-This is an essay for the Philosophy and the Arts course. Therefore it needs to contain both philosophy and art knowledge.
-The primary reading is The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche.
-The essay question is Evaluate Nietzsche’s contention that art is the highest form of human activity.
-Nietzsche indicates that art is the highest form of human activity, and that art bounds up in opposition between Apolline & Dionysiac.
-In the essay, an artwork should be chosen as an example to illustrate the argument. In this case, the artwork is a 16 minute film, Ballet Mécanique (1923-24) by Fernand Léger. The film and Nietzsche’s contention needs to be linked at some point, by giving examples of it’s Apolline and Dionysiac characteristics.
Please be aware of not doing plagiarism.
A link for The Birth of Tragedy:
http://archive.org/stream/thebirthoftraged00nietuoft/thebirthoftraged00nietuoft_djvu.txt
A link for the film, Ballet Mécanique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QV9-l-rXOE
On Nietzsche & The Birth of Tragedy:
Spinks, Lee, Friedrich Nietzsche (London: Routledge, 2003) (pages 13-35)
Ridley, Aaron, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Nietzsche on Art (London and New York: Routledge, 2007)? (pages 9-33)
Ansell Pearson, Keith and Duncan Large (eds.), The Nietzsche Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006)? (pages 42-87)
On Ballet Mécanique:
Malcolm Turvey, (2002) ‘The Avant-Garde and the “New Spirit”: The Case of Ballet mécanique’ October, 102 (Fall) pp. 35-58
Apart from the documents that I’m providing, you can use online sources and these as well:
Ansell Pearson, Keith, How to Read Nietzsche (London: Granta, 2005)?
Carne, Daniel, Nietzsche on Art and Life (Oxford: OUP, 2014)
?Pippin, Robert (ed.), Introductions to Nietzsche (Cambridge: CUP, 2012)
Schopenhauer, Arthur, The World as Will and Representation, trans. E.F.J. Payne (Indian Hills, CO: Falcon’s Wing Press, 1958)
Blaise Cendrars, (1919) ‘L’ABCs du Cinéma’ in Maria Chefdor, (ed.) (E. Allen & Maria Chefdor, trans.) Blaise Cendrars: Modernities and Other Writings(University of Nebraska Press, 1992)