Dear Sjord,
Your comments on Nietzsche are full of interesting observations and
nuggets of insight. However, as you also correctly note, you do not
quite control the material You need a question that you will answer.
What is this question? I know that you are aware of many issues in
this work but for the sake of your paper you need to choose one or, if
you choose several, they should be related by a common question.
Here are some of my specific responses to your observations:
Quoting md811@bard.edu:
> Dear Gennady,
> I hope in my essay to write about the practical and rational
> throughout The Birth of Tragedy, but especially focusing in on its
> creation of New Attic Tragedy. It seems as though the appreciation of
> the beautiful or sublime nature of the original tragedy was destroyed
> by its having been monopolized and made practical by Euripides and
> Socrates. The problem with this judgment, however, is that although
> the life of Tragedy was made fruitless as a mythology under the yoke of
> Socrates and Euripides' interest in public opinion, the Tragedy as an
> art form nevertheless succeeded itself by taking on a new form that
> affirmed both the moral convictions of the author as well as the
> audience?s immediate will to be identified with practical decisions
> seemingly greater than themselves.
1. I do not think that N sees that the reason why Socrates and
Euripides subverted tragedy was due to public opinion. Rather, he
sees this subversion as a more general existential tendency of humans
to fear life, Being, since it brings destruction. In this sense,
Euripides and Socrates reflect, as well as shape this existential
fear. From N's point of view, this shift in focus away from the Will
as the underlying reality of all life effectively killed tragedy as an
art form, and in a larger sense killed art as an activity isomorphic
to life and Will. That which constituted the essence of tragedy and
art was destroyed. So, later tragedies, in N's view, are not really
tragedies any more, nor are they art.
I have not yet gained enough
> control over this text to provide a full thesis and solution to this
> problem, but I have a number of unresolved yet relevant observations:
> Nietzsche gives little time to the birth of reason and critique, and
> within the brief description argues that the birth of critique was
> accomplished by merely the unified efforts of two individuals, and
> moreover two thinkers.
You are right, he does not spend a great deal of time on the birth of
reason and critique. He does suggest that they are born out of the
principium individuationis, the principle of individiatuion. They are
born out of the Appolonian element as a reaction to the awareness of
the imminent destruction. Again, Socrates and Euripides are not only
shapers of this new attitude but also reflections of the more general
fear of humans.
He seems here to deny the arc of tragedy within
> his story; there is no discussion of tragedy?s placement within any
> type of geographical context, while at the same time the universal
> suffering and pessimism of the Greek people is taken as a necessary,
> albeit probably temporary within the development of Greek civilization.
> Nietzsche wills a rebirth of tragedy in Wagner?s works not out of a
> deluded fantasy for the golden age of pessimism, but rather because he
> himself understands Tragedy as religion and productive in the context
> of his own intense pessimism about the contemporaneous ineptitude of
> reason at redeeming humanity of its rapid change and sublime pressure
> during industrialization.
I do not think that N implies that Ancient Greeks were pessimistic.
On the contrary, they were, in his view, profoundly optimistic even in
the face of destruction. They could balance their existence between
the fear of destruction, the joy of merging with the original oneness,
and the illusions of individuation.
I hope these responses will help.
Best,
Gennady
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