The Celebrated Tragedies of Good and Evil
Is good and evil locked in a painful yet necessary and
eternal conflict? What else did inform the competition between epicureanism and
stoicism? What glorifies suffering, as in religion, with the promise of higher
reward and what abhors suffering as alien to a man who was created to be happy.
From tragedies to romanticism the trace of the contradiction yet inevitable
struggle between evil and good has persisted throughout human history. If you
walk in the streets of modern cities, you are going to see the sharp contrast
between religious asceticism bordering on fanaticism, through things like
overnight religious worship functions and human pleasure through things
like discotheques in night clubs. These are not new things in the history of
man, after all, in old Greece, Stoics took pain lovingly as atonement while
Epicureans enjoyed the worldly pleasures. Sophists found pleasure in the art of
argumentation; not very different from the current world of law and its
practice.
Commenting on some of these matters the Germany
controversial philosopher, Friedrich
Wilhelm Nietzsche precariously circumnavigated between classical Athenian tragedies, an
art form that transcended the pessimism and nihilism of what he perceived as a
fundamentally meaningless world. The Greek spectators, by looking into the
abyss of human suffering and affirming it, passionately and joyously affirmed
the meaning of their own existence. They knew themselves to be infinitely more
than petty individuals, or contemporary common folk, finding self-affirmation
not in another life, not in a world to come, but in the terror and ecstasy
alike celebrated in the performance of tragedies. Nietzsche discusses the
history of the tragic form and introduces an intellectual dichotomy between the
Dionysian and the Apollonian. Let’s not forget that for Dionysianism, reality
was conceived as being chaotic, disordered and undifferentiated by forms while
to the Apollonians reality was prototypically ordered and differentiated by
forms. For Nietzsche, life always involves a struggle between these two
elements, each battling for control over the existence of humanity. In
Nietzsche's words, "wherever the Dionysian prevailed, the Apollonian was
checked and destroyed and wherever the first Dionysian onslaught was successfully
withstood, the authority and majesty of the Delphic god, Apollo exhibited
itself as more rigid and menacing than ever." Yet neither side ever
prevails due to each containing the other in an eternal, natural check, or
balance. So what new did Nietzsche say? And what new can we say today? We are
seeing same old things, competition between what is perceived to be good and
evil. I not think those who go to night cubs to have fun consider it to be evil
neither are those who go for overnight religious functions. But either of the
two perceives the other as indulging in things that do not matter. Is good and
evil locked in a permanent conflict? And decides what becomes evil and what
becomes good in human life?
The Celebrated Tragedies of Good and Evil
Reviewed by Ibrahim Magara
on
May 27, 2016
Rating:
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