Leaving aside for now the methodological introduction (referred to in English as the ‘Epistemo-Critical Prologue’), the first part of Benjamin’s thesis is concerned with repudiating the dogmatic attempt by later critics to impose onto these plays the external criteria of Aristotelian aesthetics, which are rooted in classical tragedy. Benjamin’s understanding of tragedy here (and his approach to the mourning-play in general) is partially influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy. Benjamin claims that The Birth of Tragedy substantiates the critical insight that the empathy of undirected modern feeling is unhelpful for properly grasping ancient tragedy (OGT, 93).  Instead, Nietzsche undertook a metaphysical inquiry into the essence of tragedy as a dialectical interplay of the contrasting aesthetic impulses of Apollonian semblance and Dionysian truth. This dialectic is central to Benjamin’s own philosophical investigations, particularly his claim—derived from his discussion of Goethe’s Elective Affinities—that an expressionless moment is constitutive of art, in which the limits of semblance are broached precisely in order to illuminate an artistic truth.