Ernest Becker and Nietzsche's Apollonian Illusion

Reading Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy I stumbled across a section which reminded me of the importance of Ernest Becker's later work regarding the role of heroic culture as a means to deny finite existence i.e. death. We can find the origins of the denial of death in Greek society when king Midas asks the wise Silenus what was the best of all and most desirable of man. The demon laughing responded: Oh, wretched race of a day, children of chance and misery, why do ye compel me to say to you what it were most expedient for you not to hear? What is the best of all is for ever beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. The second best for you, however, is soon to die

The Greeks were keenly aware of the terrors and horrors of existence, in Becker's words the finitude of existence with all the pain and suffering involved, in order to be able to confront these terrors what the Greeks did was to come up with a mechanism in order to deny their meaningless existence, and they did that through the invention of the Olympian world. 

By putting the gods of the Olympian pantheon between them and death the Greeks were able to overcome the sufferings one must endure in existence, what the Olympian pantheon did was give a justification for existence essentially as Nietzsche said: "the only satisfactory Theodicy (1)." This, in in Becker's synthetic work of the human condition, was how the Greeks were able to deny death, it was their vehicle by which they were able to endure the suffering and pains involved in existence, it is what gave meaning to existence. 

"Existence under the bright sunshine of such gods is regarded as that which is desirable in itself, and the real grief of the Homeric men has reference to parting from it" This is what Nietzsche refers to when talking about the Apollonian Illusion, under this veil life has meaning since it is the gods, which we have stated are mere inventions, what justifies existing, through "powerful and dazzling representation and pleasurable illusions." Here we can see the seeds of nihilism developing in Nietzsche's philosophy as only the naive society can pleasurably live under the Apollonian illusion which gives meaning and purpose to their existence, it is the Homer naivete which is that which overcome the Apollonian illusion and must confront head on the cold and hard realities of existence.

As I advance in this book I expect to find that the tragedy which Nietzsche is referring to is this tragedy of the need to live under the sunshine in gods in order to give justification to existence, the birth of tragedy will be man's departure of the illusion into the realms of nihilism. 




(1) Theodicy: explanation of why a perfectly good, almighty, and all-knowing God permits evil. The term literally means “justifying God.”

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