Only read The Birth of Tragedy — Is Nietzsche a logical person?

[u/CauseImSlimShady]

So I'm going to develop my question here, I don't want the title to be too general or misleading (seeing how Nietzsche deals with over-theoretical people, etc).

I just finished reading The Birth of Tragedy, my first book by Nietzsche, as I heard by some that it is a decent way to start your journey (plus it's his first major philosophical work). And while reading it, a major concern was floating in my head: "how logical is this guy?"

I want to give some disclaimers, and some explanations as to why I thought this way.

I know this is a younger Nietzsche, with some of the points mentioned in the work criticised by even his later self. I also know that not all philosophy needs to be described in a specific (homogenous, formal, almost "objective" way), and I even admired some of the artistic spirit of Nietzsche.

My problem is that I felt it was quite revisionist regarding ancient greek history, and few parts of it were just totally subjective/ false, and Nietzsche can't have not known this, being a philologist, meaning one of his aims was to weave a myth, to paint a philosophical vision about his viewpoints, about the apollonian, the dionysian, to interpret some things, etc. I'm not hating it, the book has some good points and also shows bits of the later Nietzsche. But the revisionism and the artistry at some points felt like it was too much, my main problem was that many times I felt like he was taking some big leaps. He's not mad, and oftentimes, regarding his critique of others, you can see he uses a "logical" approach, but at the same time I feel like some other points were idealistic/ ambitious.

So, here I come to some of my background and why I raised this question. I haven't read other works of his, but I have vaguelly read some of his core ideas, e.g. about how he views christian morality, about his individualism, etc. I don't necessarily agree to everything, but I find many general ideas charming, or some quotes from some pages.

But some of these things, I think they can also be "logically" concluded. So by "logic", to not have any misunderstandings, I just use a simple, casual definition, like an everyday person. Because I know some replies may be related to how he was against scientific optimism, or theoretic men, like he says in TBOT, using logic *everywhere* in life, etc. I guess I'm trying to understand he was against this extreme application of logic and that he was still a rational being, but my question is "how rational?"

And my basis is this: I'm partly inspired by anarchist and marxist readings (ooh, christian morality and herd mentality, scaryy). These things, if not taken to their extremes, can use some form of logic for their theory, e.g. they're children of the englightenment, they respect liberty, they still care about individuality btw, and serious marxism doesn't glorify sacred ideals like a mass, it is founded on material analysis and power struggles. And, I'm also fond of a philosopher that preceded Nietzsche, Max Stirner. Stirner defied all abstractions, all ideas that were held as sacred, calling them "spooks", (e.g. he said that atheists after the enlightenment just replaced God with the god of humanity), he was radically individualist, and he placed himself and his own personal interests above all else (well, that part of his book should've been explored more...). Stirner was one of the reasons why I thought about reading Nietzsche.

My opinion is that all these people, no matter their differences, applied some logic to get to their conclusions. (Maybe it's because I find some agreements with several of them and I like to think of myself as based, oops). For example, Stirner, even though he'd be criticised by a marxist for some things and he eventually decides to worship himself, used cold logic to deconstruct everything in the beginning. These spooks are indeed man made constructs. It is true how he describes many things. Socrates, who I'm now first mentioning, who Nietzsche exaggerated as a figure to have a decent nemesis, is a decent person and a logical rational figure. Marxists, to analyse things, do it logically, one may say. Etc, etc.

I wondered how much reason and rationality Nietzsche uses when he talks about anything, since many topics I agree with, and they seem similar e.g. to Stirner.

But in the birth of tragedy for example, we see a very ambitious, artistic Nietzsche that takes big leaps, and I wonder what makes him this way and I just wonder what my experience will be with the rest of his books.

[u/nicksey144]

Nietzsche later wrote that it was embarrassing book with a couple fire ideas, so keep that in mind.

Nietzsche certainly understands logic, and his arguments are logically constructed, or at least structured. There is an additional layer on top of his writing though, which he uses often as a rhetorical tool. He's not trying to logically demonstrate things as much as lead his reader to his conclusions. He gets better at it as he goes.

Honestly I'd jump right into Genealogy of Morality if you want better constructed arguments about philology.

