Rev. Jan 15, 2025
“Believe with me in the rebirth of tragedy. Socratic man has run his course [and we are entering into a new era]. Crown yourselves with glory and embrace the fertility that Nature is about to bestow through you.”
Those are the words of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in 1872, when he was 28 years old, reiterated now by me, declaring his vision of a rebirth of something uniquely Western, dating back an extraordinary two millennia, back to the time when our civilization was being founded by the progeny of geniuses we know as the ancient Greeks, something so magically wonderful that its subsequent loss with the teaching of Socratic logic would be profoundly painful and enduring for modern man and would lead directly to the nihilism that now threatens his existence. And Nietzsche was declaring its rebirth, which would certainly be an Alexandrian moment in the history of Occidental culture. Who would hear the call, let alone begin to heed it?
Me. I heard him.
The Proposal
In brief, I propose an innovative addition to higher education. Please note my use of the word “addition.” I do not propose any changes whatsoever to modern higher education as it exists today. Nor would anything that I am proposing change the existing modern system of higher education.
Notwithstanding that assurance, the addition I propose would vastly improve modern higher education by introducing the practice of proto-tragedy for the first time in two millennia!
I propose a requirement for a college degree that students learn about dithyrambic music and dithyrambic drama, for which I have now provided four books as instruction, to the extent, at a minimum, that they know it exists and that they know about its good effect on those who undertake it, specifically the healing and redemption it provides to the bad conscience. That minimal instruction would be the least that an education in dithyrambic drama must provide as part of a college education. Beyond that, students should be taught how to read dithyrambic music and encouraged to practice the will that it teaches. And the result of students learning how to practice dithyrambic music will most certainly lead them into the drama, which is a tragedy that requires years of concentrated and sometimes monastic work, as a very fundamental contribution to the health of our culture. Not all of them will succeed, but some must. And I believe their undertaking of the drama should be supported in any way possible toward a successful completion. I believe those who succeed in their undertaking will benefit not only society but culture as well, and I predict they will do so in a measure that will prove my proposal here today most prescient.
Whereas modern higher education aims to produce an encyclopedic mind for the purpose of priming the workforce, which is certainly all well and good and will remain as it is, my proposal would instead, right alongside modern higher education, produce highly creative individuals capable of mustering that workforce and leading it.
The benefit of my proposal would be the guaranteed rebirth of proto‑tragedy, more than two millennia since it has existed here on Earth, with credit to philosophy, whose doctoring assisted the rebirth. And that rebirth, if successful, would be an Alexandrian milestone in the history of Occidental culture, which is just too expansive to articulate in this short brief. If you wish to learn more, please contact me. Just click on the orange “Contact” button on any of my web pages. Unfortunately, there is no other way to contact me.
Boston, May 22, 2024