TEACHING THE GRATEFUL DEAD WITH NIETZSCHE’S BIRTH OF TRAGEDY

Abstract

Friedrich Nietzsche published his first work, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music in 1872 and his last work, Ecce Homo in 1888. In not only these two works, but also in his other writings as well, one of the ideas that he consistently emphasized was the idea of life affirmation and vitality: first, how they were expressed in Ancient Greece and then how they had been neglected in Western culture from the fifth century BC to the end of the nineteenth century and finally how regaining life affirmation and vitality might occur in a post nineteenth century world. To start at the end of his trajectory, an initial observation is that chronologically the Grateful Dead (1965-1995) was a post nineteenth century band, and in order to justify a claim that the Grateful Dead expressed Nietzsche’s ideas of life affirmation and vitality, we need first to understand Nietzsche’s characterizations of the Greek period to contrast with what was lost in the middle period when life affirmation and vitality were underemphasized and replaced with an over-emphasis on reason, and then grasp how life affirmation and vitality can come to the forefront again in the twentieth century. Then, we can confidently demonstrate how closely the Grateful Dead exemplify some of what Nietzsche projected for the future...