Nietzsche’s Response to Schopenhauer’s Philosophy

In order to understand Schopenhauer’s philosophy, one must understand the concept of the will. Schopenhauer seems to describe the will as a blind force of our feelings, our thoughts, and our perception. The only way we see the world is through the will. We are limited because we only see our representation of it through the will, not the actual reality, the thing in of itself. For this reason the world is will, our will, and it has desires. These desires are insatiable, so life becomes defined by suffering. Suffering, however, is only our representation. The world in of itself, aside from our representation, has no suffering. Schopenhauer says the only way to escape the will, which is suffering, is through knowledge and art. There is a distinction between ordinary knowledge and pure knowledge, however. Ordinary knowledge, according to Schopenhauer, was a result of the will. Pure knowledge is actual contemplation of the world in of itself without influence from the will. This can only be attained through art that is able to separate us from our perceptions of reality and reach a state of pure knowledge. In the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche responds to this by agreeing with Schopenhauer’s philosophy in that art is the way to avoid suffering. He argues that the art capable of ending suffering is tragedy, which is a fusion of the Apollonian and the Dionysian.

Nietzsche introduces the Apollonian and the Dionysian as being part of the “Greek Life.” The Apollonian was based off of the Greek god Apollo. It represented culture, order, and art. The Dionysian was based off of the Greek god Dionysus. It represented nature, chaos, and feeling. Both the Apollonian and the Dionysian were combined with the creation of tragedy and became the core o...

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...g along with order.

Overall Nietzsche is successful at responding to Schopenhauer’s philosophy as his work in Birth of Tragedy, in introducing the Apollonian and Dionysian, echoes and coincides with Schopenhauer’s ideas. Schopenhauer claims that knowledge and art are the way to escape the will, suffering, and Nietzsche seems to describe the process of doing that by defining art and its connections to knowledge. Those who disagree that Nietzsche is successful might say that him defining art for Schopenhauer is going too far. One cannot deny that there may be different paths to achieving perfect knowledge and contemplation, however, within the generality of Schopenhauer saying that art and knowledge are the ways to escape suffering, Nietzsche successfully created a definition for art and a valid argument that stays within the parameters of Schopenhauer’s philosophy.