The Birth of The Birth of Tragedy 7.5masses view as nothing more than vile luxury? Nietzsche asked himself
these questions and found himself pondering the connection between
culture and justice. He drew a set of conclusions that would endure,
some vacillations notwithstanding, until his final creative period of his
work on The Will to Power.
Life, as we saw earlier, is tragic. It unfolds with enormous suffering,
death, and cruelty of all kinds. In The Birth of Tragedy\ Nietzsche coined
the famous formula "Existence and the world are eternally justified
solely as an aesthetic phenomenon" (1,47; BT § 5). In "The Greek
State," and in other fragments from this period that addressed issues
pertaining to the social mass movement and Nietzsche's fear of the Paris
Commune, the implicitly political meaning of this formula came
through more clearly than in The Birth of Tragedy, which had muted this
topic. In his notes, Nietzsche sharpened the problem of the link
between culture and social justice. When it comes to culture, he con-
tended, a decision must be made as to its essential aim. The two major
options are the well-being of the greatest possible number of people, on
the one hand, and the success of individual lives, on the other. The
moral point of view gives priority to the well-being of the greatest pos-
sible number of people, whereas the aesthetic view declares that the
meaning of culture lies in the culmination of auspicious forms, the
"peak of rapture."
Nietzsche opted for the aesthetic view. In the fall of 1873, he noted
in a fragment that individuals must bow to the "good of the highest indi-
viduals," namely "creative people" (7,733). The latter produce great cul-
tural achievements in art, philosophy, and the sciences; these
achievements are the direct fruits of exploitative labor. In some cases,
creative individuals are themselves works of art that merit our attention.
These heroes of creativity are justified not by their social usefulness but
by their superior existence. Although they do not improve mankind,
they embody and display its better possibilities. Culture and states are
justified if these "highest exemplars can live and create" in them (7,733).
These "highest exemplars" are, according to The Birth of Tragedy, the