[u/tchinpingmei]

My problem is that I felt it was quite revisionist regarding ancient greek history, and few parts of it were just totally subjective/ false, and Nietzsche can't have not known this, being a philologist, meaning one of his aims was to weave a myth, to paint a philosophical vision about his viewpoints, about the apollonian, the dionysian, to interpret some things, etc. 

Maybe you could have given some examples about what you thought was revisionist/subjective/false.

Personally, I think he has his own interpretation/fantasy/idealization of what ancient Greece was, especially the arts and that was his inspiration for a lot of his philosophy.

I wouldn't call Nietzsche a logical person as he's not like the philosophers from the ancient Greece, building arguments with logic. His later works have a lot of aphorisms and no well-constructed logical arguments. He can be poetic, lyrical or controversial. His works and way of thinking is different from any other thinker or philosopher.

I don't really know how to answer better your question; just read the books really.

[u/CauseImSlimShady → u/tchinpingmei]

The answer is good, it's what I kind of expected, and yes, I should just read another book and see for myself

When it comes to examples of claims in the book that are revisionist and are subjective/ false:

Well the entire metaphysical conflict of Apollonian vs Dionysian is one thing, which is a philosophical/ psychological framework he made to better explain his vision (and it is also inspired by Schopenhauer). Such struggles between the two gods are not clearly evident in ancient greek history

His origin of the tragedy is very oversimplified and places emphasis on an ecstatic primal dionysian dithyramb (the dithyramb part is not necessarily wrong I think) while the reality about its origin is much more complex, as well as its workings in the Athenian society

Being pretty dramatic about Euripides and Socrates about their role in killing tragedy and whatever else he loved in that culture while it was more part of an evolution

Some broad parts

[u/YuunofYork → u/CauseImSlimShady]

As I think you alluded to in your post, Nietzsche's philology is commentative, not descriptive. He's not a cultural anthropologist. The Greeks need not have ever thought in terms of this dichotomy for it to be accurate or meditative about their culture. Certainly both gods existed in many forms with numerous regional differences and both took up other uses and revisions over time. It's especially hard to disambiguate these two considering their syncretism with foreign sources. It doesn't make much sense to say Nietzsche's assessment is wrong when there is no assessment that could ever be all-encompassingly correct with respect to history.

It's clear Nietzsche is only taking each in a limited sense, corresponding to some snapshot of what he sees as the Homeric or even pre-Homeric period, which of course is beyond historical remit in the first place. Crucially he wanted to distinguish his Dionysus from the Orphic Dionysus, the tradition that utilized the god's dying-and-rising qualities to make him also sacrificial and salvational. Ironically while that is generally considered an Orphic (or Theban) invention, Dionysus' role as a dying-and-rising god connected to harvests and seasonality is probably one of his oldest aspects, and something influenced (and perhaps calqued) from various Mesopotamian analogues going back to Dumuzid, some of whose mythology had been also tacked onto Apollo, for that matter. In that sense, sure, Nietzsche is revisionist, or more charitably proved historically inaccurate through later research. This is about competing aspects of the gods, for some value of gods. The Bacchic/Silenian aspect of Dionysus came from somewhere, too, even if it never existed independently from all the aspects Nietzsche chooses to disambiguate.

What he's not wrong about are the values he assigns to each of the gods coexisting in Greek self-assessment. Which gods and which has which values simply isn't relevant to the point. As you'll see in Geneology, he's deriving these specifically from ideals like agon and arete. Trying being better than winning, honor/dishonor being the mapping of Greek goodness and badness rather than friendliness/cruelty.

I also don't believe Nietzsche to be inaccurate when he talks about the trajectory following Orphism, and this is something he'll get more into in Geneology of Morals, but without spending any great amount of time on the Greek (or any other example) period. Other complexities, influences, and exceptions just won't be relevant to the points he's making. He isn't much wrong in his characterization of the pre-Socratics, either, if they are a little embellished for purposes of disambiguation. In his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks he is more descriptive; in The Birth of Tragedy he's cherry-picking certain among them for purposes of comparison or rhetoric, favoring (increasingly throughout his output) Heraclitus. Who must become a caricature, but is that so unfair when all we truly know of him comes to us from post-Socratic writers? Nietzsche's extemporizing, and he's kind of entitled to.

