Frederick Nietzsche is hands down one of the most important philosophers today. Just about all
contemporary and current philosophy contends with ideas that stems from him. And for that reason, he
deserves our attention. And speaking of attention itself there's a very lack of it regarding The
Birth of Tragedy so hopefully, we can mend this. The Birth of Tragedy is typically pretty difficult
to read, especially if you do not have a complete understanding of Greek history and the tales of
the past. Since this is Nietzsche's first book I want this to be our very starting off point for
him on this channel. On the surface, seeing this book as a philosophical analysis of Greek tragedy,
this book seems kind of meaningless. What is the point of explaining Greek tragedies?
Greek tales of the past? What does historical and artistic tragedy have to do
with a philosophical text? These questions are all answered and more. Birth of a Tragedy;
despite it being one of Nietzsche's first works does not receive a ton of attention
compared to Beyond Good and Evil, Thus Spokes Zarthustra and The Gay Science,
but hopefully, we can mend this and give further insights into Nietzsche
and the beginning developments of his philosophy. This is the Birth of Tragedy just in video form.
Nietzsche starts out with a radical defense of aesthetics, he targets the very people who see
aesthetics as a fringe discipline and as he puts it: "a merry diversion." To Nietzsche,
aesthetics and art are of the human character. Nietzsche sees aesthetics and art as the highest
task and the proper metaphysical activity of this life. But, to Nietzsche this art;
this inlook into tragedy; into the Greeks, are not done in a vacuum. He isn't analyzing this
for the sake of meaningless philosophical analysis. He wants to make universal claims
here. To Nietzsche, the German national character is at stake and art is what makes its character.
Not only this but the idea that the Greeks play a pivotal role in the german character itself.
But, why the hell would he care about the Greeks regarding the German character? Nietzsche claims
that greeks were of unmatched beauty. Within Greek city-states, there was ample diversity. Athens was
as different and sophisticated as Sparta. He claims the Greeks were an ultimate synthesis
of beauty itself. Represented by cultures such as Sparta and Athens, who were very different,
yet very much the same. The dialectic nature of the Greeks: of being together culturally, while
also being simultaneously different, manifested as ultimate art. Nietzsche immediately comes
out explaining art as developmental intuition, an intuition that elaborates on the human will
and driven energy. Thus, of absolute importance to the existence of humans. With this very intuition
being driven by two opposing energies. Energies symbolized between the Greek gods of Apollo and
Dionysus. Nietzsche quotes: “We shall have gained much for the science of aesthetics,
when once we have perceived not only by logical inference, but by the immediate certainty of
intuition, that the continuous development of art is bound up with the duplexity of the Apollonian
and the Dionysian: in like manner as procreation is dependent on the duality of the sexes,
involving perpetual conflicts with only periodically intervening reconciliations.”
Now onto the energies themselves. First we must understand the symbols that represent
these energies: Dionysus is the Greek god of wine, fertility, ritual madness,
theater and religious ecstasy. Apollo is the god of healing, medicine, music, and poetry. Again,
this might seem meaningless and arbitrary, but Nietzsche uses them in a context that makes sense.
Apollo is the stoic thoughtful, logical, reasonable, and artistically calculated energy,
one that showcases humanity above humanity itself. A transcendental dreamlike self.
While Dionysus is the youthful energetic human energy. The one that is wild vigorous and one
that shows our primordial drunkenness nature. A nature that is of our raw human instinct. Now
to the aesthetics of these energies: onto the very Apollonian energy, Apollonian nature of art.
