialist, which (especially in The Birth of Tragedy) he is most decidedly not.
First off; what is the tragic, for Nietzsche? Here is a quotation from earlier in the same chapter:
The experience of Dionysiac tragedy destroys Apollonian distinctions and shows us the truth of the world, "the solace that in the ground of things, and despite all changing appearances, life is indestructibly mighty and pleasurable." The tragic captures the indomitable spirit of life - of Dionysus! - that the calculations of normal daily life in civilization have covered over and forgotten. Nietzsche asserts that this is the feeling that overcame the Greeks when they gathered to experience a tragic play.Whence the absurdity, then? If tragedy uncovers the purity of life inherent in the Dionysian worldview, why then does the Dionysian man, who knows the "truth" of the tragic, "see only what is terrible or absurd in existence"? This shift is found when the Dionysian state subsides and those who now know the "truth" are left to contend with the realities of their daily lives. Another quotation:
Nietzsche goes on to compare the man who has returned to daily life from a Dionysiac state to Hamlet:
To be sure, Nietzsche is playing on Hamlet's famous line here that "the time is out of joint." The absurdity that with the Dionysiac man is now faced makes him long for a "world beyond death, beyond even the gods themselves." This is one of the first appearances of Nietzsche's famous mistrust of transcendent realities. He calls the response of the Dionysiac man who knows the "truth" a denial of existence. It is here that we find Nietzsche writing those words that make up the quotation in this post:
But, I stress, this is not Nietzsche's last word on the subject in The Birth of Tragedy. Indeed, this issue will transform itself many times and will remain until Nietzsche's last written words. It will evolve and change, but here we find it in its original mutation. Here, for Nietzsche (a young, impressionable Nietzsche), it is art that will save the man who knows the "truth" from the absurdity of existence:
As is now plainly clear, Nietzsche did not assert that life was meaningless or absurd. The somewhat pathetic pity-party found in the discussions in this thread has nothing to do with anything Nietzschean, except that his name has been unfortunately attached to a quotation which needs context to be properly and fully understood. Nietzsche did not assert that life is meaningless, or absurd, or worthy of loathing. In fact, perhaps the singular most inspiring kernel of his thought, from beginning to end, is Nietzsche's unswerving dedication to revealing the eternal, infinite value of life, in the face of so many forces that want to take the easy way out and call it worthless. Nietzsche cries out, with almost every sentence: "LIFE IS WORTHWHILE! LIFE IS INVALUABLE!"
It is admittedly an 'ideal' ground on which, as Schiller rightly saw, the Greek chorus of satyrs, the chorus of the original tragedy, is wont to walk, a ground raised high above the real path along which mortals wander. For this chorus the Greeks built the hovering platform of a fictitious state of nature on to which they placed fictitious creatures of nature. Tragedy grew up on this foundation... Perhaps it will serve as a starting-point for thinking about this if I now assert that the satyr... bears the same relation to the cultured human being as Dionysiac music bears to civilization... [civilization] is absorbed, elevated and extinguished by music, just as lamplight is superseded by the light of day. This [too] is the first effect of Dionysiac tragedy: state and society, indeed all divisions between one human being and another, give way to an overwhelming feeling of unity which leads men back to the heart of nature. -- The Birth of Tragedy, chapter 7
The experience of Dionysiac tragedy destroys Apollonian distinctions and shows us the truth of the world, "the solace that in the ground of things, and despite all changing appearances, life is indestructibly mighty and pleasurable." The tragic captures the indomitable spirit of life - of Dionysus! - that the calculations of normal daily life in civilization have covered over and forgotten. Nietzsche asserts that this is the feeling that overcame the Greeks when they gathered to experience a tragic play.Whence the absurdity, then? If tragedy uncovers the purity of life inherent in the Dionysian worldview, why then does the Dionysian man, who knows the "truth" of the tragic, "see only what is terrible or absurd in existence"? This shift is found when the Dionysian state subsides and those who now know the "truth" are left to contend with the realities of their daily lives. Another quotation:
...the ecstasy of the Dionysiac state, in which the usual barriers and limits of existence are destroyed, contains, for as long as it lasts, a lethargic element in which all personal experiences from the past are submerged. This gulf of oblivion separates the worlds of everyday life and Dionysiac experience. But as soon as daily reality re-enters consciousness, it is experienced as such with a sense of revulsion; the fruit of those states is an ascetic, will-negating mood. -- *The Birth of Tragedy, chapter 7
Nietzsche goes on to compare the man who has returned to daily life from a Dionysiac state to Hamlet:
both have gazed into the true essence of things, they have acquired knowledge and they find action repulsive, for their actions can do nothing to change the eternal essence of things; they regard it as laughable or shameful that they should be expected to set to rights a world so out of joint. -- The Birth of Tragedy, chapter 7
To be sure, Nietzsche is playing on Hamlet's famous line here that "the time is out of joint." The absurdity that with the Dionysiac man is now faced makes him long for a "world beyond death, beyond even the gods themselves." This is one of the first appearances of Nietzsche's famous mistrust of transcendent realities. He calls the response of the Dionysiac man who knows the "truth" a denial of existence. It is here that we find Nietzsche writing those words that make up the quotation in this post:
Once truth has been seen, the consciousness of it prompts man to see only what is terrible or absurd in existence wherever he looks; now he understands the symbolism of Ophelia's fate, now he grasps the wisdom of the wood-god Silenus: he feels revulsion. -- The Birth of Tragedy, chapter 7
But, I stress, this is not Nietzsche's last word on the subject in The Birth of Tragedy. Indeed, this issue will transform itself many times and will remain until Nietzsche's last written words. It will evolve and change, but here we find it in its original mutation. Here, for Nietzsche (a young, impressionable Nietzsche), it is art that will save the man who knows the "truth" from the absurdity of existence:
Here, at this moment of supreme danger for the will, art approaches as a saving sorceress with the power to heal. Art alone can re-direct those repulsive thoughts about the terrible or absurd nature of existence into representations with which man can live; these representations are the sublime, whereby the terrible is tamed by artistic means, and the comical, whereby disgust as absurdity is discharged by artistic means. The dithyramb's chorus of satyrs is the saving act of Greek art; the attacks of revulsion described above spent themselves in contemplation of the intermediate world of these Dionysiac companions. -- The Birth of Tragedy, chapter 7
As is now plainly clear, Nietzsche did not assert that life was meaningless or absurd. The somewhat pathetic pity-party found in the discussions in this thread has nothing to do with anything Nietzschean, except that his name has been unfortunately attached to a quotation which needs context to be properly and fully understood. Nietzsche did not assert that life is meaningless, or absurd, or worthy of loathing. In fact, perhaps the singular most inspiring kernel of his thought, from beginning to end, is Nietzsche's unswerving dedication to revealing the eternal, infinite value of life, in the face of so many forces that want to take the easy way out and call it worthless. Nietzsche cries out, with almost every sentence: "LIFE IS WORTHWHILE! LIFE IS INVALUABLE!"