This book argues that Nietzsche bases his affirmative morality on the model of individual responsiveness to otherness which he takes from the mythology of Dionysus. The subject is not free to choose to avoid such responding to the demands of the other. Nietzsche finds that the basic mode of responding is pleasure. This feeling, as a basis for morality, underlies the morality which is true to the earth and the major concepts of "will to power", "eternal return", and "amor fati". (...) The priority of otherness makes all thought ethical and not only aesthetic. The basis of all meanings combines the fundamental impulse of responding outwards with an immediate complement in the individual interpretation-world. This is specifically ethical because the recognition of our own historical specificity arises as a result of the refusal of others to become mere differences within our notion of the Same, and through their demand that we "become who we are" in the recognition of their separate existence. (shrink)

_Nietzsche and the Dionysian_ argues that the Dionysian affect in Nietzsche’s early work can be linked to an originary interruption of self-consciousness articulated by the philosophical companion, who compels us to respond to the plurality of life they express by being ‘true to the earth’ and ‘becoming who we are’. Such an ethics, compelled by the Dionysian affect, grounds any future for humanity in the affirmation of the earth and life.

After meeting in Zurich, Nikos Kazantzakis and Elli Lambridi undertook a number of Nietzsche pilgrimages in Switzerland together in 1918, beginning with a trip to Silvaplana. At the time, Kazantzakis had written a thesis on Nietzsche and had translated The Birth of Tragedy and Thus Spoke Zarathustra into Greek, while Elli Lambridi was enrolled in a PhD in philosophy at the University of Zurich writing on Aristotle. They continually debated the nature of the philosopher-type in relation to Nietzsche and Dionysianism, (...) and this philosophical engagement is the central topic of this paper. Lambridi envisaged a Dionysian philosopher fully engaged in an ethical and natural life within a community of others and also envisaged a derived politics of affirmative communal responsibility. Kazantzakis considered that the philosopher should take a much more Apolline, spiritually focused and solitary path, continually ascending toward heroic self-redemption. As well as examining their recorded exchanges, this paper also addresses the fictional resumption of their relationship in The New People, a novel which Lambridi wrote some time after Kazantzakis’ death. In the novel, they resume their discussion of the philosopher-type in 2118, in an eternal recurrence event. In the end, the male character, Petros, learns that the grounding event of a Dionysian Nietzscheanism is an instinctive promise of responsibility for the future of others. (shrink)