Ages of Nihilism and Renewal in Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy

In this invited lecture, hosted by the Pell Honors program at Salve Regina University, I present some of the key themes and concepts of Friedrich Nietzsche's first major work, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music.
We start with Nietzsche's distinction made early on between the Dionysian and Apollonian responses, which play a central role in this work, and particularly in the development of the genres of classic Greek poetry, leading up to the tragedy of Aeschylus and Sophocles.
We then look at the third major response, the one which takes us from the tragic to the theoretical point of view and mode of life, the Socratic, which Nietzsche will also call the Alexandrian -- and which he regards as the prevalent fundamental viewpoint of our own modern times.
According to Nietzsche, with Euripides, tragedy ends up dying a self-inflicted death. By rejecting the Dionysian depths and mystery, Euripides is abandoned by the Apollonian instead, and has to find new substitutes for what the interplay between Apollonian and Dionysian provided.
We close by considering the situation of modernity -- which threatens the danger of nihilism, as the spirit of science starts finding its limits, and the cheerfulness and optimism of the Socratic begins to give way to an existential nausea, pessimism, and groundlessness. Nietzsche's solution in this early work is to chart out a resuscitation of Apollonian myth emerging through the Dionysian basis of music, leading to a revival of tragedy. In his later self-criticism of the work, he suggests that he was off-base and that a more individual solution would be possible.
If you'd like to watch some more in-depth videos (4 1-hour sessions) on Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, they're available in my Existentialist Philosophy and Literature playlist: • Existentialist Philoso...

[@GregoryBSadler]

The footage from the invited talk, given to the Pell Honors students at Salve Regina University yesterday afternoon -- video footage by the SRU staff, the audio of the talk recorded from my iphone

[@ZeroSheFlies]

Really interesting

[@GregoryBSadler]

Thanks! It was quite a lot of fun to get to do

[@ZeroSheFlies]

Its remarkable how things change. In my day (the 1960s) Nietzsche was at best frowned upon by Catholic institutions. Consequently, we never got around to reading him even in our most bohemian moments. In my father's day (the 1940s), these works were banned from Jesuit institutions ('à l'indexe), My dad, who had a License in philosophy, first worked as a literary critic and he had to obtain a dispensation from the bishop to write reviews of books by so-called atheistic authors. . If you were ``edgy`, you would write about Maritain in those days in Catholic circles.. Now here you are at Salve Regina lecturing about the a writer whose philosophy that Camus described as “the will to power taking the place of the will to justice”. Quite a change in Weltanschauung (LOL). At least, you chose the first book and not a later less palatable work. Your exposition was clear but I also found it interesting for the reason outlined above. Cheers from Ottawa!

[@GregoryBSadler]

ZeroSheFlies Well, it was SRU who picked the book and the thinker, but I was quite game. Interestingly, one of the great early works of commentary on Nietzsche is by Max Scheler, who was Catholic, at least the time he worked on it - his piece on Ressentiment. I think the shift in looking at these sorts of secular and even anti-Christian authors occurred in the 1970s and 1980s

[@JesusLopez99]

Lecture on Nietzsche's BoT? Yes!! This is exactly what I needed now to unwind from work. I always enjoy your lectures on Nietzsche and I thank you for uploading it Dr.Sadler!

[@GregoryBSadler]

You're welcome. Glad it fit the bill, so to speak

[@mitchellkato1436]

While Parmenedies' ontology is complete One; Plato's ontology is the perfect One. And Nietzsche's ontology is simply Many. (which includes the Two of Tragedies.)

[@homunculus8773]

Another great lecture. What a fantastic channel. Really, a tribute to philosophy and man's eternal reflection on, and struggle with, the great questions of existence. Thank you Dr Sadler, and greetings from Greece

[@GregoryBSadler]

+homunculus Glad you enjoyed the lecture -- and the channel!