Speaker

Tian Linian

Host

Tang Xiaolin

Introduction

This lecture attempts to tell Nietzsche’s story of tragic birth, death and rebirth in a slightly different way to the typical interpretation, of the relationship between ‘self and the world’, viewing Socrates and Apollo instead as symbols of self-confirmation, self-identity, sel and external control, and Dionysus as Nietzsche’s attempt to escape from egocentrism and maintain the unbalanced duality and constant interaction between self and world. In his first philosophical work, Nietzsche proposed ‘Dionysus’ a figure which then appeared through all his philosophy. However, Nietzsche’s understanding of Dionysus at this point in his thought was lacking, and marked by the color of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics and Wagner’s romanticism. As Nietzsche’s thought developed, Dionysus came to life, particularly in his finest work, ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’, which he called the first ‘Dionysian ode’. In ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’, and in other later works of Nietzsche, beneath the veneer of words and ideas we see not Apollo and Socrates, but a dancing and singing Dionysus.