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Before I start the review, I just want to say that it felt great to read Nietzsche after a long time!

'Birth of Tragedy,' written in 1871, is Nietzsche's first book, that I think should have been titled 'Rebirth of Tragedy.' It is also a critic of reason, the scientific, the theoretic, and the Socratic; and is an ode to music, specifically Wagner.

Nietzsche wants humanity to be united again and break away from the concept of individualization. For this to happen, the Apollonian and the Dionysian have to merge-which he thinks can be found in folk songs, tragedy, tragic myth, and Wagnerian symphonies. He believes that the Germans are igniting a new art form that comes from the womb of the Dionysian and appears in images from the Apollonian. He considers music to be the highest form of art as it can encompass something beyond worldly appearances-a hidden reality. In the world of images, music appears as Will-inherently unaesthetic, though it is not Will. Music does not need lyrics and images though it can tolerate them. The lyric poet requires passion to have the Will appear in music. The listener of this music feels a metaphysical solace-an elevated omniscience and ability to penetrate to the interior of things.

Nietzsche also makes use of the philosophical concepts from Schopenhauer and Schiller, which would be a precursor for reading this book.

BORING AS FUCK; Not his best work by far, as he himself says:

"I repeat: I find it an impossible book today. I declare that it is badly written, clumsy, embarrassing, with a rage for imagery and confused in its imagery, emotional, here and there sugary to the point of effeminacy, uneven in pace, lacking the will to logical cleanliness, very convinced and therefore to arrogant to prove its assertions, mistrustful even of the propriety of proving things, a book for the initiated...an arrogant and wildly enthusiastic book which, from the outset, shuts itself off from the profanum vulgus of the 'educated' even more from the 'common people', but also one which, as its effect proved and continues to prove, knows well enough how to seek out its fellow-enthusiasts and to entice them on to new, secret paths and places to dance."

That said, there are some interesting notions in the book, just not anything as pivotal as he makes them out to be. Of infinite more interest to me is the included essay "On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense," which I assume the layman would shrug away based on its title (and their "dislike" of Nietzsche, even though they know nothing of his works except for what they hear from other people, or their liberal history professors).

His next book probably isn't any better, but as too few people seem to realize, it's always better to go to primary sources than to settle for hearsay.

Oh god

I have never thought that a person can write like this. This writing is full of metaphors and theories. It is prosaic even though it is a translation work. Apollonian and Dionysian elements constitute tragedy together, as the reality is the combination of order and chaos, reason and passion, beauty and primal will. Tragedy does not avoid the cruelty of life by creating delusions like science or morality does. It faces the suffering and the absurdity of life directly.

For Nietzsche, life is full of pain and struggle. Tragedy transforms these unbearable truths into aesthetic experiences. Tragedy reflects the universal human condition—Apollonian and Dionysian characteristics.

The interesting resonance I found in the book is Nietzsche’s description of the theoretical man. He was afraid that the culture of our society will be controlled by theoretical men—the people of learning—instead of the people of culture who truly master art. In today’s world, the people of learning devote themselves to creating AI, which generates the most content of today’s culture, even art itself.

This is what Nietzsche terrified the most. And so am I. AI does not have consciousness and does not understand art. It generates based on its database, which means it cannot create art. Art itself is an innovation, a personal reflection of the world. However, AI does not experience the world like we do. In Nietzsche’s words, AI does not experience the Apollonian and Dionysian characters in life.

he may have gone crazy at the end of his life, but the crazies are the genius'! you just gotta crack the codes they subtley encrypt..

Music is the direct copy of our metaphysical world, of our will. A loyal audience of the healing cathartic power of music and art of the Greek tragedies to the universal and eternal abysmal human sufferings and the instincts of ressentiment of slave morality brought by the Christianity, Nietzsche proclaimed in his book that he is an anti-christ. Nietzsche disgust the “slave morality” along with the ingrained feel of indebtedness brought by the Christianity. An avid art lover, Nietzsche claims that art makes life bearable. The essence of human life, according to Nietzsche, is not morality, but rather art.

Only Dionysian art, and the will to power of the healthy nobles, is the eternality.
Socratic rationality, according to Nietzsche, is ruining our temporary release from the eternal sufferings of the essence of human existence. While the introduction of Christianity, the slave revolt, started the endless feel of guilt and debt and ressentiment. More importantly, like a cognitive scientist and psychologist, Nietzsche disproves the Socratic rationality but rather first tries to figure out the workings of neurological and biological configurations and transformations of human beings before the attempts to understand the outside objective world.

The word by word translation of the birth of tragedy( Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik) is probably the birth of tragedy from the spirit of music. For Nietzsche, music is the immediate idea of the eternal life. (BT, p.79, 80) A famous nihilist, Nietzsche probably find a soothing and healing power inside the all embracing power of music, a direct copy of our metaphysical world and our will. “What, when seen through the prism of life, is the meaning of morality? ..art, and not morality--is the true metaphysical activity of man.” (BT,p.8) As spectators of operas and tragedies, individuals find themselves to be more than a tiny little bit of themselves alone, but together in the endless sea of human sufferings. “whereby the terrible is tamed by artistic means, and the comical, whereby disgust at absurdity is discharged by artistic means.” (BT, p.130) Music is our brain’s Narcotic, a healthier one than religion, against our repulsive thoughts about our existence.

