How Art Can Save You | Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy

Support us on Patreon, get access to exclusive videos: ▶   / weltgeistyt   WATCH: ▶ Why Nietzsche Hated Socrates:    • Why Nietzsche Hated Socrates   OUR ANALYSES: ▶ Beyond Good and Evil:    • NIETZSCHE Explained: Beyond Good and Evil ...   ▶ The Antichrist:    • NIETZSCHE Explained: The Antichrist (Full ...   ▶ Genealogy of Morals:    • NIETZSCHE Explained: The Genealogy of Mora...   ▶ Twilight of the Idols:    • NIETZSCHE Explained: Twilight of the Idols...   ▶ The Will to Power:    • NIETZSCHE: Will to Power Explained (all pa...   ▶ Daybreak:    • NIETZSCHE Explained: DAYBREAK - Thoughts o...   ▶ The Joyful Science:    • NIETZSCHE Explained: The Joyful Science | ...   TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Introduction 02:28 Apollo and Dionysus 08:41 The Chorus 16:27 A glimpse of horror 21:02 A spoonful of sugar 24:05 The death of tragedy 26:05 Euripides 34:14 Socrates 41:03 Richard Wagner 49:03 Beyond the Birth of Tragedy 55:02 Conclusion The Birth of Tragedy is Nietzsche’s first major work. It immediately split public opinion in half: hated by the academic world, embraced by the artistic world. Heavily drawing on the influence of Arthur Schopenhauer, it features the twin concepts of the Apollonian and Dionysian as creative drives in the human spirit. Apollonian art representing individuality, restraint, delineation; plastic arts, as opposed to the Dionysian; exuberant, formless, ecstasy, emotion; musical arts. Both of these creative forces reach an equilibrium in Greek tragedy. This work deals with how Greek tragedy came to be (borne from the Greek chorus), how tragedy died (featuring also one of Nietzsche’s earliest critiques of Socrates) and how tragedy can be reborn (through the Gesamtkunstwerk of Richard Wagner.) Although this work put Nietzsche on the map, he would later disavow much of its ideas while saving others. In particular, he would become disillusioned with Wagner’s art and turn against his former idol Schopenhauer. The metaphysics underpinning the entire work would also be discarded. He revisioned his ideas on the nature of (Greek) pessimism and the role of art in a culture. Republished fourteen years after the original with a new foreword which includes a self-criticism, the work attained a unique place in Nietzsche’s larger body of work and philosophy. Still, the Birth of Tragedy stands as an influential work, if not in philosophy, definitely in art history and aesthetics.