5066 PDF
5066 PDF
5066 PDF
William O. Taylor
A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the
Department of English and Comparative Literature (Program of Comparative Literature).
Chapel Hill
2013
Approved by:
Eric Downing
Jonathan Hess
Clayton Koelb
Konrad Jarausch
Michael Silk
©2013
William O. Taylor
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ii
ABSTRACT
as it argues that Greek tragedy is a singular and exemplary art form moderns need to
emulate. This classicism becomes even clearer when his lectures “On the Future of Our
Educational Institutions,” delivered at the same time The Birth of Tragedy is published,
are read alongside it. These lectures propose the creation of new schools to create artists
through the study of the ancient Greeks. Nietzsche’s classicism is often supposed to have
developed during his school years. This study demonstrates that Nietzsche never shows
any signs of classicism while a student and that the Greeks are little more than an
academic subject for him during these years. It is not until he completes his education
that Nietzsche abruptly announces his classicist project centered on the Greeks. As the
sudden nature of this classicism has never been recognized before, the motivations for it
have never been questioned. This study uncovers three motivations for Nietzsche’s
classicism: his love of music, his need for existential meaning, and his feeling of having
no other career option than to be a professor of philology. This provides a new and more
nuanced picture of Nietzsche’s thinking on the value he proposes that the ancient Greeks
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
throughout this process. I also thank Eric Downing for his watchful eye helping me
continually see how to return to the stronger part of my work. Finally, I thank Nietzsche
for his example of courage to think and write for the sake of life despite the inevitability
of error.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1
B.2 Humboldt.............................................................................................15
v
1.2.2 Late Eighteenth Century (1773-1801) ..............................................55
2.2.1 Franconia........................................................................................161
vi
2.2.5 Return to Work ...............................................................................179
3.1.3 Tribschen.........................................................................................239
vii
3.4.0 WAR, POLITICS, AND ELITISM ............................................................283
CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................314
BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................351
viii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
KGW: Colli, Georgio and Mazzino Montinari, eds. Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe.
Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1975-. Same format for citation as above. Thus,
section two, volume one, page 14 appears: KGW II/1, 14.
ix
INTRODUCTION
Fourteen years after publishing The Birth of Tragedy in 1872, Friedrich Nietzsche
Among other reasons for calling it questionable, he finds it “mad with images and
from German philosophers and composers on top of portraits of ancient Greek authors
and their gods. This book claiming to achieve the philological task of explaining the
origin of Greek tragedy has generally been read instead as a treatise on aesthetic theory.
This confusion of image, mode, and purpose helps make The Birth of Tragedy out of the
One aspect of this impossible book’s complexity that has received little attention
when he holds up Greek tragedy as the art form needed most by modernity. By
“classicist” we refer here and throughout this study exclusively to holding up the ancient
1
This is found in his new preface written for it, “Attempt at Self-Criticism” [“Versuch einer Selbstkritik”].
KSA 1, 11, 13. “fragwürdigen” “schlecht zugänglichen” “unmögliches” (emphasis original)
2
KSA 1, 14, “bilderwüthig und bilderwirrig”
3
Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik. As recently as 2004, Lorella Bosco has asked “How
is this book to be categorized?” [Wie ist ein solches Buch einzuordnen?] (321).
Greeks as singular and exemplary for the benefit of modern culture.4 Birth has certainly
been read before in relation to the tradition of German classicism stretching back to
Winckelmann. In perhaps the most common reading, Nietzsche presents the classicist
tradition in his Apollo, whom he opposes with a new, darker, and anti-classical vision of
Greece in his figure of Dionysus.5 This reading fails to recognize that Dionysus is as
much a part of Nietzsche’s classicism as Apollo is. Both figures are necessary elements
in Nietzsche’s idea of the nature of Greek tragedy, and if moderns want to emulate Greek
art, Nietzsche is arguing, they must honor and include both aspects of Greek artistic
creativity. Dionysus is not a rejection of the classicist project for Nietzsche as much as
an elaboration of it.
about Greek art, specifically tragedy, in order to support Wagner’s modern Musikdrama.
Nevertheless, this classicist gesture of pointing to a Greek ideal for the benefit of
modernity presents a problem for our understanding of Nietzsche that has only begun to
4
The term “classicism” and its related forms are certainly problematic and contested. Christian Emden
explores their complexity starting with three factors inherent to them outlined by Karl Christ and Suzanne
Marchand: “a tendency toward aesthetic idealization, the demand for rigorous scholarship, and an
ideological appropriation of antiquity.” For this study we are keeping the three distinct requiring an
artificial and rather limited use of “classicism” to refer only to the first factor, the aesthetic idealization of
Greece. Classicism, as used here, is characterized by a mission to redeem modern culture by means of an
idealized image of the Greeks. The second factor listed by Emden, rigorous scholarship, is made distinct
and referred to throughout this study as “philology” and its related forms. Philology here refers only to the
institutionalized attempt to understand the Greeks as accurately as possible through the historical-critical
method, a pursuit that does not require idealization or aspirations for future culture. The third factor, the
ideological appropriation of antiquity, expresses itself in both classicism and philology and is discussed as
a nationalist tendency within each of them when referred to in this study. See Emden (2004), 372.
5
By the 1960s R.J. Hollingdale can argue that it is well established that Apollo represents Winckelmann’s
Greece and that Nietzsche rejects this vision of the Greeks in favor of a vision of them “as a cruel, savage
and warlike people.” As late as 2004, Dirk t.D. Held is still arguing that Nietzsche’s Dionysus is presented
as an innovation in opposition to the classicism of his Winckelmannian Apollo. See Hollingdale (1965), 90
and Held (2004), 410-413, as well as Butler (1935), 310 and Kaufmann (1950), 105.
2
be addressed.6 As this study demonstrates, the intense classicism that characterizes Birth
is nowhere to be found in Nietzsche’s thinking before 1869, despite the fact that he has
been studying the Greeks since at least 1855. The fervor of the sudden and
uncharacteristic classicism in Birth raises the question of the motivations behind it.
relationship to classicism from his earliest schooldays up to the publication of Birth at the
beginning of 1872. The January that Birth is published, Nietzsche begins delivering a
series of five lectures, “On the Future of our Institutions of Bildung” (hereafter Lectures
on Bildung).7 Though they are characterized by the same fervent classicism as Birth,
these lectures have never been explored as an extension of the sincere classicist project
announced there. This two-part classicist project proposes, first, that Germans can
support Wagner’s Musikdrama by understanding the true character of Greek tragedy and,
second, that they can ensure the cultivation of further artists to sustain the culture created
by Wagner by returning philology to its classicist roots.8 The first part is explained in
6
James I . Porter does clearly recognize the problematic nature of Birth’s classicism in his Nietzsche and
the Philology of the Future (2000a). How this study goes beyond his findings is discussed below in the
Literature Review.
7
“Ueber die Zukunft unserer Bildungsanstalten.” Throughout this study, Bildung, will generally not be
translated. It is a word that in translation always loses relevant aspects of its semantic range. It means
“education” as both a process one undergoes and as something that is acquired thereby. A literal
translation of it can also indicate the form that something has and the process of formation (Bilden).
Bildung, then, not only refers to the knowledge one has gained, but also the kind of person into which one
has been formed and the process of formation one has undergone. Bildung can also be translated as
“culture,” referring to a collective state achieved by the process or the cultural acquisition gained by an
individual. Thus, Nietzsche’s discussion of Bildung is not only about education but also about the molding
of individuals into beings capable of a true, artistic culture, and it locates itself within multiple discourses,
pedagogical, economic, political, and artistic, important to his audience. For a good introduction to the
meaning of Bildung in the nineteenth century, see Jeismann (1987), 1-21.
8
On the specific use of “philology” and its related forms in this study, please see note 4 above.
3
These lectures argue that Germany needs to renew its institutions of Bildung,
especially the Gymnasium, so that the study of the Greeks can produce modern artists
century philology has, Nietzsche argues, moved too far away from the classicism which
originally motivated it. He hopes to nurture future artists by means of a new philology,
one with its classicism renewed. He does not want to do away with philology; he hopes
most elite Gymnasium in Germany and two of the leading universities, studying
Bildung. His life has been spent at school, and these lectures provide a fuller view of this
personal aspect of his classicism. This study acknowledges and explores, for the first
time, the insight the Lectures on Bildung provide into the classicism of Birth and the very
ambitious task Nietzsche envisions for himself within it. The Lectures on Bildung also
make clear that Birth is not a farewell to philology but an attempt to salvage it in a new
form.
Bildung. In the conclusion, Birth and the Lectures on Bildung are considered briefly to
further sketch the outline of the classicist project Nietzsche presents in them and to see
how they themselves demonstrate the motivations behind the classicism they express.
9
A Gymnasium, another German term that is not translated throughout this study, is a secondary
educational institution and is discussed in detail in Chapter 1 below. Its plural form Gymnasien is also
used.
4
The rest of this introduction consists of four sections. In Section A, we explore
why the classicism expressed in Birth should be questioned as problematic and then
summarize our findings on what motivates this classicism. Section B then discusses the
two precedents for Nietzsche’s classicism, Winckelmann and Wilhelm von Humboldt. It
nineteenth century German philology develops, providing the theoretical justification for
much of the form they are still in when Nietzsche attends them. Section C reviews
existing literature pertinent to this study, establishes what this study contributes to the
various fields it touches, and offers an overview of the contents of this study. Finally, in
Section D we establish a few more definitions that will help us maintain clarity.
At this point, the questions may arise, “But Nietzsche loves the Greeks, does he
not? Does he not believe that they are an incomparable culture worthy of emulation?”
Indeed, many of his biographers and commentators have assumed and asserted that
Nietzsche develops a deep admiration for and connection to the Greeks during his years
at the Gymnasium (1855-1864). In the writings of all of his years in school, we do see
him diligently studying the Greeks, however, he never expresses any special affection for
them. Still, Julian Young, a biographer of Nietzsche’s consulted throughout this study,
“loved the Greeks” since his time at the Gymnasium without adducing evidence from
5
Nietzsche’s writings to support this claim.10 Other studies more closely focused on his
student years that comb over much of the same material analyzed here also assume
Nietzsche develops a love and admiration for the Greeks during his school years.
Curt Paul Janz in his Friedrich Nietzsche Biographie (1978) often comes closest
to the assessments of this study as he slowly works through all of Nietzsche’s writings
since childhood and has proven to be by far his most careful and reliable biographer for
this study. Even still he argues that Nietzsche has a “love for antiquity” and for the world
relationship” to the Greeks.11 He does provide evidence for this, specifically a biography
Nietzsche writes upon leaving the Gymnasium and a paper he writes there on Oedipus
Rex.12 Both of these texts are examined below in Chapter 1, where it is made clear that,
for them. Janz is unable to provide further evidence of any passionate relationship
Nietzsche might have to the Greeks and, in fact, argues that Nietzsche’s graduating thesis
written for his Gymnasium on Theognis, a Greek author, shows no special love for him.13
This is the extent of the evidence Janz discusses to establish Nietzsche’s relationship to
the Greeks. As is shown in this study, there is little material, if any, one could draw upon
to argue for a personal need for the Greeks before 1869 or expressions of love for them
before 1870.
10
Young (2010), 31.
11
“Liebe zur Antike” “unmittelbaren, lebendigen, ja leidenschaftlichen Beziehung”
12
Janz (1978), 121-122.
13
Janz (1978), 122.
6
Michael S. Silk and Joseph P. Stern provide in Nietzsche on Tragedy (1981) a
detailed study of Nietzsche’s thoughts on the Greeks in Birth. They more carefully
propose that Nietzsche develops “an inclination” for the Greeks during his years in the
Chapter 1 as a work of plagiarism and, thus, an unreliable witness for any special
relationship between Nietzsche and the Greeks. Had it not been exposed as plagiarism in
an article written twenty years after Silk’s and Stern’s study, this Hölderlin essay would
indeed have been the best piece of evidence indicating a special affection for the Greeks
and a form of classicism during Nietzsche’s time at the Gymnasium. Still, Silk and Stern
are closest to the mark as Nietzsche does indeed write in the biography cited by Janz that
see, this inclination is far less than an admiration for the Greeks holding them as
Even James I. Porter’s Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future (2000), in many
ways the most akin to this study as discussed in the literature review, despite its very
careful and detailed examination of Nietzsche’s study of the Greeks and his classicism,
mentioned, Nietzsche writes his thesis at the end of his course of study at the Gymnasium
that Nietzsche has any passion for Theognis as Janz correctly argues and that, in fact,
14
Silk and Stern (1981), 22.
15
Janz (1978), 121. “Neigung für klassische Studien”
16
Porter (2000a), 33.
17
He also returns to Theognis and reworks this thesis later at university.
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Theognis as his topic is suggested to him by a teacher. It is simply the case that it is not
until after his years at the Gymnasium and university that Nietzsche gives any indication
that he has a particularly fervent appreciation for the Greeks that has any effect on his
goals, behavior, or worldview or that he sees them as setting standards in any way for
modernity.
Now there certainly is a very good reason for commentators and biographers to
think that Nietzsche has a passion for the Greeks. Birth proclaims it loudly. His Lectures
on Bildung go so far as to praise the Greeks as the “incarnate categorical imperative of all
culture” and call ancient Greece “the land of longing” and the “only home of Bildung.”18
What has not been recognized before is that this is in fact a rather drastic shift from his
thinking on the Greeks since his school years, and, without a close examination of his
It is also not at all farfetched to see Nietzsche’s fervent classicism after his school
years and assume that he develops a passionate love for the Greeks and a view of them as
assumption. It is simply one without supporting evidence. It is not until after Nietzsche
18
KSA 1, 741, 686. “leibhaften kategorischen Imperativ aller Kultur” “dem Lande der Sehnsucht”
“einzigen Bildungsheimat”
19
Bosco (2004), 297. ““mit Fug und Recht als Musterbeispiel eines humanistischen Gymnasiums”
20
Janz (1978), 67-68.
8
finishes at both the Gymnasium and the university that we see him begin to speak of the
Greeks as an eminent culture of normative importance for him and modernity. This
newly expressed admiration and devotion is closely tied to his reasons for writing Birth,
as is discussed in the next section. Thus, one of the findings of this study is that
Nietzsche does not come to love the Greeks at school, a finding that makes the question
of what motivates the classicism found in Birth all the more interesting.
What Nietzsche does get at school, both at the Gymnasium and at university, is an
elite education in the tools and methods of philology. By the time Nietzsche receives his
the many differences between, say, the world of Heraclitus on the west coast of Asia
Minor at the end of the sixth century BC and the world of Alexander in Macedonia in the
mid-fourth century BC. In the ever more specific field of nineteenth century philology, a
scholar is hard pressed to speak of a single, homogeneous ideal called “Greece” or “the
Greeks” meaningfully in any professional capacity. Even though philologists of the later
nineteenth century could sometimes revert to such simplifications, one should question
this rhetorical move going against the training of the one making it. This is especially the
case with Nietzsche as he is not only a thoroughly trained philologist but one who later
presents himself, and is accepted by most of his readers, as precisely the kind of
iconoclast who exposes such simplifications and cultural clichés for what they are as he
so heavily in his own work despite his extensive education, one who hopes to understand
21
See KSA 6, 57-58.
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A.2 Motivations for this Classicism
As already noted, this study does not provide a reading of Birth. By examining
Nietzsche’s thoughts on the Greeks, whether written for school, in personal notes, or in
letters, from the beginning of his education up until the publication of Birth and the
expressed between 1869 and 1872 have never been sought or demonstrated as such
before.
The first is his passion for music, a passion always stronger and developed much
earlier than any affection for the Greeks. In fact, music is always first for Nietzsche with
is not a focus on music that Wagner contributes to Nietzsche’s interest in the Greeks, but
The second motivation is Nietzsche’s need for existential meaning after his
religious faith collapses in his teenage years. This begins at Schulpforta, and, though it
seems like an ideal time for him to turn to classicism for meaning, we see that he does
not. In fact, he finds no real tools for coping with his existential crisis until he reads
that Nietzsche reads Lange after reading Schopenhauer and that he does have some effect
on Nietzsche’s thinking, the scope of that effect and the fact that it in many ways eclipses
the effect of Schopenhauer has rarely been discussed.22 It is in Lange that Nietzsche
22
Stack (1983) provides the very helpful, and only extended, study of Lange’s effect on Nietzsche, though
he does not address Lange’s role in the creation of Birth, focusing instead in his influence on Nietzsche’s
10
finds permission and a conceptual framework to creatively use concepts he does not
believe, such as an idealized image of the Greeks, in order to artistically propose his own
ideas in the search for existential meaning. Lange gives him permission to let go of
epistemological and historical correctness in favor of a sincere attempt to make life worth
living. It is after reading Lange, at the very end of his time in school, that we see the first
Nietzsche’s existential crisis does. Yet Lange offers much of the solution to Nietzsche
for coping with this existential crisis and makes Nietzsche’s classicism and Birth itself
The third and final motivation stems from the facts of Nietzsche’s career training
and options. He finds himself in his mid-twenties locked into the only path, other than
becoming a pastor, that he has ever been offered. Though he would always rather have
been a musician, he never has any opportunity for formal training in music. He has
received, however, an elite education in philology. It is in the study of the Greeks that
Nietzsche is highly trained, and it is in teaching about the Greeks that he must hope to
Nietzsche’s career in institutional philology. This becomes much clearer when Birth is
considered alongside The Lectures on Bildung as this study does for the first time.
Nietzsche hopes that his Langean classicism can keep him on a career path that allows
him to make use of his training and help to redeem German culture.
later writings. Porter (2000b), though not as focused on Lange, also offers some valuable ideas on his
effect on Nietzsche. This is all examined in Chapter 2.
11
These three motivations, Nietzsche’s love of music, his existential crisis, and his
commitment to his career path, are followed as they develop amidst Nietzsche’s study of
the Greeks throughout the three chapters of this study. As will be seen, the influence of
Wagner considerably intensifies the way these three motivations coalesce into
Nietzsche’s classicism, but the development of all three motivations predates Wagner as
does the way they drive Nietzsche towards a classicism that would otherwise be
uncharacteristic of him. His classicist project starts to take shape and is already
announced before he begins his fervent conversations about tragedy with Wagner as we
will see in Chapter 3. His love of music makes Wagner’s charisma even more irresistible
and makes Nietzsche quite receptive to Wagner’s ideas on tragedy that have such a
profound influence on the form of the classicism expressed in Birth. Certainly without
Wagner we would not have the same classicism found in Birth and most likely not that
found in the Lectures on Bildung, but Nietzsche’s classicism begins before he first visits
consider the two models of classicism that guide the examination here of all of
Nietzsche’s written thoughts on the Greeks from the fifteen years before he begins work
on Birth and the two years spent working on it.23 As mentioned above, these two models
are the classicism of Johan Joachim Winckelmann and Wilhelm von Humboldt
23
As the first text with Greek subject matter written by Nietzsche is dated sometime between 1854 and the
beginning of 1856, the years under consideration are ca. 1854-1869 plus the years in which Birth is worked
out, 1870-1872.
12
B.1 Winckelmann
familiar to most students of the history of German literature.24 For the purposes of this
study, we need only focus on two sentences from his Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek
Early on in Imitation of Greek Works, Winckelmann offers the key thought that
deeply impacts the course of German culture and education, “The only way for us to
become great, even, when possible, inimitable, is the imitation of the ancients, and what
one has said about Homer, that he who learns to understand him learns to admire him, is
also valid for the artworks of the ancients, especially of the Greeks.”26 This, as we have
noted above, is the key move of what we are here calling classicism: holding up the
Greeks as singular and exemplary for the benefit of modern culture. Though this notion
entirely straightforward.
Peter Szondi in his Poetics and Philosophy of History (1974) focuses on the first
Winckelmann’s poetics.27 He sees this sentence illustrating the borderline between two
forms of poetics: that of the Enlightenment preceding Winckelmann, and that of the time
of Goethe following him. The sentence reads, “Good taste, which is spreading more and
24
For full monographs on Wincklemann, see Dummer (2007), Potts (1994), Kraefft (1988), Uhlig (1988),
and Spengler (1970).
25
Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst
26
Winckelmann (1969) 2. “Der einzige Weg für uns, groß, ja, wenn es möglich ist, unnachahmlich zu
werden, ist die Nachahmung der Alten, und was jemand von Homer gesagt, daß derjenige ihn bewundern
lernt, der ihn wohl verstehen gelernt, gilt auch von den Kunstwerken der Alten, sonderlich der Griechen.”
