尼采：美学最可能替代宗教 Nietzsche: Aesthetics, the Most Promising Alternative to Religion

尼采场被认为是后现代主义之父。作为十九世纪德国三个大哲学家的最后一位 – 其他两位是黑格尔与马克思，他为随后的思维作出了决定性的陈述。对于那些尝试把道德世俗化而从基督道德中分离出来，尼采鄙视他们，并宣称上帝已经死亡。初看是十分令人不快的。可是就如那在水里被慢慢加温的青蛙那样，他的思想却慢慢地爬进了我们。原来被认为不可思议与荒谬的，现在已经被普遍接受。

但是，他对于当每一个人对上帝之死的含义完全了解后会产生的后果感到恐惧。对尼采而言，上帝之死为人生旋开新章，这‘肯定人生’哲学的新章代替了‘否定生命’的基督道德。由此，他转向人类价值的这个中心问题。在他寻找价值的新基础，当上帝不再是人生目标与认可人类行为的那一天到来时，尼采相信美学最有可能替代宗教。

他说，唯有作为一种审美现象，人类的生存与世界永恒才能有正当的理由。他相信原本是希腊发现人类努力的意义。他从希腊阿波罗与狄俄尼索斯的概念中对人性得到了基本的领悟。他相信审美价值来自于这两个希腊神所代表的原理的融合。

酒神狄俄尼索斯象征有活力的生命溪流，没有约束与障碍，挑战所有限制。另一方面，太阳神阿波罗是秩序、约束与体制的象征。从另一个角度来看，酒神代表灵魂中负面与有破坏性的黑暗力量，如果不被抑制，会导致令人恶心的肉感与残忍的混合物，一种典型的未开化的动物的本性。相反的，太阳神代表的是一种能够处理高涨活力的力量，利用有破坏性的力量并把它们转换为有创造力的行动。

对尼采而言，人性的最高成就出现于希腊文化，在那里酒神与太阳神的元素互参，而不是只对太阳神的崇拜。事实上，人的生命无可避免包含了感情中的黑暗与激情两种力量。他相信宗教信仰之所以被冷落，就是因为基督道德里主要否认生命的消极性。

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Friedrich Nietzsche is often called the father of postmodernism. Being the last of the three great German philosophers of the nineteenth century - the other two being Hegel and Marx, he made the definitive statement that set the stage for what was to follow. Contemptuous of those who tried to secularize morality by divorcing it from Christianity, Nietzsche pronounced God dead. Perhaps offensive at first, his thinking, like the proverbial frog on the stove, has crept up on us. What was once thought of as incomprehensible and absurd has now become widely accepted.

However, he was appalled at the consequences that would follow once everyone fully aware of the implication of the death of God. The death of God meant for Nietzsche the opening of a new day – a day when the life-denying ethics of Christianity could be replace with a life-affirmation philosophy and this turned him to central question of human values. In his search for a new foundation for values in a day when God no longer be the goal and sanction of human conduct, Nietzsche believed that aesthetics was the most promising alternative to religion.

Only as aesthetic phenomenon, he said, are human existence and the world eternally justified. The Greeks, he believed, originally discovered the true meaning of human effort. He drew his fundamental insights about human nature from the Greek conceptions of Apollo and Dionysus. He believed the aesthetic value results from a fusion between two principles, which are respectively represented by the two Greek gods.

Dionysus symbolised the dynamic stream of life, which knows no restraints or barriers and defies all limitations. Apollo, on the hand, was the symbol of order, restraint, and form. From another point of view, the Dionysian represents the negative and destructive dark power of the soul, which when unchecked, will culminate in that disgusting mixture of voluptuousness and cruelty typical of the most savage beasts of nature. The Apollonian, by contrast, represents the power to deal with the powerful surge of vital energy, to harness destructive powers, and to transmute these into creative act.

For Netzsche, the supreme achievement of human nature occurred in Greek culture where the Dionysian and Apollonian elements were brought together, rather than respecting only the Apollonian spirit. The fact is that human life inevitably includes the dark and surging forces of passion. What disqualified religious faith, he believed, was the essentially life-denying negativeness of the Christian ethics.