Nietzsche as a Cultural Critic

I    Unification, the Second Empire, and Their Discontents
II   “Germans under the Spell of Greece”:  German Classicism
III  The Targets of The Birth of Tragedy
IV  Aesthetic Regeneration:  The Birth, Death, and Rebirth of the Tragic Myth

“ God is dead.”  --Nietzsche
“ Nietzsche is dead.”  --God
      (countless anonymous graffiti artists)

[W]ithout myth every culture loses the healthy natural power of its creativity:  only a horizon
defined by myth completes and unifies a whole cultural movement.  And now the mythless man
stands eternally hungry, surrounded by all past ages, and digs and grubs for roots.
                                          (Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, section 23)

*Optional sections in The Birth of Tragedy:  ¶ 6; 11-12; 19; 21-22

paradigm of illiberalism
revolution of 1848
Second Empire (1871) / Prussia / Bismarck
industrialization / economic bourgeoisie / Social Democracy
positivism / “scientism”
nihilism

classicism / Hellenism
University of Basel (Switzerland)
German idealism
Winckelmann:  “noble simplicity and serene grandeur” (edle Einfalt und stille Größe)
higher synthesis
specialization (of scholarship and knowledge)

mythic culture / tragic culture
Socratic culture / Alexandrian culture
Apollo (Apollonian) / Dionysus (Dionysian)
culture as struggle / necessity of (creative, life-enabling) illusions
the principle of individuation / rituals of collective renewal