Continental Philosophy

Nietzsche’s Aesthetics

Primary Source:

• Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, Sections 10-15, 18, 24, in BN, pp. 73 – 98, 109-114, 139-143

Background:

This reading continues Nietzsche’s analysis of tragedy. In Sections 10 – 14, Nietzsche discusses the death of tragedy at the hands of Euripides and Socrates. In Section 15, he then levels a critique of Socratism (or Scientism, if you prefer). In the remaining sections, he posits a “rebirth of tragedy” by the opera of Wagner. In the three sections we are reading (18, 24-25), he recapitulates the problems with Socratism for culture, and he tries again to explain why “only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified”.

Questions:

• What is the "problem of Socrates" in Sections 11 – 15?
• What is "aesthetic Socratism" (Section 12)?
• How did Euripides and Socrates murder Greek tragedy (Sections 11 - 14)?
• Why is Socrates the turning point in world history (Section 15)?
• Why is it that the modern (Socratic) culture should turn into an artistic one (Section 18)?
• What is aesthetic pleasure (Section 24)?
• Is Schopenhauer's will the "primal artist" (back in Section 5), and is the world a work of art produced by this will out of a "primal pleasure" (Section 24)?

I love Apache! So should you!