I reviewed a few pages and i definitely gotta read this one. Can i find the time? yea.

This is a double book, the first, "The Birth of Tragedy" was kind of a slog. A lot of history and comparison between the Dionysiac and Apollonian artistic expression. i personally got a lot more from the second book, "The Genealogy of Morals" though he did go on quite a bit about the ascetic ideal. Early on there was good discussion about the value judgements of 'good' and 'bad'. This was interesting, but seemed a little short. All told, a mixed bag. Good quote at the end, "Man would sooner have the void for a purpose than be void of purpose." Recommended.

I have two different engish editions for the Birth of tragedy + 1 german edition.

An interesting combination of Nietzsche's works in one volume. I read this to accompany a book blogger's Greek tragedy read-along in 2022.

this book is a prophecy of rocknroll. read a good translation (hollindale).

Both excellent works which bookend Nietzsche's writing.

Birth of Tragedy shows the beginnings of his thoughts philosophy, albeit disguised in his concept of 'Apollo vs Dionysus' when talking about Greek tragedy. Apollo represents reason, structured thinking, writing, law making - everything that separates man from nature. Dionysus represents passion, music, fear, the unconscious, animal instincts - everything that grounds man in nature, making us no better than beasts. According to Nietzsche the two need to intertwine and make great art, and that this only happens rarely in a contemporary setting, mainly through music.

Genealogy of morals is the end of his thoughts, and he attempts to lay out a more rigorous grounding. The first essay 'good and evil' develops the nobleman/slave binary that is a core tenant of his. 'Guilt, bad conscience' lays out his reasoning for the origins of these feelings, locating it in the debtors guilt in the creditor/debtor relationship, and 'what do ascetic ideals mean?' takes aim at the role of philosophers and Christianity, unpacking why ascetic priests are common across different cultures. All essays are packed full of ideas and definitely worth a re-read.

Nietzsche constantly tries to tear down existing thought structures and simultaneously build new ones, and it can easily be argued that he is much more effective at the tearing down than the rebuilding. His criticisms of philosophy, religion and reason are blistering, and it's worth reading just for that. However the philosophy he builds is full of contradiction and conjecture. He says that philosophers are really writing autobiographies, yet in no philosopher is this more apparent than him. When he says stuff like:

'The real danger lies in our loathing of man and our pity of him. If these two emotions should one day join forces, they will beget the most sinister thing ever witnessed on earth: man's ultimate will, his will to nothingness, nihilism.'

It's obvious he's speaking about his own inclinations, you could easily argue the opposite of what he's saying. His philosophy is almost like a house of cards, where you have to buy into a lot of his very tenuous assumptions in order to follow his thought process, but if one of those assumptions isn't true the whole thing will fall down.

However the more you read the more it becomes clear that this is his intention all along. His scathing criticisms are about how objectivity is a sham, how a 'disinterested perspective' is a myth - but given this, where does that leave him? What's his role as a philosopher? If he is to follow his criticism, he has no right to propose an objective truth:

'It is of the greatest importance to know how to put the most diverse perspectives and psychological interpretations at the service of intellection. Let us, from now on, be on our guard against the hallowed philosphers' myth of a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless knower"; let us beware of the tentacles of such contradictory notions as "pure reason," "absolute knowledge," "absolute intelligence". All these concepts presuppose an eye such as no living being can imagine, an eye required to have no direction, to abrogate its active and interpretative powers - precisely those powers that alone make seeing, seeing something. All seeing is essentially perspective, and so is all knowing. The more emotions we allow to speak in a given matter, the more different eyes we can put on in order to view a given spectacle, the more complete will be our conception of it, the greater our "objectivity"'

His role is therefore to offer 'different eyes' to 'view a given spectacle'. He's allowing his emotions to speak on the matters of good and evil, morals etc. to give us a more complete conception of it, not to claim that his perspective is the absolute truth. So he doesn't need to care too much about contradicting himself or not being logical because he's not aiming for the heights of objectivity, just to put forward his view. Once you start reading him in this way it becomes much more enjoyable, as you realise that you're there for the ride, not the destination. His ideas really are different and original, and he definitely does offer fresh perspectives on a range of things. But I enjoy him most by not getting too attached to his ideas, to let them wash over me and to keep the ones that I like and to forget the ones I don't.

I read the Kauffman editions. Fun to read in tandem: early Nietzsche, and middle-late Nietzsche.

To sum up in a phew catchfrazes: BoT - apollo and dionysus; GoM - slave morality and will to power.