Dionysus and the Overman. Two Characters in the Philosophy of F. Nietzsche

Abstract

The article attempts to reveal the mutual relations between: the figure of the Greek god Dionysus, inseparable companion of the philosopher throughout his work, and, in contrast, the somewhat mysterious figure of the overman, who burst like a meteor in the first pages of the book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. Genetically linked not only to Greek mythology but also to Schopenhauer’s will, Nietzsche’s Dionysus already in “The Birth of Tragedy” appears on the other side of good and evil and sanctions the supremacy of aesthetic values over moral values; in the middle stage of Nietzsche's work Dionysianism leads the philosopher to the idea of the eternal recurrence; finally, in the third stage Dionysus is drawn into a war with Christianity and is polemically sharpened in the formula “Dionysus Versus the Crucified”. At different stages of Nietzsche’s work almost all of his major philosophical ideas – except one – either derived directly from Dionysianism or were aligned with it. The image of the overman at the moment of its appearance was so out of the general picture of the philosopher's doctrine, that in the course of time he had to “correct” it. The overman loses his most outstanding, but, as it turned out, superfluous features in “Twilight of Idols”, “The Anti-Christian”, and “Ecce Homo”. Having lost interest in the idea of the overman, Nietzsche tries in his last works to structure and complete his philosophical doctrine, returning to Dionysus. By analysing his later works, the author hopes to draw the attention of researchers to these attempts of the philosopher.