A review of:

The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche

            What can be said about one of the most prolific philosophical writers of all time that has not already been said? Nietzsche, a German, took to writing philosophy after a somewhat unfortunate childhood. Growing up around the time when evolutionary theory was first gaining it’s notoriety, he latched onto it as a way to resolve the inherent moral weaknesses he saw in a society based on Judeo-Christian values. This book, while not the greatest writing I’ve ever seen, does introduce some serious questions about accepted morality and other subjects in the wake of new, non-teleological creationist thought. This book also serves as an overview for the rest of Nietzsche’s great works, from Beyond Good and Evil to On the Genealogy of Morals. If you are going to read Nietzsche this is the book you should start with.

On a more personal level, the majority of this book is used to convey the message that art may indeed be the saving grace of mankind. I, along with many others, disagree. The inclusion of this idea of art as the highest of all human achievements was one of the major criticisms of Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Millendorf; and even though he has a really long name he is also a major philosopher. He attributed Nietzsche’s strong attachment to music with his relationship to the composer Richard Wagner, a man in whom Nietzsche had found a father figure to replace his real father, a Lutheran minister who died when Nietzsche was five. Both Nietzsche and Wagner had a special love for music with Schopenhauer in particular, and as such Nietzsche was careful to characterize music as the highest form of art, another thing that critics of his work didn’t take too well to.

Even with all this in mind, I prefer to give Nietzsche the benefit of the doubt about all this. I’m not sure if art is the greatest achievement of mankind, in fact I would take issue with the whole idea, especially when you apply Nietzsche’s stringent regulations on what is and is not art. As a traditionalist in that respect, Nietzsche would not consider most of what we would call modern art art today. Anyway, after reading this book a couple of times I’m not sure if it’s what he meant, but the way he talks about it it seems like the part of music which he enjoys most is the connection with people. He sees art as the great connector of people, what ties us all together and makes us one. This seems to be the only “triumph of the human spirit” section that Nietzsche lends himself to, and he seems to see it as the humanizing element, what he says makes the terrible facts of life bearable. It seems to me what he is really talking about is communication. That feeling you get when you know you have connected with another person on an almost intimate level is what he is getting at, and he feels like music (in his case, classical) is the greatest way to achieve this on a massive scale. On this point I would agree with Nietzsche, because there is a definite value in the communicative aspect of art, but other forms of communication are just as important as music or art. We all hunger to be understood, and we all find the best way for each of us personally to do that. While music may have been the best way for Nietzsche to do that, I’ll take a page from his playbook and make my own absolute truth on the subject, and you should too. What you should take away is the communication aspect of his point, and remember that. Maybe art doesn’t do it for you, but communication is the reason you are reading this right now, and also the reason you do not feel utterly and completely alone right now.

Another thing that you can see from this is the inherent loneliness of the original “overman.” Communication with other humans would be important to the man whose writing in practice would separate him from the rest of humanity. There is definitely a dualist nature to Nietzsche, as I believe there is in all of us. He wanted to close himself off from all other traditions of mankind, but the one thing he wanted to keep was the brotherhood of man. But I digress, I am supposed to tell you specifically about The Birth of Tragedy and I have yet to do so.

This is one long book. Nietzsche shows us his worldview from Greek times until his present day by talking about art. He has two types of art, Apollonian and Dionysian. Apollonian art is beautiful but superficial. It captures the details of what it is supposed to be showing you, but not the emotion, none of the communication. Dionysian art happened when Dionysus came and rocked the Greek’s world. His type of art took pleasure in the excesses of it, taking everything to its extreme and taking pride in doing so. At the moment of its arrival, with no respect for the traditional boundaries of Apollonian art, Dionysian art gave birth to Greek tragedy. Apollo protects us from the terrible realities of human existence, and Dionysian art teaches us to be commune with what Nietzsche called the “Primordial Unity”, allowing us salvation from this existence. What we learn from Dionysian art is that we aren’t alone in the world, and that all people experience the same existence as we do, therefore we don’t need to go through it alone either. Dionysian art connects us to other people in a way that no other action can. Through art we can escape the great equalizer, cheating death by using art to attain immortality. For Nietzsche art is the struggle, the action that takes man above his existence as a large mammal and makes him human. He talks about art like Christians talk about Christianity, and that is important to note, because as an ardent hater of Christianity, Nietzsche needed some other reason for mankind to exist. This is the new religion, as I said earlier the saving grace of mankind. For a man to truly be a man, he must have immersed himself in Apollonian art, as well as engaging in the higher form, the Dionysian art. If he does so he will be remembered for all time, thus cheating death and living forever. He makes sure that we know that one without the other is not good enough to save mankind, but only together can they erase the terrible existence of mankind, replacing it with paradise.

Then comes the tragic aspect of it all. Through the different forms of art we are able to learn, but the pursuit of knowledge is the murderer of art. We see Euripides, obsessed with knowledge, putting all his faith in the individual human mind, and then getting rid of music in art. He sees no use for it because it does not advance knowledge, but in doing so he takes Dionysus out of the realm of art and tragedy. He calls out the Socratic thinkers, claiming that they are to blame for this happening, and in doing so implies that knowledge is not all there is to mankind, playing out these themes in grand fashion between his three main characters. At this point Nietzsche begins to reveal his reasons for telling us this tragic tale of the death of art by obsession with knowledge, and that is that he feels that is where we are right now. By now, I mean his present day, but you can still see some of what he was talking about today. He says that science cannot solve all of our problems because it is looking in the wrong place. Science solves the problems of man’s relationship to nature, and leaves it at that. Nietzsche feels that this leaves unanswered the more important question, and that is man’s relationship with existence. Man cannot live as an individual or explain his relationship with the universe and other humans by science alone, because science deals with a man as an individual, whereas the important questions to Nietzsche deal with mankind as a whole. Nietzsche thinks that German culture is at an impasse, and they will now either give in to Socratic culture, losing their ability to be saved forever, or experience a revival of Dionysian art and excess, allowing man to live as one of many, communicating with others and possibly assuaging the terrible the realities of an isolated existence. He tells us that he has written this book in order to try and influence us to choose the latter of the two, thereby saving mankind. He is careful to note that because of the paradoxical nature of the three characters there is always a struggle, but if we are careful we can keep one more powerful than the other.

So here is the deal. This is one of the greatest books you will ever read, and if you let it it will blow your mind. As I said in the beginning this book is like an outline for the rest of Nietzsche’s works, so if you are starting a series of his books, start here. My skill as a writer and thinker is nothing compared to one of the greatest minds in history, so my pathetic attempt at a report on this book does not come even close to doing it justice. Please, whatever you do, do not just take what I say here. Read this book, read all his books, and make your own truth. Incidentally, if you want to get a feeling for Nietzsche’s writing in practice and have plenty of extra time on your hands, there is an RPG out on the PS2 called Xenosaga: Episode One: Der Wille zer Macht (The Will to Power) that is based on his style of existentialism. While not exactly an in depth study of Nietzsche, it does offer some great gameplay as well as an awesome storyline. Also, when you get done with the countless hours of gameplay that you will get from that game, Xenosaga: Episode Two: Jenseits vot Gut und Bose (Beyond Good and Evil) will answer some of your questions from the first, as well as still pretty faithfully following the teachings of the man for which it was subtitled.