When Nietzsche says in The Birth of Tragedy that the downfall of the tragic culture of the Greeks was caused by the appearance of “theoretical” man, represented by Socrates, his intention is to make an epistemological critique. In so doing, he also directs attention toward the immoderation of the “drive for knowledge,” which he regards as an illness in the culture of modern man: by “taming” this drive for knowledge through art he hoped, during his early period under the influence of Wagner, to achieve a rehabilitation of “culture.”