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Lewis Richardson
PHIL 203
11 December 2018
Essay #2 – An Analysis of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Forces of Life
In considering the most prolific and influential philosophers of the 19 th century, few can

compare to the earth-shattering impact of Friedrich Nietzsche. In his numerous works, Nietzsche

single-handedly criticized the very foundations of philosophical thought and commented upon a

multitude of seemingly broken sociological phenomena and the state of human nature which he

observed throughout his life. Throughout this paper, I will begin by discussing Nietzsche’s

understanding and definitions for the Greek-inspired Apollonian and Dionysian forces of life. In

this section, I will be sure to both note how the simultaneous interaction of these diametrically

opposed forces creates what we know as human existence (life). I will then go on to discuss the

ways the Apollonian and Dionysian forces operate in the essential task of self-overcoming, as true

growth cannot occur without first overpowering one’s own human nature. Further, I will remark

upon the two forces of life’s role in forming the personality and characteristics of the figure that

Nietzsche refers to as the “free spirit.” It is in this person that true self-overcoming becomes a

tangible reality. Finally, I will devote a brief section to Zarathustra’s experience of creative and

liberating willing as they relate back to the two forces and a more attuned connection to the human

will and desires. In addition to these distinct sections, I will also be commenting on how

Nietzsche’s philosophy provides a firm grounding for a deeper understanding of how life happens.

It should be noted that I collaborated with Nusheena Parvizi and Jasmine Morgan through the

duration of the writing of this paper.

Although he is often misrepresented as a nihilist philosopher, Fredrich Nietzsche’s work is

the furthest thing such a classification; rather, he is firmly classified as a “life” philosopher. This
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means that rather than posit that life is meaningless, Nietzsche says that life contains meaning in

it of itself. Accordingly, the most valuable of all things is that which affirms life itself. Bearing

this in mind, the work of Nietzsche is largely given its foundation in one of his earlier works, The

Birth of Tragedy. It is in this book that Nietzsche describes the role of art, specifically the Greek

theatrical tragedy, as the most admirable and life-conscious of all art forms. It is in the Greek

tragedy that Nietzsche sees their consciousness of how life, an entity devoid of transcendental,

absolute meaning, can be affirmed in all its grotesque and often tragic forms. Just as Oedipus

experienced his inevitable fall from grace at the end of Oedipus Rex, so too does all human life see

deterioration and death. He said, “The Greek knew and felt the terror and horror of existence”

(P.42, TBOT). Nietzsche remarked upon the Greek people’s affirmation of life despite their

conscious realization that all that exists withers and dies eventually given enough time. At one

point, Nietzsche went so far to question “How else this people, so sensitive, so vehement in its

desires, so singularly capable of suffering, have endured existence, if it had not been revealed to

them in their gods, surrounded with a higher glory” (P.43, TBOT)?

It is in this realization and intimate affiliation and admiration with Greek culture that

Nietzsche’s fascination and use of their polytheistic beliefs saw its initiation. Although he certainly

did not view the Greek gods as beings which existed, Nietzsche realized that the countless deities

seated upon Mount Olympus served as incredible extrapolations and reflections of the vices and

virtues of the Greek culture from which they emerged. Realizing this, it is vital to note that the

Greek gods are not beings of justice, morality, elevation, or duty. Rather, they are simply mediums

for expressing the less-than-desirable aspects of human existence by means of eternal beings. He

writes, “Whoever approaches these Olympians with another religion in his heart, searching among

them for moral elevation, even for sanctity, for disincarnate spirituality, for charity and
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benevolence, will soon be forced to turn their back on them, discouraged and disappointed” (P.

41-42, TBOT). Accordingly, no two Greek gods accentuate the traits of one another in their

completely opposite natures more than those of Apollo and Dionysus, the inspirations for what

Nietzsche refers to as the ‘forces of life.’ Nietzsche’s reference to such forces in terms of Apollo

and Dionysus are not calling to mind some sort of divine intervention from mythical beings, rather

they are characterizations of the methodical nature in which life occurs in an intermingling of

powers via the characteristics that the Greeks so brilliantly assigned to such gods.

