The Birth of Tragedy
Out of the Spirit of Music
by Friedrich Nietzsche
A compelling argument for the necessity of art in life, Nietzsche's first book is fuelled by his enthusiasms for Greek tragedy, for the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and for the music of Richard Wagner, to whom this work was dedicated.
In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche outlined a distinction between the two central forces in art: the Apolline, representing beauty and order, and the Dionysiac, a primal or ecstatic reaction to the sublime. He believed the combination of these states produced the highest forms of music and tragic drama, which not only reveal the truth about suffering in life, but also provide a consolation for it.
The youthful faults of this work were exposed by the author himself in the brilliant Attempt at a Self-Criticism, which he added to the new edition of 1886. But the book, whatever its excesses, remains one of the most relevant statements on tragedy ever penned. It exploded the conception of Greek culture that was prevalent down through the Victorian era, and it analysed themes developed in the twentieth century by classicists, existentialists, psychoanalysts, and others.
Impassioned and exhilarating in its conviction, The Birth of Tragedy has become a key text in European culture and in literary criticism.
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Further Reading
Chronology
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
Attempt at a Self-Criticism
Preface to Richard Wagner
The Birth of Tragedy
Notes
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Paperback Edition
160 pages. Printed card cover.
ISBN: 9780140433395
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Press, reviews, endorsements
“…it’s hard to deny the seductiveness of Nietzsche’s argument, especially when his own reading reads like a late Romantic prose-poem. Had it not been dressed in a scholarly cloak, it would have been considered a masterful work of art in its own right.”
Philosophy Now - read the full critique here
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About the Author
The late Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. His attempts to unmask the motives that underlie traditional Western religion, morality, and philosophy deeply affected generations of theologians, philosophers, psychologists, poets, novelists, and playwrights. He thought through the consequences of the triumph of the Enlightenment’s secularism—expressed in his observation that “God is dead”—in a way that determined the agenda for many of Europe’s most-celebrated intellectuals after his death. Although he was an ardent foe of nationalism, antisemitism, and power politics, his name was later invoked by fascists to advance the very things he loathed. For further information on the misappropriation of Nietzsche’s work, read here.
