vulturetime's review
2.0
Read this for class, and while there are definitely portions of Nietzsche's arguments that I found interesting, overall, I did not enjoy reading this in the slightest. Outside of the writing style, The Birth of Tragedy does hold more anti-Semitic and nationalist sentiments (largely due to Wagner's influence on Nietzsche at the time) and while later in life, Nietzsche tried to lose those sentiments, that does not mean that they are completely gone or that they don't exist in the later work, The Genealogy of Morals. Honestly in some ways, The Genealogy of Morals was worse for me to read because while Nietzsche always had elitist attitudes, they come much more strongly in this work. Glad I'm done with it.
justinm's review
3.0
This edition brings together two of Nietzsche's writings, the former one being his first book and the latter one being one of his last. The Birth of Tragedy mainly focuses and compares Apollonian and Dionysian art, and the reasons for the popularity and eventual 'death' of tragedy. In The Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche deals with the origins of morals and its terminology, such as 'good and evil' and 'good and bad'.
This was a tough read to start the challenge (PBT Subdue the Shelf Challenge) with. Trying to read it in a day didn't help me to understand a lot of what Nietzsche was arguing. Also, I know I would have been better off if I knew more about ancient Greek history. Even though a lot of his writing his powerful, poetic and commanding, Nietzsche still appeared to have many quaint views, which is understandable since these works were written in the late 1800s.
In some parts of this book I was just reading without understanding, but there were times I was able to grasp what Nietzsche was arguing even if I didn't always agree with it. For example, in The Birth of Tragedy he mentions Euripides and the Euripidean prologue which would "have a character appear at the beginning of the play, tell us who he is, what preceded the action, what has happened so far, even what is about to happen in the corse of the play." A book I'm reading at the moment, Skippy Dies, partially does this. I was intrigued finding out the origins for such a technique, and the possible reason they were used in this book.
This was a tough read to start the challenge (PBT Subdue the Shelf Challenge) with. Trying to read it in a day didn't help me to understand a lot of what Nietzsche was arguing. Also, I know I would have been better off if I knew more about ancient Greek history. Even though a lot of his writing his powerful, poetic and commanding, Nietzsche still appeared to have many quaint views, which is understandable since these works were written in the late 1800s.
In some parts of this book I was just reading without understanding, but there were times I was able to grasp what Nietzsche was arguing even if I didn't always agree with it. For example, in The Birth of Tragedy he mentions Euripides and the Euripidean prologue which would "have a character appear at the beginning of the play, tell us who he is, what preceded the action, what has happened so far, even what is about to happen in the corse of the play." A book I'm reading at the moment, Skippy Dies, partially does this. I was intrigued finding out the origins for such a technique, and the possible reason they were used in this book.
kelseyandrew's review
2.0
I had to read in my senior Arts & Politics class. We studied it for far too long, maybe that's why I cringe at it?
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