NIETZSCHE AND THE GREEKS - IDENTITY, POLITICS, AND TRAGEDY

In The Birth of Tragedy and his other early writings on the Greeks, Ni etzsche was working toward a conception of politics based on articulat ion of the paradoxes underlying the human quest for identity in a radi cally temporal existence. In Nietzsche's view, tragedy provided a form of political education helping maintain the agonistic principle by po inting toward a balance between creation of stable identities and appr eciation of the full diversity of life.