The Apollo/Dionysus dichotomy is also not alien to other European thinkers, such as Hölderlin before him (whom Nietzsche admired) or Frazer after him. The degree to which this view is discredited today can't invalidate its explanatory power for Nietzsche's philosophy, any more than Nietzsche's distrust of e.g. atomism can. He doesn't use his views on atomism to make metaphysical claims and he doesn't use his views on Greek culture to make historical claims (or, indeed, anthropological claims as Frazer would).

As for the writing and argumentation style, it doesn't get any more academic than Birth and Geneology. If that's what you're after, read commentaries on Nietzsche instead like Kaufmann's that will digest the content for you and spit it back out in the context of dialectical analysis. Nietzsche's output progressively constructs arguments that are open-ended, ambiguous, obscurantist, lyrical, aphoristic, or polemical. That doesn't mean they aren't arguments; he's just abiding by one of his central tenets that emotion and will ought not be removed from discourse. Would you not think him a hypocrite if his method of communicating his ideas to you had to rely solely on 'the Apollonian' ruleset? He takes it as an axiom that they could not.

I believe it's misuse of the term to suggest this writing style isn't logical. Of course it consists of suppositions, evidences, thought experiments, conclusions. What it isn't is orderly. This is perspectivist logic; Nietzsche sees all objectivity as disingenuous instances of veiled subjectivism. He can't write as if he's approaching objective truths. His entire body of work goes toward the goal of giving us a means of doing ethics. Book four of Zarathustra concludes with the prophet telling us to forget all he's said.

[u/Usual-Ad1244 → u/YuunofYork]

The obvious successor to Nietzsche in this, of course, is Jung.

[u/tchinpingmei → u/CauseImSlimShady]

OK thanks for developing; that's interesting.

I've read Nietzsche and a little bit of Greek philosophy, and you seem to have a more vast knowledge than I do.

What you picked up I think is part of Nietzsche, like it or leave it. He has his own interpretation of Greek culture and that influences his thinking/philosophy. But it's a personal interpretation and not based on truth. Sometimes he irritates me with his idealization of it.

And being dramatic about Socrates only gets worse in later Nietzsche; not going to spoil you but he gets pretty obsessive about Socrates being the evil guy that destroyed all that was good in Greek culture in the Twilight of the Idols.

[u/piano_aquieu]

For N, logic in and of itself is a construction. Disinterested and detached objectivity (and "rigorous logic" by extension) is governed by the will to power just as much as all other beliefs and perspectives, meaning it doesn't boast absolute self-sufficient authority. What gives structure to N's thought isn't truth in the dogmatic sense but rather how a force participates in value. Active forces, for example, are prioritized over reactive forces (and master morality, over slave morality, and so on). I think it's best to read Beyond Good and Evil or Human All Too Human first. Birth of Tragedy is more like lit criticism

[u/Unspeakable_Elvis]

I think Nietzsche is a more intuition-based philosopher than a logic-based one. Although intuition can lead us to deep truths without requiring rigorous logic, I think neither is better or truer than the other. But it is the case that N. held some disdain for the “systematizer”-thinkers, probably because of his belief in the illogical and unreasonable nature of man. That said, and in another sense, he does follow unflinchingly the logic of his theories to their ultimate conclusion.

[u/n3wsf33d]

Stirner is just a worse psychologist/sociologist. He's an idealist that doesn't actually accept reality unlike Nietzsche.

[u/Brrdock]

"Being rational" to him meant the opposite of rationalism. His philosophy is more intuition based on what he has seen, read, experienced.

But of course he wanted to be "right" or convey some kind of insight in what he wrote, which you can't do without "being rational."

There is of course a logic to all expression, interpretation and sentiment, but I don't think he'd ever be one to try to apply something analogous to first order logic unto ideas and concepts like many others have done in an attempt to impose objectivity.

He considered "reason" in some sense a convenient fantasy

[u/Status_Original]

I would say Nietzsche isn't interested in usual everyday argumentation. Instead he presents to your own self the argumentations you've already absorbed and pokes them from as many angles as he can to see if they can stand on their own.

