Figures of duality and unity in Nietzsche and Schelling : mtaphysical and historical analysis of The Birth of Tragedy (1872) § 1-10 and its background in Schelling's Middle Philosophy
Abstract
The following research article deals with the theme of duality and unity in sections § 1-10 of Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy from both a metaphysical and an aesthetic perspective. Duality is expressed according to our interpretation in two metaphysical principles or moments that we can trace from Nietzsche to Schelling and Schopenhauer.
On the one hand, we speak of a principle of rules, order, and moderation, from which the orderly and rational world emerges as we know it today. On the other, we find a substrate of irregularity and chaos that is located, so to speak, in a deeper dimension of reality and struggles to return its differentiated elements to the original unity from which everything arises.
However, both principles interact so that reality subsists as well as to achieve, according to Nietzsche, the primordial phenomenon of its full aesthetic appreciation. In this work we will compare various points of Nietzsche's metaphysics in 1872, referring to duality and unity, with the metaphysical doctrines previously defended by Schelling in his Freiheitsschrift (1809).
To reveal the similarities between the position of Nietzsche and that of the romantics, as well as with Kant and Schopenhauer, is also a secondary objective of ours. Our broader objective in this as in other works to come is to defend a metaphysical position that gives greater prominence and centrality to dualism, and therefore to reject the monism that is traditionally associated with the philosophies of Spinoza and Hegel.
To achieve this end, it is essential to draw the line that goes from Kant to Nietzsche, passing through Schelling and Schopenhauer, and that we investigate here in two of its main authors.