Heraclitus’ Child: The Centrality of The Birth of Tragedy in Nietzsche’s Philosophy
AI art “Every philosophical theory has a core, a fundamental idea that serves as its foundation. If one succeeds in finding and understanding this idea, suddenly the various aspects of the theory fit together, and everything makes sense.” — Michael Hauskeller, Was ist Kunst?¹⁰ A Seed of Philosophy Veiled in Philology When The Birth of Tragedy was published in 1872, the young classical philologist Friedrich Nietzsche caused a stir in academic circles. Far from being a conventional study of Attic theatre, the book emerges as the first gesture of a nascent philosophy—a poetic metaphysics centered on becoming, unredeemed suffering, and the affirmation of life. Veiled in Dionysian imagery, the intuitions that would later mature into key concepts—eternal recurrence, the revaluation of values, the figure of the Übermensch —already resonate within its pages. The academic rejection was swift. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, in his Future Philology , dismissed Nietzsche’...