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VOLUME VI, ISSUE I & II, SPRING & FALL 2013



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The recent emerging technologies, specifically those that effect formation of the self directly like the internet and social media, have posed many problems for thinkers and they will keep doing so, as they become integrated into public life at the global level more and more in the coming years. To a large extent, they have already permeated technologically advanced societies. Today many of us are already integrated into these mediums and rely heavily on them for our communication and interactions. How can we approach this question of technology based on Nietzsche’s critique of culture of the 19th century Europe? This will be the focus of my reflection in this paper. I will approach this problem from two areas that are crucial in Nietzsche’s thought: first, spectacle (Schauspiel), second, formation/education (Bildung), as well as the kinds of types and affects that are produced in and through them. It is important to keep in mind that these two distinct but overlapping domains of culture are directly connected to Nietzsche’s philosophy of value.

The Question of Spectacle

The question of spectacle preoccupied Nietzsche from The Birth of Tragedy (1872) to The Case of Wagner (1888).  While in the former he was concerned with the disintegration of poetic, mythic and Dionysian forces and the rationalization of arts and culture in ancient Greece and their impact on European culture up to the 19th century, in the case of Wagner he saw the symptoms of ascetic idealism, nihilism and decadence. Although more than two millennia separate Wagner from Euripides, what we can gather from Nietzsche’s critique of Euripidean and Wagnerian artistic spectacles are as follows: artistic spectacles, that are in the position of retaining and uplifting the greatness of culture, must not degenerate into popular forms of media, while they, at the same time, uphold the Dionysian ecstatic core via music, dance and singing, and the unity of spectacle and all beings. Rationalization, popularization, the decline of Dionysian functions, the decline of the power of creation and bodily regimes are both symptoms (what they inherit from the macro-culture) and affects (what they re-produce) of these non-Dionysian spectacles. To strive for and to uphold the highest forms of creation are the demands of the eternal return of the same and overhumanliness; demands that, in Nietzsche’s assessment, the tragic and agonal Greeks[2] met or strove to meet, but post-Socratics did not. In the post-Socratic age, according to Nietzsche, Dionysian artistic functions and bodily regimes declined and heroes and gods, the higher types, became subject to popular sentiments or caricatures; hence, the withdrawal of mythopoesy, the primordial creative life forces of a culture. The main philosophical aporia from the beginning to the end of Nietzsche’s philosophical life, which persists in his thought, despite the variations in the way it is expressed is this: greatness (great values and types) must reign over a culture in its Dionysian connectedness to existence. No doubt, what is greatness and how great values and types rule are questions that remain unending question marks for Nietzsche, and his assessment of culture moves along these lines. For example, Parsifal is no hero and Wagner succumbed to the problems of the moral world-order and nihilism.

Furthermore, Nietzsche raises the question of disinterestedness of spectator in response to Kant to emphasize the physiological, Dionysian functions that are at work in spectacular relations. Nietzsche’s point of departure in this criticism of Kantian aesthetics (in GM III) lies in the artistic experience of the work of art from the artist’s perspective; therefore, any notion of spectator that creates a detachment of the spectator from spectacle (the problem of impersonality) is not acceptable by Nietzsche, and not any spectator can be the judge of aesthetics (the problem of universality). Although Nietzsche’s interpretation of Kant’s disinterestedness is a poor interpretation, misguided by Schopenhauer according to Heidegger,[3] the issues he raises are of significance for a theory of spectacle:

“Schopenhauer made use of the Kantian version of the aesthetic problem—although he certainly did not view it with Kantian eyes. Kant thought he was honoring art when among the predicates of beauty he emphasized and gave prominence to those, which establish the honor of knowledge: impersonality and universality. This is not the place to inquire whether this was essentially a mistake; all I wish to underline is that Kant, like all philosophers, instead of envisaging the aesthetic problem form the point of view of the artist (the creator), considered art and the beautiful purely from that of the “spectator,” and unconsciously introduced the “spectator” into the concept “beautiful.” It would not have been so bad if this “spectator” had at least been sufficiently familiar to the philosophers of beauty—namely, as a great personal fact and experience, as an abundance of vivid authentic experiences, desires, surprises, and delights in the realm of the beautiful! But I fear that the reverse has always been the case; and so they have offered us, from the beginning, definitions in which, as in Kant’s famous definition of the beautiful, a lack of any refined first-hand experience reposes in the shape of a fat worm of error. “That is beautiful,” said Kant, “which gives us pleasure without interest.” Without interest![4]...“

A parallel idea, namely that the highest place of the artistic spectacle cannot be reduced or lowered to the common denominator of the spectator, was introduced in The Birth of Tragedy where Nietzsche discusses the artistic freedom of the chorus by way of Schiller. Here Nietzsche, to show the high and lofty ground of artistic experience, aims at a wrong target in Kant, because Kant is not talking about the same thing; his aporia has to do with the conditions of aesthetic experience, and the disinterestedness is that of the imagination in relation to other (cognitive) faculties of the mind. Nietzsche may respond to that by saying Kant is not an artist and is not writing about aesthetic experience the way an artist would; see how Stendhal, for instance, looks at art, he would say.




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