VOLUME V, ISSUE I, SPRING 2012
Abstract
…that which we call “invention” (in metrics, for example) is always a self-imposed fetter of this kind. “Dancing in chains,” to make things difficult for oneself but then cover it over with the illusion of ease and facility — that is the artifice they want to demonstrate for us
— Nietzsche, The Wanderer and his Shadow
Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy should be read as a phenomenological undertaking including his ‘reduction’ of traditional scholarly assumptions and theories regarding the history of the tragic work of art as well as the history and function of the tragic chorus as a musically poetic performance that can only be understood, so Nietzsche was at some pains to argue, in the full context — political and social and religious — of the life-world of Greek antiquity. Without such an encompassing focus it is difficult to understand Nietzsche’s counter-arguments regarding Aristotle’s theory of tragedy as also concerning Schlegel on the chorus as well as the critical “working” of the work of tragic art in the political/a-political(1) and socio-cultural context involving the entirety of the Athenian demos. And there is still more.
Nietzsche’s phenomenological philology drove his discoveries regarding the stress ictus (or absence thereof)(2) in his studies of the prosody of ancient Greek, including his studies of rhythm and meter, using as was commonly conventional, specifically musical notation for the sake of the same. This was no mere metaphor and the conclusion of his The Birth of Tragedy, as we shall see, invokes the theoretical notion of musical dissonance with explicit reference to Beethoven. I further contend that it matters here that Nietzsche himself studied musical composition technique (on his own) and that he played the piano so well that he impressed everyone who heard him, not excluding Wagner(3). I am using the word phenomenology not just because Nietzsche, in additional to speaking of phenomenalism and phenomenality, used the term phenomenology as such in his late notes, as he does in connection with consciousness and the body(4) — Nietzsche thus speaks of an “inner and outer phenomenology,” and all research, not only of the socalled “digital” kind, that is based on word frequency analysis is and can only be wrongheaded when it comes to Nietzsche(5) — but and much rather because it describes his method(6). Thus Nietzsche seeks to turn in the case of his science of philology to “language use,” as he says, i.e., to the texts themselves which is his case to the words themselves, qua written and as spoken or sung. Inasmuch as Greek is also one of the first truly phonetic alphabets, and this is its revolutionary character, this also means that from the beginning Nietzsche seeks to return to the sounds themselves.
Hence when speaking of phenomenology here it is important to note that phenomenology is not a method somehow been patented by Husserl although he takes it the furthest and all phenomenological contributions today and to be sure are shaped by his work. Nietzsche’s phenomenology cannot and does not stand in this lineage but both Husserl and Nietzsche shared the same 19th century confluence, including scientific antecedents and historically philosophical background(7). Thus and in addition to his first book, Nietzsche’s genetic reflections in his Untimely Meditations (on religion, history, education, culture and politics, and including, his own contemporary musical cultural world) and Human, All too Human, are similarly phenomenological in scope and approach, in addition to his critical reflections on logic, perception, and indeed science in The Gay Science and Beyond Good and Evil and his later work, just to the extent that Nietzsche may justifiably claim that he is the “first” to raise the question of science as such — and here we should think of Heidegger as well as Husserl — of science as “question-worthy.”(8)
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