In considering the Dionysian and Apollonian forces of life, it should first be understood

that these exist without human acknowledgment or application. They are “artistic energies which

burst forth from nature herself, without the meditation of the human artist – energies in which

nature’s art impulses are satisfied in the most immediate and direct way…” (P. 38, TBOT). There

is no being or mover behind them nor is there any transcendental meaning or will behind their

occurrences. Building upon this, the Dionysian and Apollonian spirits are, just like life itself,

“beyond good and evil,” or outside the restrictions and confines which conventional morality

places on things. Accordingly, the two forces are pervasive in all of life’s occurrences and occur

simultaneously and in unison despite their complete opposition to one another in form. According

to the Myths of Force handout, these forces do not name a specific, tangible substance, rather they

“name a relation of forces, interactions that produce effects” (Myths of Force). The Apollonian

force is of course molded in the image laid out by the Greeks of Apollo, the god of individuation

(the development of definable characteristics), light, healing, exactness (in form), and, somewhat

ironically, sudden death (paraphrased from P. 35, TBOT). Apollo is characteristic of the

continuous power of the creation of all things (even death) and symbolizes the individualized

beauty inherent in all of existence. Because the Apollonian force is nothing more than an
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extrapolation of the way life happens in the image and likeness of his mythical likeness, Nietzsche

argues that life is experiencing a constant stream of individuation and creation in all things (P. 38,

TBOT).

On the complete contrary, the Dionysian power is one of chaos, lack of form, and

destruction molded in the image of Dionysus. As a god, Dionysus was emblematic of dissolution,

resurrection, raw ecstasy, amoral attachment, forgetfulness of commitments, destruction of rule of

law, and drunkenness. Further, he symbolized a forgetfulness of one’s individual nature and

characteristics as he took many shapes and forms in his mythical interpretations (paraphrased from

P. 38-39, TBOT). In interpreting the figure’s role as a force of life, the Dionysian power is one

that is dominant in defining human/worldly life, as the power describes the continuous destruction

and deconstruction of forms that existence undergoes. This destabilizing force paired with the

creative, stabilizing force that is the Apollonian work without rationality or cause and ultimately

carries all beings and aspects of existence from their creation to their endpoint to every moment in

between. Pulling from the conclusions that Nietzsche draws upon in relation to these forces, it is

clear that a conscious realization of each at play in one's own life not only allows for a better

understanding of how life happens but also provides one with the tools necessary for self-

overcoming.

According to Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the greatest gift is to overcome

humanity in its split nature. This is the gift that Zarathustra is attempting to give throughout the

book and is a primary focus of the entirety of Nietzsche’s work which finds a philosophical starting

point in an advanced understanding of the two forces of life. In fact, the overman (Übermensch)

was he/she who successfully overcame their own human nature and serves as the exemplar of

humankind (p. 8, TSZ). Nietzsche calls this phenomenon of defeating human nature "self-
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overcoming” and paints it as the great task of the human experience. In a stroke of literary

brilliance in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche describes a conversation that Zarathustra has with

life itself when he writes: “And life itself confided this secret to me: ‘Behold,’ it said, ‘I am that

which must always overcome itself. Indeed, you call it a will to procreate or a drive to an end, to

something higher, farther, more manifold: but all this is one, and one secret” (P. 115, TSZ). On

one hand, humanity is beleaguered with animal-like instincts of aggression and destruction

(Dionysian), while on the other it possesses the capability of becoming the overman in his own

reformation of the self and creation of his own values outside of tradition or genealogies

(Apollonian). In this dichotomy, one must focus the aggression and Dionysian power of

destruction on oneself to destroy itself and create a new self which is more approximate to the

overman. In this, self-overcoming is a violent process of self-harm that strengthens the self

tremendously should one survive the brutal process.

The brutality and difficulty of self-overcoming are discussed at great length in Thus Spoke

Zarathustra, though the Three Metamorphoses paints an incredibly clear picture of what the

process entails with colorful literary descriptions. P.138/26 Nietzsche understood that Western

society (and civilization itself) was filled with burdens on the human person that plagued the ability

for beings to experience self-overcoming. When a person became conscious of these burdens, their

self metaphorically leaves the place of civilization for the desert like a camel bearing a large

burden. He writes, “All these most difficult things the spirit that would bear much [the free spirit]

takes upon itself: like the camel that, burdened, speeds into the desert, thus the spirit speeds into

its desert” (P. 26, TSZ). The burden, in this case, was that of consciousness. The camel, in carrying

its burden of consciousness on its own in the solitude of the desert, becomes stronger and

eventually metamorphizes into the lion. Nietzsche writes: “In the loneliest desert, however, the
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second metamorphosis occurs: here the spirit becomes a lion who would conquer his freedom and

be master in his own desert” (P. 27-28, TSZ). Such a destruction of the camel form and

metamorphosis into the new one is holistically tied to the forces of life just as all other things are,

as the old form of the camel dies out as the new form of the lion is created. Further, it should be

noted that just like Dionysus the evolution of multiple forms is representative of a lack of incivility

and identity, while the forms themselves hold incredibly distinct characters and roles in the self’s

development just as the Apollonian power posits. This represents the self’s second stage in self-

overcoming, as the lion is then tasked with fighting a dragon symbolic of dogmatic authority

named “Thou Shalt.” Nietzsche writes that the soul in the form of a lion “wants to fight him and

his last god; for ultimate victory he wants to fight with the great dragon” (P. 28, TSZ). The dragon

represents all the compelled behaviors that are found within moral systems, and the lion fights this

source of oppression ferociously.

