Over time Nietzsche was to change his mind about a number of things he had fervently advocated in his first book The Birth of Tragedy (1872). His enthusiasm for Wagner's operas and his advocacy of Schopenhauer's metaphysics of the will were the two most notable follies of Nietzsche's youth. One thing the later Nietzsche claimed he had definitely got right in this book, however, was his understanding of the Dionysian. I will argue in this article that, although there are certain continuities between Nietzsche's early and later characterizations of Dionysus, there are a number of very important differences. I shall look at Nietzsche's account of the Dionysian in The Birth of Tragedy, argue that this early conception is fundamentally a metaphysical conception, and examine Nietzsche's rejection of metaphysical activity in Human, All Too Human. Finally, I shall offer an account of Nietzsche's later conception of the Dionysian and his attempts to match up this conception with his earlier understanding. I want to argue that Nietzsche's later Dionysus is in some respects radically different from the one that featured in his early book on tragedy.

The Early Nietzsche and Dionysus

In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche offers an account of the origins of tragedy in ancient Greece. He begins the book by identifying two different aesthetic tendencies in nature (BT §1). The first of these tendencies manifests itself naturally within dreams. Our dreams offer up a range of appearances that are representations of the real waking world.