This is a hard book to review, just as it is a hard book to read. The Birth of Tragedy is what I would call very heavy prose. It is certainly not the type of witty writing that Nietzsche became famous for later in his life. This is of course Nietzsche's first book, and that, at least for me, is where the importance of this book is to be found. If you really want to study and ponder Nietzsche's thoughts and writings, even as a philosophical layman like myself, you need to read this book. You can't just pick and choose among different writings and hope to comprehend Nietzsche's genius. That kind of arbitrary treatment by the Nazis is responsible for much of the disfavor Nietzsche has endured over the years; Nietzsche was certainly not a proto-Nazi.
I am planning a return to all of Nietzsche's writings, and for this reason I have just re-read The Birth of Tragedy. Frankly, I remembered little from my first reading of several years ago. At that time, I made a few comments in the margins and underlined some key passages, but I am unsure now why I stressed some of the things I did at that time. Perhaps I was more in tune with Nietzsche's mentality, having first read this book after finishing The Gay Science and Beyond Good and Evil.
Science is necessarily limited, according to Nietzsche; life and existence cannot be understood in purely rational terms. The very logic of science serves to reveal this fact, and it is argued that science and rationalism cannot, having been embraced as the mechanism with which to understand life and existence in universal terms, deal with this shortcoming on its own. Science, in the end, must turn to myth, and the dying Socrates is presented as the example of this mechanism by which life sustains itself. In the end, Socrates falls back on his divine "voice" when he realizes his reason and logic cannot understand or explain life. Nietzsche's treatment of the birth of tragedy revolves around emotion and logic. There is a constant tug of war between these forces among the ancient Greeks, represented by the gods Dionysis and Apollo, and true tragedy and understanding was to be achieved by a mixture of the two. The cold logic and Socratic rationalism of Euripides served to disturb this vulnerable combination of those forces in Greek tragedy, and thus true tragedy has yet to be recreated by the time of Nietzsche's writing. A culture based on science and logic eventually becomes illogical, that culture's optimism destroyed. That seems to be the kind of culture Nietzsche sees existing in Germany, and his later sections are an attempt on his part to force a rebirth of tragedy in modern culture, for--as he stresses--"existence and the world seem justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon."
I feel as if I have wrongly attempted to summarize this book; it may well be that my interpretation is quite wrong. In any case, I personally enjoy reading some criticism of the "demon Socrates," criticism which only serves to increase the importance of Socrates on the course of world history, I should add. In closing, you need to read this book if you want to come to terms with Nietzsche. If you are wondering what the big deal is about this great philosopher, do not start your exploration with this book. This book is unlike Nietzsche's other writings, and he in fact repudiates much of his reasoning shortly after completing this book. I would recommend Beyond Good and Evil or The Gay Science as the most suitable introduction for Nietzsche newbies.
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