Nietzsche makes it clear that a metaphorical loss to the dragon would catalyze a complete

loss of the personal will and surrender to dogmatism, which is the greatest of all sources of restraint

and takes a person’s priorities away from life as it occurs in the present. The dragon himself says

that “All values of all things shines on me. All value has long been created, and I am all created

value. Verily, there shall be no more, “I will.” The dragon, a symbol for creative values, represents

the death of the forces of life at work in evolving one’s understanding of values as all values are

already in place in his world. Although the lion cannot create its own values, it serves the critical

role of creating space for new ones to be formulated in its victory over the dragon. Of course, the

“sacred No” that the lion is forced to utter in opposition of the dragon creates a temporary period

of fear for the lion, as the deconstruction of old values leaves a moral actor in limbo for a brief

time. This “sacred no” (p. 28, TSZ) is essentially the Dionysian power in full effect, as it harnesses
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the power of destruction whilst also calling upon the power of creation (Apollonian) to replace

that which has been destroyed. Nietzsche writes that the lion cannot “create new values” on the

sacred “no,” but that it serves the critical role of “find[ing] illusion and caprice even in the moat

sacred, that freedom from his love may become his prey” (p. 28-29, TSZ). It is in the willingness

to live in that temporary fear though that the lion metamorphizes into the child and takes on its

final form. In the form of a child, the “sacred No” of the lion becomes a “Sacred Yes,” an

affirmation of creative occurrences and an enthusiasm for creation, that is the power of Apollo.

Nietzsche writes that “The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-

propelled wheel, a first movement…” which he remarks allows the newly transformed spirit to

“now will his own will” and “conquer his own world” (p. 29-30, TSZ). In this metamorphosis, the

human person can fully experience the process of self-overcoming and reformulate their values to

fit their own expectations for existence. In this process of self-flagellation, the simultaneous

destruction and vulnerability of the Dionysian force paired with the creation and affirmation of the

Apollonian force make the soul and the self become a weathered entity capable of taking on the

immense demands that free-spiritedness requires.

Because there is no motive or reasoning behind the constant relation of forces present

between the Apollonian and Dionysian powers, discussions of these values cannot be discussed

using literal, objective language. Rather, the two forces of life render humanity in a condition of

“untruth,” which is to say that occurrences themselves have no objective truth associated to them.

It is in this occurrence that the Nietzschean concept of the free spirit finds its niche in the world.

As mentioned before, the process of self-overcoming is so important because life is devoid of any

intrinsic value and comfort provided by dogmatic certainty concerning ultimate meanings, thus

self-affirmation is vital. To master the ‘art of free-spiritedness' is to live in such a way that is ever
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curious and questioning of prejudices and traditions that may appear as givens in many places

within one’s life. This is to live fully attuned to the occurrence of the power relation between the

two forces, as questions, not Truths, are of the utmost priority in a world where objective meaning

does not occur. At one point, Nietzsche mocks Voltaire’s search of the truth to do good, though he

promptly remarks that “I bet he finds nothing” (P. 47, BGE).

Building on this curiosity, being a free-spirit ensures that one is never tethered to anything

or any idea, thus it is firmly opposed to the dogmatic beliefs of religion or the overarching moral

codes that plague and restrain humanity to an impersonal ultimate meaning. In order to be truly

attuned to the way life occurs and experience creativity, which is to open the door to self-

overcoming, Nietzsche famously writes that “one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give

birth to a dancing star” (P. 17, TSZ). This is to be fully in touch with the Apollonian force of life,

which is creative, whilst also remaining in unison with the Dionysian which is without form and

wholly chaotic. Nietzsche advocates that such chaos allows us “Not to remain stuck" to a person,

feeling, intellectual conviction (science) morality, or our own detachment (P.52, BGE). He furthers

this by writing that "One must know how to conserve oneself: the hardest test of independence"

(P. 52, BGE). Of course, to be a free spirit is to be independent of the will and desire of anything

or idea. It is to, among all else, remain in touch with the living soul, which is as Nietzsche puts it,

“the range of inner human experiences reached so far, the heights, depths, and distances of these

experiences, the whole history of these experiences so far…” (P. 59 BGE). Nietzsche continues

that the power of the soul, the place of formation and deformation within the human person, must

not ever subject the soul to the “malicious spirituality that would be capable of surveying from

above, arranging, and forcing into formulas this swarm of dangerous and painful experiences” (p.

