Kunst und Fest

At the ancient Greeks Nietzsche seeks a way of thinking other than the metaphysical. Next to the pre-Socratic thinkers, Greek art (tragedy) as living art proves to be paradigmatic for non-metaphysical philosophy. The feast reveals an original relation to understanding tragedy. The festive encounter between Man and Existence occurs in celebration. Phenomenologically speaking, celebrating means being free to sing, to dance, to turn into a “work of art”. The opposition of the feastly and the ordinary leads us to the rift between “questionable” and aesthetically “justified” existence. This relation to existence binds art and celebration in an existential manner. Tragedy arises from the Dionysian goat’s condition of ecstatic transformation (Dionysian choir) – from the festivity that forms in the “spirit of the music”. Tragedy plays the feastly manifestation of life on stage. Man justifies himself in the tragic manifestation as aesthetic appearance, in so far as he understands that there is no other "justification" for life other than appearance per se. In this manner, the living art proves to be the way to the “justification” of existence. The experience of art remains paradigmatic for Nietzsche’s philosophy, because thinking for Nietzsche means not the knowledge of truth, as with metaphysics, but rather a way to the fulfilment of existence.

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