27
Poetik und Geschichtsphilosophie
13
more in the world, first began to form under the Greek sky.”28 Szondi sees the first
as following rules derived from an absolute standard set by the ancients in order to
produce beauty in art correctly. The last concept in the sentence, “Greek sky,” Szondi
takes as looking forward to the poetics of Goethe and his contemporaries, a search for
focused on the Greeks. This reveals two conflicting tendencies in Winckelmann that are
not easily reconciled: that the Greeks are an ideal standard to be imitated by others and
that they are a specific historical instance made possible by historical circumstances and,
thus, not to be replicated.29 It is the first tendency that points back to Enlightenment
poetics while the second points forward to the historical sense that will sweep German
thinking every bit as much as admiration for the Greeks will. Though Winckelmann lets
this problematic classicism loose into the world, as Szondi argues, he himself does not
This new kind of poetics, a German classicism, will always recognize the historic
specificity not only of any ancient people but of the culture of the present moment in
modernity. Thus Szondi argues that, though the Greeks are seen as the highpoint of
history and are always at the center of aesthetic concerns, those following Winckelmann
seek out multiple forms of beauty in addition to the Greeks. These other forms of beauty,
though understood by means of the Greeks, are each found to be unique. Szondi cites the
28
Winckelmann (1969), 1. “Der gute Geschmack, welcher sich mehr und mehr durch die Welt ausbreitet,
hat sich angefangen zuerst unter dem griechischen Himmel zu bilden.”
29
Szondi (1974), 22-23.
30
Szondi (1974), 28-29. Alex Potts provides an in depth study in Flesh and the Ideal (1994) of the tension
between the idealizing and the historicizing poles in Winckelmann.
14
example of Herder’s thoughts on Shakespeare, in which Herder argues that Shakespeare’s
poetry grows naturally out of his national and historical circumstances, just as Greek
tragedy does, thus benefitting from what makes Greek art great while having its own
particular beauty. 31 In this example of a German poetics after Winckelmann, we see the
Greeks playing a central role in determining how art is to be created but in a way that
makes room for modern national and historical specificity. The Greeks provide, Herder
hopes, a model for how art can be made in the present in a way that grows out of the
inherent already in Winckelmann that makes Nietzsche’s classicism all the more
develop during the course of the nineteenth century to the point that simplified claims
about “the Greeks” and a unified standard they ostensibly set become extremely difficult
to make for one steeped in the historical specificity of any single artist or author of
antiquity. Yet, once Nietzsche is trained in these methods, he begins to ferociously attack
specialization and the attention to detail of professional philology, arguing instead that
B.2 Humboldt
for many years in schools shaped by the Prussian educational reforms directed by
31
Szondi (1974), 17-19.
15
Wilhelm von Humboldt. As the creator of the University of Berlin around 1810, which
becomes the model for all research universities, and as the central figure in the reform of
nineteenth century Germany, including the study of antiquity. Humboldt’s notion of the
value of the Greeks for Bildung is affected by Winckelmann and by the many others who
have been influenced by him, such as his friends Goethe and Schiller. As we see in
theories about the role of the Greeks in education and in other ways is at odds with him.
Nietzsche’s own theories on Bildung are made clearer and can be better contextualized in
Before we are able to see precisely what value Humboldt believes the Greeks
have for Bildung, we first need to sketch out some of his more general ideas on Bildung.
Humboldt sees Bildung as a means to achieve what he thinks is the central task for any
developing all of one’s abilities, one who realizes one’s humanity also understands what
Humboldt believes is the organic unity of thought and of the world.32 This concept of the
idealist belief that all phenomena are the expression of one single idea.33
32
Spranger (1960), 14.
33
Spranger (1960), 201-202.
16
To help individuals become both independent learners and fully-developed
than filling minds with an encyclopedic array of facts or material, what had been one of
the pedagogic aims of the enlightenment, formal Bildung should instead awaken all of the
forces and faculties needed for insight within the individual.34 Humboldt also prefers
formal education before any kind of specialized or vocational education. As his ideal for
human existence is the full development of one’s abilities, any education that neglects
certain elements in favor of others is deficient. Though he feels specialized schools have
their place, it is after one has undergone a general, formal Bildung that Humboldt wants
anyone to pursue any career-specific education.35 Bildung, for Humboldt, is first and
foremost to produce individuals that can think and function independently as fully
developed humans.
education. This begins in elementary schools where pupils became accustomed to formal
education through acquiring and developing skills in basic tools of learning like
rudimentary language and math instruction.36 This formal education continues at the
Gymnasien, where pupils are to learn the basic skills needed to conduct independent
research. Where the university would be characterized by the freedom of the pupil, the
emphasis of the Gymnasium is discipline.37 The university is then the place where the
students who have had all of their forces and faculties awakened and developed by the
34
Spranger (1960), 134-135, 246, and Sweet (1978), 214.
35
Spranger (1960), 144, and Sweet (1978), 43-44, 48.
36
Spranger (1960), 138.
37
Sweet (1978), 45-46, 67.
17
formal education of the elementary and secondary schools make contributions to the body
of knowledge. The lectures there are to be unimportant, and the more unstructured the
activity at the university the better. Humboldt sees the primary value of classes at the
university as a source of stimulation for teachers who benefit from such interaction,
though he is mindful of those who, like himself, work best without any teaching at all.38
As in Humboldt’s vision of the state, the school system is successful if it makes people
independent of it.39 The university, characterized by this academic freedom, is the final
Though Humboldt feels that formal education does not require any specific
material to stimulate the development of individuals and their capacities, he does have
specific ideas about the curriculum for the Gymnasien. These humanistic institutions are
known for their focus on the study of ancient languages, as we see in detail when we
discuss the Gymnasien Nietzsche attends. For Humboldt, the study of ancient languages
serves a formal rather than a material purpose. One is to come to an understanding of the
independently.40
of how to learn other languages, the study of language also reveals for Humboldt much
about thought and the world. Language is for Humboldt a structured whole analogous to
the human mind, but language has the advantage of being perceivable while mind is not.
38
Sweet (1978), 67-69.
39
Spranger (1960), 138-139.
40
Spranger (1960), 140, 167-168 and Sweet (1978), 46.
18
Humboldt sees the two structures correlating to such an extent that language becomes a
symbol of the human mind as well as of the world itself.41 He believes that it is language
that makes it possible for the notion of an external world to even exist for humans,
inasmuch as he thinks language creates and shapes one’s picture of the external world,
national language, the totality of individual languages and the worldviews they embody,
reflects a national worldview, and it is in language study, Humboldt believes, that one is
Nevertheless, though his intended curriculum for Gymnasien requires all pupils to begin
the study of both Greek and Latin, they are allowed to drop one of them already in their
second year.44 He really does intend for this study to serve formal rather than material
purposes, and he prioritizes the ancient languages of Greece and Rome because he feels
that their distance from the languages and worldviews of modernity provides richer
material for the development of each individual’s humanity. They strike pupils, he
believes, with their strangeness and make them aware of the form of language and the
41
Spranger (1960), 51-52.
42
Menze (1975), 40-41. He held the view that language embodied each individual worldview into his final
years, as evidenced in the introduction to his treatise Über die Kawi-Sprache auf der Insel Java. See also
Borchmeyer (1994), 313.
43
Menze (1975), 44, and Sweet (1978), 29-30.
44
Looking at the example of Schulpforta in Chapter 2, we will see how an actual curriculum developed and
was implemented there in the wake of Humboldt’s reforms.
45
Sweet (1978), 45-46.
19
If language study is only to serve formal education, and ancient languages are
preferred simply because of the distance between their structures and those of modern
languages, why does Humboldt follow his contemporaries in giving the Greeks such an
elevated position in his thinking on Bildung? For Humboldt, the study of the Greeks
serves two formal purposes: to give the above-mentioned richness of stimuli to moderns
because of their distance from them and to present to modern pupils individuals and a
nation that achieved the most complete development of their own humanity. That is,
following Winckelmann, Humboldt believes the Greeks are singular and exemplary. He
believes that the Greeks develop their humanity more than any other people and best
achieve the ideal of a national humanity.46 As Humboldt thinks that the correlation
between mind and language is best experienced in language study, he believes that
studying the Greeks allows access to the worldview and manner of thinking of this most
Unlike Winckelmann, Humboldt has no desires for anyone to imitate the Greeks
in the production of any material artifacts. Rather, the Greeks are exemplary in their
humanity. They are to be looked to for formal Bildung to help moderns most fully
develop their own humanity.48 Nevertheless, what we are here calling Humboldt’s
classicism, his notion that the Greeks are the best object of study for moderns, is deeply
classicism. The Greeks may be the ideal object of study, but within the institutions of
Humboldt’s reforms, they are immediately studied historically. As we will see, the more
46
Spranger (1960), 49-50, 61-64, and Sweet (1978), 14.
47
Spranger (1960), 51-52, and Sweet (1978), 29.
48
Menze (1975), 37-38.
20
intensely Germans in the wake of Humboldt’s reforms seek to study the Greeks, the more
specific and specialized their study becomes. It is in the schools of Humboldt’s reforms
that the historical tendency inherent in Winckelmann grows strongest to threaten the
One more aspect of Humboldt’s thinking requires explanation for the sake of this
study. As is seen in our study, Nietzsche’s classicist project is for the good of Germany
development, the question arises: what if any benefits does Humboldt envision for
impediments to all men (and he is only explicitly concerned with men) of all classes to
achieve his vision of the Bildung of one’s full humanity. As an educational reformer, he
categorically opposes the idea of different forms of education for people from different
classes.49 He wants to release individuals of lower classes from the subjectivity they
experience in late feudalism so that they can be self-legislating and responsible for
themselves. Though at the time of his educational reforms, Humboldt does not seek to
give everyone access to participation in the political process, in his later years, he wants
to help provide more opportunities for such participation and even proposes a bicameral
system with a house of commons. At the time of the reforms, he is focused mainly on
49
Sweet (1978), 48.
50
Borchmeyer (1994), 307-310.
21
We will examine how Nietzsche’s own ideas on educational reform continue
Humboldt’s ideas and the radical ways in which he departs from them. We also see how
timeless ideal and the historically specific of the Greeks expresses itself in Nietzsche’s
Four books are especially relevant to this study and beneficial complements to it.
Silk and Stern’s Nietzsche on Tragedy (1981) is the first extensive study to look at Birth
detailed understanding of how Birth is a part of the German literary and philosophical
traditions as well as a product of philological scholarship. Among other things, they offer
a view of how Nietzsche’s theory of tragedy relates to earlier theories of major German
thinkers, they examine the relationship of Nietzsche’s claims about the Greeks to the
views of other scholars, and they offer a detailed summary and analysis of the book’s
argument and style.51 Nietzsche on Tragedy goes a very long way in sorting out and
making sense of the image-mad argument of Birth. Though Nietzsche on Tragedy does
topically on issues like Schopenhauer, Greece, and music, it does not offer a detailed
51
Though this study assumes readers familiar with Birth, for those who may not be, the summary on pages
62-89 of Nietzsche on Tragedy is highly recommended.
22
analyzing his writings from 1854-1872.52 It also does not focus on the tension between
Nietzsche’s philological training and his holding the Greeks up as a classicist ideal as a
philology, which leads to ever more specific specialization, and a simplified cultural ideal
of “the Greeks” is discussed, but the question of why Nietzsche would resort to idealist
Porter’s Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future (2000a) offers a very detailed
look at Nietzsche’s writings on the Greeks from his university years, though not from his
years at the Gymnasium. Readers are often referred to his findings on these texts where
extended discussion here would only provide duplication. Porter also clearly
and explores the tension between them, explicitly recognizing their paradoxical and
texts of his university and early professional years leading up to Birth, and though his
study does not focus directly on Birth, he offers penetrating insight into just how
problematic the classicism expressed in it is. He does not, however, give any attention to
The way Porter explores the tension between Nietzsche’s classicism and
philological training and the explanation he offers for it generally treats “Nietzsche” as a
body of texts rather than as an emotional, volitional human. As Peter Levine discusses in
his Nietzsche and the Modern Crisis of the Humanities (1995), French postmodern
52
See Silk and Stern (1981), 15-17.
53
See Silk and Stern (1981), 13-14.
23
philosophers of the 1960s avoided “ascribing any intentions to Nietzsche, but suggested
instead that his texts had a highly unusual quality of constantly subverting themselves in
order to gesture in a direction beyond sense.”54 Porter is very much in this tradition when
he describes Nietzsche’s writings as luring readers into positive readings that only end up
presenting the reader with an example of his or her own misunderstanding.55 For Porter,
Nietzsche’s philology is able “to elicit and then to embarrass the inconsistency” of the
postures of classicism and philology, leaving us able to say, at most, that the coexistence
paradoxes in our own modern thinking. These writings, then, are “fashioned as a trap,
luring readers performatively and demonstratively” into the problems of modern thinking
and culture.56 Without a doubt, Porter is correct. Nietzsche’s oscillation between stances
is bewildering, and anyone who tries to formulate a positive understanding of just what
Nietzsche is trying to do must confront the limitation of their own thinking at every turn.
however, we are left with texts without a flesh and blood author. In our study, we do
assume a human Nietzsche with insecurities, aspirations and even intentions, to see if we
can find consistently revealed motivations for the paradoxical complexity of his attitudes
towards the Greeks. In this attempt to describe the hopes of a real person, Nietzsche’s
“sincerity” is often spoken of in this study. To be clear, by sincerity we mean only that
Nietzsche has real aspirations that he hopes his ideas will help him achieve and that he
24
case, especially after he reads Lange, does not indicate a commitment on his part to the
deeply felt need for his ideas to have real effects in a real world. It is with this intention
of exploring a Nietzsche with sincere aspirations that this study and its findings diverge
sharply from Porter’s, and it is this intention that uncovers the three motivations for
Porter’s expressed main thesis, that assumptions that Birth represents a rupture
between Nietzsche’s earlier and later thinking are incorrect and that his early and later
thinking are equally problematic while showing a greater consistency than previously
thinking is equally problematic both before and after Birth is not challenged. Neither is
his assertion that Birth “does not mark a break in Nietzsche’s thinking, whether away
metaphysics.” 57 However, this study does argue that the classicism Nietzsche displays in
Birth is a new development, certainly compared to his years at the Gymnasium and even
In the same year he publishes Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future, Porter
also publishes a book focused directly on Birth called The Invention of Dionysus: An
Essay on The Birth of Tragedy (2000b). It continues to support the thesis that Birth does
not indicate a rupture in Nietzsche’s thinking and focuses on the metaphysical claims of
Birth. Exploring these as postures, masks and experiments, Porter reveals at length and
with subtle care how problematic and contradictory Nietzsche’s metaphysical thinking is.
57
Porter (2000a), 1-2.
25
He does not focus here, as he does in Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future, on the
tension between Nietzsche’s classicism and historicism. The present study does not
investigate the metaphysical claims of Birth, only the motivations behind its classicism.
Porter’s findings in The Invention of Dionysus are considered here when helpful.
Janz’s Friedrich Nietzsche: Biographie (1978), like the work of Silk and Stern
and of Porter, is an essential complement to this study. Janz offers, as no other does, a
careful reading of much of the material Nietzsche writes on the Greeks beginning in his
school days and continuing on to his mental collapse, offering thoughtful analysis and
the best biography available on Nietzsche for those who want to understand his thinking
and life experience. Janz does not, however, focus on the development of Nietzsche’s
thinking on the Greeks, providing a more well-rounded discussion while also reducing
what he has to offer on that question. He also does not explore the classicism of Birth or
of the Lectures on Bildung, nor does he question the motivations for it.
Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik” (1992) relates, much like Silk and Stern,
the claims Nietzsche makes about the Greeks in the first fifteen books of Birth to other
philological scholarship, offers a brief overview of his years of education, and also offers
some explanation of his relationship to prior German authors. This is done in the format
58
Hermann Josef Schmidt (1991-1994) does indeed offer an extremely ponderous and extended discussion
of all of Nietzsche’s writings from his days at Gymnasium. Unfortunately, as he is so focused on
establishing a psychoanalytic argument that Nietzsche’s thinking is to be traced back to the death of his
father weighed down by prolonged polemical defense against hypothetical counterarguments, he does not
produce a study of these texts that illuminates the development of Nietzsche’s classicist or historical
thinking on the Greeks. Janz’s study is much more to the point, objective and useful for this study.
26
illuminating the complex and confusing concepts of Birth. Her primary objective is to
demonstrate the value that Birth, especially its theory of tragedy, has for current
philological studies. She does not investigate Birth as part of a classicist project.
After this group of four books, another group of four has a direct, even if less so,
relationship to this study. Timo Hoyer’s Nietzsche und die Pädagogik: Werk, Biographie
und Rezeption (2002) offers the most detailed and comprehensive account of the
implication in Birth, let alone in the Lectures on Bildung, but he does not view these texts
The other three titles are also diachronic studies. Carl Pletsch’s Young Nietzsche:
Becoming a Genius (1991) is the first and most detailed discussion of Nietzsche’s years
in school offered in English, though it is not nearly as detailed as Janz’s study on which it
relies while also offering details not found in Janz. It does not offer careful analysis of all
of Nietzsche’s writings on the Greeks from these years and, like Janz and Hoyer, is not
focused on Nietzsche’s relationship to the Greeks and, thus, does not explore his
classicism or its motivations. Hubert Cancik’s Nietzsches Antike (1995), does, like
Porter, Silk and Stern, and Reibnitz, focus directly on Nietzsche’s developing thoughts on
the Greeks. Though brief, he covers the years of Nietzsche’s education in the first twenty
27
the Greeks that are considered throughout this study. Julian Young’s Friedrich
more cursory manner that is not focused on his relationship with the Greeks, though he,
like others, does offer some thoughts on the subject that will be considered. As an expert
Schopenhauer and with Wagner. Neither Cancik nor Young focus on Birth as a
A group of five books more generally related to this study all focus on
Nietzsche’s ideas on the Greeks. The first collection of its kind in English, Studies in
Nietzsche and the Classical Tradition (1976), edited by James C. O’Flaherty, Timothy F.
thinking on antiquity. Despite some essays with promising titles, none of them focus on
profession.59
Similarly, most of Nietzsche and Antiquity: His Reaction and Response to the
Classical Tradition (2004) edited by Paul Bishop is a collection focused on many of the
other aspects of Nietzsche’s thoughts on the Greeks. A few essays, however, do have
some direct bearing on this study. James Porter provides an essay on “Nietzsche, Homer,
and the Classical Tradition” that explores Nietzsche’s Homer as a classicist construct in
tension with the historicist methods that study the Homeric texts. It explores how
“Homer can, for Nietzsche, represent different and sometimes conflicting aspects of the
59
Kurt Weinberg’s “The Impact of Ancient Greece and of French Classicism on Nietzsche’s Concept of
Tragedy,” and Karl Schlechta’s “The German ‘Classicist’ Goethe as Reflected in Nietzsche’s Works” both
deal with entirely different issues.
28
transmission and even of the very conception of classical antiquity,” in a way similar to
his discussion of various philological topics in Nietzsche and the Philology of the
on Classicism, Classicality, and the Classical Tradition” is closely related to this study.
subject, but it does not focus on the tension between these two approaches. Emden is
focused primarily on how nineteenth century German notions of the “classical” can
harbor Eurocentric ideologies and how Nietzsche resists and ultimately rejects this. He
does not view Birth as a classicist project, arguing instead that that Nietzsche actually
uses classicist clichés at other times to “conceal his more vivid image of archaic Greece
The other three books in this group on Nietzsche’s ideas on the Greeks in general
are all monographs written by single authors. Christian Benne’s Nietzsche und die
discussion of the history of professional philology. Like Porter, Benne is pushing against
Nietzsche’s thinking and how they affect the writings of his middle and later periods
while neglecting Birth and questions of Nietzsche’s classicism. Enrico Müller’s Die
60
Porter (2004), 20.
61
Emden (2004), 379.
29
Griechen im Denken Nietzsches (also from 2005) focuses on the relationship of
important information for this study on Nietzsche’s relationship to Jakob Burckhardt that
problematize the tension between philology and classicism in Nietzsche. Though she
asks, as noted in a footnote above, how Birth is to be categorized, she then goes on to
discuss the history of the philological attempts to answer the question of the origin of
tragedy and never addresses the problem of classicism as it is framed for this study,
apparently answering that Birth should be categorized as a philological text. Like every
other study besides Janz’s and Pletsch’s discussing Nietzsche’s school years, Bosco’s ten
Another group of three books dealing with either Nietzsche’s views on the Greeks
or with his profession as a philologist deserve mention. Levine’s Nietzsche and the
Modern Crisis of the Humanities, already mentioned, seeks to use Nietzsche to defend
the humanities from more reactionary proponents of western culture like Leo Strauss on
one end and deconstructionists like Derrida at the other. Levine addresses the classicist
tendencies in Nietzsche, including in Birth, but assumes that their purpose is to appeal to
the masses unable to understand his deeper meaning.62 Though the findings of this
dissertation contradict this idea of a purely cynical classicism in Nietzsche, Levine does
62
See Levine (1995), xviii.