59, BGE). This is to say that the dogmatist and one who ‘knows’ commits a heinous self-suicide
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in their analysis of the soul, and, like Christ in his death on the cross, fails in the process of self-

overcoming and the transformation of free-spiritedness.

It is in the scathing rhetoric found in Beyond Good and Evil that Nietzsche sets up his ideal

figure of the free spirit, Zarathustra, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Zarathustra is an advocate of three

distinct things which contribute to his free-spiritedness and utilize a knowledge of the two forces

of life: exploration, attunement, and readiness. In exploration, the free spirit of Zarathustra

understands that which destroys and impedes upon creativity from sources of cultural burden or

lineage. Further, he is attuned to that which restrains, allowing him the capability of destroying it

(Dionysian) and providing him with an in-depth understanding of the fundamental instinct and

predisposition toward a transfiguration of human values, which is the forces at play in free-

spiritedness and self-overcoming. Additionally, Zarathustra is ready to undergo the suffering of

displacement and utter isolation that free-spiritedness and the transformation of values requires. In

this, Zarathustra is like a bridge which connects humankind to its higher purpose and prompts the

transformation of values and removal of the yoke placed upon humanity by morality and

dogmatism. Early in the book, the free spirit is described as "a bridge and not an end: what can be

loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under" (P. 13, TSZ). In considering this, free-

spiritedness is like a step on the road to self-transformation and the affirmation of individual

values. It is the bridge between common man and the overman. The free spirit is he who teaches

us of eternal return or the idea that all of time is like a flat circle and is constantly occurring without

cause (P. 216, TSZ). In this, we see that the free spirit is the person who educates us of the need

for both self-overcoming as a continuous process, but also of the value of creative and liberating

willing.
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All things told, the process of self-overcoming and the consciousness brought about by

free-spiritedness sees its culmination in creative and liberating willing. It is in this process of

creative willing, touched upon in the discussion of the soul under the analysis of self-overcoming,

that the self can truly see its formation in a new thing that is appropriate to the person. These

processes of willing are essentially the two powers of life reinterpreted and placed within one’s

own will, as the creative is symbolic of the Apollonian and the liberating is illustrative of the

destruction of the old which restrains that characterizes the Dionysian. Despite this, liberating

willing is not synonymous with the creative. In truth, the philosophy of Nietzsche echoes that of

Kierkegaard’s Judge William in a way, as he posits that the very act of willing and liberating is

what gives us life. It is in this act that we see ourselves connected and in touch with the earth and

physical realm (and forgetful of the abhorrent idea of an afterlife or another world), which allows

us to use the self-centered strength we gained in the process of self-overcoming.

To will is to be in the here and now and it is to be in touch with one's own desires and

values, not the values and wants of an ethereal dogmatic belief system of a moral code which was

created impersonally. This hearkens back to the secret of life that that life itself spoke to

Zarathustra on page 115 of TSZ, as the very connectedness to life can only come through the

willingness of one to shed their own self-imposed burdens. The very willingness of living and

intensity by which it is carried out creates the possibility for liberation, which can restore one to

life affirmation. Willing is like a life force, though it has the strange capacity to will things that are

life-denying (like disciplines that deny earth and flesh, dogmatism). The will liberates from the

kind of forms of passion that affirm the life of the self-overcoming and affirm the transformative

nature of being. The liberation is of the passion, which takes one from a camel bearing the burdens

of the soul to the child who is creative in his own light. The three metamorphoses (p.26-32, TSZ)
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are key here because they demonstrate that the person is in accord with the instincts of their body

and are willing to undergo a self-inflicted liberative willing in order to obtain the creative will that

is so key to earthly connectedness. Such attunement is found not only in Zarathustra’s account of

the three metamorphoses but also throughout the entirety of his experiences describing creative

actions.

In truth, the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche is not one of nihilism, though it is one of rebellion

and a dramatic overthrow of the status quo which restrains life. In this, Nietzsche is not afraid of

the void that appears when considering existence, rather he is intimately aware of the void and

levels a response of absurdity: taking pleasure in a life filled with no objective meaning. It is in

this that Nietzsche affirms life itself and urges all of us to not live in the complacency of values,

but to self-overcome and be free to affirm one's own existence in the here and now.