Nietzsche and Freud

Similarities based on the aesthetics and philosophy of the tragic

Abstract

Despite being a modern aesthetic movement, the tragic has its roots in the 19th century Germany, propelled by writers of the German Romanticism. After a series of developments and elaborations, writers associated with the Sturm und Drang artistic and literary movement reworked Greek tragedy and provoked, according to Isaiah Berlin, an unprecedented revolution in Western thought. Nietzsche claims to be the first tragic philosopher and, with his philosophy, sets in motion a new way of thinking about man based on a critique of German idealism. A field marked by dialectics and contradiction, the tragic heralds modernity and precipitates a new conception of man, based on an irresolvable dissonance within. Freud makes this contradiction the basis of his theoretical field, stating “ego is not master of his own house” and founds psychoanalysis as a theorized clinical praxis. The objective of this work is to investigate the possible links and similarities between both authors and their contributions to the modern thought. Based on an analysis of two main texts – The birth of tragedy by Nietzsche and Das Unheimliche by Freud – it was possible to determine relevant similarities between the aesthetic category of the uncanny as proposed by the Freudian text, and the philosophy of the tragic, in which Nietzsche postulates to be the antithesis of aesthetic Socratism. The uncanny, as a mark of tragedy, encompasses the dimension of the unconscious and subverts the classical aesthetics of ancient Greece.