Friedrich Nietzsche’ Views on Death of Tragedy Essay

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Updated: Dec 15th, 2023

The concept of the death of tragedy is taken from Nietzsche’s book “The Birth of Tragedy” where he declared that God is dead. He stated that Greek tragedy died due to suicide as a result of an irreconcilable disagreement, and its death was sad (Janaway 53). With the beginning of World War II, Nietzsche’s description of the death of tragedy turned out to be more significant. The attitude and concept of Nietzsche regarding this issue can be seen examining the following example. Even though Euripides was younger than Sophocles, their death occurred at the same time in 406 with Euripides dying first. Was Euripides accountable for the death of tragedy, or could he personify the spirit of the time of Nietzsche where such a tragedy was impossible?

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The argument made by Nietzsche claimed that Sophocles, precisely in his elderly period and in the preceding twenty years of his profession, was also tainted. Nonetheless, the acceptance that tragedies of Euripides were not actually tragedies and that Sophocles also noted down merely three genuine. These would decrease the entire concept of the death of tragedy, both currently and in 406 B.C, to the illogical except if we bring in Aeschylus at the moment. Nietzsche stated that Aeschylus was the father of tragedy, and that people have to join his cycle if they want to fully understand the tragedy (Janaway 54). This is the description of Nietzsche. and if this idea is preserved, then his claims are not illogical. From this instance, it may be stated that seven level tragedies of Aeschylus were the standard examples of the genre to which Sophocles had donated three huge works of arts before he submitted to the fundamentally non-tragic outlook of the beginning of the fourth century.

Nietzsche’s explanation of the death of Greek tragedy is colorful and comes with astonishing thoughts. Socrates expressed three key maxims which say whoever is virtuous is happy, ignorance brings human sins, and virtue is knowledge (Neill and Ridley 25). Nietzsche stated that the above three maxims of optimism possess the death of tragedy, and this forms the impression that Nietzsche considered to be a delusion. The imperturbable have faith that through the sign of logic, thinking may arrive at the bottommost depths of being and the fact that thinking may not merely distinguish the being but even transform it. Consequently, Nietzsche foresaw a come back to Dionysian drama and alleged that German philosophers and musicians were exclusively ready to guide this rebirth of tragedy.

According to Nietzsche, the death of tragedy did not merely resulted from the fatigue because of ethics. The death of tragedy was aggressive and proceeded in a tragic way. It ended with a suicide of the currently well-known tragedian, Euripides, who had not only merely created the path for his descendants through popularizing the familiar and exalted diction of the tragedy, but on a bottommost height, sought, though without success, to create scholarly sense of the intractable mythic material along with the task for his followers.

Philosophy And The Socratic Wisdom

Regarding one of the causes of the death of tragedy, Socrates presented the hypothetical structure which led to Euripides’s creation of tragedy. Nietzsche was open about the outlook of Socrates’ unfavorable impact and his historical influence on Euripides’s tragedy. Therefore, Nietzsche blamed Socrates for his role in the death of Attic tragedy and also noted how it was embodied in moralizing and rationalizing outlook of current culture to serve as a blockade to the reproduction of tragic culture. Nietzsche discovered a historical example of the modernity. He, therefore, employed Alexandrian culture to emphasize the poverty and was considered to be carefully inculcated in the Socratic faith. Nietzsche appreciated the analysis of Socrates’ and Alexandrian culture which operates as a study of the cultural backgrounds, and, therefore, further enlightens his anticipations for an option of tragic culture (Neill and Ridley 25).

Nietzsche stated that in his book, it is as simply as an aesthetic occurrence that existence and the universe are eternally reasonable. According to Nietzsche, Greek tragedy may not live together in a place of Socratic rationality (Janaway 53). Tragedy obtains its power revealing the depths which stay underneath our rational grounds, while Socrates claims that we fully reveal our human’s nature simply through becoming completely rational. After Socrates, philosophy became a way of gaining wisdom through rational means. In proposing that rational ways may not always strengthen the humans’ knowledge, Nietzsche proposes that philosophy is not a detailed pursuit. Factual wisdom is actually a type which cannot be created by thinking mind according to the philosopher of the XX century. True wisdom is achieved through the Dionysian dissolution of ourselves, which everybody discovers in tragedy, music, and myth. The current world has taken over the rationalistic position of Socrates at the cost of misplacing the imaginative wishes associated with Apollinian and the Dionysian cultures (Neill and Ridley 25). Knowledge can be seen as worth undertaking for its own purpose and considered that entire truth may be identified and described using rational means. Fundamentally, scientific, Socratic, rational, and modern perspectives view the world like something stipulated by a certain reason rather than something above a human rational strength.

Understanding the problems which are associated with Socrates is a vital key to Nietzsche’s concept of solution. Nietzsche did not just overturn the stand of Socrates, but asked everybody to control their impulses. He disapproved everybody to follow his/her impulses trying to achieve which he/she becomes aggressive to his/her personal attainment. As a substitute to Socratic control, Nietzsche does not suggest several theoretical thoughts of nature or liberation. The freedom of expressing something by someone is restricted by what he/she declares to be true. The only Nietzsche’s desire is to be aware of how to prevent the humans’ aspirations to tyrannize and forge. This may be actually the main reflect image of several latest interpretations.

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Nietzsche viewed the reasons for the death of such an art form as a result of variations in modern thinking. The piece called Birth of Tragedy is nearly linked to the need for knowledge and description in Socratic thought (Neill and Ridley 25). For Nietzsche, that route was reversible, and cynicism could again overcome the limitation of hopefulness through the revival of tragic insight. This cultural movement cannot come back since the society that was associated with its death made it vanish. Death is the only explanation of the narrator, permitting life skills of an individual to be purified and conveyed. Dionysian festivals often practiced tragedies as one of their common religion practices where they were rejoicing the cycle of life. Both the birth and the death of tragedy were mostly honored by the society. Dionysus was considered to be the only holy being who experienced death and succeeded to return to life.

Works Cited

Janaway, Christopher. Reading Aesthetics and philosophy of Art. Malden, MA: Blackwell publishing, 2006. Print.

Neill, Alex and Aaron Ridley. The philosophy of Art: Retulings Ancient and Modern. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1994. Print.

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