Nietzsche believed that the early Greeks were a pessimistic and world-weary people, living in darkness and having no fun at all. It was not until after the tragedy that it turned into optimism full of brilliant joy. This outlook on life is Nietzsche's tragic spirit and the only thing he is sure of. Nietzsche believes that the beauty of Greek tragedy is because it is an organic combination of two components (Apollo modality and Dionysus modality). The former represents the beauty of silence and the attitude of people to observe the world with calm reason; The latter represents vitality, which is the endless kinetic energy for people to create the world and life. When beauty and strength are combined, the highest form of art (tragedy) can be achieved. In tragedy, the former stimulates vitality and the latter awakens the beauty of dreams, and the two interact. The Greeks used it to purify the world, beautify life and sweep away the pessimistic haze. But the appearance of Socrates broke the harmonious balance of the above two components, because he carried forward the modality of Apollo and abandoned the modality of Dionysus. Life in Greek culture disappeared, leaving only a bloodless rational culture. In this sense, Nietzsche called Socrates a decadent, and thought that the task of contemporary people is to improve vitality, revive the glory and inject boiling blood into rational culture.
On the surface, Nietzsche's tragic spirit pays equal attention to reason and vitality, but in fact, he emphasizes the latter. Nietzsche is different from Aristotle. He thinks that what people get from Greek tragedies is not fear and pity, but the fullness of vitality. What he means is: from the tragedy, we can see that the destruction of the individual relieves all the pain and eliminates the root of the pain, thus gaining the ecstasy of being integrated with everything in the world. At the same time, seeing the personal destruction does not affect the unstoppable and endless life phenomenon, and it suddenly gives birth to heartfelt pleasure. This is the fullness of vitality and the highest beauty. Therefore, it is the essence of Nietzsche's tragic spirit to gain happiness instead of disappointment and to affirm life instead of denying it.
Nietzsche led people's eyes to Greek tragedies, believing that there was the highest beauty in them, with the aim of affirming man and his existence and value. Nietzsche believes that in order to affirm life, people need tragic spirit, look at the generation and change process of the real world with an aesthetic eye, make the real world artistic, turn the suffering of life into aesthetic happiness, turn personal tragedy into comedy of the world, abandon pessimism, and experience happiness as life and biology from it. This is the "metaphysical comfort" given by tragedy, and it is also the ultimate meaning for life. Nietzsche said, "Existence and the world are always justified only as aesthetic phenomena."