The Birth of Tragedy

Item in good condition. Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc...

Item in good condition. Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc...

Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. Penguin Classics. Audience: General/trade.

Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. Penguin Classics. Audience: General/trade.

New York. 1993. Penguin Books. Reprinted Penguin Classic Paperback Edition.

New York. 1993. Penguin Books. Reprinted Penguin Classic Paperback Edition. Very Good In Slightly Worn Wrappers With A Tear On The Cover. ISBN: 0140433392. Translated from the German by Shaun Whiteside. Edited & With An Introduction by Michael Tanner. 121 pages. paperback. The cover shows a detail from Bacchus among the Muses by Buonaventura Genelli in the Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen. FROM THE PUBLISHER-THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY created a furore on its first publication in 1871; it has since become one of the seminal books of European culture. Dedicated to Richard Wagner, THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY is rich in Nietzsche's current enthusiasms for Greek literature and especially tragedy, for Schopenhauer and Wagner's TRISTAN UND ISOLDE. Its central vision is the idea that ‘only as an aesthetic phenomenon are existence and the world justified'. Making his celebrated distinction between the Apolline and the Dionysiac spirit, Nietzsche presses us to consider why it is that we derive pleasure from tragic art, and what is the relationship between our experiences of suffering in life and in art. THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY was his first book. Occasionally flawed and impetuous in argument, it is none the less a triumph of passionate energy and insight. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philologist, philosopher, cultural critic, poet and composer. He wrote several critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and aphorism. Nietzsche's key ideas include perspectivism, the Will to Power, the 'death of God', the Übermensch and eternal recurrence. One of the key tenets of his philosophy is the concept of 'life-affirmation, ' which embraces the realities of the world in which we live over the idea of a world beyond. It further champions the creative powers of the individual to strive beyond social, cultural, and moral contexts. Nietzsche's attitude towards religion and morality was marked with atheism, psychologism and historism; he considered them to be human creations loaded with the error of confusing cause and effect. His radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth has been the focus of extensive commentary, and his influence remains substantial, particularly in the continental philosophical schools of existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism. His ideas of individual overcoming and transcendence beyond structure and context have had a profound impact on late-twentieth and early-twenty-first century thinkers, who have used these concepts as points of departure in the development of their philosophies. Most recently, Nietzsche's reflections have been received in various philosophical approaches that move beyond humanism, e.g., transhumanism. Nietzsche began his career as a classical philologist—a scholar of Greek and Roman textual criticism—before turning to philosophy. In 1869, at age twenty-four, he was appointed to the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, the youngest individual to have held this position. He resigned in the summer of 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life. In 1889, at age forty-four, he suffered a collapse and a complete loss of his mental faculties. The breakdown was later ascribed to atypical general paresis due to tertiary syphilis, but this diagnosis has come into question. Re-examination of Nietzsche's medical evaluation papers show that he almost certainly died of brain cancer. Nietzsche lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897, after which he fell under the care of his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche until his death in 1900. As his caretaker, his sister assumed the roles of curator and editor of Nietzsche's manuscripts. Förster-Nietzsche was married to a prominent German nationalist and antisemite, Bernhard Förster, and reworked Nietzsche's unpublished writings...