Euripides reduced the role of music in the mere conversational drama and Socrates is searching for the truth and reason. For Nietzsche, their efforts are in the wrong direction, rationality would only dilute individual’s ability to live temporarily harmoniously with oneself and one’s life sufferings. Only art, and most importantly, music, or the art form of Tragedy specifically that of Wagner’s, we found a balance of the two greatest soothing artistic power: Apollonian and Dionysian. Apollo is the image maker or sculptor, “beauty is his element, eternal youth his companion” (BT,p.120) and imageless art of Dionysos. While music is a direct copy of the will itself, and only music could represent “ metaphysical in relation to all that is physical in the world.” (BT,p.77) He contends that the plastic art of Apollo overcome individuals’ suffering by the glorification of eternity of youth and beauty together with Dionysian art wins over the fear of the reality of eternal suffering. Nietzsche inherited Schopenhauer’s idea that music is the expression of human will and the essence of everything. Second derivatives of music are poetry and drama which remains merely on the noumenal field of appearances of Apollonian art. There is no eternal truth, according to Nietzsche, only Dionysis is the eternality.

“As an advocate of life my instinct invented for itself a fundamentally opposed doctrine and counter-evaluation of life, a purely artistic one, an anti-Christian one…..for who know the true name of the Antichrist?--by the name of a Greek God: I called it Dionysiac.” (BT,p.9) Nietzsche argues that artistic instincts are anti-christ in itself, and also life’s healing instincts as well to break from the “guilt, sin, sinfulness” and other sickness of ressentiment brought by the Christianity.

“The rise of the Christian god as the maximum god that has been attained thus far therefore also brought a maximum of feelings of guilt.” (GM, p.62, 1-2) Nietzsche talked a lot about human instincts and the direction of the discharge of those instincts: “All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn themselves inwards--this is what I call the internalizing of man: thus first grows in man that which he later calls his “soul”.” (GM, p.57, 1-3) Morality is a secret human instinct, according to Nietzsche, to human self annihilation, a “will to negate life.” Therefore Nietzsche argues life’s essence is not morality, but a purely artistic one, which equals to anti-Christianity.

“The people were victorious--or ‘the slaves’, or ‘the mob’, or ‘the herd’, or whatever you like to call them--if this happened through the Jews…..everything is jewifying or christifying or mobidying as we watch” (GM, p. 18, 12-20) Therefore two kinds of people, according to Nietzsche, the healthy and the sick, who are the nobles and the slaves. There is, though, a middle ground between the two, that is the priest. Though, according to Nietzsche, the priest also belong to the sick, for “He must be sick himself, he must be related to the sick and short-changed from the ground up in order to understand them”(GM, p.90, 14-15). Nobility developed from master morality, it’s an expression of the domination and rule over others, the will to power.

“Hostility, cruelty, pleasure in persecution, in assault, in change, in destruction--all of that turning itself against the possessors of such instincts: that is the origin of “bad conscience”. (GM, p.57, 12-13) The counterforce of the noble and healthy will to power, is the struggle against our own natural instincts, which is exactly what Christianity advocated, is the bad conscience and also slave morality. “the slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values:...whereas all noble morality grows out of a triumphant yes-saying to oneself, from the outset slave morality says “no” to an “outside”, to a “different”, to a “not-self”.(GM, p.19, 4-8) Ressentiment is the creation of an imagined scapegoat when individuals produce a sense of hostility in order to make oneself free from blame and frustration.

Ressentiment is sickness, explosive in manner. The slave morality created ressentiment where it defines the powerful and healthy qualities of the nobles as “evil” and its own contrasting qualities as “good”. The slaves use this as a defense mechanism to avoid to address and to overcome their own flaws. The ego created an scapegoat of one’s own weaknesses and frustration and disgust toward oneself. While the healthy and the nobles are those who continue the self-overcoming and who likely focus on artistic and dionysian works. “the privilege of the few” resounded in the face of the old lie-slogan of ressentiment, “the privilege of the majority,” in the face of the will to lowering, to debasement, to leveling, to the downward and evening ward of man!” (GM, p.32, 13-19) For Nietzsche, democracy along with Christianity has the same debasing and sick impulse to make all equal, to make all slaves.

This movement of slave revolt, organized by the priest, killed the creative Dionysian element of the nobility and made the all sick and diseased slavery herd become one. Obsurdly, Christianity is the herd or the slave’s will to power. In their will to power, or the unifying force to make all equal to make all slaves, the noble’s will, the music, the Dionysian art, the only true heal to the human sufferings, are stifled. Nietzsche seems unconsciously calling for the coming of overman, or supermen, Ubermensch, someone like Napoleon, to change the domination of slave revolt.

doesn't contain much of Nietzsche's later philosophy, utterly unacademic and has some gets some historical facts wrong despite him being a literal professor of Philology. There was a famous take down of this book by one of his contemporaries if that would interest you. But reading in the context of Schopenhauer, a really interesting answer to how justify life as an art or "aesthetic phenomenon." I just appreciate the aesthetic value of this book and come back to every now and then

Big bro took the wisdom of Silenus to heart.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. There were many moments where I was just continuously amazed with how much of a genius Nietzsche is as a philosopher and writer…some may even say a poet(?) The only part that got me, ironically, was him talking about opera. I get it! We’re talking about Wagner…but seriously it killed the flow that he was on. I do think he makes a good argument with the parallels between “Socratic culture” and the music of opera or “culture of” but maybe it was just the content that felt a little dull. I mean, to be fair he is talking about the “theoretical man” it isn’t the most thrilling subject.

The only way I felt like I could even attempt to summarize this book was by saying “it’s like I need a whole book about this book to tell you what this book is about” so just, read it yourself. Every point Nietzsche makes feels infinitely important for x amount of reasons leaving any act of synthesis to cease. I would say “An Attempt and Self-Criticism” to chapters 1-18 of “The Birth of Tragedy…Foreword to Richard Wagner” are fantastic, then, unfortunately, I found the book to drag on a little bit till the end. Oh well, everyone’s a critic, even Nietzsche about his own work.