The Birth of The Birth of Tragedy 7.5for the current German war of conquest are gradually fading. I think the
future of our German culture would appear to be in greater jeopardy
than ever" (53,164).
Greek antiquity served as Nietzsche's model of how war benefited
culture. The shift of martial impulses to the culturally productive form
of the contest was exemplary in ancient Greece. But war is even more
fundamentally linked to the destiny of culture. In the essay 'The Greek
State," Nietzsche employed the Hobbesian argument of "nature" and
the "bellum omnium contra omnes" ("war of all against all") to demon-
strate that the state arises from attempts to subdue war within its bound-
aries, however these may be defined, and to redirect it outward to other
communities. There will always be periods of "terrible thunderstorms
of war" between nations, but in the "intervals," society has the time and
opportunity to produce "the radiant blossoms of genius" of culture in
."the concentrated effect of that bellum, turned inward" (7,344; TGS).
Periodic war as a test case and as a re-immersion in the Dionysian-
Heraclitean element is indispensable in order for culture to blossom.
Culture requires a foundation of cruelty; it is a beautiful culmination of
the appalling. The necessary association of "battlefield and artwork"
(7,344) reveals the truth about culture.
Culture requires more than just the cruelty of war. According to
Nietzsche, a second form of cruelty is a necessary precondition. In his
discussion of the cultural nation in Greek antiquity, which he considered
exemplary, he unabashedly put a name to the form of cruelty that he was
advocating: slavery.
Every advanced culture needs an exploitable, working class, a "slave
class" (1,117; BT% 18), Nietzsche declared without mincing his words.
He went on to write: "There is nothing more dreadful than a barbaric
slave class that has learned to regard its existence as an injustice and sets
about taking revenge not only for itself but for all generations" (1,117).
Nietzsche penned these words in early 1871 in a preface to an unwrit-
ten book called "The Greek State," a text he presented to Cosima
Wagner in a private printing but did not publish in any other form. The