Nietzsche's Discipleship to Dionysus

Abstract

This dissertation examines several specific works of Friedrich Nietzsche, and makes the case that they can be understood as describing and pursuing a discipleship to the god Dionysus, which aims at the creation of new, divine forms of existence. By the time Nietzsche issued new editions of his previous works in 1886 with new prefaces, he had come to understand the process of his own philosophical development in terms of a discipleship to Dionysus, and in those prefaces, announced that he had earned the status of initiate. This dissertation uses this announcement, and the model of discipleship it proposes, as a starting point and lens for interpreting Nietzsche’s philosophy. I focus on The Birth of Tragedy, the first edition of The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, and the second edition of The Gay Science. I contend that while The Birth shows Nietzsche already projecting Dionysian philosophical ideals, which are especially focused on the production of art with the capacity to transfigure, and to communicate non-conceptual insights, it is only with the later works that he performs those ideals in his own philosophy. Furthermore, I argue that this Dionysian philosophy passes through two crucial phases, the first defined by tragedy, and the second by parody. Nietzsche initially develops his Dionysian philosophy in a tragic register, which centers the values of superabundance and overflowing health, and renders the ideal disciple as one capable of celebratory and affirmative self-sacrifice. After this tragic phase, Nietzsche’s Dionysianism is increasingly defined by stylistic and modal turn to parody, which both mocks and deepens the values of tragic teaching, rendering the ideal disciple as a satyr-like figure. Both of these registers reflect Nietzsche’s efforts to reclaim philosophy from what he saw as its modern degradations, and restore to it the power to transfigure and reshape human life and existence. I argue throughout the dissertation that these writings reflect Nietzsche’s efforts to give voice to the incommunicable insights, experiences, and encounters involved in his own discipleship, and to thereby provoke similar insights and experiences in his readers. This suggests that Nietzsche’s deepest teachings, those insights which he took to be most central to his philosophy, cannot be expressed in received linguistic formulations. His writings therefore attempt to draw readers into their own experiences, their own discipleships to the god Dionysus. My hope is that this dissertation leads readers to think more about the status of Dionysian divinity in Nietzsche’s work, and especially about what it means for a divine, Dionysian philosophy to finally take the form of a festive parody.