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The Birth of Tragedy

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aleph_0

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I am now reading Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy and I'm wondering what anybody else has to say about it. It is my simple opinion that Nietzsche has either not considered, or too hastily brushed aside, the thought that the truly heroic, the anti-Christian is the act of not accepting any guilt, any suffering, and putting pleasure in form. For Christians, life is a drudgery that one must endure while, for Nietzsche, life is something to be affirmed in suffering and excess. While his claim is more admirable than the Christians', while he may assert the greatness of life in the midst of pain, while he may assert the right to drink, have sex, and enjoy pleasure, he does not consider pleasure given a form to be truly pleasurable. To him that is an Apollonian (And so Christian? Or contemporary Aryan?) individuation—which by the way, is utterly true since, to assert the will, to distinguish the self, to give form to the senses, are all setting the self apart from the not-self--and so slaps an intelligible lie onto the face of Dionysus. But why must it be an intelligible lie? I can understand Nietzsche if I don't read him literally, that is, if I don't take him to mean that there is no truth but that we need guard ourselves about the attitude involved in asserting absolutes. That said, if the only truth is unintelligible then how do you know it is true? If only lies are intelligible, are you sure it is not you rather than the "lie" that is false? Why is it that, by making sense of the sense-data, we invent myths of our own? And why is it that, by giving form and limit to our lives and our pleasures, we necessarily diminish them? A movie is usually best when it has an end. A woman is most beautiful when she is not extreme in every way, for instance, 50-feet-tall and 20,000 lbs. Limits and forms are often uplifting and more satisfying. Chess without rules becomes empty. The process of living in and by rules is the way in which we gain the most joy in life.

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