ABSTRACT
In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche recovers the mythical origins of Greek drama not as an exercise in historical scholarship but in order to force the hand of the future. The Birth of Tragedy elaborates a mythical genealogy which serves to justify Greek tragedy as the highest unity of Apollinian and Dionysian art impulses. For according to Nietzsche, it is only with Greek tragedy, in the dramas of Aeschylus or Sophocles, that the orgiastic music of Dionysus achieves a stable relationship with the measured harmonies of Apollo. Nietzsche insists that an Apollinian culture emerges as the counter-thrust to the word of Silenus, so that with the creation of the Homeric heroes and the artist's glorification of the eternal Olympians, life itself becomes transfigured. Nietzsche's account of Greek tragedy, whether it is historically correct or not, will allow us to unlock his specific philosophy of the individual.
