The Birth of Tragedy

One of the most influential thinkers of the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche was born in Röcken, Prussia (Germany), in 1844. Nietzsche’s education at the Universities of Bonn and Leipzig was initially focused on theology, with the aim of becoming a Lutheran pastor like his father. However, Nietzsche switched to classical philology (the study of ancient languages in their historical sources) instead, eventually landing a professorship at the university of Basel at the young age of 24. During his early adult years, Nietzsche was strongly influenced by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and the music of Richard Wagner, even writing musical compositions of his own.

In the early 1870s, Nietzsche served as a medic in the Franco-Prussian war, in the process acquiring damaging health conditions that would affect him for the rest of his life. The Birth of Tragedy was written after his return from the war and reflects the influences of Schopenhauer and Wagner combined with an abiding interest in classical Greece (See: Background). Nietzsche’s subsequent career as a philosopher was dedicated to analyzing the thought, art, and morality of Western civilization from the perspective of contrasting ancient classical culture with the secularization of the Enlightenment—a split that, according to Nietzsche, made necessary an overturning of fundamental values and ideas stemming from Christianity. The Birth of Tragedy reflects his tendency to see Western cultural development in terms of a recurrence of themes and mythopoetic worldviews from ancient times to the present.

Nietzsche died in 1900 after a long-term physical and mental health crisis, first living in an psychiatric hospital and later being cared for at home by his mother and his sister Elisabeth. Nietzsche’s 20th-century influence was both great and controversial, with generations of philosophers, theologians, psychologists, and politicians (such as the Nazi Party in Germany) analyzing and appropriating—often while seriously misunderstanding or distorting—his ideas in various forms.