Orchestral Metaphysics: The Birth of Tragedy between Drama, Opera, and Philosophy

Abstract

This chapter considers the relationship between Nietzsche’s understanding of tragedy in The Birth of Tragedy and the particular form of philosophical writing he develops in that work. The author interprets The Birth of Tragedy as the site of a ‘three-cornered conversation’ Nietzsche stages between Aeschylus, Wagner, and Schopenhauer, and hence as an experiment in defining a mode of discourse that makes equal reference to tragic drama, opera, and philosophy. Key ideas in that experiment include the employment of a particular technique the author calls ‘metalepsis’, the disclosure of a mythological mode of philosophical thinking, and the elaboration of a critique of Socratic philosophy—as represented by Kant—as privileging Apollo over Dionysus. The author argues that Nietzsche aims not so much to privilege Dionysus instead, but rather to write in a way which amounts to a ‘non-idolatrous acknowledgement of Apollo’.