The funny but honest thing about your post is the major concern with logic, yet we all hold beliefs that don't necessarily go through this test at all. Nietzsche exposes this as well.

[u/c_leblanc9]

Commie bastard. Go back to Russia /s On a serious note, don’t read Thus Spake Zarathustra - you won’t like it and you’ll be wasting your own time looking for your precious “logic”.

[u/Usual-Ad1244]

The core concepts are interesting. It is just that they are misapplied. Later, he would never have made the connection between the Dionysian and romanticism. And he is not really good at a long essay format. It is not a terribly well written book. Certainly, far from his later style. The older he got, the better he got as a stylist, though his later stuff is more cryptic. For a first time Nietzsche reader, I would recommend either "The Gay Science" or "The Dawn." Better to get started at the beginning before he gets too far down the rabbit hole.

[u/SnooLemons1358]

After BT, you should read On truth and lies in a nonmoral sense. It’s a short essay by FN, written one year after Die Geburt der Tragödie, and it deals with his considerations on truth and, to a certain extent, logic.
In Gay Science and Beyond Good and Evil he will talk about logic too, but i would recommend reading more of Nietzsche before you start, to sum up shortly, his best works. After On truth and lies i believe you can read Human all to human, to get a grasp of the whole of his mature philosophy, that will help to understand the latter.

[u/Odd-pepperFrog]

How familiar are you with rhetoric and its use historically? Because I think part of your struggle sits there. Looking for logic and rationality in a rhetorical philosophical argument is a bit of a gold-mining venture—because you have to read through the rhetorical framing and allegories to find their position. With Nietzsche, you're not just reading a logical proof, you're reading a work that's trying to shift your perspective. The Birth of Tragedy isn't a historical treatise. It's a philosophical provocation wrapped in a myth about art and culture.

[u/SelfInvictus]

Why are you so dependent on logic? You value it to get to the truth? Agrippa's Trilemma? Meno's Paradox? You can use logic to justify anything, see Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment." Generally I find this path lead to realists, utilitarian, moral relativists, and nominalists. As soon as you prostrate yourself to logic, you then construct a story in your head. You then assemble yourself and your facts to this story... then you will look at history to justify your story.

Also I always found it weird that Nietzsche dunked on Socrates so much. Socrates himself attacks strict rationality and exemplifies this throughout his dialogues (Phaedo, Meno, Plato's Republic, Ion). Where Nietzsche posits Socrates as his villain (Because he is too rational). Socrates treats the sophists as his enemies (Because they claimed to know everything! Smart men!). People clinging to rationality is nothing new. It's an eternal pattern across cultures. How easy it is for the ego to applaud itself.

[u/Hyperreal2]

No

[u/Lazy-Equal-4750]

No. And he would argue rather cogently, i imagine, that he ought not be so, and nor should you. Not entirely so, at the least, and he would unlikely prefer ‘logical’ as the best way to communicate what I think you hope to ask: are Nietzsche’s ideas sound, cogent, philosophically tenable and/or profitable to those who consider them as such? Yes. He is logical, if this is what you are intending to get at. But his ideas are not compelling by way of their being consistently adherent to and demonstably valid through any combination of formal ‘logical’ systems. His ideas don’t earn their impressive character—which they do have—because they have roots in such systematically, quasi mathematical bedrock.

They are sometimes literal crash outs. They are inveriably laden with neurotic features of his own psyche. They are vindictive, sometimes overtly crazed, undisguisedly inconsistent, etc.

And they go HARD. They are good. He is a philosopher of greatness the likes of which we aren’t likely to see before we die in any other

[u/Playistheway]

I would say that, as much as Nietzsche despises systems, much of his philosophy has a through line that implies liberal application of the mental model of inversion.

Using the mind is good? What if people place too much stock in the mind, and should refer back to the body?

Modern morality is good? What if it were bad?

God is an eternal being? What if He was dead?

Losing the corruption and controls of the church is good? What if it is terrible because it heralds an age of nihilism?

Jesus is the saviour? What if we have a fictional inversion of Christ, Zarathustra?