Nietzsche’s Dionysian Aesthetics and the Will to Power

Dionysian Art and Intoxication

Dionysian art relies on the intoxicating power of nature, mirroring the natural human being’s naive ecstasy. This gives rise to the instinct of self-forgetfulness, much like the effects of a narcotic drink. In both states, the principle of individuation is broken; the subjective disappears completely before the eruption of the general-human, the universal-natural. A covenant is established between human beings and nature, reconciling all strained differences. The need to create and to lose oneself establishes a connection between people, where differences disappear: the slave is a free person, the noble and the humble come together to form the same choruses. Singing and dancing, human beings manifest as superior members of a community, feeling miraculously transformed, indeed having become something else, something supernatural. They resonate with something divine that, previously lived only in their imagination, is now perceived within themselves. No longer an artist, the individual has become a work of art. The artistic power of nature is thus revealed. Just as intoxication is the interplay with human nature, the creative act is the Dionysian artist’s interplay with intoxication. While this state has not been universally experienced, it can be understood symbolically.

The Dionysian intoxication, in the impetuous journey of all moods during excitation or through narcotic influences, manifests nature at its highest: it brings individuals together and makes them feel as one, so that the principle of individuation appears as a permanent state of weakness in the listless will. The stronger the will, the more selfish and arbitrary it is; the more developed the individual, the weaker the body it serves. In these states, a sentimental characteristic of the will sprouts forth: the supreme pleasure resonates with “the cry of fright, the nostalgic groan of irreplaceable loss.” The god Dionysus has freed all things for themselves; he has become everything. The singing and mimicry of the excited masses has thereby become the voice and movement of nature, something new and unusual. “If we witnessed a festive representation of Athens, the first impression would be that of a savage and bizarre spectacle.” Not only would the ancient Greek cultural world seem strange, but other ancient cultures, such as that of China, would also cause us wonder and amazement at the unusual. But the past, once present, is now forgotten. From a current perspective, the whole world seems to walk only towards one direction: the future. The “last man” says nothing of the greatness that civilizations developed in ancient peoples or the mechanisms on which they chose their art, culture, and vision of the world.

But for Nietzsche, who grapples with this disappointment, it is important to imagine the ancient Greek cultural world, to recreate that world from what is known of it. He emphasizes what is and occurs in artistic life in order to “see” the Greek drama: he strives to create an atmosphere of the ancient drama’s preparatory events. But the drama not only expanded his own understanding but also “expanded within the listener an unusual festive mood, with freshly stimulated senses, all of which produced a profound instinct.”

The Highest Concepts and the Concept of God

Human beings have built a dome on infinitely complex conceptual foundations, mobile as moving water. The construction is like a spider web, transported by thin waves, consistently scattered unless held by the wind. Every word becomes a concept from the moment it no longer serves the original experience, unique and individual, to which it owes its origin. The concept is intended to serve to express or signify a multiplicity of individual realities that are never identical. Truth is just a set of generalizations, illusions, that use and custom have imposed and whose nature we have forgotten.

Against the petrification suffered by concepts when fixed on a category, a habit that becomes immutable, Nietzsche exalts the power of metaphorical imagination. The metaphor integrates diversity without dogmatism because it remains always open to reality, and it is not simplistic as occurs in the conceptual model. The metaphor is a mask or filter that lets us see the world in a certain way, removes some facts and highlights others. The dogmatic philosopher has confused the mask with the face and uses the concept that simplifies and blocks the vision of reality’s future.

Thanks to abstraction, human beings can cope with the evolution of intuition, which would otherwise drag on without a chance of survival. Abstraction allows us to create a pyramidal order, a world of laws, privileges—a world diametrically opposed to the primitive world of first insights. The neglect of the metaphorical nature of the concept is to cut off the essence of things. The Western tradition has posited that the concept does not randomly cut the movements of reality; on the contrary, it states that the forms distributed in reality correspond exactly to concepts. Because our reality is as we think it, Nietzsche denies that concepts apprehend the true reality of being, which is becoming and change. Through words and concepts, we never penetrate, never reach the fabulous origin of things.

Truth would exist if an accurate perception were possible, but this is impossible. Only aesthetic behavior, which is known to be creative and ephemeral, is possible. The problem of truth takes on a different meaning now. It is not important to know whether a judgment is false, but whether it serves to promote and sustain life. If it is maintained and promoted, its truth does not matter. Placing oneself beyond good and evil is the way of the will to power, or the expression of the will to power. The will to power is the will of appearance, even delusion. This desire is deeper, more metaphysical than the will to truth that prevails under the reign of the sensible world. It is deeper because the real reality of being is becoming, and what human reason knows cannot be simplified with categories.

The will to truth is to use truth or lie according to common belief, according to the compulsory social style of everyone. Truth is what has been fished with our concepts and categories in the future of being. This is only a perspective that has been imposed by custom, but it is therefore an error.