30
scholarship is “sincere” in the sense that this study uses that term: it is done with hopes of
realizing real aspirations. Unlike this dissertation, Levine does not offer a detailed
Two more collections round out this group of three: “Centauren Geburten”:
Wissenschaft, Kunst und Philosophie beim jungen Nietzsche edited by Tilman Borsche,
Frederico Gerratana, and Aldo Venturelli (1994), and Out of Arcadia: Classics and
Politics in Germany in the Age of Burckhardt, Nietzsche and Wilamowitz edited by Ingo
Gildenhard and Martin Ruehl (2003). The first is focused on the same period of
Nietzsche’s life as this study, featuring essays on Nietzsche’s philological studies and
other topics. Though none of them problematize Nietzsche’s classicism in Birth, they do
classicism, and those insights are included throughout this study. The other book does
not offer any thoughts on Birth as a problematically classicist text, but does offer useful
thoughts on Burckhardt’s thinking and his influence on Nietzsche that are considered in
Chapter 3.
A final group of four books deserves mentions. These all discuss the history of
Schulpforta and/or examine Nietzsche’s experience there: Fritz Heyer’s Aus der
Geschichte der Landesschule zur Pforte (1943), Gerhard Arnhardt’s Schulpforta: Eine
Schulpforta: Tradition und Wandel einer Eliteschule (1994), and Reiner Bohley’s Die
Christlichkeit einer Schule: Schulpforta zur Schulzeit Nietzsches (2007). Much of their
work is simply summarized here, along with information from Hoyer and Janz, to explain
31
the history of Schulpforta and help us understand Nietzsche’s experience there in enough
detail.
This is done for two reasons. The first is that Nietzsche’s own classicist project of
creating new schools for the study of Greeks to improve German culture centers around
the Gymnasium and its methods. In order to understand his propositions, it is important
to understand his own experience at one of Germany’s most elite Gymnasien and to
understand the history that formed that institution. The other reason is that, beyond
Pletsch’s brief discussion and the even more abreviated summaries in sources like
Clearly, the present study should prove valuable to students of Nietzsche trying to
untangle the complexity of Birth. It offers clarity for discussions on Nietzsche’s thinking
on the Greeks in general, certainly in the period leading up to Birth, though it also
thoughts on them for the rest of his writing career. This is important as Nietzsche never
stops thinking or writing about the Greeks, and his relationship to them never loses its
complexity. For Nietzsche scholars, this study also provides an understanding of his
driving motivations and concerns in his younger years and especially of the way they
63
As Christopher Stray has offered a fascinating look at the development of the study of antiquity at
English schools in roughly the same period in his Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities, and Society
in England, 1830-1960 (1998), it seems beneficial to have a detailed account in English of the same study
at a top German school.
32
For students of German literature and culture more generally, a case study is
offered here of a later expression of German classicism and its particular motivations.
The role played by sixty years of professional philology since Humboldt’s reforms in
shaping that classicism receives new clarity in this case study, providing insight into the
relationship between professional philology and the continuing ideal of “the Greeks” in
nineteenth century German cultural discourse. For those concerned with issues of
(Bonn), and one of Germany’s oldest universities (Leipzig) – and the way it affects its
recipient is offered.
other secondary and primary schools), provides a detailed history of Schulpforta and its
curriculum, and offers a close analysis of the texts Nietzsche writes there related to the
attitudes towards the value they may have for moderns. What is revealed, interestingly
enough, is that Nietzsche develops no love for the Greeks at all in this period, his primary
passion being music, though he does develop an academic interest in them bolstered by a
gift for philological research strong enough to lead him to choose philology as one of his
fields of study when he moves on to the university. During this period, we also see
33
Nietzsche’s loss of faith and the potential it has to affect his thinking on the value of the
Greeks.
philology at German universities. Then it follows Nietzsche through his university years,
still examining his writings to establish when he begins to value the Greeks for the sake
Friedrich Lange as it relates to the development of his thoughts on the value of the
Greeks. Here we find that, though Nietzsche is almost entirely finished with his
education, it is through reading Lange that he finally comes to see some value in the
study of the Greeks and begins to show signs of a nascent classicism. We also see that,
though Lange does not motivate Nietzsche’s classicism, he makes it possible. At the
same time we see how Nietzsche’s critique of professional philology and its historical
methods develops, even though he has so far shown so much promise as a philologist and
Chapter 3 begins with Nietzsche’s first meeting with Wagner in Leipzig and his
move to Basel to begin his career as a professor of philology shortly thereafter. His
writings are further examined to chart the development of his classicism as it crystallizes
very rapidly and begins to express itself publicly. Here we see how the forces of his love
of music, his need for existential meaning, and his need to make the most of his career
path are critical in the formation of this classicism under the charismatic influence of
Greeks and the accelerated development of his classicism, Jakob Burckhardt’s decisive
34
influence on Nietzsche’s views of the Greeks and their value for modernity is also
examined.
The Conclusion offers a look at Birth and the Lectures on Bildung to make clear
rebirth of tragedy and Nietzsche’s hope to create a new kind of school that produces more
artists like Wagner through the study of the Greeks. As the purpose of this study is to
explore the motivations that lead to Nietzsche’s classicism in these texts, we also
examine them briefly to see how they express Nietzsche’s love of music, his need for
existential meaning, and his need for meaning in a career he does not feel he can leave.
As already noted in footnote 4 above, two of the most important terms in this
study are used in a way more limited than they are in general or indeed in the discourses
related to this study in order to maintain some clarity. Thus, “classical,” “classicist,” and
other related forms are always used to refer to thinking holding the Greeks as a singular
and exemplary ideal to be imitated or studied for the benefit of modernity. “Philology,”
“philological” and related forms are only used to refer to the professional study of Greek
and Roman texts and to the education and tools needed to conduct that study. The term
“classical philology,” though entirely legitimate, is avoided in this study to avoid any
confusion except for a couple of instances where Nietzsche uses it. Admittedly,
according to the definitions held to here, what is being examined is precisely the
35
As also already noted, some German terms are used untranslated in this study.
translation, while Bildung defies translation to the extent that it is better to keep the
original German term (the provisional definition for Bildung offered for this study is
found above in footnote 7). Forms related to it, like bilden – to carry out the process of
Bildung, are also used untranslated as are the adjectival forms derived from its participles
such as gebildet – having gone through the process of Bildung and bildend – currently
carrying out the process of Bildung. Similarly, Wissenschaft is not translated. Its usual
translation of “science” too easily risks limiting an English speaker’s conception to the
natural sciences, whereas a Wissenschaft could be any field of study, including philology.
This term will also be used in its adjectival form, wissenschaftlich. Finally, as noted
already, Gymnasium and its plural form Gymnasien are not translated as there is no
proper equivalent. For those unfamiliar with what a Gymnasium is, the discussion in
decent understanding. Any other terms used untranslated are explained as they first occur
All translations from German, Latin and Greek are by the author of this study
unless otherwise indicated. Nietzsche’s spelling and grammar errors, especially in his
younger years, are not corrected in the German in the footnotes but are presented as he
made them.
36
1.0.0 NIETZSCHE’S ELEMENTARY & SECONDARY BILDUNG (1849-1858)
To later assess Nietzsche’s classicist hopes for Bildung at the Gymnasium in our
conclusion, we now lay out the relevant aspects of the curricula and history of the
elementary and secondary schools he attended. We also examine the ways he relates to
antiquity, especially the Greeks, and keep watch for signs of classicism in his thinking.
In the end, this chapter will show that Nietzsche does not develop any love for Greece or
give it any special place in his thinking in this period beyond what is required for his
schoolwork. To be clear, it is not that Nietzsche dislikes the Greeks, it is simply that he
shows no special devotion to them, especially compared to his real passion, music. This
chapter will also follow this love for music, one of the three motivations for his later
classicism, in relation to his studies. We see the collapse of his religious faith which will
send him on an urgent search for existential meaning, another of the three motivations for
his classicism. Finally, we see how his Bildung, especially at Schulpforta, places him on
a career path that will give the Greeks special meaning for him, special enough to
attends before entering Schulpforta, 2) the history of Schulpforta, 3) Nietzsche in the first
four years at Schulpforta, 4) his last two years at Schulpforta, and 5) his experience in
Germania, a society he forms with his friends. The primary focus of all of these sections,
with the exception of the section on the history of Schulpforta, is to list and examine all
of the places in Nietzsche’s unpublished works, including letters, schoolwork, essays for
Germania, private notes, and other private writings, where we see him discussing or
creatively using the ancient Greeks. Though we will not see him developing a love for
the Greeks in this period, we do see him developing thoughts on them that puts him on
elementary schools followed by the Domgymnasium at Naumburg for a few years.1 His
and writing German.2 At the age of five, he is further educated in these basics and in
religious instruction at the village school in Röcken for a year (fall 1849 to spring 1850)
and then at the public Knabenbürgerschule in Naumburg for a few more years (spring
1850 to spring 1853).3 His Grandmother Nietzsche is the deciding force behind his initial
enrollment at the public school in Naumburg, as she believes the upper class (which is for
her the Bildungsbürgertum to which she belongs) should mix with the lower classes in
1
The “Domgymnasium” is a Gymnasium developed out of a cathedral school.
2
Janz (1978), 50.
3
Hoyer (2002), 112-121. The Knabenbürgerschule is a vocational school for boys not intended to go on to
university study.
38
the school-years before going to the Gymnasium.4 It is not until he studies at an institute
established specifically to prepare pupils for study at a Gymnasium that Nietzsche first
begins to study classical languages. This institute has just been established in 1851 by
Carl Moritz Weber, who has finished his training as a pastor and is awaiting a position.
An eight-year old Nietzsche begins studying there in the spring of 1853. In a recollection
written when Nietzsche is thirteen, he states that he first begins to receive instruction in
Latin and Greek at the institute, but in report cards retained for his four semesters there,
only Latin (alongside German and French) shows up as being offered.5 No reflections
from Nietzsche on the study of antiquity are mentioned in his writings or drawings from
the time, which are almost entirely concerned with games of military strategy. The
playtime of Nietzsche and his friends at this time is focused on recreating aspects of the
In the spring of 1855 Nietzsche along with his two friends Wilhelm Pinder and
Gustav Krug transfer from the institute into the Quinta, the first year of study, at the
Domgymnasium in Naumburg, where he stays for the next three years. Originally, the
Naumburger Domschule is founded in 1030 along with the diocese. In 1528 Philipp
4
Pletsch (1991), 33 and Young (2010), 13. The Bildungsbürgertum consists of the middle class created by
the educational systems of the nineteenth century. The Gymnasium especially allowed one access to
bureaucratic government positions, clerical posts (such as most men in Nietzsche’s family have
traditionally held), positions in the military, and other careers now opened by education to many who
previously would have had no access to them. See Kraul (1988), 45-49 and Cancik (1995), 6.
5
Hoyer (2002), 122-125.
6
Janz (1978), 54, and Pletsch (1991), 43.
7
see Hoyer (2002), 122 and Janz (1978), 52-53.
39
continuing the Catholic forms of education dominant up until the Reformation. These are
adopted at the Domgymnasium in Naumburg at the same time that a protestant preacher
and protestant teachers, all selected by Melanchthon and from Wittenberg, come to
transform the Domschule into a Protestant Latin school.8 Melanchthon makes eloquence
modeled on Cicero and taught through the medieval trivium (grammar, dialectic and
rhetoric) the main goal of pre-university education, meant to prepare pupils for university
study. He also requires that the reading of ancient authors and philosophers focus on
depth rather than breadth, following the principle of “multum, non multa.”9
Though the study of Latin has long been the core of European education,
Melanchthon proposes replacing much of the scholastic and other Christian literature
with pagan Roman authors. Similarly, he separates the study of Plato from the study of
the New Testament.10 Greek is now to be taught.11 Though it indicates a new direction for
European education, this new emphasis on Greek is still quite light compared to the
demand for pupils to become eloquently fluent in Latin, proficiency required for
scholarly opportunities at any university in Europe. Thus, at the Latin schools, including
the Domgymnasium at Naumburg and Schulpforta, the school Nietzsche attends next, all
instruction is in Latin, as are prayers, songs, sermons, readings to the pupils at mealtimes,
8
Meusel (1991), 14. On the role of Melanchthon’s reforms within the broader Reformation, see Bosco
(2004), 31.
9
Arnhardt (1988), 18-21.
10
Arnhardt (1988), 60.
11
Arnhardt (1988), 19-20.
40
and all conversation.12 The earliest surviving curriculum for the Domgymnasium is from
1667 and shows that only the ancient languages, along with theology, logic and rhetoric,
are taught.13
In 1685 the student body has grown to the point where it becomes necessary to
hire new faculty and to change the school from the three-class model established by
Melanchthon to the five-class model it retains until Nietzsche begins there.14 In the
second half of the eighteenth century, enrollments are very low, as many students either
Domgymnasium absorbs the secular school, which is then replaced with a Bürgerschule
Prussian and a part of Prussia’s sweeping reforms begun by Humboldt. The church
continually loses control of the school until, by Nietzsche’s time there (1855-1858), the
secularization is mostly complete and the school conforms to the Prussian state
In the Quinta, Nietzsche has 31 hours of instruction per week, 10 of which are in
Latin as the state curriculum prescribes. In the Quarta, at the age of 11 Nietzsche finally
begins his study of Greek, receiving 6 hours a week. In the Tertia, he again has these
12
Heyer (1943), 34.
13
Meusel (1991), 16.
14
Meusel (1991), 14.
15
Two forms of vocational schools.
16
Meusel (1991), 15-17; Hoyer (2002), 126-127.
17
Hoyer (2002), 127-128.
41
writes many essays in German. The quality of an essay is to be the crowning proof of the
require the description of objects (e.g., “Observations on a Fruit Tree”), engagement with
moral questions (e.g., “On the Feeling of Sympathy”), the description of literary
characters (e.g., Minna von Barnhelm), but no essays on personal experience are
assigned.18 Nietzsche’s attitudes towards essay writing will later play a role in his
Nietzsche is only an average student, consistently standing just above his friend
Krug in the annual ranking and below his higher-achieving friend Pinder. Nevertheless,
Nietzsche works hard, often until midnight, only to get up at 5 am to continue working.
His grades for “Diligence” Fleiss are consistently above average, as they have been at
Candidate Weber’s institute. As Thomas Brobjer points out, the education offered at the
Domgymnasium does not differ much at all from what Nietzsche would soon receive at
Schulpforta. The requirements listed above (and those for other subjects) are almost
identical at both schools, with Schulpforta giving a little more time to Latin. Most of the
teachers at the Domgymnasium also have doctoral degrees like those at Schulpforta.19
Much more material from Nietzsche exists, and more work has been done, on his
Nietzsche is with his two best friends every day and lives with his family at home. The
one hour a week at most of contact he has with them once he moves to Schulpforta makes
18
Hoyer (2002), 128-129. “Betrachtung eines Obstbaums” “Ueber das Gefühl des Mitleids”
19
Brobjer (1999), 302, 306-309.
42
letter writing much more important, producing a large body recording Nietzsche’s
thoughts and feelings that is not necessary during his years at the Domgymnasium.20
Similarly, we have far fewer prose compositions representing his schoolwork while
there.21 Still, it is clear that Nietzsche while in Naumburg spends three years with a
curriculum almost identical to that which he will continue to follow at Schulpforta and is
already being exposed to the literature and worlds of ancient Greece and Rome.
In Nietzsche’s writings from his time at the Domgymnasium, the first to include
themes from antiquity is likely a play dated as written sometime between 1854 and the
beginning of 1856.22 We enter the dialog in medias res, though possibly not intentionally
as the beginning seems to be missing, with Jupiter conversing with Apollo about making
a specific mortal a demi-god. The hospitality of the man named Serenius is tested when
Jupiter shows up at his house as a beggar and Serenius fulfills his obligations as a host.
When Jupiter tells the other gods, Vesta celebrates her prediction of this man being
rewarded coming true. Serenius is invited by nymphs to jump into the sea, which he
fears doing but finally finds the courage to do. We then see his father, mother and sister
at his grave mourning his death when he appears to them, now a demi-god, and invites
them to follow him. They arrive where the gods are as Jupiter welcomes them in his
kingdom to which Sirenius responds, “Joy I have, for even my father is with me.” Juno
invites him to drink from the River Lethe in order to remember (!) what he did as a
20
Brobjer (1999), 304.
21
Brobjer (1999), 309.
22
This dating indicates that perhaps the play is actually written before he gets to the Domgymnasium.
43
mortal and puts a necklace on him as other gods give him gifts. Finally he is sung a song
shows him using freely motifs from classical and Biblical texts, and possibly even from
Goethe. Nietzsche did read Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Naumburg, though it is not clear
how early nor what the exact date of this play fragment is. The Latin names of the gods
and the motif of reward for hospitality indicates familiarity with the story of Philemon
and Baucis from Book VIII of the Metamorphoses. The nymphs calling Sirenius to what
seems to be his death appears to be influenced by Odysseus’ encounter with the Sirens
(who also might appear in the hero’s name). However, Nietzsche, the preacher’s son,
seems to have also been influenced by the tomb scenes in the Gospels and possibly the
story of Lot and the angels in Sodom and Gomorrah (though this hospitality story better
aligns with Ovid’s). In Vesta’s claim that she predicted that this mortal would pass the
test, we may see an allusion to a lost beginning of the play which may have included a
heavenly court scene like Goethe’s Prolog in Heaven from Faust, with its influences from
For a young boy who loves military games and whose creative writing often
centers around a protagonist’s bravery (as we will see), this curious blend of classical and
Biblical motifs in which one praised at the end is able to bring eternal life to his entire
family, reuniting them in heaven, and is especially pleased that his father is with him may
betray the longing of a young Protestant boy for a father who has passed away and the
wish to become the family savior through courage. At any rate it is clear that Nietzsche
23
KGW I/1, 105-108. “Freude habe ich denn auch mein Vater ist bei mir.”
44
is using this play to understand the classical literature he is encountering through the
religious training meant to help him understand the virtues needed by a young man. It is
safe to say that, at this very early point, one of the values Nietzsche sees in the
engagement with antiquity is to better understand the duties already placed on him by his
throughout his career, a wanderer. This wanderer is greeted and told, “Wanderer, when
you wander in Greece/ You will come upon Thermopylae,” echoing a line from Schiller’s
“The Walk” (1795), a poem exploring the development of civilization and humanity’s
relationship to nature.24 Nietzsche may be familiar already with this poem, though his
own does not use the same meter nor does he explore the same issues. The voice greeting
the wanderer is that of a Persian who has gone over to the Greeks, and he invites the
wanderer into his hut to learn about the courage of the Spartans who fought at
Thermopylae. He exhorts his guest, “Weep wanderer for the brave heroes/ Weep also
that you were not there.”25 The theme of bravery is encountered here as in the earlier
play and is the essential characteristic of these Greeks. The Greeks are gone and the fact
that the wanderer was not there when the Greeks were is to be mourned as much as their
deaths. Interestingly, through the first person Persian, Nietzsche distances himself from
the wanderer encountering antiquity as a stranger. He is more informed and closer to the
24
“Wandrer, wenn du in Griechenland wanderst/ Wirst du begegnen den Thermopylen.” The line in “The
Walk” [“Der Spaziergang”] that is likely echoed here is: “Wanderer, kommst du nach Sparta, verkündige
dorten, du habest/ Uns hier liegen gesehn, wie das Gesetz es befahl.”
25
KGW I/1, 125-126. “Weine Wandrer um die tapferen Helden/ Weine auch daß du nicht bist dabei
gewesen”
45
This is followed by another poem featuring a wanderer, this time described in the
the ruins of eastern Mediterranean civilizations and told of their punishment by God. In
digging out marble sculptures and other remains, the wanderer meditates on the transitory
nature of happiness and cries out “How transient is happiness/ This I have now seen./
Eternally one finds it in heaven,” and falls into his own pit he has dug.26 Here the young
Nietzsche again imagines the encounter with antiquity as the travels of a wanderer, from
whose perspective he does not write, with the irretrievability of the past made stronger
than before and with the tragedy of loss and degeneration only able to take comfort from
A poem entitled “Cecrops” begins in the first person, but switches to a third
person description of how Cecrops founds the citadel of Athens after traveling from
Egypt and encountering resistance from the god of the sea.27 Two different poems
describe the courage needed by a hero (unnamed in the first, Perseus in the second) to
rescue Andromeda from a monster.28 Another poem, “Leonidas und Telakeus” returns to
treated as a youth in a poem told “of ancient events” by one who once heard the events
from Chiron.30 Though the gods almost all have Latin names here, as they have in all of
Nietzsche’s compositions so far, the first Greek name for a god, Hermes, does somehow
26
KGW I/1, 127-129. “Wie vergänglich ist das Glük/ Das hab ich nun angeschaut./ Ewig mans im Himmel
findet”
27
KGW I/1, 134-135.
