ABSTRACT
In Untimely Observations, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life, Friedrich Nietzsche analyzes the fruitlessness of cultural tradition uncoupled from action and shoved into the sphere of interiority. The idea of a new mythology is of Romantic provenance, and so also is the recourse to Dionysus as the god who is coming. Nietzsche likewise distances himself from Romantic use of these ideas and proclaims a manifestly more radical version pointing far beyond Richard Wagner. Like all who leap out of dialectic of enlightenment, Nietzsche undertakes a conspicuous levelling. Consequently, like Nietzsche, Heidegger and Georges Bataille must reach beyond the origins of Western history back to archaic times in order to rediscover the traces of the Dionysian, whether in the thought of pre-Socratics or in the state of excitement surrounding sacred rites of sacrifice. The antiquarian-thinking latecomers of modernity are to be transformed into firstlings of a postmodern age a program that Heidegger explores in Being and Time.
