ResearchBib Share Your Research, Maximize Your Social Impacts
Sign for Notice Everyday Sign up >> Login

Nietzsche, Hamsun, and Sacred Violence

Journal: RUDN Journal of Philosophy (Vol.26, No. 2)

Publication Date:

Authors : ; ; ;

Page : 418-426

Keywords : Nietzsche; Hamsun; Bataille; Blanchot; aesthetics; Apollonian; Dionysian; neo-mythology; pantheism;

Source : Download Find it from : Google Scholarexternal

Abstract

This article deals with the analysis of neo-mythological and pantheistic subjects in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Knut Hamsun. The analytical comparison of Nietzsche’s philosophical concepts and Hamsun’s literary psychologism is poised to find an underlying understanding of human nature at the confluence of ethics and aesthetics - of goods and beauty, of evil and ugly. A precise definition of the aesthetic categories “Apollonian” and “Dionysian” is carried out based on Nietzsche’s work “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music”. The relevance of the Dionysian culture’s phenomena is based on the Nietzschean belief in an Übermensch within the modern mindset. The concept of “Dionysus” finds its continuation in the postmodern philosophy of Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot, in such archaic emotional and aesthetic aspects of human essence as violence and sacrifice understood in an extremely abstract sense. The authors stress that modern culture’s interest in violence and sacrifice is rooted in Nietzsche’s idea of Dionysius in the meaning of one of the beginnings of any segment of European culture. The foundations for overcoming postmodernism in the 21st century and the subsequent development of aesthetic views can be found in an attempt to revise the foundation of European culture through rethinking the concept of Übermensch-Zarathustra-Dionysus.

Last modified: 2022-07-01 22:10:11