Beautiful and Sublime, Apollonian and Dionysian

Abstract

n §1 of  The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche describes the effects produced on us by the two basic principles of his aesthetics: the Apollonian and the Dionysian. There are remarkable similarities between this description and the one provided by Kant in his Critique of Judgment for the beautiful and the sublime: in one case, we experience joy in contemplating beautiful forms; in the other, our pleasure is derived from an initial feeling of terror. Further evidence suggesting this analogy may be found in the fact that Nietzsche consistently employs the word "beautiful" [sch¶n] when he writes about the Apollonian in this work. If we take into account that, besides Schopenhauer, Kant is one of the very few philosophers explicitly mentioned in The Birth of Tragedy,  it is tempting to assume that Nietzsche wrote his first book under the influence of Kantian aesthetics. This paper aims to assess this hypothesis.

Key words: Nietzsche, Kant, Apollonian, Dionysian, beautiful, sublime