Speaker

Antoine Panaioti (Toronto Metropolitan University) completed his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge. He works primarily on Classical Indian Philosophy, Nietzsche, Selfhood, Cross-Cultural Philosophy & Science, Philosophy of Cognitive Science, and Metaphilosophy.

Abstract:

My goals in this talk are twofold. My first goal is to provide an in-depth overview of The Birth of Tragedy’s account of the nature of Attic tragedy as an artform in which what the young Nietzsche calls ‘the Apollonian’ and ‘the Dionysian’ are wholly hybridized. I explain how the rivalry between these two ‘forces of nature’ extends far beyond the domain of art, with Apollo and Dionysus representing systematically opposed ontological, epistemic, and ethical principles, then examine what it means for the Apollonian and the Dionysian to be is hybridized across the full range of the multi-axial opposition between them, as Nietzsche thinks is achieved in Attic tragedy. My second goal is to gain further clarity on the concept of the tragic which forms the core of Nietzsche’s exposition in his first philosophical work through a careful analysis of the way in which he interprets Sophocles’ Oedipus plays and Aeschylus’ Prometheia in chapter 9 of this text. The concept of the tragic, I argue, concerns the synergistic dynamics between the apparent opposites of criminality and justice, chaos and order, undifferentiation and individuation, and truth and illusion — where these dyads all bear important relations to one another qua aspects of the ‘rivalry’ between Dionysus and Apollo. Towards the end of my talk, I consider and respond to an objection, which has it that, in so far as it appeals to broadly ethical considerations to explain the ‘tragic effect’, my reading is at odds with the aestheticizing thrust of The Birth of Tragedy. I close, finally, by showing that the figure of Socrates as he is portrayed in this text is quintessentially tragic (as per the concept of the tragic that is central to this work).