21: A Pessimism of Strength - Dionysus v/s The Crucified

This is the final episode of our series on Schopenhauer, and the episode where we will finally draw some general conclusions, not merely about Schopenhauer’s philosophy or his life, or how he influenced Nietzsche - but rather about Nietzsche’s philosophical project itself and how Schopenhauer helped him discover the true opposition at the heart of his work. Nietzsche has been called a romantic during his early period, owing to the influence of Schopenhauer and Wagner. Nietzsche has also been called a pessimist, because of his cynicism about our will to truth, for example, his critiques of morality, and his predictions of the collapse of our values structures in the wake of the death of God and thus the rejection of a divine origin or teleology for man. In this episode, we’re looking at writings from 1886 and 1887, where Nietzsche looks back on his intellectual development , and tells us in his own words how he grew to differ from the romantic pessimism of his influences. Through this understanding of his fundamental differences with Wagner and Schopenhauer, Nietzsche gained a clear idea of that which he opposed in current society, and that which he felt was needed or lacking. His discovery is another useful skeleton key for his work: the Dionysian as the life-giving spirit of transformation that man can discover by again spiritualizing the animal drives, and all that is Christian as the symbol of the denial of life and the turn towards nihilism. Through the formula of Dionysus v/s the Crucified, Nietzsche discovered what Schopenhauer lacked, and what his own task was in philosophy: to search for “a pessimism of strength” that could harness the penetrating, heroic honesty that Schopenhauer modeled, and put it into the service of life.