Monday, February 22, 2016

Dionysian and Power

In the first section of Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche describes a moment of the Dionysian experience of a celebrant as "he is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art."  This moment of uncanny clarity has more in common with Spinoza's Blessedness or Heidegger's Appropriation, than with the obliviousness often associated with the term 'Dionysian'.  It is an experience of not the dissolution of the Self, but of the Self as a part of a primordial whole.  But, it is not a moment of Enlightenment--it is one of creativity, and, hence, of Empowerment, in which Power is experienced as elevating, not subjugating, on the basis of which can be developed a different concept of Will to Power than the one usually associated with Nietzsche.

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