Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings

I read this book for a graduate seminar on the philosophy of art. Nietzsche's "Birth of Tragedy" and "On The Genealogy of Morality" begin to shape or force the latter character of his thought, which is an affirmation of life. An affirmation of life, even with its tragic character rather than an affirmation of life without tragedy. Nietzsche agrees with Schopenhauer about the nature of reality being dark. He accepts Plato's characterization about tragedy, but affirms tragedy instead of wanting to ban it like Plato argued for in his "Republic." He rejects Aristotle' formalism, Nietzsche rejects Kant's notion of disinterest, and its life denying implications, the whole idea that you have to be disinterested in art is a complete contradiction of the vitality of art. It betrays a kind of life denying implication, if the point of art is to find a zone to turn off ones interests, then why would you think that, that is valuable. Why would someone think that that is a good thing? Nietzsche accepts the idea of genius and like Hegel, although not in the same way as Hegel, Nietzsche elevates art to a high level, by saying that art and reality mirror each other, in that art is a kind of forming formlessness and that is the way reality is. Nietzsche had a big influence on 20th century art. Nietzsche unlike Aristotle insists on a religious component in tragedy, the two main Greek myth currents is Apollo and Dionysus. By associating these two religious sects with tragedy, it is more historically true for Nietzsche. He observes Greek tragedy and Dionysian religion and its character. The image of Greek culture was one of being measured and civilized, however Nietzsche sees the Dionysian religion was dark and violent and irrational as well. Tragedies were performed at Dionysian festivals it is a "nature" based religion, celebrating the cycle of life, both birth and death. The world is like a restaurant, all living things live off other living things. Dionysian rites probably included animal sacrifices, maybe human as well. Dionysus was an unusual deity in Greece; he was the only one to suffer death and to be brought back to life, unlike other Olympian deities. Dionysian religion was very popular in Greece; Apollonian religion was very popular as well. Nietzsche says tragedy has something to do with Dionysius religions dark side. One of the best sources of the Dionysian religion is Euripides in the "Bacchae." There is some question about his intent in writing the "Bacchae." Euripides turns against his Greek tragic tradition by showing the Greeks the absurdities and ironies in their tragic tradition with his plays, which also essentially recommend that Greeks turn away from their form of tragedy. Euripidean heroes are usually rebelling against the state rather than accommodating it. However, the "Bacchae" is an unusual play because it seems to be just the kind of portrayal of the Dionysian religion. It is a tragic satire of Dionysian r

After Plato/Aristotle, the most influential (and read) Western philosopher is Nietzsche, and few of his writings continue to resonate in the mind as forcefully as "The Birth of Tragedy." It's at once a coherent and fairly accessible text with implications far in excess of its stated, explicit meanings. Although Nietzsche's focus is, as the title indicates, on Greek drama prior to the 5th century B.C. and to the written records of Aeschylus, his setting is as much the realm of the sub-conscious, whether viewed as Jung's collective unconscious or Freud's id. "The Birth of Tragedy" could as accurately be titled "An Anatomy of Desire and Investigation of the Role of the Erotic." Anyone who has read with understanding this account of the primary agency of the Chorus in early tragedy as well as the privileging of darkness over light, of the ear over the eye, of incantation over narration, is likely to find all "texts" thereafter colored by Nietzsche's views. It's no longer a mystery why "Moon" songs outnumber "Sun" songs by a vast margin in music literature, or why writers from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Wagner and Cole Porter extoll the realm of the dark and atemporal while sparing no venomous rhetoric in relentless denunciations of a rational, brightly lit temporal order. Even a poet as calm and commonsensical as Wordsworth could write, "We murder to dissect." That which is illuminated, and hence visible and measurable, is necessarily individualized, quantified, and objectified, removing it from the vital stream that at some level we recognize as leading us to our most authentic selves. Whenever we "stop" the life-flow to examine a part--whether as an analytic scientist, a rational psychologist, or a pathological individual who finds love surrogates in the form of some fetish--we in effect "kill" the thing that had formerly embodied the living and the whole. Only by careful reconstruction can we begin to understand how the object of analysis, when experienced as part of the current, is not merely an object but a microcosm. "The Birth of Tragedy" is Nietzsche's metaphorical journey into the archetypal "heart of darkness" that has been the destination for storytellers from Homer to Francis Ford Coppola. But it also represents the challenge confronting any true mathematician or scientist engaged in the quest of exploring and representing "the real." Perhaps it goes without saying that for any lover who is capable of addressing with honesty the experience of being "in love" Nietzsche's essay is practically required reading: it may probe sores and open wounds, but it's doubtful any other text does a better job of explaining why we as humans love to love, desire to desire, and are drawn--repeatedly and against our wills--to the entrancing song from the darkness.

