The Birth of Tragedy
by Friedrich Nietzsche · first published 2010
31% recommend63% neutral6% critical
Why HN recommends it
Nietzsche's early work on the origins of Greek tragedy, linking it to Schopenhauer and poetry. It is presented as the place to see his early thinking, especially for those already familiar with his later books.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
A compelling argument for the necessity for art in life, Nietzsche's first book is fuelled by his enthusiasms for Greek tragedy, for the philosophy of Schopenhauer and for the music of Wagner, to whom this work was dedicated. Nietzsche outlined a distinction between its two central forces: 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. Impas
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…Here’s a TED talk by Csíkszentmihályi (2004): http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.htm... Also worth reading: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig, 1974), The Birth of Tragedy (Nietzsche, 1872)
on “Scott Adams: Crazy Eyes” ↗…unbridgeable difference between the world and its representation read Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation, and if that doesn't fully satisfy you, also Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy. The trouble that philosophy has always come across is the issue of how we are able, in a world which is at the bottom totally unrepresentable, to apply structural order and communicate with one another…
on “Cognitive Decoupling and Banana Phones” ↗The Gay Science is another great Nietzsche book. Pick up The Birth of Tragedy if you get a chance though, Nietzche's early views on history and science are also worth reading and considering.
on “Nietzsche – The Dionysian Impulse (2009)” ↗If you found Schopenhauer's thoughts on it interesting, I'd recommend giving The Birth of Tragedy a read to see where a young Nietzsche took it, relating it to poetry.
on “How is music possible” ↗Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy
on “Ask HN: What book that you read in 2015 significantly affected how you think?” ↗…studying chemistry, for instance with O.L. Erdmann and H. Kolbe in Leipzig: would we be counting him nowadays among our great German chemists?" [2], as we know, he falls back into philology and publishes The Birth of Tragedy in 1872. Incidentally, in 1869, apparently in one day, February 17, Dmitri Mendeleev conceived the first periodic table of the elements [3]. No one could have guessed the power that lies in those scribbles,…
on “End-of-Life Dreams” ↗…would place art into the rational realm (although more into the periphery of it than into the center). If I could read German, I would be incredibly interested to read Wilamowitz-Mollendorf attack on "The Birth of Tragedy" (infamous for the fact that it nearly ended Nietzsche's career) because I came believe that the difference between early Nietzsche and a charlatan may be more subtle than many realize.
on “I don't "get" art” ↗I've always loved this and many of the other insights and distinctions introduced by Nietzsche. While "The Birth of Tragedy" is a bit of a turgid read, the works following it are much sharper. I'd honestly recommend his entire corpus as it's pretty much a goldmine of insights given that you take the time to read and understand…
on “Nietzsche – The Dionysian Impulse (2009)” ↗…Writings of Nietzche’” all translates by Hollingdale or, preferably, Kauffman. Among the jewels you’ll find in such a reading are things like the seed of Nietzsche’s thought being placed, imo, in The Birth of Tragedy, with the line: > It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified Other Nietzsche related recommendations: Pre-Nietzsche: Plato, Schopenhauer Post-Nietzsche:…
on “Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?” ↗…on the back end of Zarathustra at the moment, hence moving onto something a bit stronger. I tend to flick between different books by any given author in order to assimilate their ideas, so I might add Birth of Tragedy at the same time - thank for the recommendation. I'd like to get through all of Nietzsche's key writing in the next couple of years. I've thought about reading Schopenhauer as I understand he's a great…
on “Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?” ↗> The first text he was assigned was Nietzsche’s “The Birth of Tragedy”; unlike “all the confusion of mathematics,” it immediately struck him as clear and perfectly rational. Bad sign...
on “Bruno Latour, the Post-Truth Philosopher, Mounts a Defense of Science” ↗Nietzsche was hotly anticipated in academic circles, before he published The Birth of Tragedy. There are a lot of ways to show promise in academia long before your first book.
on “Plagiarized in a plagiarism atonement essay” ↗There's a book. It's called The Birth of Tragedy. On the one hand, Nietzsche is pretty persuasive that, basically, tragedies are the highest form of drama. So, one would expect ambitious artists to want to tell stories with realistic characters and…
on “Why does culture get less happy year after year?” ↗Incidentally a helpful dichotomy in this regard is laid out in Nietzsche's first major work: The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (he was a superb classical philologist by trade and one of the youngest tenured "Classics" professors at the age of 24): Apollonian/Dionysian [0] >Dancing forces you to be…
on “Dancing Is Stupid” ↗…deadpan in tone than many others of the same period (there is, for instance, a nearby note which equates philologists with castrati ...) – Friedrich Nietzsche encapsulates the inescapable provocation of The Birth of Tragedy: a work written by a classical scholar in defiance of the most fundamental norms and protocols of his profession. KSA = G. Colli and M. Montinari (eds.) (1988) Friedrich Nietzsche: Sämtliche Werke. Kritische…
on “Is "luxury beliefs" a useful category?” ↗