The Birth of Tragedy

Presents an argument for the necessity for art in life. This book is based on the author's enthusiasms for Greek tragedy, for the philosophy of Schopenhauer and for the music of Wagner. It outlines a distinction between two central forces: the Apolline, representing beauty and order, and the Dionysiac, a primal or ecstatic reaction to the sublime. The first book by the author of the classic philosophical text Beyond Good and Evil. The youthful faults of this work were exposed by the author himself in the brilliant Attempt at a Self-Criticism, which he added to the new edition of 1886. But the book, whatever its excesses, remains one of the most relevant statements on tragedy ever penned. It exploded the conception of Greek culture that was prevalent down through the Victorian era, and it analyzed themes developed in the twentieth century by classicists, existentialists, psychoanalysts, and others.