Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy - Part 1 

Hmmm... Wonder where that came from...

I just started reading Deleuze's Nietzsche and Philosophy! So same here on the "perfect timing"!

Nietzsche's book The Birth of Tragedy (Kaufmann translation)

@@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy thank you!

@@ubet6691 Like saying that Bob Dylan switched from acoustic to electric guitar. Who cares? I’m trying to see the merit. Not how popular he is. Reasoning based upon popularity is a form of fallacy.

@@ubet6691 how does one engage in something that will have a cognitive cost and time without the benefit? If Nietzsche was more promising, then that risk would be more worthwhile given so many alternative learning options.

If you knew more about philosophy you'd realize that this kind of dichotomizing is very commonplace. The point is not necessarily ever to say "This is the ultimate and only way of looking at things", it is rather a way of elucidating specific aspects of something, whether it is humanity, an art form, a historic development, or whatever. The book, to me, is less about tragedy in and of itself and more about the human condition, very much inspired by Schopenhauer, and just uses tragedy as perhaps the strongest artistic expression of this condition. The value in reading Nietzsche's take on the subject does not lie in finding out whether he was absolutely or objectively 'correct', this is very rarely the goal in philosophy. You sound like you look for the same kind of truths in philosophy that one can obtain from mathematics or history, which is... not the point. You're looking for the wrong thing. Also, "Reasoning based upon popularity is a form of fallacy." Well yes, but also, no. Whether you like it or not, his philosophy has been hugely influential upon modern philosophy, and if you want to understand, say, postmodernist deconstructions of ideas thought to be absolute, this will be very much easier if you understand Nietzsche's genealogy of Christian morals, for example (although to be fair, it shares a lot with the Marxist concept of historicism, even though a postmodernist would vehemently deny it). Even though I find a lot of postmodernist thought quite... terrible, to be honest, its popularity and influence is undeniable, and Nietzsche was a huge influence to that. And again, philosophy isn't science - popularity, to a certain extent, DOES make you right, because it means your thoughts resonated with a lot of people. Philosophy does not stand outside of time, culture, and humanity - it is a part of it, and is created by it. It is not a measurement of it but a product of it.

​@@viljamtheninja those are very good points. it's always beneficial to better understand the context. like religion, no matter how antiquated, to understand the past and today's civilization. or learn about Hitler, Stalin, or Mao, to better understand ww2. however, may be in my narrow view, I see the goal of philosophy beyond context, outside of time, culture, and humanity. beyond just elucidation. you have data and you have model, it's always interesting to better understand data, but I see the goal of philosophy is to better understand the model. so far, I found Nietzsche's philosophy in his attempt better model the data, forms a model that seems more like an opinion. that's why I find it unsatisfying. even a self-help advice of which Nietzsche seems to have abundance of, can gain popular influence. most of eastern philosophy seems to have such an orientation as well. a model philosophy should be able to stand the test of time, all edge cases, and even humanity. the fact that we can make such a philosophical enquiry means that it is a problem that can be asked within our cognition and that we are not limited to philosophy constrained to context, even though there are no apparent answers, except may be more follow up questions. a poor answer comes across as a mere assertion. that's what I see as plaguing Nietzsche.

It’s not just “art” that Nietzsche’s ideas can apply to. They are potentially more broadly important that that. We could in fact fruitfully interpret our own current “culture war” we hear so much about in terms of Dionysian versus Apollonian drives. We can also hope we do not succumb to the ultimate “deindividualization” that those proposing the cleansing rebirth of society through mass violence espouse.