Aesthetic transformations

by Thomas Jovanovski

"In this study, Thomas Jovanovski presents a contrasting interpretation to the postmodernist and feminist readings of Nietzsche. As Jovanovski holds, Nietzsche's written thought is above all a sustained endeavor aimed at negating and superseding the primarily Socratic principles of Western ontology with a new table of aesthetic ethics that is informed by the Dionysian insight of Aeschylean tragedy. Just as the Platonic Socrates perceived a pressing need for, and succeeded in establishing, a new world-historical ethic and aesthetic direction grounded in reason, science, and optimism, so does Nietzsche advocate the rebirth of this tragic consciousness as the vehicle toward a cultural, political, and religious metamorphosis of the West. However, Jovanovski contends that Nietzsche does not advocate such a radical social turning as an end in itself, but as only the most consequential prerequisite to realizing the culminating object of his supra-historical model - the phenomenal appearance o