NIETZSCHE / DIONYSUS: ECSTASY, HEROISM, AND THE MONSTROUS

NIETZSCHE/DIONYSUS: ECSTASY, HEROISM, AND THE MONSTROUS
Robert Luyster
‘What is the significance of the tragic myth among the Greeks of the best, the strongest, the most courageous period? And the tremendous phenomenon of the Dionysian
–and, born from it, tragedy — what might they signify?’ So asks Friedrich Nietzsche in the Preface to the new edition (1886) of his The Birth of Tragedy (1872). In many respects
this tremendous phenomenon, the Dionysian, forms the groundwork o f Nietzsche’s whole philosophic enterprise, as he himself frequently insisted. Nor was his relation to the
concept one of objective disinterest or academic detachment. Quite the contrary, for he had himself the most intense personal identification with the notion. In the same Preface
he asks again, ‘Indeed, what is Dionysian?
—
This book contains an answer: one “who knows” is talking, the initiate and disciple of his god’

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