Nietzsche’s Reading of the Pandora Myth Pessimism, Hope, and the Tragic-Art of the Greeks

I.This essay is focused on Nietzsche’s unique reading of the Pandora myth as it appears in Human, All Too Human and develops an interpretation of Hope, the most profound evil of the many evils released by Pandora infecting the human condition, as it might be understood in relation to Nietzsche’s analysis of the ancient Greeks in The Birth of Tragedy. In reading this early work of Nietzsche, modes of comportment that fall under two specific categories are considered: Passive NihilismPessimism of Decline and Active NihilismPessimism of Strength as understood by Nietzsche in the late compilation of his notes published as The Will to Power. Ultimately, this essay explores the artistic responses to the bleak and pessimistic conditions of the Greeks’ lives found in the Apolline art in the Homeric Greeks and the tragicart of the Greeks, which Nietzsche argues is the ultimate expression of art as the merging of the “aesthetic” principles of the Apolline and Dionysiac. These aesthetic responses are elucidated in and through the comparison to modes of existence that impede the spirit’s optimal, flourishing development, specifically, as expressed through Christianity and “Socratic optimism” in the superior power of human reason.