Reading the Birth of Tragedy

Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy is most often discussed only as a source of his conceptions about the Apollinic and the Dyonisian. Through an analysis of the questions of science, music and myth in this piece of writing, this paper demonstrates that, in spite of what Nietzsche says in his "Attempt at a Self-Criticism," he belongs to an age-old chain of Western political thinking that includes Plato, Marx and Heidegger. Moreover, it will also come to light that Nietzsche will never give up the ambitions stated in this work. The Birth of Tragedy announces a post-philosophical programme that will be accomplished in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. At a more general level, this discussion brings into question the relationship between theory and politics or, rather, the attempt at creating a philosophical model for political existence as such.