The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche
The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche
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The Birth of Tragedy

Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

Narrator: Duncan Steen

Unabridged: 6 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Naxos

Published: 11/04/2013

Categories: Nonfiction, Philosophy


Synopsis

Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music was published in 1872. In 1869, at the age of 24, he had been appointed a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel, a remarkable position for one of his age, and the book was his first significant publication. It did little, however, to help his reputation as a scholar; his views were controversial and aroused strong criticism in some quarters, while his deliberate espousal of the cause of the composer Richard Wagner was, to say the least, unhelpful. Nietzsche later revised his views on Wagner and re-issued The Birth of Tragedy in 1886 under the title The Birth of Tragedy, or Hellenism and Pessimism, introducing it with An Attempt at a Self-Criticism. The present reading includes this last, his 1871 Preface to Richard Wagner and the original book itself, with its famous discussion of the Apollonian and Dionysian in Greek tragedy.

About Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher and philologist whose best-known works include Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Ecce Homo; Human, All Too Human; and Beyond Good and Evil. Much of his work is characterized by radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth and criticism of traditional ideals of morality. Nietzsche's writings were significant influences on the existentialist, nihilist, and postmodernist schools of thought, as well as on the work of such later writers as Herman Hesse, Albert Camus, Sigmund Freud, and Jean-Paul Sartre.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Glenn on December 21, 2023

With his vivid, passionate language, 19th century German philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche wrote his books as a way to pry open a space in a reader’s psyche, a space empowering an individual to embark on a journey of inner exploration. This is precisely why I think any attempt, no matter how well inten......more

Goodreads review by Riku on October 13, 2015

Apollo Vs Dionysus: A Darwinian Drama Nietzsche never struck me as a real philosopher. He was too much the story-teller. This is probably his most a-philosophical (?) work. But it is my favorite. It was the most accessible to me and it was the most relevant of his works. It helped me form my own convi......more

Goodreads review by Jon on February 03, 2025

Another '10%' book for me: I think I understood about 10% of what Nietzsche was trying to say - so here is my 10% review: the dichotomy between (A)pollonian (rational) and (D)ionysian (irrational) impulses is a constant 'tug-of-war' that seems to go on for the soul of a nation; indeed this is the si......more

Goodreads review by Sean Barrs on July 27, 2018

Nietzsche talks in abstract ways and I find it very difficult to access his words and ideas, and even harder to actually agree with them or sympathise with his stance. As such, I’ve always found this book a little odd. I read it years ago for university, but I recently picked it up again with the ho......more

Goodreads review by Roy on June 02, 2016

A few weeks ago, I finished Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. It strikes me now that that book and this one are similar, in that they shed light on the two thinkers as young men. In Marx’s Critique, we see the twenty-something grappling with the tentacled beast of Hegel; in The Birth o......more