Is Pessimism Necessarily a Sign of Decline?

In the name of Lord Dionysus, it with great joy and solemnity that we commence this, the first of our Nietzschean bookclubs. This series will see me undertake an in-depth analysis, moving section-by-section, through Nietzsche’s first book: The Birth of Tragedy. In the first episode, we’ll look at Nietzsche’s masterful second preface, written in 1886 and attached to the beginning of the work. This episode will therefore serve as a sort of introduction to the text, contextualizing it within Nietzsche’s own understanding of his early text and how it laid the foundations for many of his later ideas.