The Tragic

There's another name for the mode of existence of the genealogist that we discussed last time -- the tragic perspective on life.  Like many of Nietzsche's ideas though, this name at first glance conveys almost exactly the opposite of what he intends.  Far from the feeling that 'life is a tragedy' or some sort of punishment, the tragic perspective on life is so joyous and affirmative, so fundamentally in love with life, that it sees life's inherent value as justifying any amount of suffering.  This is the depth to which the genealogist carries their affirmation of difference.  Far from being neutral or objective, it reaches the point of affirming even differences that tear their own identity apart, that dissolve them into a sea of interacting forces.  

Deleuze presents the connection between the more metaphysical version of this philosophy that we saw last time and the more emotional or existential version by way of examining the development of Nietzsche's ideas over time.  While The Birth of Tragedy obviously introduces Nietzshce's interest in what tragedy can bring to philosophy, that book's opposition between the collective and the individual, between Apollo and Dionysus, is still presented in dialectical fashion.  The opposing forces are only reconciled and subsumed into a higher unity through a negation: the suffering we habitually associate with tragedy.  It's only later, as his philosophy matures, that Nietzsche begins to see how "offensively Hegelian" (pg. 11) this thesis is.  Gradually, he realizes that the true opponent of Dionysus is not Apollo, but Christ, and that the suffering of Dionysus does not justify the tragedy of individual life by universalizing it, but affirms that life requires no justification even though it involves suffering.  Just as we saw with the distinction between genealogy and the dialectic regarding the question of difference, here it's a question of whether we have a fundamentally positive and affirmative attitude towards life or, on the contrary, see it as something negative that must be overcome.  Dionysus versus The Crucified.  

In Dionysus and in Christ the martyr is the same, the passion is the same. It is the same phenomenon but in two opposed senses (VP IV 464). On the one hand, the life that justifies suffering, that affirms suffering; on the other hand the suffering that accuses life, that testifies against it, that makes life something that must be justified. (NP, 14)

Christianity accuses life of being a bad thing.  With the proper eschatological faith though, we can be delivered from this life, and its suffering given meaning and redeemed as a necessary step on the road to salvation.  It's in this sense that Nietzsche speaks of a Christian nihilism.  Life, in itself and for itself, has no meaning for the Christian.  It would be an irredeemable mass of suffering and torment were in not for the grace of a force outside this life.  In fact, the situation with Christianity is almost worse than nihilism.  It teaches us not merely that life is meaningless suffering, but infers that this suffering is actually our fault -- our original sin leads us to suffer.  Conversely, our suffering is considered proof of our sin.  Suffering is not merely an accusation against life but leads to a conviction that it is bad, that we are at fault, that we are powerless to do anything but pray for an escape from it.  The passion of Christ, the God on the cross suffering for our sins, is the perfect symbol of this attitude towards life.  As we saw with the dialectic, the self-identity of God here develops only through its negation, only through a life of human suffering.  Suffering is the opposite of the divine life.

Dionysus too is crucified, dismembered by the Titans.  But his suffering is joyous one that leads to his own rebirth.  He doesn't escape life but returns to it, only to suffer again.  For Nietzsche, this myth represents an overcoming of the problem Christian nihilism.  It's not simply that a solution is found that justifies life and provides it with meaning.  Christians, after all, find their solution in God.  Dionysus, by contrast, overcomes the whole problem, the whole need for a solution.  Life is so joyous that it doesn't need to have a meaning.  Life, we might say, justifies itself, from within.  And we redeem every moment we are able to affirmatively live, regardless of how much suffering it contains.  

For there are two kinds of suffering and sufferers. "Those who suffer from the superabundance of life" make suffering an affirmation in the same way as they make intoxication an activity; in the laceration of Dionysus they recognise the extreme form of affirmation, with no possibility of subtraction, exception or choice. "Those who suffer, on the contrary, from an impoverishment of life" make intoxication a convulsion, a numbness; they make suffering a means of accusing life, of contradicting it and also a means of justifying life, of resolving the contradiction. (NP, 16)

Dionysus is, in effect, the real hero of every tragedy.  A "joyful hero" (pg. 18) despite his suffering.  His passion encapsulates the tragic worldview which affirms everything, even its own dismemberment.  This is the analog of the genealogist's affirmation of difference, even at the price of her own identity.  And living this way is no small task.

Multiple and pluralist affirmation -- this is the essence of the tragic. This will become clearer if we consider the difficulties of making everything an object of affirmation. Here the effort and the genius of pluralism are necessary, the power of transformations, Dionysian laceration. When anguish and disgust appear in Nietzsche it is always at this point: can everything become an object of affirmation, that is to say of joy? We must find, for each thing in turn, the special means by which it is affirmed, by which it ceases to be negative. (NP, 17)

Embracing the difficulty of tragic affirmation is the crux of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  It is the snake of nihilism that nearly chokes our hero.  Everything small and petty and painful in ourselves has to be affirmed as fully as anything we take pride in.  It's a level of self-love that dissolves the self, and acknowledges each of the forces within us striving for dominance.  Can we take this affirmation itself as the meaning of existence, without thinking that existence should be justified from something outside?  Can we find the "sense" of existence within it -- the force powerful enough to appropriate all of it -- or is, "a god needed to interpret existence" (pg.19)?