28
KGW I/1, 130-131, 136-139.
29
KGW I/1, 139-142.
30
“von alten Geschehnen”
46
finds its way in.31 “Olympos” is the beginning of a first-person account of a wanderer
who comes to what was “once the abode of the gods” where even still “divine beings/
stroll around here.”32 Like the name of the mountain in the title, the god Helios is spelled
in its Greek form. Peneus is the only Latin form. No other gods are named.33
In the writings dated to his last year at the Domgymnasium, we find compositions
set during the Trojan war. These still feature mostly Latin names for the gods, but they
are a more direct engagement with the stories in the forms in which Nietzsche would
encounter them at school. There are no frame stories mediating access to the past, nor are
there wanderers. We see scenes imagined that would either fit in around Homer’s
last conversation of Hector and Andromache. It clearly has the original scene from Book
VI of the Iliad in view, while still allowing for Nietzsche’s own creativity. One
encourage the Trojans should he fall, followed by: “For if the genius lowers his torch/ So
we shall see each other above again eternally.”34 Again we see Nietzsche’s concern with
the ideal of heroic courage, and we have another heavenly reunion, a hope not found in
Additionally, we have the idea of the divinity with the downturned torch
argument in his 1769 essay “How the Ancients Depicted Death,” which argues that the
31
KGW I/1, 160-161.
32
“einst der Wohnsitz der Götter” “göttliche Wesen/ Wandeln hie umher”
33
KGW I/1, 181-182.
34
KGW I/1, 261-262. “Denn senkt der Genius die Fackel nieder/ So sehen droben wir uns ewig wieder.”
47
ancients have a much more beautiful image for death (this divinity with crossed legs and
down-turned torch) than the Christian image of a skeleton.35 This image is further
canonized for German classicism in Schiller’s “The Gods of Greece” (1788), and would
even reappear after Nietzsche’s death as the red-headed stranger, crossing his legs and
Nietzsche has encountered Lessing’s essay at this point. It is clear that he has at least
From this period we also see him working with the story of Jason and Medea,
focused mostly on Medea and following Ovid quite closely as he had followed Homer in
the scene described above. In a small prose passage in his notes, Nietzsche compares
while Medea “always follows the circle of ideas of the Greeks.”38 Further into his
reflections, however, Nietzsche admits that all people are “coarse and violent” in their
beginnings, reducing the distance between Medea and Kriemhild he sets out to
establish.39 The wild nature, separation of individual families, low views of religion and
humanity, and the raw [rohe] nutrition of the ancient Greeks led them to acts of violence
and to preserve and repeat their stories of adventure and danger. The observation that
35
“Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet”
36
“Die Götter Griechenlands” Der Tod in Venedig
37
“Chrimhilde des Nibelungenliedes”
38
“eine deutsche Rohheit” “immer den Ideenkreise der Griechen sich anschließt”
39
“roh und gewaltsam”
48
prominent among these were the stories of the Argonauts brings Nietzsche’s text to an
end.40
Despite the lack of letters, we do have at the end of this period Nietzsche’s brief,
first autobiography from which we can glean some of his thoughts on the value of an
education in the classics. In it, he says nothing of the ancient Greeks or Romans and says
nothing about the value of studying them, only the fact that was learning Greek and Latin
with Candidate Weber.41 He does, however, discuss a couple of ideas that will be
important in the Lectures. One of those is the quality of his own poetic expression. At
the age of thirteen, Nietzsche is looking back and able to divide his poetically productive
years into three phases, the third of which has only recently begun. He characterizes the
work of his first period as clumsy, rough, and heavy in its use of language, the second as
much too ornate while lacking ideas. In his third period, he hopes to strike the perfect
middle path.42 A few pages later, he explains that for a poem to be complete, it must be
as simple as possible, but with “true poetry” still upon every word. A poem lacking
thought and weighed down by “phrases and images” is like “a red-cheeked apple”
Working towards this simple and powerful style, Nietzsche has been composing a poem a
night for a few weeks, focusing on linguistic simplicity. Poems in the extinct East
Germanic language, Gothic, rather than Greek poems, are his models.44
40
KGW I/1, 255-256, see also 246-248, 262-264.
41
KGW I/2, 289.
42
KGW I/1, 291, 295.
43
“wahre Poësie” “Phrasen und Bildern” “einen rothwangigen Apfel”
44
KGW I/1, 307.
49
This little biography says nothing of how school or any other institution helps in
developing this personal style. Nietzsche only mentions the process of imitation, noting
that, in his first phase, he had no “models,” then changing the topic to visiting painting
exhibitions discusses how children tend to imitate what they like, and then he notes that it
is hard to imitate a poet or writer one does not enjoy. Realizing he has only mentioned
the names of his friends, Pinder and Krug, he changes the subject to an introduction of
these friends and does not return to the subject of imitation for developing style nor does
Though nothing explicit about conscious ideas Nietzsche may hold about the
value of the study of the Greeks is expressed in these texts from his three years at the
Domgymnasium, a few patterns worth tracking are apparent. First, especially earlier in
this period, Nietzsche approaches antiquity through his Protestant religious worldview.
Second, in this approach, he seems preoccupied with the virtue of courage, which is not
surprising when one leafs through all of the unpublished documents printed in the
Complete Critical Edition and sees that all of his attention, before any of it turns to
antiquity, is occupied with war, soldiers and his own war games.46 Third, his approach to
the Greeks at this point is generally colored by his more robust study of the Romans and
their literature in Latin. Ovid’s impression in these texts is deeper than Homer’s, and
Latin names are almost always preferred. Still, in a text like his final encounter of Hector
and Andromache, we do begin to see a more immediate engagement with the Greeks.
Fourth, his approach to the Greeks maintains a distance from them through their absence
45
KGW I/2, 291-292. “Vorbilder”
46
Kritische Gesamtausgabe
50
in his earliest compositions and the fact that others there give secondhand information
about the Greeks. Fifth, we see moments of Nietzsche’s approach to the Greeks mediated
by German Classicism in his possible use of Faust in his very first composition on
antiquity (the play about Sirenius), with his echoing of a line from Schiller’s “The Walk,”
and with his very clear interjection of the image for death Lessing argued was typical of
evaluate German traditions. What is most interesting in this is that, though he at first
displays the expected prejudice in favor of the Greeks in his comparison of Medea and
Kriemhild, he ends up seeing a raw, wild nature as prevalent in the Greeks as in the
medieval Germans or in any other people. This honesty about what he sees as a violent,
wild drive in the Greeks will, of course, later become one of his most widely known
Gymnasium, located just a few miles from Naumburg in September 1858. He will spend
more years at this school than at any other before or after. Before we look at Nietzsche’s
transfer to the school and how his thoughts on the value of the Greeks develops there, we
will first look at the history of Schulpforta. Since we have more information on its
history and structure and much more data revealing Nietzsche’s developing thought
during his six years there, the history of the mission and curriculum of Schulpforta will
be explored in more depth. This will help us better understand the specific proposals he
51
offers for Gymnasien in the Lectures by giving us a clear picture of his most significant
experience at a Gymnasium.
grounds of a former Cistercian monastery, more than five hundred years after the
at Schulpforta seeks to, in large part, replace Catholic scholasticism with the study of
through the centuries.48 Like the Domgymnasium, Schulpforta’s curriculum and mission
eloquence in Latin and a study of the trivium to prepare students for university study.
These regulations also expand Schulpforta’s curriculum into the study of the Greek
language and into pagan literature in both Greek and Latin. 49 As at the Domgymnasium,
splits the pupil body into 2 classes. The Prima (the advanced class) is to study Latin for
twenty hours each week, with fifteen hours of reading, consisting primarily of Cicero,
and five hours of grammar. The Prima is also to study five hours of Greek a week and
five hours of music and arithmetic. The Sekunda is to study twenty-five hours of Latin,
47
See Arnhardt (1988), 20-21 and Heyer (1943), 12.
48
See Arnhardt (1988), 18-19 and Bohley (2007), 52.
49
Arnhardt (1988), 60.
50
Heyer (1943), 34.
52
divided into ten hours of reading, again, focusing on Cicero, and fifteen hours of
grammar. They have no Greek, but do have five hours of music and arithmetic.51
Three years later, in 1546, the school’s structure changes a little. There are now
three classes: the Prima, Sekunda, and Tertia. Religious instruction on Sundays is also
added, with the requirement of thirty weekly hours otherwise remaining the same. Six
days a week pupils have class from 6 am to 9 am and then from 12 pm to 3 pm. Latin is
reduced for the Prima by an hour and Greek is reduced by two, which makes room for
three hours of dialectic. The five hours of art and mathematics became pure math. For
the Sekunda, Latin is reduced by three hours, and two hours of rhetoric and dialectic are
added. One hour of Greek is added. The Tertia has twenty-five hours a week of Latin,
divided into fifteen hours of grammar and ten hours of reading, just as it was for the
Sekunda in the 1543 curriculum. The Sekunda and Tertia spend their final five hours a
week singing (mostly hymns).52 Thus, the weekly hours are apportioned as follows:
study is made clear in the recognition of just how many hours are dedicated to Latin in all
three classes. Still, in line with the humanist goals of the school, Greek expands its share
of hours between 1543 and 1546. By the late 1570s, this curriculum set in 1546 is still
followed. Exams are not a part of the regulations of 1546, but what come to be known as
51
Arnhardt (1988), 26.
52
Arnhardt (1988), 27-28.
53
“Study Days,” a practice alive and well in Nietzsche’s time at Schulpforta, are.53 Each
Wednesday, pupils do not have to attend any instruction and focus instead on written
assignments. This rhythm of formal instruction and private study ties the humanist
school to its earlier monastic life, as do the monks’ cells in which the boys live in pairs.54
It is also established that not only teachers, but older pupils teach the younger boys.55
The mission and curriculum of Schulpforta remains essentially the same for the
next two centuries. The regulations of 1580 keep the pupil body divided into three classes
with an additional hour of Greek being given to the Prima and Sekunda. The most
important change is the introduction (at least into the written regulations) of quarterly
examinations. These are to assess the content the pupils are learning and the personal
spends six years at Schulpforta, they are meant to undergo these examinations twenty-
four times.56
The regulations of 1594 keep Latin in the center of the curriculum, making the
use of German, even in free-time, taboo.57 During the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), the
school experiences stagnation and decline as battles rage throughout the region, but the
same curriculum is taught, to everyone’s best ability.58 The curriculum also remains the
same from the 1650s until the late 1670s, when two hours more of mathematics per class
53
“Studientage”
54
Arnhardt (1988), 59-60.
55
Bohley (2007), 60.
56
Bohley (2007), 60-61.
57
Arnhardt (1988), 36-37.
58
Arnhardt (1988), 41.
54
are added.59 In 1682 the pupil body is divided into five classes: the Prima, the Upper
Sekunda, the Middle Sekunda, the Lower Sekunda, and the Tertia, and a larger number
than ever before of Extraneer (pupils who live with teachers instead of in the dormitory
cells) are allowed in.60 Otherwise, Schulpforta remains in structure and curriculum
basically unchanged as a humanist Latin school in a monastic setting until late in the
eighteenth century.61
known as “der deutsche Cicero” draws up a new set of regulations.62 These regulations
are guided by the new ideals of the Greeks and their ability to help moderns develop their
Latin and Greek are to be studied with three intentions in mind: to be able to understand
and interpret them, to enhance insight and taste in writing and speaking – not only in
Latin but in living languages, and “to learn from them everything necessary and
useful.”63
In these proposed regulations of 1773, Latin still receives the most weekly hours,
though they are now to be reduced to twelve to fifteen hours for all five classes. Greek’s
59
Arnhardt (1988), 45-46
60
Bohley (2007), 44.
61
Arnhardt (1988), 46 and Heyer (1943), 86.
62
Bohley (2007), 49 and Heyer (1943), 88.
63
Arnhardt (1988), 49-51 and Bohley (2007), 63. “allerley nöthige und nützliche Sachen daraus zu lernen”
55
share of the weekly hours is to grow. In the Tertia, there are to be seven hours of Greek,
with four hours in all levels of the Sekunda and in the Prima.64 In the Prima and
Sekunda, grammar is to be much less important than it has been for two centuries. Pupils
are now for the first time to develop their receptivity for content and gain general
comprehension and also produce general interpretations of entire texts. In the regulations,
Ernesti distinguishes between grammatically exact reading and cursory reading for
content.65 The content of ancient texts is now seen to be as important as the form. Also,
though since its humanist roots the school already prefers the reading of the ancients to
that of the church fathers, in the reform of 1773, outside of the New Testament itself, all
The study of German literature and language is for the first time recognized in the
Universal history is now to receive two weekly hours in the Prima, math is to be taught in
German, and the exams, now to be held only twice a year, are to test math alongside
Latin and Greek.68 Also, it is specified that teachers should give the older and brighter
pupils independent readings in Latin or Greek and then meet with those pupils once a
month to discuss the passages and help them with any questions they may have,
64
Arnhardt (1988), 50-51.
65
Arnhardt (1988), 52.
66
Bohley (2007), 56.
67
Arnhardt (1988), 51, 53 and Bohley (2007), 63.
68
Arnhardt (1988), 54-55 and Bohley (2007), 63-64.
69
Heyer (1943), 88-89.
56
into the spirit of the ancient languages, antiquity needs to be studied as a whole including:
its manner of thinking, artwork, geography and other aspects. In 1797 the president of the
Upper Consistory dictates that all prayers and hymns should be in German, leaving only
the Gloria in Latin.70 Even with all of the proposed changes of 1773 and 1796, the actual
schedule of 1801 shows that these reforms are only adopted very slowly, if at all.
German, geography and history still have no weekly hours, and Greek is only given three
Carl David Ilgen becomes rector of Schulpforta in 1802 and remains there until
1831. He has been professor of oriental languages at the university at Jena from 1794-
among others, Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Herder, Schelling, F. Schlegel, and the Humboldt
brothers.72 He has, in fact, had Wilhelm v. Humboldt living with him as his house guest
from 1794-1799.73 Humboldt and Ilgen remain in contact, and Humboldt participates
directly in Ilgen’s reform efforts at Schulpforta, encouraging Ilgen to allow the pupils
freedom of choice in their objects of study to develop as many of their abilities as fully as
70
Heyer (1943), 99-100.
71
Arnhardt (1988), 79.
72
Heumann (1994), 99 and Arnhardt (1988), 80.
73
Heyer (1943), 102.
74
Arnhardt (1988), 72, 89.
57
In June 1807, the 1796 regulations are sent to Ilgen, and by the spring of 1808, he
produces a thorough assessment of them which results in the new regulations introduced
at Schulpforta at a school festival on the first of November later that year.76 On Ilgen’s
suggestion, the five classes are to be named Selekta, Prima, Sekunda, Tertia and Quarta.77
language alongside Latin and Greek and is supposed to get two weekly hours for each
class. Each class is now to receive four or five weekly hours of Greek. More Greek
authors are included and the New Testament is slated to be cut entirely from the readings.
Two weekly hours of Hebrew are to be obligatory for the Selekta, Prima and Sekunda.78
In a major curricular shift, eleven weekly hours of history are now planned, with
the first detailed lesson plan ever that includes universal history, history of antiquity and
even an hour of Saxonion history. The Sekunda and Prima are to receive three hours of
world history, and the Selekta and Prima are to have art history and literary history. The
study of history is to conclude in the Selekta with an optional, encyclopedic course on all
existing areas of scholarship.79 Philosophy is also to receive more prominence, and, for
75
Heumann (1994), 99.
76
Arnhardt (1988), 80.
77
Arnhardt (1988), 81.
78
Arnhardt 80-81.
79
Arnhardt (1988), 82.
58
the first time, papers written in German are allowed.80 These regulations are, like many
set of regulations in 1811 regulates an entire day for individual study without disturbance
to work on projects like: composing a poem, writing a paper in Latin, reading speeches
preparing a speech or essay – anything that will expand the powers of the understanding,
sharpen the power of judgment, or nurture and develop the imagination. It is proposed
that there be twelve such days per year, though they will later become weekly in 1847.82
The semi-annual exams are to be held on Easter in the spring and Michealmas in
the fall, lasting two weeks each time, and continuing the tradition of focusing not only on
content learned and skills gained, but also on the development of individual character.
The first week tests the knowledge gained by the pupils. The second highlights abilities,
diligence, morality and other tendencies, and lets faculty explain to the pupils their
strengths and weaknesses.83 Though many of these regulations do finally start to go into
effect by the end of 1811, they are overtaken by the final battles of the War of the Sixth
Coalition against Napoleon’s France and then by the Prussian educational reforms in the
next few years.84 Thus, the pattern of practice lagging behind theory and administrative
80
Arnhardt (1988), 83.
81
Heyer (1943), 106.
82
Heyer (1943), 107.
83
Heyer (1943), 108.
84
Heyer (1943), 106.
59
In 1815, Saxony becomes part of Prussia, and the reforms begun by Humboldt are
somewhat at odds with that set by Humboldt.86 While Ilgen’s actions towards reform are
stock the minds of pupils with a more encyclopedic body of knowledge.87 Schulze is a
philosophic sciences which span subjects from logic and law to art history. Where
Schulze’s immediate predecessor, Johann Süvern, wants all objects of study to form an
organic unity, Schulze wants to comprehend the whole organism of knowledge itself,
Prussian reforms. He spends two weeks there examining the state of the school and all of
the neglected reforms that have been proposed for it since the early 1770s.89 He comes
Schulpforta he lists: 1) the admissions exam is too easy with admission being
probationary and unqualified Tertianer not actually being expelled, 2) pupils of the upper
85
Heumann (1994), 10.
86
Arnhardt (1988), 94 and Heumann (1994), 93.
87
Bohley (2007), 66 and Heumann (1994), 96-97.
88
Bohley (2007), 24-25.
89
Heumann (1994), 94-95.
60
problems, 7) too few written assignments, 8) arbitrary private readings not steered by
administrative problems he suggests: dropping Ilgen’s Selekta and the Quarta, leaving the
Prima, Sekunda and Tertia with each class split into two years, extending study at
Schulpforta from five to six years; forbidding the mixing of classes within courses; and
putting all decisions on the division of hours, school years and the selection of books in
the hands of the rector. These suggestions are actually put into effect in 1820.90
In relation to his desire to make the variety of subjects taught more encyclopedic,
Schulze only appears to be able to add natural science, and that is only with one hour in
the Prima and none in the lower classes. He is able to finally lock history, German and a
minimum of four hours of math for each class into the weekly schedule, as well as an
increased number of hours for Greek, but this expansion of the curriculum is merely an
emphasis on Greek, German, history and math has been the tendency at Schulpforta for
rector, Ilgen is able to resist any dramatic shift from the curriculum he desires despite
90
Arnhardt (1988), 94-96 and Bohley (2007), 53.
91
Heumann (1994), 124.
92
Arnhardt (1988), 88-91.
93
Bohley (2007), 66 and Heumann (1994), 95.
61
curriculum after Schulze’s reforms of 1820 can be seen in the following schedule from
1825:
Before Schulze’s appointment and visit to Schulpforta, the Abitur exam, a central
feature of the Prussian reforms that both signifies graduation from the Gymnasium and
Ilgen opposes its implementation as he fears that all subjects will be taught towards this
one exam and that it will either shorten or eliminate the semi-annual exams that assess
Schulze makes it compulsory in 1820. Nevertheless the semi-annual exams are kept and
are not shortened.94 In fact, these traditional exams are now expanded to include
Just as Schulze and Ilgen actually agree on placing more emphasis on German,
math and history, they both see the study of the Greeks from philological and
university preparation.96 Schulze who has only recently edited, along with Goethe’s
94
Arnhardt (1988), 96 and Bohley (2007), 69.
95
Arnhardt (1988), 98.
96
Arnhardt (1988), 89.
