The Philosophy of Life as a Type of Artistic Grounding of Philosophical Discourse. Considerations About Henryk Benisz’s Book – Schopenhauer-Nietzsche-Heidegger. Fundamentalne kwestie filozofii życia, Wydawnictwo Marek Derewiecki, Kęty 2015, ss. 600

Abstract

The topic of this paper is a critical analysis of Henryk Benisz’s book – “Schopenhauer- Nietzsche-Heidegger. Fundamental questions of life philosophy”. Benisz shows that Schopenhauer’s, Nietzsche’s and Heidegger’s conceptions belong to immanent transformations of the “post-Kantian” philosophical tradition. Its most central aim is to establish the philosophical discourse beyond the scientific and metaphysical language and to overcome the nihilism and the “death of God” (death of Christian God). The philosophy of life transforms the meaning of Plato’s difference between truth and fiction, philosophy and poetry (tragedy), vita contemplativa and vita activa, between Christian view of eternal spiritual life and neopagan scarification of body. According to Benisz, the most influential and creative philosophy of life is Dionysian philosophy, which is based on the figure of the dynamic, cosmic, self-transforming and suffering divinity. Dionysus symbolizes the eternal cosmic order of eternal recurrence  and of  life growing up, also divinity without the supernatural, meta-physical reference (Christ) and the non-metaphysical and tragic “humanity” (superman) without resentment and sin. In Dionysian world the philosophy become art, because philosopher belongs to the life and to its tragic metamorphosis.