Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks

117 pages

English language

Published 1996 by ‎ Gateway Editions.

ISBN:
978-0-89526-710-8
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5 stars (1 review)

For Nietzsche the Age of Greek Tragedy was indeed a tragic age. He saw in it the rise and climax of values so dear to him that their subsequent drop into catastrophe (in the person of Socrates - Plato) was clearly foreshadowed as though these were events taking place in the theater.

And so in this work, unpublished in his own day but written at the same time that his The Birth of Tragedy had so outraged the German professorate as to imperil his own academic career, his most deeply felt task was one of education. He wanted to present the culture of the Greeks as a paradigm to his young German contemporaries who might thus be persuaded to work toward a state of culture of their own; a state where Nietzsche found sorely missing.

2 editions

Better than The Birth of Tragedy

5 stars

Better than The Birth of Tragedy, and literally destroys someone like Russell. Of course, it is highly personal, but plainly, Nietzsche's insights are true. Not only that. I guess when people start reading philosophy, they, or at least some of them, are already in the mindset that intuitively comprehend and know what Nietzsche is saying here. But it gradually becomes impossible, when reflective thought, and more over, self-consciousness drives him away from the primordial mystic intuition that led him to philosophy and religion and art, and possibly mathematics and physics. Hence this little unfinished book is another tragedy. And as I can see it, Nietzsche chose a dead-end path. Magnificent, but dead-end. Oh, Nietzsche, my dear, of course Plato was not a mixed type! The theorized account of his intuition is approximately a hybrid (and not really), but you youself knew that he was closer to you than …

Subjects

  • Philosophy
  • Aesthetics
  • Philology
  • Poetics
  • Proto Psychoanalysis