62
friend Heinrich Meyer, a new edition of Winckelmann’s History of the Art of Antiquity,
believes that the Greeks have to be studied in a way that brings them to life rather than as
a dry textual, grammatical exercise.97 Still, as there are only two hours of Greek for
every three in Latin in the Upper Prima and three times as many hours of Latin as of
Greek in the Tertia, the traditional importance of eloquent expression in Latin and its
careful reading at the university are still apparently valued more than the study of Greek.
The growing use of the vernacular at European universities throughout the nineteenth
century, however, results in the hours of Latin and Greek becoming almost equal at
Schulpforta by 1900, with Latin receiving eight hours in every class and Greek receiving
institutionally standardize education for all pupils at all Prussian Gymnasien is the focus
on individual development and private study. The increased variety of subjects studied,
the tighter control of schedules and of the curriculum, and the increase of institutionally
standardizing practices such as exams and certificates do not crowd out the central
importance of letting each pupil develop his own unique abilities. Pupils are still allowed
97
Arnhardt (1988), 114 and Heumann (1994), 96. Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums
98
Arnhardt (1988), 120.
99
Arnhardt (1988), 100.
63
Following the turbulence and instability in the curriculum beginning in the early
1770s and finally settled in the 1820s, Schulpforta’s curriculum experiences relatively
little change in the next few decades. Rector Ilgen dies in April of 1831 and is replaced
by Adolph Lange, who also passes away very soon after in July of the same year.
Following Lange, Karl Kirchner serves as rector at Schulpforta from 1831 to 1855, a few
years before Nietzsche arrives, introducing some further changes.100 Where the Prima
has previously read Cicero, Ovid, Horace, Tacitus, Sophocles, Plato and Homer, new
regulations in 1834 reduce the focus to just Horace, Tacitus and Homer – striking a
severe blow to the focus on Cicero and his eloquence after almost three centuries. The
other classes retain their focus on Cicero, but also reduce the numbers of authors read.101
The gap in hours between Latin and Greek is continually closed as the number of authors
read in Latin and Greek is reduced. Compared to the hours of 1825, Latin has gained one
more hour in the Lower Tertia by 1848, but has lost one in all of the five higher classes.
Greek gains one hour in the two lowest classes.102 As the focus on Latin diminishes, and
as nearly half of the weekly hours are spent on subjects other than Latin and Greek, the
importance of German continues to grow. The 1834 regulations also stipulate that the
Abitur certificate be issued in German, a decisive, institutional advance for the prestige of
100
Arnhardt (1988), 105 and Heumann (1994), 103.
101
Arnhardt (1988), 114-115.
102
Arnhardt (1988), 116.
103
Arnhardt (1988), 115.
64
The revolution of 1848 has little effect on Kirchner’s Schulpforta. Looking at the
papers of pupils there and commenting on the lack of political consciousness in general at
Schulpforta in the nineteenth century, Hans Heumann judges that the pupils know more
about Hannibal crossing the Alps than about Napoleon’s victory at Jena (only 16 miles
responsible for the fact that political and revolutionary movements have little
some faculty, however, do express desire for a more democratic constitution for the
school, which only results in more free time on the weekends and the Lord’s Prayer being
After Rector Kirchner’s death, Karl Ludwig Peter, a Schulpforta graduate, serves
as rector from 1856-1873, a period that includes all six of Nietzsche’s years there.107 The
focus and content of Schulpforta’s curriculum under Peter as they relate to Nietzsche’s
studies while there will receive more attention in the sections that follow. The original
humanist mission of Schulpforta to prepare pupils for university study in Latin is still
reflected in the curriculum at Nietzsche’s time. This focus has been well tempered,
however, by both the neo-humanist focus on the Greeks and by a more Hegelian,
104
Heumann (1994), 150-151.
105
Arnhardt (1988), 101, 110.
106
Arnhardt (1988), 109-110.
107
Heumann (1994), 106-107.
65
curriculum under Rector Peter during Nietzsche’s years has evolved since the curriculum
1546
1859-1865
Though the idea has been repeated since Nietzsche’s sister’s, Elisabeth Förster-
Nietzsche’s, biography on her brother that Nietzsche wins a place at Schulpforta through
his precocious brilliance, Carl Pletsch argues that Nietzsche receives a scholarship at
Schulpforta because of his status as the orphan of a state employee rather than for
intellectual ability.109 Thomas Brobjer gives a more detailed argument that similarly
makes clear that Nietzsche was accepted due to the nature and mission of Schulpforta and
the loss of his father and not because of intellectual gifts. Nietzsche’s father, who dies
when Nietzsche is only four, has been the state-appointed pastor in Röcken. One of
66
employees, which is precisely what most of its students at Nietzsche’s times are. Most
students also have scholarships, making Nietzsche’s less remarkable than his sister would
have us believe.110 This scholarship also relieves his widowed mother of paying for his
schooling as she has been doing while he is at the Domgymnasium. Brobjer further
demonstrates that Nietzsche does not perform exceptionally, except in Religion, at the
Domgymnasium, has done worse than average in Latin and Greek there, has “barely
passed” Schulpforta’s entrance exam and has to begin held one semester back.111 While
most students begin and end their study and their school years at Easter, Nietzsche counts
his years at Schulpforta beginning and ending at Michelmas in late September. His good
friend, Wilhelm Pinder for example, is a better student than Nietzsche at the
Domgymnasium, but he is not offered the opportunity to transfer. Nietzsche will become
an exceptional student while at Schulpforta, but that is not the reason he is invited to
study there.
Throughout this section we will pick up the trail of Nietzsche’s thinking on the
It is beyond the purpose of this study to examine Nietzsche’s daily routine and the
that he encounters a new, masculine world of routine and discipline unlike any he has
110
Brobjer (2001a), 322-325.
111
Brobjer (2001a), 326-327.
112
For a succinct overview including a Foucauldian perspective on discipline at Schulpforta, an elaboration
of Nietzsche’s own description of a normal day there, further discussion of the curriculum, and an overview
of Nietzsche’s performance there, see Hoyer (2001), 140-153.
67
known before. His letters to his mother clearly reveal his intense homesickness. On his
first day there, he writes one letter to her, two on his fourth day, and then another letter
again on his sixth day, apologizing that she might think he has forgotten her before one
week has passed. In his second letter to her he notes that in terms of work and strictness
Pinder he also writes about the rigor of his new school stating that one is “not as
compelled” at the Domgymnasium, and requesting Pinder admit that in Naumburg things
are “somewhat too free,” adding that in many respects, he is glad to no longer be there.114
This lack of consideration for the fact that Pinder is still there may be due to Nietzsche’s
need to express how overwhelmed he really is, may be an attempt to impress Pinder, or it
may also even be a bit of a stab at a friend who has always gotten better grades.
In the same letter to Pinder, Nietzsche regrets that he is currently not reading
Homer at school, revealing that his studies have, at least in that regard, taken a step
backward for him. In that year in the Lower Tertia, his study of Greek language and
literature consists only of grammar and the reading of selected excerpts. Once he is in
the Sekunda and Prima, he reads Homer again and does so every year. In addition to
grammar and composition, Nietzsche’s Latin instruction in the Lower Tertia does allow
him to read parts of Caesar’s Gallic Wars and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. His instruction in
History is focused on the geography of Europe and Prussia for the Winter Semester, the
rest of world geography in the Summer Semester and the history of ancient Greece all
year.115
113
KGB I/1, 16-20.
114
KGB I/1, 24-25. “[v]iel ungezwungener” “etwas zu frei”
115
Bohley (2007), 223-226.
68
His first composition dealing with classical material during his years at
Schulpforta is a brief summary in German of part of Caesar’s Gallic Wars written in his
first semester.116 This is an appropriate starting point for Nietzsche’s classical education
there, as it represents the original and still dominant purpose of Schulpforta: to produce
pupils capable of reading, writing, and speaking elegantly in Latin at the university level.
This summary of Caesar is not yet an exercise in Latin composition, but is focused on
reading and comprehension. During Nietzsche’s six years at Schulpforta, the majority of
his work related to antiquity is aimed initially at developing comprehension and, then
increasingly over time, elegant composition in Latin, a task that will culminate in the
thesis he writes upon Graduation (Valediktionsarbeit) written entirely in Latin and filling
forty-four pages of the Complete Critical Edition. Unless these Latin compositions
reveal something of Nietzsche’s study of the Greeks or of how art and antiquity can serve
modernity, they are not considered in this dissertation, as the focus here is to determine
how Nietzsche’s concept of the artistic value of the Greeks for his time develops in his
school years. Those that do shed light on Nietzsche’s valuations of the Greeks are
addressed.
There are no compositions of Nietzsche’s during the Winter Semester of his first
year (Lower Tertia) that deal with the Greeks as exemplary for modernity. In the
Summer Semester of that year, however, we do see Nietzsche using the Greeks for his
own artistic production in a manner similar to the works he produced before he comes to
Schulpforta. His one-act Prometheus drama, most likely not written for any school
assignment, again reveals the piously Lutheran youth working out his religious concepts
116
KGW I/2, 9-12.
69
through pagan subject matter. Prometheus is rebelling against gods that are too full of
vice to be worshipped. The focus on rebellion could indicate that Nietzsche has already
contempt for and rebellion against the Olympians, a poem he will discuss in Birth.117
Some impetus for the composition certainly comes from learning something about the
discussion of Aeschylus. Nietzsche’s drama, certainly at odds with either model, is very
much concerned with Christian ideas. The impiety of rebellion against the Olympians is
made clear when the human chorus contradicts Prometheus’ valuation of the Olympians:
Once again, Lessing’s genius with down-turned torch appears. The Christian
quality of the Greek divinity is presented with a singular noun that allows the actual
young Nietzsche’s Lutheranism and suggests that the Greeks, as embodied here by the
impious Prometheus, simply do not understand the true nature of deity. The vices of the
Olympians pose no problem for Nietzsche as they are not the actual divinity to be
worshipped. That the human chorus is talking about a Christian divinity (to Prometheus!)
70
In his earlier composition, Lethe restored memories. Here it is a bit closer to the
ancient conception as something which takes something away even though it does such
as a River Jordan baptizing away sins. This Christianizing turn makes quite clear what
issues Nietzsche is dealing with and how un-Greek his treatment of the Prometheus story
that, this is a rather Christian exploration of pride as a sin to be forgiven and of humility.
work. Then he writes in another voice to ask if one really wants to “renew the times of
an Aeschylus.”120 Any reader of Birth will perk up at the mention of renewing the times
of Aeschylus, though nothing like the project envisioned in that book is being discussed
Goethe’s “Prelude in the Theater” in Faust, where the number of Nietzsche’s characters
continues multiplying into an amorphous mass neither discussing the play nor the critique
119
KGW I/2, 43-44. Und geläutert steht der/ Sünder vor der Gottheit/ Und in Lethes Fluthes/ Taucht er
seine Schuld./ Aus der Sünde Finster/ Aus der Reue Dämmrung/ Steigt er wie des Himmels/
Strahlenauge.
120
“die Zeiten eines Aeschylos erneuen”
71
of it as their conversation wanders off.121 The discussion about the renewal of antiquity
“wrong concepts” on the subject, but does not say how they are wrong.122 Then he goes
on to discuss his piece critiquing the play and some other compositions, with his tone
becoming increasingly giddy and ironic – much as it does in the critique on the play –
until he ends with the line “unfortunately my paper is at an end.”123 Why it is that
his critique and his letter discussing the play is unclear. Is the question of renewing
Greek art too serious or daunting? Though the question of renewing the time and art of
Aeschylus goes no further than its asking, it is worth noting that the fourteen year old
Nietzsche is at least formulating it, even if this very act of formulation causes
decorum.
Another letter to Pinder sent soon after the last one (in April or May of 1859)
informs Pinder that Nietzsche now has a plan for approaching the Prometheus material,
which has become for him a “a very interesting topic,” and he asks for Pinder’s help.124
He indicates that, first and foremost, he is collecting all the data he can on Prometheus
from every available reference work, collection of mythology, and other book to arrive at
72
understood and handled into six sections, asking Pinder to handle half of them. He does
not indicate any discomfort with his anachronistic handling of the material in his earlier
attempt, but he does present a clear concern for a more thorough and accurate
understanding of the material than he has formerly had.126 Though he does not indicate
having any problem with the extent to which he Christianizes Aeschylus’ theme, he
A brief text in Latin verse written for school summarizing in fourteen lines
material from books VII and VIII of the Odyssey shows that Nietzsche is getting to work
a bit on Homer at school during the Summer Semester of his first year, the Lower Tertia,
though it is not officially assigned. It does not contain any reflections on the value of the
Alexander the Great, whose biography, Nietzsche believes, offers many sections to be
Philotas. It is unclear whether Nietzsche has been introduced to or heard about Lessing’s
play Philotas (1759) and is using it as inspiration. Lessing’s play is rather independent of
the historical Philotas, as it makes him a prince, does not mention Alexander, and gives a
name very similar to the historical Philotas’ father, Alexander’s general, Parmenion, to a
soldier, Parmenio, in the army of Philotas’ father, here a king. Lessing’s Philotas
125
“Japetos, der Titanen, Epimetheus, Pandora”
126
KGB I/1, 60-61.
127
KGW I/2, 65-66.
128
“vortrefflichen”
73
commits suicide, whereas the historical one is executed after being accused of conspiring
against Alexander. It is much more likely that Nietzsche’s inspiration is his history
course.
soldiers fear and respect him “because he is strict and does not suffer that any Oriental
luxuriance, which the king [Alexander] has started to develop, get out of control.”129
Through Philotas, Nietzsche is again exploring the Christian vice of pride and virtue of
humility, though now they are connected to a military strictness, tying them to another
virtue that has been important to him since he was a small boy absorbed in military
games. Earlier in May of that same year he has written to his mother to please write him
about “the newest political developments” as he is “very eager” for them, demonstrating
to her that his interest in political and military matters has not abated.130 We will return
to the Philotas drama after examining a few texts that appear before it here at the end of
In a note written on the 24th of August, Nietzsche discusses his recent reading of
Schiller’s The Robbers (1781) in which he sees the characters as “nearly superhuman”
waging “a Titanomachy against religion and virtue” which is ultimately won by the
unending sinner” in the play.132 Clearly he sees in Schiller’s play the same titanic
129
KGW I/2, 112. “weil er streng ist und nicht leidet, daß jene asiatische Ueppigkeit, die der König selbst
angebahnt hat, überhand nimmt”
130
KGB I/1, 63. “die neusten politischen Ereigniße” “sehr begierig”
131
Die Räuber “fast übermenschlich” “einen Titankampf gegen Religion und Tugend” “Allgewalt”
132
KGW I/2, 119-120. “Furchbar [sic]” “die Verzweiflung des unendlichen Sünders”
74
rebellion he approaches in his Prometheus play and that he will soon take on in his
Philotas drama: a sinful and destructive pride that challenges the celestial “Omnipotence”
and loses.
interesting notes around the beginning of his second year (the Upper Tertia) at
Wissenschaften such” as he has never encountered before.133 Then later in the same set
of notes he writes that “an uncommon urge for knowledge, for universal Bildung” has
taken hold of him, and that “Humboldt has excited this direction in me.”134 Though
inspired by Humboldt, it is not Humboldt’s concept, and Nietzsche does not see it as
using material like that left by the Greeks to formally arouse and develop all of his
information and developing as many talents as he can, as the expansive list of things to be
learned included in his notes, and not mentioning antiquity until the very end,
indicates.135 This relates his plans for learning much more to Humboldt’s successor in
the Prussian reforms, Johannes Schulze, who wants to expand the curriculum into a more
encyclopedic approach to knowledge, than it does to Humboldt. After his first year at
133
“eine so allseitige Kenntniß der Wissenschaften”
134
KGW I/2, 133. “ein ungemeiner Drang nach Erkenntniß, nach universeller Bildung” “Humbold [sic] hat
diese Richtung in mir angeregt”
135
The list ordered into tables includes: geology, botany, astronomy, music, poetry, painting, theater,
military affairs, architecture, seafaring, good Latin style, mythology, literature, German, Hebrew, Greek,
Latin, English, French, math, sculpture, chemistry, business, geography, history, and antiquity. KGW I/2,
135-136.
75
Schulpforta, Nietzsche is aware of neo-humanist educational ideals and aims, and their
himself is followed in the Complete Critical Edition directly by his Philotas drama.
Before we discuss that, let it quickly be noted what Nietzsche’s studies include in his
second year (Upper Tertia). In Latin he is still reading Caesar’s Gallic Wars, Ovid’s
Metamorphoses and working on grammar and compositions. His Greek studies add
sections of Xenophon’s Anabasis to the study of grammar, and his history course is on
the Romans.136
As noted, the Philotas drama combines Nietzsche’s concern with pride as a sin
with martial virtues. It is clearly a continuation of themes that have long been important
to him and is not too different from his earlier creative uses of antiquity. What is most
Christian direction with this work. For one thing, he finally refers to the Olympian gods
with plural terms, making it impossible to read monotheism in.137 He also adds a new
dimension to his concern with pride against the gods – freedom. Philotas stands for a
freedom without monarchy, and monarchy is precisely what Darius represents and what
seems to be seducing Alexander. This space of freedom for humans, within a system
where humans are foolish to challenge the gods, anticipates Nietzsche’s later discussions
of competition among peers as intrinsic to the Greeks.138 Though Nietzsche is not yet
concerned with competition in the Philotas material, what had earlier been a wholesale
136
Bohley (2007), 223-226.
137
KGW I/2, 147.
138
See, e.g., KSA 1, 787.
76
submission in humility to God has started to become a free space for human activity that
is bound by an understanding that one does not overstep the line that separates humans
from gods. In the play, Nietzsche establishes that Apollo is the sun-god and has his
Overambition
Knows no bounds. Yes I believe
If Alexander ruled this world,
He would complain that the sun
mocks him in its freedom from control.139
This pride can still be read as a Christian motif, as it may well be for Nietzsche,
like Lucifer’s vaunting pride as read by Christians into Isaiah 14, but it is certainly
moving closer to views of proper and improper competition that a Nietzsche with thirteen
additional years of philological study will consider genuinely Greek.140 In a note from
that October, Nietzsche further explores proud rebellion, not against divinity, but against
religion itself: “As often as a person speaks loudly against religion, one may brazenly
assume that it is not his reason but rather his passion that has won control over his
identify himself with the “person” or with “one”? There are no contextual clues to point
to either. The “brazenly” would seem to indicate a value judgment against those who
make the accusation, while “loudly” allows us more sympathy with those who speak
against religion. This toe-dip into questioning religion puts the Philotas drama into relief
139
KGW I/2, 144. [....] Ehrsucht/ Kennt keine Grenzen. Ja ich glaube/ Wenn Alexander diese Welt
beherrschte,/ Er würde klagen, daß die Sonne ihn/ in ihrer Unbezwungenheit verspotte.
140
We will see in Chapter 3 how Jakob Burckhardt influences Nietzsche’s ideas on competition.
141
KGW I/2, 167. “So oft der Mensch laut gegen Religion spricht, vermuthe man dreist, daß nicht seine
Vernunft, sondern daß seine Leidenschaft Gewalt über seinen Lehrglauben gewann.” Note that “Laut”
could also mean “clearly.”
77
as either a strong effort to stave off his own inevitable questioning of religion, or at least
who remain within a sphere of human activity that can be analyzed. He is not ready to
storm and explode the religious sphere yet, at least not loudly or clearly as his letter in the
following spring (March 1860) to Pinder indicates, where Nietzsche congratulates him on
becoming a mature Christian and wishes him the richest blessings of the Lord.142 What is
key is that after just one year at Schulpforta, we see Nietzsche recognizing that religion
For the rest of Nietzsche’s second year at Schulpforta (Upper Tertia) we have no
letters or schoolwork indicating reflections on the value of the Greeks for modernity. We
do, however, get another moment of reflection on one of Germany’s most famous
renowned Germanist, says that the national festival is “a meaningful foretoken of the
reawakening, German national-feeling, and one could tie beautiful hopes for the future to
this celebration.”143 Though the words are not Nietzsche’s, they impressed him enough
to record them, and they clearly indicate that at Schulpforta he is learning that the work
There is nothing here about the Greeks in Koberstein’s remarks, but what he says
is in celebration of a man who engages the Greeks strenuously for the sake of art. In a
letter to his mother, Nietzsche says of the celebration (while paraphrasing Koberstein’s
142
KGB I/1, 96-97.
143
KGW I/2, 177. “ein bedeutsames Vorzeichen für das wiedererwachte deutsche Nationalgefühl, und man
könne an diese Feier schöne Hoffnungen für die Zukunft knüpfen.”