Although I'd spent some time reading Nietzsche somewhat intensively, I'm far from being a "student of Nietzsche," let alone a "Nietzsche scholar." My reading of him was more as a disturbed soul than as a student/scholar, and I didn't get much in the way of philosophical achievement of his. One of my plans for the summer is to read him more carefully and more with an eye to his intellectual development, and I began with The Birth of Tragedy. So, BT is his first book, published when he was only 27. As he himself famously noted, 14 years after the first publication of BT, it is "a first book in every bad sense of the word." Apart from his own criticism (in "Attempt at a Self-Criticism"), any new reader just entering Nietzsche's corpus and Nietzsche scholorship is bound to hear of critical belittlements toward BT. So we hear that Nietzsche of BT is far from the mature philosopher we admire in Beyond Good and Evil and other later works, that he was under a strong sway of his youthful influences (Wagner, Schopenhauer) and was helplessly romantic. That he was a mere "philologist and cultural critic," whose philosophical maturing is years to come. That, taken with Nietzsche's later intellectual developments in mind, it is a "scandalous" (albeit in a different sense from what his detractors used it on its publication) book. Etc. Etc. I'm now into Human, All Too Human, and I cannot but think that what Richard Schacht says in "Introduction" as to this another llargely ignored book of Nietzsche's early period equally applies to BT: "Even today, few recognize it as the gold mine it is, not only as an excellent way of becoming acquainted with his thinking, but also for its wealth of ideas worth thinking about." Coarsely put, isn't it often true that the worst work by the greatest mind often is far superior to the best by the mediocre? My reading of BT this time concludes: his most pressing concern in BT is *not* to pay homage to Wagner or Schopenhauer, rather it is to seek ways to learn from Greeks, for as he notes, "the ability to learn from this people is in itself a matter of lofty fame and distinguishing rarity." By tracing the birth and death of tragedy in ancient Greece, Nietzsche is showing us how a culture could "justify" (affirm and embrace) even the "worst of all worlds," and how it perished. His diagnosis of modern ills toward the end of BT is indeed a goldmine, a wealth of ideas worth exploring, and is so pertinent to our time. Perhaps Nietzsche's insights and ideas in BT have been fully explored and exhausted, and thus we may benefit more from elsewhere in this regard. Yet, as a beautifully written "youthful" book, belonging to the precious group of books we may call "books for the eternal youth (in us)," it has the power to make our heart beat faster, awakening the spirit in us we thought we have long lost.

My mom gave me this book to read on a plane flight to Prague. I loved it and it kept me glued to the pages for the whole time. "The age of the Socratic man is over...only dare to be tragic men" - I love this stuff! Sincerely, David

"Birth of Tragedy" can be stated as the first study off the hands of a master, concerning the European thought while establishing cross-roads between theater and music. According to Nietzsche, who approaches diverse philosophical problems along paths other than European philosophical tradition, thinking man is defined as creative, progressive and productive. His superior talents qualify him as one of the "über-mensch". Tragedy too embodies an application quality which makes its way through the dephts of human nature with the aid of music. Thus, this study is among the works which represent the intellectual personality of Nietzsche excuisitely.