Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy": A Reader's Guide (review)

In this detailed reader's guide, authors Burnham and Jesinghausen explain that their exegetical study of The Birth of Tragedy is to be read beside Nietzsche's text. They proceed in their systematic analysis section by section, interjecting notes when they deem it necessary to pay attention to a thinker of influence, a particular concept of relevance, or a problem in Nietzsche's work. One of the greatest strengths of the text is the historical and philosophical contextualization of Nietzsche's thought. Aimed toward undergraduate students, this guide makes The Birth of Tragedy accessible to the reader by comparing Nietzsche to other thinkers and by offering a strong analysis of the central themes at work in Nietzsche's text.

At the start of the guide, the authors explain how Nietzsche's difficult relationship with Wagner, as well as his self-critical attitude, contributed to the 1886 addition to The Birth of Tragedy of "An Attempt at Self-Criticism." Their suggestion that the body of the text be read first and the "Attempt" later is a good recommendation for first-time readers because the "Attempt" undermines The Birth of Tragedy. To read the "Attempt" before the text proper would be especially problematic for those first-time readers interested in Nietzsche's early philosophy of art and aesthetics.

In order to explain Nietzsche's central contention that art is an expression of natural drives that are in turn fundamental to the experience of being human, the authors turn to Schiller's anthropological aesthetics and German idealism more generally. They state that Nietzsche's use of the term "Schein" to describe Apollo has a particular history in this tradition that is often lost in English translation and that is important for understanding fully what the power of the Apolline represents in The Birth of Tragedy. The authors explain that in Schiller's aesthetics "Schein" always implies "Sein" because art is defined by Schiller as a beautiful appearance of being (40). They state that this is similar to Nietzsche's conception of the Apolline in that its presence also suggests that of the Dionysiac. As Burnham and Jesinghausen point out, in The Birth of Tragedy the individuating power of appearance of the Apolline allows for the raw nature of the Dionysiac, which is originally one, das Ureine, to be symbolized and made accessible to the human being. By tracing the activities of the Apolline and Dionysiac in cultural history, Nietzsche examines how metaphysics is manifested in culture and art.

In section 3 of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche begins to "dismantle" the cultural history of the Apolline and, in doing so, exhibits the genealogical method that becomes central to his philosophical style as a critic of culture. The authors claim that in his genealogical analysis of tragedy, Nietzsche works to undermine the idealism of German Hellenism by uncovering the historical and psychological factors that allowed Greek tragedy to become possible in the first place. By asking, for example, where Greek serenity came from, Nietzsche exposes how such admirable states emerged out of a subconscious need for a more fundamental protection from madness and universal suffering.

Burnham and Jesinghausen explain that when Nietzsche introduces the rather obscure figure of Archilochus in section 5 of The Birth of Tragedy and raises him above Homer, he not only challenges the classical views of philologists but also provides a historical description of the tragic artist type with a new status of appearance (Schein) and being (Sein). In Archilochus, the lyrical poet-artist, "being corresponds symbolically with appearance" because Archilochus is able to both enact and observe the artistic phenomena, to glimpse into das Ureine and live to tell a story about the journey. The authors state that this account explains Nietzsche's metaphysics of art in The Birth of Tragedy and his strong claim, in both sections 5 and 24, that "only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world...