78
words, slightly shifting the emphasis): Professor Koberstein “held an excellent speech in
which he especially emphasized that it is a hopeful sign for Germany’s future that the
birthdays of its great men are increasingly becoming national festivals which bind
Germany into one whole despite its political inner turmoil.”144 He emphasizes the
he shares with his mother, focusing on how the celebration of great men (not specifically
One final note that emerges from Nietzsche’s thoughts on this event is found in
his description of who took part at Schulpforta: “not only the Gebildeten, no, also the
lower classes of the people.”145 For the fifteen year old Nietzsche at Schulpforta, there
are the lower classes below and the Gebildeten above. This high esteem of his own
standing reflects an attitude held by his Grandmother Nietzsche, as we have seen, and one
Before moving on to his experience in the Sekunda, let us briefly summarize how
Nietzsche’s relationship to the Greeks develops during his two years in the Tertia at
Schulpforta. We see him continuing to use the Greeks in his own creative works in order
to explore his own Lutheran conceptions. He is especially concerned with pride and
humility which manifest themselves among his Greeks as either disrespect or respect for
a proper boundary and distance between humans and the divine. Whereas in his
Prometheus tragedy he is using singular nouns to blur the distinction between his
144
KGB I/1, 84. “hielt eine ausgezeichnete Rede worin er besonders hervorhob, daß es ein hoffnungsvolles
Zeichen für Deutschlands Zukunft sei daß die Geburtstäge ihrer großen Männer immer mehr Nationalfeste
würden, die Deutschland trotz seiner politischen Zerissenheit zu einem Ganzen verbänden.”
145
KGW I/2, 175. “nicht nur die Gebildeten, nein, auch die untern Stände des Volkes.” Gebildet is the past
participle of bilden, the verb from which we get Bildung.
79
monotheism and Greek polytheism, later in his Philotas tragedy he is comfortable letting
Greek gods be plural and, thus, more genuinely Greek. In relation to his Prometheus
tragedy, we see Nietzsche broach the issue of the possibility of renewing the time of
Aeschylus, though he gives no further reflections on the issue. Nietzsche also reads the
issue of human pride that must lose to overwhelming divine power into Schiller’s work,
showing that Nietzsche is thinking through the same themes in both ancient contexts and
in the work of modern German classicists. We see the thought of other classicists,
Lessing, with his image of the genius with down-turned torch, and Goethe, with the
format of his Prelude in the Theater, being utilized by Nietzsche in his approach to
Humboldtian approach, it must be noted, gives no central place to the Greeks in his
see Nietzsche impressed by his professor’s idea that Germany’s great artists have
power in his letter to his mother while simultaneously transferring this power from artists
The Greeks are neither singular nor exemplary for Nietzsche at this point, but he
is clearly engaging them both directly and through earlier German classicists during these
first two years at Schulpforta. We should also note that he has already begun to broach
80
instruction adds the reading of a couple of books of Homer’s Odyssey and a section of
study of grammar. Latin instruction moves towards developing the students’ eloquence
by introducing the study of a good bit of Cicero (De imperio Cn. Pompei, Pro Archia,
Pro Sulla, and In Catilinam) alongside The Ornamented Syntax by University of Berlin
Professor Carl Gottlob Zumpt.146 They also read some Livy and Ovid. Having had
Greek and Roman history for the first two years, he now studies Medieval history in his
third.147
In a letter to his mother in early December, 1860 we see Nietzsche asking his
his universal Bildung, and that he does not think that this is primarily done through a
between an authentic ancient Greek and a modern German by Herder’s 1773 essay
from his environment as Greek drama had done, few Germans a century later would be
young man. What is worth noticing is that Nietzsche’s enthusiasm for Shakespeare’s
146
Die Syntaxis ornata
147
Bohley (2007), 223-226.
148
KGB I/1, 133. “zur allgemeinen Bildung.”
81
importance to his education is not yet paired with a mention of a similar value of the
Greeks. He may have felt that value, but he has not yet expressed it.
In two essays written in the spring of 1861 we see Nietzsche using theories central
are hardly connected to the ancient Greeks and certainly not focused on them. “Hunters
and Fishermen” is written for school and discusses the similarities between the two ways
of life.149 In the second sentence, he begins to describe peoples in terms that had become
commonplaces in German classicism for describing the Greeks: not only will these
peoples be gifted with unique intellectual gifts, they live with favorable climatic
conditions. This later aspect, the Climate Theory, goes back to Montesquieu’s De l'esprit
des lois of 1748 and then even back into antiquity to Aristotle’s Politics Book VII,
Chapter VI that posits that cultures are affected by the climate they develop in.150
Winckelmann, as we saw in our introduction, leans heavily on the Climate Theory in his
Imitation of Greek Works (1755) to explain how the Greeks achieved the art he so
admired. Nietzsche’s sentence begins: “And especially those people gifted with a greater
intellectual excitability and favored by nature with favorable regions under the sky….”151
At this point one familiar with the tradition of German classicism expects to read about
the exceptional development and achievement of the ancient Greeks within a comparison
[These peoples] have first left their natural state, which could be called the
childhood of humanity in relation to a similar development for every person, and
149
“Jäger und Fischer”
150
See Szondi (1974), 25, 27.
151
“Und gerade die Völker, die mit einer größern geistigen Erregbarkeit begabt und von der Natur durch
günstige Himmelsstriche beschenkt sind….”
82
they are, surrendered to their unrestrained desires, sunken into a depth of wildness
reminding us barely now and then of the creations of God gifted with reason and
intellect.152
classical Greeks. For one thing, he uses the Lebensalter Theory that was also a
more typically classicist example of the Lebensalter Theory can be read in Herder’s
Another Philosophy of History for the Bildung of Humanity (1774) which traces the
development. 154 Childhood is projected upon the Biblical patriarchs while Periclean
Greeks live out the robust activity of a strong youth. Here, Nietzsche makes childhood a
stage among all peoples. When this stage is left, it is not to enter into a glorious, Greek
youth of humanity still at one with nature, but to descend into a wild, irrational state that
can no longer be considered the people’s natural state. Is he even talking about the
Greeks here at all? The next sentence indicates yes and no, as it makes clear that these
people who have descended into wild irrationality go on to become the various fishers
and hunters depending on whether they go off to mountainous regions, forests, to the
seaside or near great rivers. He is clearly talking about many different peoples here.
152
KGW I/2, 232. “haben zuerst ihren Naturzustand, den man in Bezug auf eine ähnliche Entwicklung bei
jedem Menschen die Kindheit der Völker nennen könnte, verlassen und sind, ihren ungezügelten Begierden
übergeben, in eine Tiefe der Wildheit herabgesunken, die uns kaum noch hie u. da an die mit Vernunft und
Geist begabten Geschöpfe Gottes errinert.“
153
Lebensalter refers to the ages of life, such as we see with Nietzsche calling an early stage of cultural
development a “childhood.”
154
Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit. “Universal history” is another
concept of the late 18th century that culminates in Hegel in the early nineteenth century. It reads all of
history as one long development towards a, usually, glorious goal, with the historian offering the reading
often standing at or near that privileged endpoint. Lebensalter theory usually works within the framework
of universal history.
83
One of those, it turns out, is most likely, though not definitely, the Greeks.
Perhaps more than one of them is one of the various groups among the Greek-speakers.
Towards the end of the essay he writes, “States relying on fishing were [note the plural]
the original beginnings of those flowering and powerful empires whose trade
encompassed the entire world knows at the time, whose inventions were the most
successful deeds of all of antiquity, whose sense for art aroused all other peoples to
imitation and later to freer artistic development.”155 According to the tropes of eighteenth
and nineteenth German classicism, it would seem that the peoples with the great sense for
art that stimulated all others to imitation would be Greeks, but Nietzsche does not say this
explicitly. And even if they are, this sentence could just as easily be talking about others
like the Phoenicians and Romans. If he is talking about the Greeks, it is worth noting that
already in his third year at Schulpforta, Nietzsche would have a complex and
What is clear is that Nietzsche has come into contact with many of the central
achievement compelling emulation. What is interesting is that Nietzsche does not use
them to write yet another encomium to the Greeks. The Greeks are very hard to identify
in the essay, if they positively can be at all. They are certainly never mentioned by name.
Most striking of all is whom the essay does end up praising as the saviors of civilization.
He writes that state, trade and art are the three pillars upon which the development of
humanity depends, then says that these pillars would have crumbled to ruin, “if the true
155
“Fischerstaaten waren die Uranfänge jener blühenden und mächtigen Reiche, deren Handel die ganze
damals bekannte Welt umschloß, deren Erfindungen die erfolgreichsten Thaten des ganzen Alterthums
waren, deren Kunstsinn, alle andern Völkern zur Nachahmung und später zur freieren Kunstentfaltung
anregte.”
84
religion, which maintained and preserved itself among a pastoral people, had not with
vital energy lent the sublime structure the correct foundation, the correct strength.”156
The Biblical patriarchs and their descendants are not written into this essay as an
early stage of development, but as those who must sweep in at a later stage to save a
development that would have foundered without them. Note that Nietzsche makes no
differentiation between this “pastoral people” and the Christianity that followed antiquity.
As in his later work, the beliefs beginning with the Biblical Israelites and continuing
through to European Christians seem to constitute a single religion for him. It is hard to
say whether his placement of Judeo-Christianity as the saving telos of his essay is due to
what continues in him of religious faith or to a concern to please teachers. At any rate,
had he given the Greeks this role, no one at neo-humanist Schulpforta would have batted
an eye, making the fact that he does not all the more curious.
Another essay, “The Childhood of the Peoples,” submitted around the same time
to Germania, the literary-musical society formed between Nietzsche and his friends
Pinder and Gustav Krug (to be examined later), continues Nietzsche’s use of the
Lebensalter Theory.157 Here when he speaks of a childhood stage, it was a time very
close to “the creation of the world or at least of humans,” in which humans, gifted by
God with language and religion and enjoyed “an age of flowering or a golden time period
on earth,” and was followed closely by the time when humanity sank from its dignity and
156
KGW I/2, 234. “wenn nicht die wahre Religion, die sich bei einem Hirtenvolke erhalten und bewahrt
hatte, lebenskräftig dem erhabnen Bau den rechte Grundlage, die rechte Stärke verliehen hätte.”
157
“Die Kindheit der Völker”
85
Fishermen” essay.158 This clearly points to something like the Biblical concept of the
Garden of Eden and the fall from it, indicating the young Nietzsche gives a much
stronger Biblical angle to the Lebensalter Theory than had Herder and others. Very few
peoples were able only with “exceptional intellectual excitability,” to rise out of this
fallen state, while another preserved its intellectual Bildung, though only “with injury to
the original purity.”159 The former may well include the Greeks (though they are never
named in this essay either), while the later seems to be the same Biblical, pastoral people
sentences later with the question whether “races of such entirely different natures could
form themselves out of one human couple” – an idea he writes he can neither confidently
defend nor reject at this point.160 He goes on to call the return to culture after humanity
had fallen into “barbarism” a “repentance,” indicating not just a return but a penitent one
with Christian coloring.161 The rest of the essay examines how this people who preserved
something of the original intellectual Bildung did so through their language and religion
and were able finally to save the rest of humanity, just as he had asserted they did in the
“Hunters and Fisherman” essay. Four pages into the essay, Nietzsche explicitly names
the Jews as one stage of this saving people, and then explicitly names Christianity
158
“der Weltschöpfung oder wenigstens der Menschenerschafung” “ein Blüthalter oder eine golden
Zeitperiode auf Erden”
159
“besonderer geistigen Erregbarkeit” “mit Verletzung der ursprünglichen Reinheit”
160
“aus einem Menschenpaar sich so ganz verschiedenartige Racen bilden konnte”
161
KGW I/2, 236-237. “Barbarei” “Umkehren”
86
another page in, making fully clear who he is not talking about and making the fact that
he never names the Greeks all the more conspicuous. What Judeo-Christianity, again a
single entity composed of stages, brought to the rest of humanity, he makes clear by the
end of the essay: architecture, music, poetry, astronomy, and trade, many of the objects of
What Nietzsche has produced here is a curious second variation on an old theme.
The Bible has been read as presenting the narrative of an original paradise where
humanity lived at one with nature and divinity. Humanity lost this state and fell due to
disobedience to God and would require redemption (through Jesus for Nietzsche and his
fellow Lutherans) to be restored from its fallen state. Winckelmann transposes this three
part structure of paradise, fall, and redemption onto a different picture of history, making
Periclean Greece the paradisiacal state of oneness with nature, an artistic decay that lost
this state up until Winckelmann’s time the equivalent of the fall, and the hope that
looking to the works of that original state among the Greeks would be able to restore the
artistic ability of at least some humans. This new paradise, fall, and redemption motif is
considerably fortified and further loaded with hopes and anxieties by those following
Winckelmann, often making the middle period, the fall, medieval Christianity, and
making the final period, the restoration, a time filled with hopes even of political unity
Nietzsche has now returned paradise back to the Biblical state directly following God’s
creation, the fall back to the general state of humanity after this original time, and
restoration back to something to be found among the keepers of the Biblical message,
162
KGW I/2, 239-243.
87
but, most curiously – and this is his remarkable contribution, he makes the final state of
restoration not one of eternal salvation or historical, apocalyptic reunion with divinity but
the promise and reality of modern artistic and scientific achievement. He keeps the first
two stages of the Biblical narrative and adds on to them the third stage of the classicist
Schulpforta, but he is not pointed by them towards the same message of artistic salvation
from the Greeks that has been fueling German classicism. His religious training is still
the Bible, not among the ancient Greeks. That this salvation, however, is human culture
shows that the German thinking of the last hundred years has taken root in Nietzsche, and
is finding strong expression in his thinking as he begins to try to hold together the slowly
September in 1861. In Greek, he reads four books of Homer’s Iliad, all of Lysias’
Against Agoratus, and selections from Herodotus, in addition to continuing the study of
grammar and work on composition. In Latin, he continues to read a lot of Cicero, and
continued composition, now including full essays and spoken exercises. His course in
history now focuses on modern history.163 As in the year before, Nietzsche produces no
extended creative works based on Greek materials and has little to nothing to say about
163
Bohley (2007), 223-226.
88
In their biographical works on Nietzsche, both Curt Paul Janz and Carl Pletsch
address an essay Nietzsche writes on Hölderlin in October of 1861. Both find within it
seeds of Nietzsche’s future thought and praise it for its astonishing insight and originality.
As he does with the myth of Nietzsche’s acceptance to Schulpforta for brilliance, Thomas
Brobjer again offers clear evidence that this essay is not everything Nietzsche’s
biographers want it to be.164 This misunderstanding has persisted into scholarship written
The Hölderlin essay has been described as a major turning point for Nietzsche,
where he is burned by criticism of it and then no longer reveals his private thoughts to his
professors, and a turning point celebrated for its anticipation of his future thought, for its
novel format (it is written as a letter to a friend), for a clever metaphor describing the sea,
which he had not yet seen, and, above all for this study, as an expression of admiration
for the Greeks. However, Brobjer makes quite clear that all of the celebrated portions of
the essay are copied “almost word for word” from a biography written by William
Neumann on Hölderlin and published in the series Modern Classics and that the letter
format is part of the assignment as given by his teacher.166 Nietzsche asks his mother for
164
For Janz on the Hölderlin essay, see 78-79. For Pletsch, see 57. Brobjer summarizes these previous
commentators in his article. See Brobjer (2001b).
165
Like Silk’s and Stern’s study (1981), neither Janz’s (1978) nor Pletsch’s (1991) books could have
benefitted from this 2001 article by Brobjer, but Julian Young, whose biography, Friedrich Nietzsche: A
Philosophical Biography came out in 2010, should have. He repeats Janz’s and Pletsch’s same arguments
about the essay without any indication of the problems Brobjer points out, but then, in an endnote admits
that “it turns out” Nietzsche may not have been entirely original in the essay, citing Brobjer’s article. He
then goes on to defend Nietzsche from Brobjer’s charge of plagiarism by arguing that plagiarism is an
anachronistic accusation against mid-nineteenth century scholarship. Whatever the merits of that
argument, it would be a better sign of good faith for Young to take the time to rewrite his discussion of the
Hölderlin essay in the main text of his book to reflect Brobjer’s important work on the topic and, most
importantly, to give a more accurate picture of Nietzsche’s intellectual development.
166
Brobjer (2001b), 399, 401. Moderne Klassiker
89
six volumes of the series for his birthday in 1858 (i.e., in his first month at Schulpforta),
and at the time that Nietzsche needs to be writing the essay, we see him writing his
mother with a request for his sister: “For a German essay on Hölderlin I require
and read it to discover that Neumann’s biography not only features the clever metaphor
about the sea, but it also contains the entire discussion Nietzsche offers of Hölderlin’s
Hyperion and Empedokles.168 Brobjer is not even sure that Nietzsche has read Hyperion
yet, as it is not included in either of the two books to which Nietzsche had access on
Hölderlin: the Neumann biography (which includes some of Hölderlin’s texts in addition
to the biographical matter) and a collection of Hölderlin that Wilhelm Pinder acquires
Brobjer, however, does indeed see the seeds of Nietzsche’s later thinking in this
essay, even if he forces us to admit that Nietzsche borrowed these from another thinker.
Going beyond Janz, Pletsch and even the more recent discussion by Julian Young,
Brobjer points out in Neumann’s biography (that is, also in portions of the text read by
Nietzsche but not copied in his essay) possible seeds of Nietzsche’s ideas of the eternal
not a search for the themes of Nietzsche’s later philosophy in his juvenilia but rather a
delineation of his developing relationship to the Greeks and to classicism in his early
years, we are only concerned with the ways Nietzsche’s essay and Neumann’s biography
167
KGB I/1, 181 and Brobjer (2001b), 399-400. “Ich bedarf zu einer deutschen Arbeit über Hölderlin
nothwendig seine Biographie, sie liegt in meinem Bücherkasten.”
168
Brobjer (2001b), 401.
169
Brobjer (2001b), 400-401.
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may prefigure his thoughts on Apollo and Dionysus in Birth. What Brobjer finds in
to which Nietzsche may later have added much including the names of the two Greek
gods. Neumann describes Hölderlin as the synthesis of these two artistic impulses much
as Nietzsche will describe tragedy as the synthesis of similar drives. This synthesis in
that will be critical for our study and returned to in an essay Nietzsche writes on Oedipus
As hard as it may be for those who appreciate Nietzsche’s thought to admit that
he copies so much of an essay, an essay on Hölderlin no less, word for word from another
source, we must acknowledge what we learn about Nietzsche’s method here. Brobjer
offers for consideration the fact that Nietzsche’s later criticisms of Kant, Rousseau,
Spinoza and Descartes are all based almost entirely on the reading of secondary, and not
the primary, sources.171 Pinder at one point wonders at Nietzsche’s work on some
Serbian folk songs which Nietzsche claims to have translated, as Nietzsche never has any
opportunity to learn any Serbian at all.172 Nietzsche is clearly not above appropriation or
above making claims about his abilities he cannot support. Whether Nietzsche’s ideas
are born in the isolated confines of his mind without any influence (as if such were
possible), or whether they are the product to a more or less conscious degree of creative
absorption, their value is more in their ability to promote new ways of thinking than in
170
Brobjer (2001b), 403-408.
171
Brobjer (2001b), 401.
172
Young, (2010), 28.
91
about whom he will say very little for the rest of his time at Schulpforta. Brobjer sees no
reason to assume that Hölderlin is not, as Nietzsche will later tell a friend, Nietzsche’s
favorite poet during his Schulpforta years. But he locates Nietzsche’s deep attraction to
as a personality very accessible to Nietzsche, and argues that this biography and
Schopenhauer are “among the most influential books Nietzsche ever read.”173
Unfortunately, as all the gems like Nietzsche’s claim in the essay that Hölderlin writes
“in the purest, Sophoclean language” are cribbed from Neumann, it is hard to see how
Nietzsche may be using Hölderlin to approach and understand the Greeks.174 What is
clear is that Nietzsche gets an assignment done, that he is carefully reading a biography
on Hölderlin, and that he is finding in it ideas about dichotomies and their syntheses that
which no one has found evidence of any borrowing, repeats his earlier valuation of
Gothic poetry as written in a “quiet, clear as gold form” as opposed to the “Sturmdrang”
In a note, not apparently for school, from that same Winter Semester, Nietzsche
shares what an unknown “famous, newer author” has to say about Homer’s poems, which
173
Brobjer (2001b), 402.
174
KGW I/2, 339 and Brobjer (2001b), 410. “in der reinsten, sophokleischen Sprache”
175
KGW I/2, 341. “ruhiger, goldklarer Fassung”; Sturmdrang is a portmanteau of Sturm und Drang or
“storm and stress,” itself the name of a literary movement typified by the early work of Goethe.