Nietzsche says the naive artist can be seen. A naivety that he quotes as the complete absorption
and the beauty of appearance. Yet, he admits this dream state is at the metaphysical level
and is preferable to being awake. Therefore the Apollonian energy is important. We think
of dreams as something that may be chaotic, but to Nietzsche, this is not so. Life is more
chaotic. Dreams are often rhythmic, calculated at times, this is represented in orchestral music
and of the ultimate representation of Attic, Athenian culture. Nietzsche quotes: “The cheerful
acquiescence in the dream-experience has likewise been embodied by the Greeks in their Apollo:
for Apollo, as the god of all shaping energies, is also the soothsaying god. He, who
(as the etymology of the name indicates) is the shining one, the deity of light,
also rules over the fair appearance of the inner world of fantasies. The higher truth,
the perfection of these states in contrast to the only partially intelligible everyday world,
ay, the deep consciousness of nature, healing and helping in sleep and dream, is at the same
time the symbolical analogue of the faculty of soothsaying and, in general, of the arts, through
which life is made possible and worth living.” Apollo is of the surface aesthetic, an aesthetic
beyond human instinct. And as Nietzsche states, the ultimate mediator of humanity. Yet this moves
us into the very core innate humanity itself. This moves us into the Dionysian nature of art,
a nature of human drunkenness, the subtraction of yourself and the world. Nietzsche sees Dionysian
energy as a barbaric human form. Of the Vandals and Germanic peoples,
albeit Nietzsche was also to say that the Dionysian form wasn't of innate brutality and
wickedness. And there was a complete difference in the Dionysian form of the Germanic peoples
and of the Greek peoples. Albeit, brutality was an extreme possibility. He saw the Peloponnese
people of Greece, the Peloponnesian people where Spartaoccupied, as a further visualization of
this energy compared to the Athenians. On the Dionysian energetic aesthetic, Nietzsche says:
“It is either under the influence of the narcotic draught, of which the hymns of all primitive men
and peoples tell us, or by the powerful approach of spring penetrating all nature with joy,
that those Dionysian emotions awake, in the augmentation of which the subjective vanishes
to complete self-forgetfulness. So also in the German Middle Ages singing and dancing crowds,
ever increasing in number, were borne from place to place under this same Dionysian power.” The
innate human experience is one of a subtraction of yourself. The idea of the individual separate from
the world is Apollonian, it's a mediation of your innate being. Nietzsche visualizes the ultimate
Dionysian act is of getting drunk and or dancing. You become closer to the Earth itself. The more
you rhythmically dance, the closer you get to a subtraction of yourself, the more drunk you get,
your visual haze takes over and you become closer to innate being. Now for humanity to flourish,
there must be a bridge in connection to these Dionysian and Apollonian energies.
We can lose ourselves to utter barbarity or in the cold calculative fantasy dreamland,
without a fundamental merging of these two opposing energies. So, we understand the opposing
natures of Dionysian and Apollonian energies, their visual and aesthetic representations,
but here is where Nietzsche is making his universal claims. The importance of this art,
the importance of opposing energies, the synthesis of these energies, the importance of these things
are of tragedy. This is the thesis of this work. This is Nietzsche's point: Nietzsche saw something
of raw synthesized humanity in the Greeks. Humanity that stemmed from tragic stories and art.
Nietzsche quotes: “Greek tragedy had a fate different from that of all her older sister arts:
she died by suicide, in consequence of an irreconcilable conflict; accordingly she died
tragically, while they all passed away very calmly and beautifully in ripe old age. For if it be in
accordance with a happy state of things to depart this life without a struggle, leaving behind
a fair posterity, the closing period of these older arts exhibits such a happy state of things:
slowly they sink out of sight, and before their dying eyes already stand their fairer progeny,
who impatiently lift up their heads with courageous mien.” These tragedies made a
more competent and worthy person in the eyes of Nietzsche, with a prediction and foresight of a
potential future without tragic art. These forms of artistic tragedy created a form of tragic joy,
or what Aristotle termed as catharsis. A feeling of release, a higher meditation of human purpose,
of heroism. This further leads us into the commentary Nietzsche is making today:
the death of tragedy started in Greece, Nietzsche claims that in the hands of Euripides,
a playwright who focused on tragedy, that tragedy died after his death. From then, a Socratic form
of art appeared, that showcases and symbolized a pure Apollonian science at the forefront.
Showcasing a theoretical world view where science and technology can solve all our human woes.
Nietzsche brings this at the forefront of his existence that reason science and technology on
its own is a purely illusionary and an ideological life. If this weren't true, we wouldn't see people
partake in the Dionysian activities of drinking and dancing. In this very world of cold science,
of cold rationality, we have to partake in irrationality, we have to be human. We have to
be Dionysian. To Nietzsche, the Dionysian acts we see today are to comfort ourselves against a world
that is purely scientific, overly rational, and that pacifies and kills our humanity. Nietzsche
sees a world where we can return to tragic art. He says that a potential return can be found in
Richard Wagner's music dramas and a more serious philosophical in-look into aesthetics. Nietzsche
ends and sums much of this book up with this: “Thus does the Apollonian wrest us from Dionysian
universality and fill us with rapture for individuals; to these it rivets our sympathetic
emotion, through these it satisfies the sense of beauty which longs for great and sublime forms;
it brings before us biographical portraits, and incites us to a thoughtful apprehension
of the essence of life contained therein.” This is the foundation that Nietzsche's work lays on
a foundation that is critical of a modern world that zaps our humanity, a critical essence seen in
Martin Heidegger's work, with the loss of culture, seen in forms of existentialism and of many
postmodern thinkers of the 21st century. Nearly all philosophy after Nietzsche contends in some
way or another with Nietzsche, and The Birth of Tragedy lays that very groundwork to begin with.
Thank you guys so much for watching and making it to the end. As I want to make quite a few
different videos on Nietzsche, I figured The Birth of Tragedy would be the very place to start. As
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there it is guys thank you for making it to the end. hopefully, I can see you in the next one.