Philosophy 422 m ADM

Fowler
31 August 1992
Reaction to First Half of
The Birth of Tragedy

In his retrospective Attempt at Self-Criticism, Nietzsche confirms his

critics’ notion that The Birth of Tragedy is far from being his best
work, and in some instances even lampoons his immature perspective and
his willingness to be taken away by an undertow of Wagnerian nationalism,
but he does not altogether revoke or ignore his premise of the
Dionysian / Appolinian dichotomy. Nietzsche still is puzzled with the
question, “What is Dionysian?” and he admits his answer from Birth is
less than satisfactory, and he hopes the Attempt provides the opportunity
to “speak more cautiously and less eloquently” (Nietzsche, 20).
Interestingly, he regards the Greeks “as totally umcomprehended and
unimaginable as ever” because he, indeed no one, can satisfactorily
answer the question, “What is Dionysian?” This persistence reveals
Nietzsche’s philosophical and philological stubbornness, and his
conviction that the question he originates in Birth is the correct, the
essential question to ask of the Greeks, and it is only the proposed
answers which are faulty. In the Attempt, he maintains his pursuit of
the answer to the specific question of the Dionysian, and importantly he
does not back down and look for another approach to understanding the
“uncomprehended Greeks.”
The first half of The Birth of Tragedy effectively introduces the
Dionysian / Appolinian division and, of course, the parallel issue of
tragedy’s birth. He takes the puzzle of the Birth and fuses it into a
puzzle of his own, crafting a polemic from the various paragraphs and
sections and consciously stalling and challenging the reader either to
follow painstakingly Nietzsche’s line of reasoning or to attempt a leap
ahead toward one’s own conclusions; the former method, though often
confusing and frustrating seems the surer path to understanding. At the
end of Section 11, Nietzsche writes of “the second spectator” with whom
Euripides could align himself in the misfired Appolinian “struggle
against the art of Aeschylus and Sophocles”, but Nietzsche does not
immediately reveal the identity of this second spectator. He closes the
section, and opens Section 12 with “Before we name this other spectator,
let us pause here a moment...” As though his argument had not been
structured enough, Nietzsche manipulates the bait-and-switch style of a
novelist, or a playwright, to lure and inspire the reader to reach the
conclusion by the end of Section 12 that “Socrates was that second
spectator” (Nietzsche, 86).
In the first half (through Section 12) of The Birth, Nietzsche
introduces and explains the struggle between the Dionysian, Appolinian,
and Socratic divisions of tragedy. Socrates, as “the new Orpheus”
opposes the Dionysian, but does not emulate the Appolinian, and each of
the three has its own playwright / vanguard, and each has its own
response to the notion of individuation.