92
he considers to be the most glorious.176 A great meaning (Sinn) breathes over the whole
revealing the ruinous consequences of violence and disorder and recommends the force
of moderation and reason, obedience and freedom, heroic courage and martial discipline.
Humans appear as they are and nothing in the plot is superfluous. We are transported
without noticing it. Nietzsche (or the famous writer?) then goes on to discuss the moral
and pedagogic value Homer has for the ancients and how one Greek father has his son
character to give his own opinion? Is he simply noting something he has indeed read
from someone else? Either way, he is reporting a logical unity to the poems of Homer
that resists the tendency to analyze them down into countless fragments, and, citing a
commonplace going back to eighteenth century German classicism, that the characters
seem entirely natural and without artificial embellishment. Even if these are not
one of the inscriptions on Apollo’s Temple at Delphi, “nothing in excess,” (these words
appear three pages earlier in the Complete Critical Edition with a Latin and a German
translation), Nietzsche describes Apollo as one who, through arts and sciences, banned
“brutishness” and moderated morals and nature.178 Such commonplaces about Apollo
176
“berühmter neuerer Schriftsteller”
177
KGW I/2, 362-363.
178
KGW I/2, 385-386. “μηδέν ἄγαν” “Rohheit”
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In the Easter break before the Summer Semester of his fourth year (Upper
Sekunda), we see Nietzsche’s slow break with religion taking a decisive step. In a note
on religion, Nietzsche writes, “The god of each human is the ideal of his or her own self
freed from all inhibitions and earthly influences.”179 Though he perhaps is still not
completely done with religion, this sentiment reveals a profound relativizing of it that
will make any remaining ties strain all the more. An essay written for Germania during
that same Easter Break titled “Fate and History” similarly reveals that a tipping point has
been reached in Nietzsche’s relationship to religion.180 It notes that when one takes a
free, impartial look (which here means one informed by the historical method he is
learning in his philological studies) at Christian doctrine and church history, one could
have many objections, even though the habits and beliefs of youth would strain against
this. He goes on to express the anxiety of a young person taking on the authority of two
millennia and the security of the most intelligent men throughout history. He describes
one who embarks on this path of questioning as one in the middle “of the immeasurable
ocean of ideas” looking hard for solid ground.181 He warns of the great revolutions
possible when the masses first realize that Christianity is based on assumptions.
Nietzsche has dared to ask the questions: “I have attempted to deny everything: oh,
tearing down is easy, but building up!”182 These are poignantly prophetic words for a
179
KGW I/2, 430. “Der Gott jedes Menschen ist das Ideal seines Selbst, befreit von allen Hemmungen u.
tellurischen Einflüssen.”
180
“Fatum und Geschichte”
181
“des unermeßlichen Ideenozeans”
182
“Ich habe alles zu leugnen versucht: o, niederreißen ist leicht, aber aufbauen!”
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philosopher more famous for his problematization of cherished ideas than for the positive
He further describes how morals are the product of time, circumstance and human
need. The problem is arrived at which he calls “infinitely important,” namely “the
question about the rights of the individual in relation to the people, of the people to
humanity, and of humanity to the world.”183 This leads thinkers to the attempt at
universal history, which can only be an abstraction from what is known to what is not.
Looking at the countless ways an individual or a people can be determined by events and
circumstances, Nietzsche wonders if one is not simply “a ball played with by powers
working obscurely.”184 Perhaps, he thinks, free will is nothing more than an aspect of
fate.
World history is then the history of material, if one takes the meaning of this word
infinitely broadly. For there must be even higher principles before which all
differences flow together into a great uniformity, before which all development is
an ascent by grades, everything flows towards a gigantic ocean where all levers of
the world’s development find themselves united, welded together, alone. –185
With the loss of God as the explanatory principle for everything, we see Nietzsche
already looking into an abyss of undifferentiation similar to the one he will find so
appealing in Schopenhauer. He is not only losing all of the assumptions of his Lutheran
religion, he is losing faith in the universal history that has developed alongside German
classicism, and even the concept of free will. In this moment of confessing his existential
183
“unendlich wichtig” “die Frage um Berechtigung des Individuums zum Volk, des Volkes zur
Menschheit, der Menschheit zur Welt.”
184
“ein Spielball dunkel wirkender Kräfte”
185
KGW I/2, 431-437. “Weltgeschichte ist dann Geschichte der Materie, wenn man die Bedeutung dieses
Wortes unendlich weit nimmt. Denn es muß noch höhere Principien geben, vor denen alle Unterschiede in
eine große Einheitlichkeit zusammenfließen, vor denen alles Entwicklung, Stufenfolge ist, alles einem
ungeheuren Ozeane zuströmt, wo sich alle Entwicklungshebel der Welt wiederfinden, vereinigt,
verschmolzen, alleins. –“
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crisis to his friends, we see Nietzsche really starting to cope with an enormous conceptual
hole. It is only natural that he would seek something to fill it. Remarkably, we do not
see him turn to any solution just yet. It seems this loss, and perhaps its mourning, will
require some time before Nietzsche is ready to replace it. As R.J. Hollingdale puts it in
his biography on Nietzsche, “it is noteworthy that his disillusionment with Christianity
and religion has not led him to some other dogmatism or orthodoxy.”186 This existential
hole could be filled at least in part with ideas about the Greeks and art that Nietzsche
with a classicism that throws Nietzsche passionately at the Greeks to find guidance for
During the Summer Semester of his fourth year (Upper Sekunda), the only place
Nietzsche writes anything that may relate to his possible thoughts on the Greeks’ value
for modernity is a curious composition called “Euphorion Chap. 1.”187 Before we look at
its content, let us ask, to whom does this “Euphorion” refer or allude? Aeschylus has a
son named Euphorion who defeats both Sophocles and Euripides in dramatic contests.
at Antioch.188 What should seem most likely is Euphorion, the son of Faust and Helena,
in Part II of Goethe’s Faust. This boy is modeled on a son of Achilles and Helen
reported by Ptolemaios Chennos to have had wings and been struck dead by a bolt of
186
Hollingdale (1999), 25.
187
“Euphorian Cap. I”
188
Hornblower and Spawforth (1999), 570.
189
Trunz, Erich (2005), 688.
96
Lord Byron, a favorite author of Nietzsche’s at this time, as well as the product of the
marriage between Greek beauty and German longing – auspicious connotations for our
study.
However, we are not even quite sure if the narrator of the story is Euphorion, and
if he is, he bears no resemblance to any of the possible antecedents listed above. The
narrator is a physician who lives across from a nun, whom he has studied intimately and
made fat. He is waiting for her brother, whom he has made thin, to die so that he can
dissect him. But first he needs to write his life story which has the virtue of making
young people old. He is confident it will be read by his wandering Doppelgänger. This
ends with a quotation mark, to which there is no corresponding mark to indicate where
the quote has begun. After another sentence about Euphorion’s (?) spinal disease the
page and a half composition ends. 190 One would be hard pressed to find anything in this
revealing Nietzsche’s views on the value of the Greeks other than that he selects the
name Euphorion for the piece and (probably?) for the main character in it.
Let us now summarize Nietzsche’s relationship to the Greeks during his two years
classicism – Shakespeare and Byron – and that Nietzsche specifically cites the value of
Shakespeare to his universal (which for him means encyclopedic) Bildung. This
consideration of these authors, however, does not reflect on or show any interest in the
Greeks, and his discussion of Byron compares him only with Gothic poetry, which
Nietzsche still holds is the ideal of poetic clarity. He also shows enthusiasm for
Hölderlin in an essay and even relates him to the Greeks, but only in material copied
190
KGW I/2, 446-447.
97
from a biography, making it difficult to determine what his own thought on the value of
Hölderlin for approaching the Greeks may be, if he sees any. Nietzsche’s reading of the
biography on Hölderlin does seem, however, to clearly present him some dichotomies
that are likely determinant in his later formulation of the Apollo and Dionysus duality. A
major shift in Nietzsche’s relationship to the Greeks, as evidenced by the letters and other
writings of his two years in the Sekunda, is that we no longer see creative works inspired
by or based on Greek material, unless his Euphorion fragment could be considered such,
which would be rather hard to argue. He is now working through his religious and
existential issues with essays for school and for Germania. In those essays, we see major
themes from German classicism, the Climate and Lebensalter Theories, but they are used
in ways that not only do not elevate nor privilege the Greeks, but they are used to argue
that the Judeo-Christian tradition is the savior of civilization’s arts and sciences in
discussions that never even name the Greeks. These essays also clearly express a tipping
point in Nietzsche’s rejection of his childhood religion as having power to explain life
and make it all the more conspicuous that he does not turn to German classicism to fill
The instruction Nietzsche receives in Greek at Schulpforta in his fifth year (Lower
Prima) continues the study of the Iliad, and adds Sophocles’ Ajax and the first three of
and written composition. In Latin he still reads plenty of Cicero but is also assigned
Tacitus and Horace. He continues verbal and written exercises and composes more
98
essays in Latin. History moves back to the Middle Ages for a one-semester review in the
winter and then to modern history for a one-semester review in the summer.191
At the beginning of the new semester, Nietzsche writes down a brief note on his
literary and musical activities, noting that he “began Schiller’s Aesthetic Education etc. at
Pforta.” 192 This is the first clear statement we have from Nietzsche that he is reading
he may have read or at least heard a discussion of Lessing’s Wie die Alten den Tod
gebildet while at the Domgymnasium and he has made use of the Climate and Lebensalter
Humanity in a Series of Letters (1794) or, if what he means by “etc.” is that he is reading
any of his other aesthetic theory, or if it means other aesthetic theory in general.193
Also in early October 1862 Nietzsche composes ten epigrams in Latin, most
likely for school. None of them reflect on the value of Greek art, but they do demonstrate
the effects of a classical education, and they return to personal themes Nietzsche has
worked on before through Greek material. Four epigrams are on Greek figures and six on
Roman ones. The Greeks are Solon, Andromache, Cassandra, and Antigone, making
three out of four of them literary figures he most likely knows best from Homer,
Aeschylus and Sophocles. The epigram on Solon is a request for him to come with his
political wisdom back from the grave to Nietzsche’s time: “We entreat you, just Solon
191
Bohley (2007), 223-226.
192
KGW I/3, 3. “fieng in Pforte Schillers aesthetische Erziehung usw. an.”
193
Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen
99
[….] Return and behold new times!”194 Though Nietzsche does not demonstrate here the
belief that Greek art could benefit the present, perhaps his political interests might
encourage him to think that the present could benefit from some Greek political thinking.
The epigram on Andromache presents her transitory bliss at a moment when she still has
both her husband and her son, a bliss that is tragic as it is given to her, and, by
implication, will be taken aware from her, by an “ungenerous fate.”195 This epigram
reminds us of his work on the Iliad from his last year at the Domgymnasium which also
focused on her before she sees her husband die. Both of these approaches to the
Andromache character may have personal importance for Nietzsche, whose mother was
(from the Agamemnon) in Latin verse and also focuses on “unkind fate.”196 With
Antigone, Nietzsche returns to his thoughts on the proper boundary between humans and
gods, writing of Creon’s law, “What obtuse arrogance it is to contend with Jupiter the
king,/ Who sits in eternal, divine authority, moving all!”197 He then moves back in an
even more Christian direction, pointing out how the death of the body, or the “human,” is
ameliorated by the idea that the “soul” lives on under the protection of the gods, an idea
that is certainly not present in the Antigone, where the physical remains are the
194
KGW I/3, 15. “Te nos, juste Solo, precimur [….] Redeas, tempora cerne nova!”
195
“fata maligna”
196
“Parca maligna”
197
“Cum Jove qui stolidus rege est contendere fastus/ Qui sedet aeterno numine cuncta movens!”
198
KGW I/3, 16. “humana” “mens”
100
“Interpretation and Translation of the First Stasimon of Ajax with a Brief Foreword.”199
It is about 10 pages in the Complete Critical Edition, written in Latin and handling
material quoted in Greek followed by a prose and then a verse translation of the stasimon
into German. 200 The work shows the developing philological skills of the eighteen year-
old Nietzsche. The majority of the essay consists of plot summary and conjectures on
why things happen in the way and order they do. For example, early in the essay,
Nietzsche argues why we hear from the chorus before we hear from Ajax’s wife. He
argues that Athena has just calmed the audience and that Sophocles’ always “avoids
severe changes,” so the chorus, in a calmer state than Ajax’s wife, must speak next.201
He does not establish this rule he lays down about Sophocles’ style with any source or
After the first few quotes in Greek which are not analyzed but serve only to help
his plot summary, we see Nietzsche engaging in some more technical philological
techniques. He takes issue “with the usual construction” of some lines.202 He argues he
has “nowhere come across” the Greek word for “victory” in relation to hunting but
“everywhere” in relation to battle.203 Though his language here indicates that his
authority for limiting the semantic range of this word is his wide reading, rather than
199
“Primi Ajacis stasimi Interpretio et versio cum brevi praefatione”
200
KGW I/3, 65-75.
201
KGW I/3, 67. “abhorreat a mutationibus in extremum”
202
“cum constructione […] vulgari”
203
“nego usquam inveniri” “νίκη” “ubique”
101
citing other passages from Sophocles or other authors he only cites dictionaries for
support.204 In the next few pages, he explains how two particles and a conjunction [γάρ,
γε, and ἀλλά] affect the reading at specific points, constituting the closest textual reading
of the passage. He then goes on to discuss two adverbs in one passage and how it is
unusual, and therefore textually problematic, for two adverbs to be used with one verb.205
The discussion of the adverbs and the earlier observations on “victory” constitute the
extent of his attempt at textual criticism in the essay. Towards the end of the essay, right
before his translations of the stasimon, he mentions how the meter of a phrase expresses
the inner state of the chorus.206 The relation of emotion to poetic text will continue to be
important up to Birth.
What we see in this essay is that Nietzsche is being exposed to some sophisticated
method, though he is not yet putting them to coherent or effective use in an essay that
offers little more than plot summary and conjecture on the order of the plot’s elements.
This essay on the Ajax is soon followed by a text which does discuss art and
aesthetic theory. This text, however, is all about music. Though it features reflective
distance from its subject, discussing how subjective response to and perception of music
204
KGW I/3, 69.
205
KGW I/3, 70-72.
206
KGW I/3, 72.
207
KGW I/3, 80-82.
102
At the end of the Winter Semester, Nietzsche is assigned an essay for his Easter
exams addressing the prompt, “Explain Goethe’s Maxim: ‘Proverbs characterize nations,
but must be native to them.’”208 Nietzsche’s discussion takes a Herderian angle, arguing
that cultural productions can reflect that a nation has grown naturally into its current
state, showing that he is familiar with such ideas from Weimar Classicism and can
converse in them to make a point.209 Whether he believes these ideas or not, or whether
he is even interested in them, cannot be established with this essay. Its contents are not
found in a letter to Pinder or Krug or in a private composition, but are written in response
to a very specific exam question for school. His argument is also to a large extent
contained in the quote from Goethe in the essay prompt already, and the fact that he is
assigned to address a quote from Goethe that is already Herderian to begin with makes it
less interesting that Nietzsche employs ideas from German Classicism. What needs to be
pointed out for this study is that Nietzsche is learning the theories produced by the
leading minds of Weimar Classicism and that he is being assigned to engage with them.
hard to assess how much Nietzsche is adopting these ideas as his own.
Semester of his fifth year (Lower Prima) does not feature any reflection on the value of
Greek tragedy, but does remind us that, now in the Prima, Nietzsche is engaging much
more with tragedy.210 It is followed by notes on the archaic poets, Callinus, Tyrtaeus,
208
“Wie ist der goethische Spruch zu erklären: ‘Sprichwort bezeichnet Nationen,/ Mußt aber unter ihnen
wohnen.’”
209
KGW I/3, 95-99.
210
KGW I/3, 122-125.
103
Mimnermus, Sappho, and Anakreon, featuring very close discussion and some translation
of the Greek texts.211 Nietzsche here again demonstrates the high level of skill he is
increasingly able to bring to his engagement with ancient Greek materials. This is one of
Nietzsche’s earliest engagements with archaic Greek thought, whether by his choice or
by assignment.
engagement with Greek literature that also reveals how many different tragedies he has
been reading this year.212 It consists of the same kind of summary and interpretation as
the Ajax essay without any philological analysis of the Greek text. According to the
information Reiner Bohley is able to gather from the Annual Reports at Schulpforta from
1859 to 1865, only the Ajax is assigned to be read that year, so the Agamemnon appears
to be independent reading for Nietzsche.213 His epigram on Antigone, due to its strange
focus on the eternal protection of human souls by the gods, would not seem to indicate
that he has worked closely with that tragedy by Sophocles. At any rate, Nietzsche is
using his free study time at Schulpforta to read more Greek tragedies than are being
In two letters to his mother written in the first half of May 1863, Nietzsche asks
for advice on what he should study when he moves on to a university in a year and a half,
as he has not yet made up his mind. “The decision is not coming automatically of what I
211
KGW I/3, 125-131.
212
KGW I/3, 175-177.
213
Bohley (2007), 221. Jahresberichte
104
should study.”214 From one angle, this could be read as a first, gentle move by Nietzsche
to let his mother know that he is no longer set on following in his father’s (and uncles’,
and both grandfathers’, etc.) footsteps to become a pastor, to let her know that he could
pastor, other than the religious doubts that have already been discussed above, but if he is
not, this might be a subtle move to let his mother know. Asking her for advice would be
From another angle, his question to his mother could reflect a sincere lack of
certainty on Nietzsche’s part. We have already seen that he has committed himself to a
disciplines and skills. He may still be interested in so many subjects that he simply
cannot decide and wants his mother’s help. This would indicate that he does not have
any deep and exclusive attachment to philology, let alone to the Greeks, that is helping
him chart out his future. We have certainly not seen him express any attachment to the
Greeks or to philology.
His study of the Greeks and the development of his historical-critical philological
skills are just a couple out of many pursuits. In the first of the two letters to his mother
asking for advice on where he should focus, he does write that, “everything seems so
dead to me when I do not hear music.”215 This indicates a real passion, and it is not the
Greeks. Similarly, since he began school, the number of texts and notes he has written on
music and German history and literature has always outnumbered the small number of
214
KGB I/1, 237-240. “Von selbst kommt die Entscheidung nicht, was ich studieren soll.”
215
KGB I/1, 238. “es kommt mire alles todt vor, wo ich nicht Musik höre.”
105
texts dealing with the Greeks. In this fifth year at Schulpforta, he is hard at work on a
drama on the German hero Ermanaric longer and more involved than anything he has yet
composed with Greek subject matter.216 As Curt Paul Janz discusses, for most of
Nietzsche’s years at Schulpforta, he is obsessed with Ermanaric, the Eddas and other
older Germanic literature and material, producing both scholarly and musical works
inspired by them.217 After almost five full years at Schulpforta, the study of the Greeks
has not become Nietzsche’s driving passion, and he has yet to leave a comment in a letter
or elsewhere about any value that studying the Greeks could have for him or others.
Music, Germanic literature and even the existential questions caused by the sincere
religiosity of his earlier youth are all more consuming for him than the Greeks.
Not only has he started to read the Aesthetic Letters at some point, but he is also
working to some degree, first- or second-hand, with Schiller’s essay “On Naïve and
Sentimental Poetry” (1795).218 In one of his most theoretical pieces on aesthetics yet,
explicitly cites Schiller and makes use of his dichotomy between naïve and sentimental
literature – categories Schiller uses to discuss the relation of modern poetry to Greek
poetry. What is contained in the Complete Critical Edition appears to be notes or a very
rough draft for what was to end up a school essay. The fragmentary nature of the notes
makes it hard to tell if Nietzsche has really worked out his ideas on the subject or not. He
offers formulations like, “The naïve, in relation to human Bildung, also in relation to
216
KGW I/3, 52, 54-56, 58-65
217
Janz (1978), 94-96.
