78 Nietzschecognition in view of the monstrous process of life. When he later cred-
ited The Birth of Tragedy for having presented "science for the first time
as problematic and questionable" (1,13; Β Τ"Attempt at Self-Criticism"
§ 2), he cited "Dionysian wisdom" as the inspiration for this book.
"Dionysian wisdom" was indeed the decisive step forward of The
Birth of Tragedy. It was an intellectual operation entirely within the tradi-
tion of transcendental philosophy. Nietzsche anticipated a horizon that
would comprise all knowledge and serve as a backdrop to all of life's
activities. He was reaching out to the absolutism of reality that can never
be grasped. This is no speculative beyond, but the embodiment of all
reality in which perception, life, and art take place. The transcendental
act does not construct transcendence, but rather is the attempt to cap-
ture and relativize to what extent the inexhaustibility of reality can be
recognized.
The inexhaustible is, of course, not recognized. How could it be? It is
unknowable! But the inexhaustible is experienced in the moment that it
becomes evident that knowledge cannot exhaust life in its tremendous
abundance. However, the need to conceptualize the inexhaustible and
not just give it a name is the age-old allure of metaphysics, and it was irre-
sistible to Nietzsche. Kant had warned against this allure. In his otherwise
dry-as-dust Critique of Pure Reason, he contrived a poetic image for this
allure: "We have not only traveled around. .. but actually traversed the
land of pure intellect, and defined everything in its place. However, this
land is an island... surrounded by a wide stormy ocean ... where many
banks of fog and a great deal of ice beginning to melt pose as new lands,
and by incessandy fooling the sailor who is eagerly moving about filled
with false hopes in quest of discoveries, entangles him in adventures
from which he will never desist and yet will never be able to complete"
(Kant 3,267).
Kant remained on the island and called the "stormy ocean" the omi-
nous "thing in itself." Schopenhauer ventured out farther by calling the
ocean the "will." For Nietzsche, absolute reality was "Dionysian." In the
words of Goethe, whom he quoted, reality is "^4 an eternal ocean, a muta-