The Abyss Of Romanticism: A Study Of The Paradox Relationship Between Nietzsche And Romanticism

People tend to simply equate Nietzsche with romanticism,to be exact,Nietzsche is considered a romanticist.The popularity of Nietzsche's romantic image is related to two pre-understandings.On the one hand,combing romanticism from the perspective of modernity,it is not difficult to find that people generally understand romanticism as an affirmative and positive modern image.On the other hand,people are willing to regard Nietzsche as a representative of irrationalism.The tendency to romanticize Nietzsche largely ignores Nietzsche's critique of romanticism and obscures the complex relationship between Nietzsche and romanticism.Nietzsche regards romanticism as a major event in modern times and one of his five negations.The entanglement with romanticism constitutes a clue to Nietzsche's thought.This thesis is an attempt to outline and restore this clue.The thesis consists of five parts: the introduction,the three chapters of the main body and the conclusion.It unfolds by the logic of Nietzsche's implicit acceptance,confirmation and criticism,overcoming of romanticism.The introduction points out the romantic image of Nietzsche and the two main reasons for the romanticization of Nietzsche's image,namely the modern image of romanticism and Nietzsche's irrational thoughts.The three chapters of the text can be subdivided into two parts.In "An Attempt at SelfCriticism"(1886),Nietzsche points out that his mission is," to look at science through the prism of the artist,but also to look at art through the prism of life." In the early works such as The Birth of Tragedy and Untimely Meditations,Nietzsche only completes half of his mission with the help of metaphysics of art,that is,"to look at science through the prism of the artist ",which constitutes the first chapter of this thesis;The other half of the mission,that is "to look at art through the prism of life ",is actually completed from Human,All Too Human,Thus Spoke Zarathustra to Twilight of the Idols and even the manuscript,which constitutes the second chapter and the third chapter of this thesis.The first chapter discusses the young Nietzsche's implicit acceptance of romanticism.First of all,combing the modernity background of the young Nietzsche's accept of romanticism.Religion provides people with a unified order,but with the rise of enlightenment rationality in modern times,God gradually died of scientific rationality.As an instrumental rationality,the scientific rationality can only understand things by decomposed mode,lacking the integrity and unity of metaphysics.Therefore,the enlightenment rationality's order planning not only failed to shoulder the heavy responsibility of providing people with a new order,but triggered an unprecedented atomic chaos.There are two main reasons for the emergence of modernity's atomic chaos.The objective aspect is the horizontal influence of the extraterritorial and the vertical accumulation of history.As for the subjective aspect,on the one hand,it is related to the intrinsic pursuit of modern people,on the other hand,it is related to the values of the times and the education principles which advocated "personal freedom".Faced with the chaos of the present era,the young Nietzsche has created two roads to eliminate chaos at the same time.One path takes ancient Greece as the teacher,which constitutes the Hellenism The Birth of Tragedy.For Nietzsche,the Hellenism education is a dualistic and unified concept of nature and culture,nature and humanity.The unity contains the competition of the duality.Apollonian and Dionysian are both aesthetics,embodied in the binary competition between Apollo and Dionysus.On the one hand,the order and being of Apollonian are obtained from the chaos and generation of Dionysian,so that life can be preserved under aesthetic conditions.On the other hand,through the opposite movement,return to the chaos of Dionysus from the order of Apollonian,to ensure the vitality of life.The other path is the romantic special road of Germany,which constitutes the romantic pessimism The Birth of Tragedy.Through the romantic pessimism of Schopenhauer's metaphysics and Wagner's music,the young Nietzsche formed his metaphysics of art.The unity of romantic pessimism is a kind of one-way unity.It only has a unified process from natural generation to human existence,but no reverse process.Apollonian and Dionysian are no longer aesthetic,but metaphysical.Embodied in the relation between Apollonian and Dionysian is that,the individual unity of Apollonian gives way to the unity of the community unity of Dionysian.Because the young Nietzsche's use of art focuses on the unity and order of art,and discards the chaotic factors,his implicit acceptance of romanticism can be called the romanticism to order,not the romanticism to chaos.The second chapter discusses the older Nietzsche's traceability and confirmation of romanticism's morality and chaos.After the undergoing of scientific turn,the older Nietzsche traces the romanticism to order with the method of genealogy such as historical philosophy and art science.He regards metaphysics of art with suspicion,and believes that the traditional metaphysical world is based on irrationality and romanticism.Thus,the inverted structure of value in the fields of truth-philosophy,good-morality,and beauty-art is discovered: supernatural and super-experienced values are regarded as reality,while nature is reversed to be insignificant.In philosophy's binary reversal of truth and lies,nature is stigmatized into lies,and ideas are imaginary constituted truth.In morality's binary reversal of good and evil,slave morality defeats aristocratic morality,which is prominently reflected in the Jewish priests' denaturalization and moralization of the God.Faced with the dual legacy of transcendental value and enlightenment rationality,romanticism is the product of compromise and integration of the two,which is manifested in two compromised schemes.The first scheme focuses on destroying the enlightenment