Product ReviewsThe Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche (1956, Trade Paperback)

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 1844- 1900

“Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of being. Everything dies, everything blossoms again; eternally runs the year of being. Everything breaks, everything is joined anew; eternally the same house of being is built. Everything parts, everything greets every other thing again; eternally the ring of being remains faithful to itself. In every Now, being begins; round every Here rolls the sphere There. The center is everywhere. Bent is the path of eternity.” - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher of the late 19th century who challenged traditional morality and Christianity. He believed in the realities of the world we live in, rather than those situated in a world beyond. Central to Nietzsche's philosophy is an honest questioning of all doctrines, and motives. Sometimes referred to as one of the first "existentialist" philosophers.

1872 Nietzsche published his first book, DIE GEBURT DE TRAGÖDIE AUS DEM GEIST DER MUSIK (The Birth of Tragedy). In it he contends human beings are subject to unconscious, involuntary, overwhelmingly self-destructive Dionysian instincts. According to Nietzsche, against this tendency the Greeks erected the sober, rational, and active Apollonian principle. At Basel Nietzsche had become a close friend of composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883), and the second part of The Birth of Tragedy deals with Wagner's music. His friendship with Wagner ended in 1878. Nietzsche did not accept the rising Wagnerian cult at Bayreuth, especially with its anti-Semitism.

The Birth of Tragedy was Nietzsche's first book, DIE GENEALOGIE DER MORAL (The Genealogy of Morals) (1887) one of his last. Though they span the career of this controversial genius, both address simular problems, conflicts, and values.

Nietzsche considered reality as an endless Becoming. Apollonian power is associated with the creation of illusion, as in the plastic arts deny the actuality of becoming with the illusion of timeless beauty, and Dionysian frenzy threatens to destroy all forms and codes. But all illusions are temporary, Dionysus whom Nietzsche celebrated in his later writings, was the synthesis of the two forces and represented passion controlled. In the earlier work he favored perhaps more Apollo. His thesis, however, was, that it took both to make possible the birth of tragedy.

Nietzsche gave up his Prussian citizenship in 1869 and remained stateless for the rest of his life. In 1879 Nietzsche resigned his professorship, or was forced to give up his chair at Basel due to his health. He wandered about Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, living in boardinghouses, this is when he produced most of his famous work.

Nietzsche respected "genuine Christianity" which he considered "possible in all ages".

Nietzsche's influence on modern Phycology is that as of a grandfather, as Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud greatly admired him. Freud stated “that Nietzsche had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any man who ever lived or was likely to live.” Freud stopped reading him because he feared Nietzsche had anticipated many of his own ideas. Interest in Nietzsche as a philosopher, however, only became widespread after World War II.

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