Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 Nietzsche and the influences on The Birth of Tragedy
- 2 Apollo and Dionysos in dialectic (§§1–6)
- 3 The tragic moment (§§7–10)
- 4 The decline and death of Greek tragedy (§§11–15)
- 5 Modernity and the rebirth of tragedy (§§16–25)
- 6 Appraising The Birth of Tragedy: Nietzsche in his later writings
- Nietzsche's life and works
- Further reading
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Nietzsche and the influences on The Birth of Tragedy
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 Nietzsche and the influences on The Birth of Tragedy
- 2 Apollo and Dionysos in dialectic (§§1–6)
- 3 The tragic moment (§§7–10)
- 4 The decline and death of Greek tragedy (§§11–15)
- 5 Modernity and the rebirth of tragedy (§§16–25)
- 6 Appraising The Birth of Tragedy: Nietzsche in his later writings
- Nietzsche's life and works
- Further reading
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This beginning is remarkable beyond all measure. I had discovered the only likeness and parallel to my own innermost experience which history possesses – I had therewith become the first to comprehend the wonderful phenomenon of the dionysian.
(EH, 49)The Birth of Tragedy remains an enigma. As a tract on the history of Greek art it aims to draw out the philosophical motives and consequences of tragedy, and proposes that the tragic culture of the Greeks provides to us an imperative for understanding and interpreting our contemporary world. Yet while this may sound straightforward enough, the book is laden with philosophical difficulties and historical complications: for one, it is a book that censures the theoretical mode of philosophizing while at times also employing a similarly troubled mode; also, where Nietzsche calls for a revaluation of modernity, he simultaneously seems to rely on the metaphysical vocabulary and grammar of his predecessor Schopenhauer; and where scholarly certainty fears to tread, Nietzsche colours his pages with poetical accounts of the ancients, and accords this a seemingly equal weighting to established philological research. The Birth of Tragedy presents us with a Gordian knot of sorts, one that entangles antiquity and modernity, philosophy and art, and the human subject with its cultural horizons.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Nietzsche and The Birth of Tragedy , pp. 1 - 40Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2013