rationality.It is called the romanticism to becoming.Rousseau attempts to return to nature by subverting the false order of enlightenment and rationality,but the nature what he wants to return is still a kind of morality and nature of the highest good.The second scheme is no longer conflicting with faith through the transformation and acquisition of enlightenment rationality.It is called the romanticism to being,and ultimately attributed to the Christian value.These two kinds of romanticisms together reflect the moral essence of romanticism,which is a kind of pessimism of the weak.Here in romanticism,the transcendental value is finally transformed into value's nihilism.In order to avoid emptiness and ignorance,people presuppose the goal of nihilism.This is actually fight against the vain world in a way that is willing to be nothing.This reflects the nihilism which Nietzsche understands,that is "it will rather will nothingness than not will." The early death of a large number of romantic writers such as Byron,Shelley,and Kleist,is the illustration of romanticism's ultimate nihilism.Therefore,romanticism's solution which supported by morality does not really solve the contradiction between faith and knowledge.Romanticism has a clear understanding of the weakness of its moralism,thus making a false imitation of power,which can be called romanticism's artistic camouflage.The disguise means are mainly the excessive illusion and chaos of art.Artistic romanticism is not only an artistic reflection of the romantic pessimism,but also a deepening development of it.Romanticism is good at dressing,showing strong nature and great passion.This selfdeception is more indicative of its life's poverty and weakness.At this point,Nietzsche completes the confirmation of the chaotic nature of romanticism: the romanticism to order and the romanticism to chaos are two aspects of romanticism.Romanticism is basically a kind of chaotic romanticism,while order is only its artistic mask.The third chapter turns to Nietzsche's overcoming of romantic pessimism with Dionysus pessimism.Romanticism advocates a one-way movement from becoming to being,accustomed to look at everything with a single perspective.The final result of this one-way perspective is unity(Einheit).Nietzsche returns to the Hellenism The Birth of Tragedy,from which he borrows a model of binary interaction between becoming and being.On the one hand,the new Dionysian takes the Christian spirit as its opposite,indicating that it is dominated by becoming.On the other hand,the new Dionysian is no longer the opposite of Apollonian,indicating that it contains being.Life itself means creating humanity and being from nature and becoming,and then using this humanity and fearlessness to face nature and becoming.The new Dionysian is therefore a composite of Apollonian and Dionysian.The reaffirmation of the duality of life makes Nietzsche no longer pursue unity,but affirm that life is a complex(Vielheit).Nietzsche's mature thoughts are most concentrated in Thus Spoke Zarathustra,and the three core concepts of the eternal return,will to power,and overman are the concrete manifestations of this complex thought.By deconstructing the " the eternal return of the same ",Nietzsche brakes the people's single belief in being.He proposes that becoming is eternity,embodying the dual interaction between becoming and being.Through this,he demonstrates the innocence of natural generation.Nietzsche opposes romanticism's the single will of self-preservation.He believes that the will to power is pluralistic rather than single.The essence of life is the will to seek growth.The competition of pluralism ensures the vitality of life,thus demonstrates the affirmation of human existence.Nietzsche continues to sort out the I-genealogy of group morality.He pointes out that under the doctrine of soul atomism,people's I(Ich)is never a true self(Selbst).This subject superstition is doomed to the nihilistic ending of self-destruction.The great contrast between the young Nietzsche and the older Nietzsche's evaluation of Byron's Manfred reflects the critique of the soul's self-concept.The older Nietzsche's self-concept is based on the physical self.This kind of generative-self determines its continuous overcoming and transcendence.The image of Zarathustra is the best display of overman's “self-overcoming” spirit.It is precisely because overman never presupposes certainty goals for himself,avoids the nihilistic destruction of doom,develops a diverse self.And so,overman becomes " the highest reality" in Nietzsche's mind.The conclusion uses Nietzsche's abyss metaphor to summarize the relationship between Nietzsche and romanticism.On the one hand,romanticism's two constructive influences on Nietzsche's thought cannot be ignored.The first influence occurs in the youth of Nietzsche.The young Nietzsche's anti-enlightenment modernity cannot be separated from the constructive power of romanticism.With the power of art,the young Nietzsche finds a unified order in romanticism.The second influence occurs in the mature period of Nietzsche's thoughts.Compared with the first influence,this time is quite concealed.Although romanticism inherits the moralism in the field of transcendental value,there are huge differences between the two: traditional metaphysics and religion believe the transcendental value without any doubt;while romanticism is dubious,the truth and the highest good are to be seen a moral imperative.Therefore,romanticism eventually develops into nihilism.Firstly is positive nihilism,and then is negative nihilism.As a positive nihilism,romanticism dispels the transcendental value.It is difficult for Nietzsche to achieve his second ideological turn without it.On the other hand,putting Nietzsche in the course of modernity,it is not difficult to find that Nietzsche's anti-romantic stance is very firm.In the great legacy of enlightenment modernity and romantic modernity,Nietzsche affirms life in the spirit of Dionysus and opposes the negation of life by enlightenment modernity and romantic modernity.