218
“Über naive und sentimental Dichtung”
219
“Die Quellen der Naturgenusses”
106
guilt,” which seems to be referring to nature, and shows that, for Nietzsche at this point, a
concept like guilt is not out of place in a discussion of the aesthetic power of nature using
an idea,” showing that he is working with Schiller’s Kantian conceptions, even if he does
not fully understand them.221 Whether Schiller’s theoretical texts have been assigned at
school or not, we see that Nietzsche feels there is some importance to reading them, and
here he makes a cursory attempt to integrate one of them into his own thinking. There is
A document titled “My Life” and dated September 18, 1863 offers us yet another
biography written just before the beginning of Nietzsche’s sixth and final year at
Naumburg, his chief interest was music, which he felt the beginning of his education did
antiquity, or even of ancient languages in this biography written after five years at
Schulpforta and three and a half at the Domgymnasium. In this biography, Nietzsche
does announce an important realization. He discusses how he had wanted earlier to gain
a “universal knowledge” which came to threaten him “with becoming a real muddled-
headed person and dreamer.”223 As we will see, he soon announces what new approach
220
“Das Naive, der menschliche Bildung gegenüber, auch der Schuld gegenüber”
221
KGW I/3, 177-180. “durch eine Idee vermittelt”
222
“Mein Leben”
223
KGW I/3, 189-192. “Universalwissen” “ein rechter Wirrkopf und Phantast zu werden”
107
In his final year at Schulpforta, Nietzsche is assigned for his Greek course, in the
Winter Semester, Sophocles’ Philoctetes, and more of Homer’s Iliad. In the summer he
is assigned either Plato’s Phaedo or the Phaedrus.224 For the whole year he continues
with various exercises and compositions in Greek. In Latin, he reads the six books of
Tacitus’ Annals, eight of the poems from Book I of Horace’s Satires, two from Book II,
and, of course, yet more Cicero, while continuing with exercises, small compositions and
essays. His history course returns to antiquity with the Greeks in the Winter Semester
An essay assigned him at school, “On that which Attracts, Cultivates, and
Teaches that is Found for Youths in the Consideration of Patriotic History,” confirms,
above all, the intentions and biases of Schulpforta.226 The topic indicates that it is already
accepted by his teacher, and should be accepted by all pupils, that the history of one’s
own country has attractive, formative and educative virtues. It is simply up to the pupils
to identify and elaborate on them. Any statements of Nietzsche’s indicating these beliefs
must be read in light of how these biases are already built into the assignment. In a
that there is not a “[more] profound and more brilliant teacher” than history for providing
“the thorough, complete Bildung of someone wise about the world, of an orator, or of a
224
The text is simply indicated with the abbreviation “Plat. Phaed.” We will see him repeatedly teaching
the Phaedo in Basel, but he also often uses imagery from the Phaedrus, including in the Lectures on
Bildung. See KSA 1, 730.
225
Bohley (2007), 223-226.
226
“Ueber das Anziehende, Bildende, Belehrende, das für den Jüngling in der Beschäftigung mit der
vaterländischen Geschichte liegt”; Bildend is the present, active participial form of bilden used here as a
substantive.
108
statesman.”227 Though he does not say that the study of history develops all of one’s
faculties, he is arguing that it is the single best discipline for providing a thorough
Bildung. Of course it is one’s own national history, not the study of the Greeks, that
Nietzsche is arguing can provide this. How committed he is to this idea is hard to tell
given that it is expressed in a rather directed essay to be graded for school, but he is at
least comfortable portraying himself holding his own national history higher than the
Greeks as the best single object of study for the most thorough education.228
Does Nietzsche argue for any value in the study of the history of “other
peoples?”229 Value is harder to gain from the study of foreign history because “we lack
on our side the warm, full devotion, the affinitive attraction.”230 Foreign history lacks
“everything shared” and “no similar drop of blood ran in their veins; these habits appear
unnatural to us, that moral ugly.”231 Eventually after long, committed familiarization it is
possible that one “feels the exotic as no longer exotic,” but the study of one’s own
national history is clearly more rewarding and effective.232 The study of the ancient
Greeks, it would seem, could not have nearly the same value as German history.
In the same Winter Semester, Nietzsche writes an essay addressing the question
“To What Extent was Exile from one’s Fatherland among the Greeks and Romans as a
227
“tiefsinnige und geistvollere Lehrmeisterin” “die gründliche Durchbildung eines Weltweisen, eines
Redners, eines Staatsmannes”
228
KGW I/3, 292-293.
229
“andrer Völker”
230
“es fehlt von unsrere Seite die warme, volle Hingebung, der verwandtschaftliche Zug”
231
“alles Gemeinsame” “kein gleicher Tropfen Blutes rollte in ihren Adern; unnatürlich erscheint uns diese
Gewohnheit, häßlich jene Sitte”
232
KGW I/3, 293-297. “das Fremdartige nicht mehr als fremdartige empfindet”
109
does not offer us any clues of the possible value he may see in the study of the Greeks,
and the essay has nothing to do with art, but it does show us that, at least with this
assignment, Schulpforta is making its pupils think about practices in their time in relation
to antiquity.234
offers a striking sign of his rapidly developing philological skill, his “The First Choral
Song in Oedipus Rex.”235 It is written in Latin, Greek and German, not as translations
repeating the same material, but with different work presented in each of the languages.
Like his other work on Greek tragedy from the previous year, it offers no reflection on
the value of the Greeks or their art. It is, however, a far more impressive piece than his
earlier work on the Ajax, showing either that he has been significantly expanding his
philological skills in the past year, or that he has put a greater amount of effort into this
After the Latin preface, the section in Greek is, similar to the earlier work on the
Ajax, summary with commentary. Not only is this section composed in Greek, it is far
more sophisticated than the earlier Ajax essay. The Greek section contains two parts, the
first of which is the story behind the tragedy, which, like his earlier work, contains a lot
of information and ideas not contained within the text at hand and not cited as from any
other source. The second part of the Greek section offers Nietzsche’s thesis that Oedipus
233
“Inwiefern war die Verbannung aus dem Vaterlande bei den Griechen und Römern in der Regel eine
viel härtere Strafe, als sie es bei den europäischen Völkern der Jetztzeit ist?”
234
KGW I/3, 309-313.
235
“Primum Oedipodis regis carmen choricum”
110
suffers a divinely caused destiny, not in any way chosen through his own agency, which
leads to an improvement in the moral world order. In his essay on the Ajax, Nietzsche
does not rely on other ancient texts to ground the views he expresses. Here, he cites
Sophocles’ Philoctetes to support his argument as he also sees Philoctetes as one who
also suffers from divine intervention in order to improve the moral world order. To
where Oedipus’ eventual gravesite is beneficial to the community hosting it.236 Thus,
Nietzsche is reading Oedipus Rex within the context of at least two other tragedies, both
In the next section, in German, he begins by discussing the effect and plan of the
tragedy, restating his thesis from the Greek section about Oedipus’s suffering and being a
moral benefit and going on to outline the tragedy in a symmetrical structure centered on
the conversation between Oedipus and Jocasta as the high point.237 One sentence of this
discussion has received attention before as it relates directly to The Birth of Tragedy:
It is interesting, by the way, that even the highest aesthetic pleasure does not blind
the judgment of the Athenians against the ethical and religious elements, so that
they always keep the religious origin of tragedy in sight. The effects of their
theatrical ideas were for that reason neither those of our stages nor those of our
churches, but they were a mix of both wound into one.238
Nietzsche is addressing, though not yet in detail, the origins of Greek tragedy;
here they are religious and ethical. He also places the Greek conceptions of theater as
236
KGW I/3, 333-334.
237
KGW I/3, 334-336.
238
KGW I/3, 335. See also Cancik (1995), 8. “Interessant ist übrigens, daß auch der höchste aesthetische
Genuß das Urtheil der Athener nicht gegen die ethischen und religiösen Momente verblendete, daß sie den
religiösen Ursprung der Tragoedie immer im Auge behielten; die Wirkungen ihrer theatralischen
Vorstellungen waren deshalb weder die unserer Bühnen, noch die unsrer Kirchen, aber sie waren aus
beiden gemischte und in eins geschlungene.”
111
something between modern theater entertainment and religious ritual. What is interesting
for us is that Nietzsche is proposing tragedy as a form of entertainment that can serve at
least part of the function of modern religion, most likely prompted by a familiarity with
Wagnerian theory through Krug.239 He has not yet proposed German classicism or any
similar project as a replacement for the religious faith he has lost. His statement here,
however, may indicate that, if he does not consciously believe such now, he is at least
formulating Greek tragedy in such a way that it could give purpose to modern life.
The next portion of his German section deals with the prologue of the tragedy.
He describes it in terms of the overture that precedes a modern opera, giving the chords
and motifs that will be explored in more depth during the tragedy. Sophocles, he argues
is the best at doing this, though he finds Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet
critical approach to the text; Nietzsche cites nothing like vocabulary, grammar, variants
The final portion of the German section goes into further reflection on “the choral
music of the tragedy” by looking at the first choral song in Oedipus Rex.241 This section
has also received attention before, but some details must be emphasized for our
239
We will discuss Nietzsche’s cultural interactions with Krug in the section on Germania below. What is
important here is that much of Krug’s contribution to Germania deals with music and specifically with
Wagner’s theories. Upon his suggestion, the society subscribes, from its founding, to the Zeitschrift für
Musik, a Wagnerian periodical. See Janz (1978), 90 and Borchmeyer (1994), 1223-1224.
240
KGW I/3, 336-337.
241
“die chorische Musik der Tragoedie”
112
consideration later.242 Nietzsche argues that Greek tragedy originates out of lyric united
with musical elements. Though he does not explicitly or implicitly link lyric to Apollo,
which he could, or music to Dionysus, which could also be legitimately done, we see yet
another dichotomy that will flow into the one that structures much of his argument in
Aeschylus, with the intervening dialog often only serving to introduce new motifs and re-
direct the mood of the chorus. He argues that music is indispensible to tragedy “when it
mostly musical where the action is minimal and “the lyrical feeling” is everything.244
Where he previously opposes the lyrical to the musical, Nietzsche now uses
“lyrical” to refer to the musical elements of tragedy. Why he does this is not clear,
though as the lyrical poetry that predates tragedy consists of poetic verbalizations
accompanied by instrumental music, the term could be used to refer to either music or
text. After presenting this idea that the lyrical (now musical), aspect must dominate the
action, he says, “out of this we comprehend why Aristotle names Euripides the ‘most
tragic.’”245 Nietzsche’s view that Euripides has the most correctly tragic proportion of
music over action and that Aeschylus goes too far in letting the music dominate the
242
See Cancik (1995), 8-9.
243
“wenn sie einen wirklich tragischen Eindruck machen sollte”
244
“die lyrische Empfindung”
245
Even though Aristotle is not actually discussing the relationship of music to text in making this
pronouncement. KGW I/3, 340. “hieraus begreifen wir, weshalb Euripides von Aristotles der
τραγικώτατος genannt wird”
113
dialog will have to be modified, of course, for the argument of Birth as we see in Chapter
3.
As Nietzsche continues, we begin to see clearly how his argument here about
tragedy is personal. He has already made clear that he is passionate about music. Now
he is having a chance in his schoolwork to propose and defend the importance of music,
even to a classical philologist. He argues that tragedians are not just Dichter, a lofty
enough vocation, but they are also musical composers.246 In fact, “they were both so that
one went hand in hand with the other.”247 Nietzsche here raises the nobility of musical
composition, which he has long felt, to the level of the nobility of Greek tragedy as it is
the choreography, scenery and other elements, so that in their works they produce “what
the newest musical school” calls “the ideal of the ‘Artwork of the Future’.”248 This is a
term straight out of Richard Wagner’s self-descriptive lexicon. This makes clear that
Nietzsche is consciously thinking about Wagner’s musical theory here in his discussion
of Sophoclean tragedy. He makes this even more explicit by naming him directly when
saying that no modern attempts at opera except for “the brilliant reform plans and deeds
of R. Wagner” ensure that the music corresponds to the feelings expressed in the
libretto.249
One of the key elements of Wagner’s theory of opera is the proper relationship of
text to music, which we have already seen Nietzsche considering in his discussion of
246
Dichter can be translated as either poet or author and can have a connotation of excellence.
247
“sie waren beides so, daß eins mit dem andern Hand in Hand gieng”
248
“was die neueste musikalische Schule” “das Ideal des ‘Kunstwerk der Zukunft’”
249
KGW I/3, 341-342. “die genialen Reformpläne und Thaten R. Wagners”
114
tragedy’s origin in both lyric and musical elements. As we will see in more detail in
Chapter 3, by the 1860s, Wagner believes that music should be the dominant element of
modern opera just as Nietzsche argues is the case with ancient tragedy. Wagner is here
already shaping Nietzsche’s ideas on tragedy by inducing him to think about it as the
combination of text and music. We see Nietzsche happily using this Wagnerian idea to
explore his passion for music within the rather textual bounds of classical philology.
Greeks that here begins with Nietzsche’s own interest in music and need to find a way to
In the Latin section of this essay, Nietzsche first discusses the gods and plague in
the choral song and then the composition of the song. In the discussion on the gods, both
Apollo and Dionysus, among others, are discussed. They serve no philosophical agenda
as they do in Birth and are in no way aligned with the dichotomies of lyric v. action, lyric
appeared so far in our study. They are described in conventional terms any nineteenth
century philologist can easily accept. In the discussion of the plague, Nietzsche makes an
argument about the date of composition for the tragedy before the plague at the beginning
much less detailed than similar ones found in Seneca, Ovid and Thucydides, and that, had
it been composed after the plague, it would have been described “with more lifelike
colors.”250 Nietzsche also uses Shakespeare to show that, on the other hand, other artists
250
“cum […] vividioribus coloribus”
115
plague). In describing the arrangement of the choral song, Nietzsche lays it out as a
paean in the first strophe and antistrophe, a lament in the second strophe and antistrophe,
and another paean in the final strophe and antistrophe. This structure places the
description of the plague at its center point, returning to the dominance of symmetrical
structures Nietzsche has been arguing for in Sophocles and in tragedy in general.251
In the next ten pages of his Latin section, Nietzsche really flexes his historical-
critical muscles, reading through a lengthy list of words and phrases in the choral song,
doing simultaneous hermeneutic and textual critical work. For example, where he has
only used the dictionary to support an argument about the usage of a single noun in his
Ajax paper, Nietzsche here appeals to other plays by Sophocles as well as Hesiod,
Homer, Pindar, Bacchylides, multiple plays by Aeschylus and Euripides, Xenophon, and
Plato to argue for the correct reading of many words and phrases. In using these other
authors, he almost always pulls in more than one source at a time to support his proposed
reading. This much broader familiarity with Greek usage not only gives weight to his
Here are some examples for the technically minded. Nietzsche appeals to this
broad base of Greek usage to argue that what Hellenistic critics took to be a substantive is
really an exclamation, and he uses this support to decide between two opinions on the
meaning of a verb based on the case of its object. In a virtuosic flash of boldness, he
disputes the reading of two modern critics by opting for the simplest meaning of a word,
ἀκτή – which he describes as “the place where waves of the sea break,” and then cleverly
reinserts this stripped-down meaning back into its metaphorical usage in Sophocles
251
KGW I/3, 345-353.
116
(where he has it refer to an altar against which the floods of evils and toils are breaking)
calling on the support of scholia, Aeschylus and Xenophon to produce a simpler, more
elegant and more meaningful reading than that produced by the other two moderns who
A very important aspect of this last reading is that Nietzsche invokes his aesthetic
sense as authority. In asking why these modern critics do not opt for the “real meaning of
the word,” he notes that it fits so “beautifully” into the passage.253 He relies multiple
between the adjective being discussed and another adjective that he just cannot
relinquish.254 He argues against a reading of another passage citing the fact that Homer
uses two adjectives interchangeably based on metrical demands primarily because this
reading “does not please him” at all as it does not accurately, in his opinion, describe the
supports with the help of Aeschylus that allows him to keep the beautiful parallelism.256
This level of technical ability and confidence in his own aesthetic sense is far, far beyond
252
Liddell and Scott define ἀκτή primarily as a “headland, foreland, promontory.” “locus, ubi maris aestus
fraguntur”
253
“genuinam vim vocabuli” “pulcre”
254
“pulcrum”
255
“non mihi placet”
256
KGW I/3, 353-362.
117
At the end of his discussion of the Greek text, Nietzsche turns to the phrase “the
among the ancients of a sound emitting light with appeals to Plato, Euripides and
Bacchylides. Then he follows this with a discussion in German that expands the
and Hölderlin. He further supports this thesis on how universal such poetic practice is
with a quasi-scientific argument that sight and sound are related the same way in which
taste and smell are.258 He finishes this argument by noting that, in current musical
discussions, the opposite, describing the effects of musical tones with vocabulary about
light and sight, occurs regularly.259 Here we clearly see Nietzsche using German
classicists to help him think about a Greek text, though not in a discussion about the
value of the Greeks for Nietzsche or for any other modern. Note well, this is his first
clear, original connection drawn between the Greeks and modern German art and
thought.
What this essay shows first and foremost is, again, a precipitate improvement in
Nietzsche’s philological ability, or his willingness to perform such hard work on paper,
or both. This essay is not, however, about how the Greeks offer any cultural salvation to
moderns, though we do finally, clearly see a connection between ancient and modern art,
especially in the discussion of the relationship of music and text inspired by Wagner.
Julian Young is right to argue “that far from Wagner hijacking Nietzsche’s first book
257
“παιὰν δὲ λάμπει”
258
This is reminiscent of, though not necessarily dependant on, Herder’s argument in his Plastik (1778) that
sight is originally bound to touch.
259
KGW I/3, 362-363.
118
through force of personality,” some of the direction of the argument of Birth is indeed
adumbrated here. When Young reads this early thinking on Wagner and tragedy,
culture theme,” he is overstating his case.260 Nietzsche believes that Greek tragedy as
originally practiced is musical, that the musical motifs in it corresponds to the emotions
of the text, and that Wagner is the only modern doing something similar. This allows
him to bring his love of music into his philological work for school. He also believes that
the Future.” Possibly most interesting, we can see that Nietzsche’s thinking on Greek art
is being directly influenced by Wagner’s own theories. However we do not yet see here
that art and culture need any savior, and we certainly do not see Wagner proposed as such
a savior.
Greek and modern German poets. This should not be surprising at Schulpforta in the
Symposium to the others in it. This essay leaves even less room for reflections on the
value of the Greeks for modernity than the previous essay on tragedy, working closely
with Plato’s text instead. His basic argument is that the final speech is not to be read as a
correction or rejection of the first five speeches, but that they all build on each other,
260
Young (2010), 40.
119
leading up to the final speech.261 What is significant about this essay is that it is on the
Symposium, and we learn from a list Nietzsche has drawn up earlier in the Winter
Semester that this is one of the texts Nietzsche is reading most.262 In the last biography
he is soon to write at Schulpforta, he calls the Symposium his “favorite literary work.”263
Here is clear evidence that Nietzsche has developed a strong affection for a Greek work,
specifically a Platonic dialog, which he calls literature without qualification. This work
is one that explicitly deals with aesthetic issues, though Nietzsche offers no thoughts on
That final biography of Nietzsche’s youth is written as a bequest left at his school,
and this public nature of the document should be kept in mind as it is examined. He
names two turning points in his life: the death of his father and his transfer to
Schulpforta. As he has in his most recent biography, he again discusses his quest for
“universal knowledge” upon entering Schulpforta and that everything, except for math,
interests him equally. He promises that as he heads to the university, he will fight the
tendency towards “a trivializing knowledge of many things” while promoting the drive
“to take a detail back to its deepest and widest foundations.”264 Perhaps his earlier
request to his mother to help him decide on a field for university study was a part of this
process of narrowing his focus. It may also be the case that he is being influenced by the
261
KGW I/3, 384-388.
262
KGW I/3, 299.
263
KGW I/3, 419. “Lieblingsdichtung”
264
KGW I/3, 415-419. “einem verflachenden Vielwissen” “das Einzelne auf seine tiefsten und weitesten
Gründe zurückzuführen”
120
In this biography he does finally claim that there has grown in him increasingly
an “inclination for classical studies; I recall with the most pleasant remembering the first
impressions of Sophocles, Aeschylus and above all Plato in my favorite literary work, the
Symposium, then the Greek lyric poets.”265 This is all he has to say about his study of the
Greeks, but it is more than he has said about it yet in any of his many earlier biographies!
Despite the fact that this essay is assigned as a bequest to remain at Schulpforta, the
affection for the Symposium does seem genuine, based on the interest in it Nietzsche has
already expressed. His exploration of music in Greek poetry also seems to indicate the
development of a real interest in tragedy and lyric, two forms of poetry originally
However, he says nothing else about the Greeks or about his study of them in this
biography. Within this one sentence there is nothing here to indicate that his six years at
Schulpforta has caused Nietzsche to “love” the Greeks or to enter into in an “immediate,
living, even passionate relationship” with them as Janz claims on the basis of this
biography.266 He shows no passion for them, he does not hold them up as singular and
exemplary, nor does he indicate any need modern culture may have for the Greeks. Upon
121
learning at Schulpforta through a study of the archaic Greek poet, Theognis of Megara.
In the 1860s, the majority of pupils at Schulpforta write their graduating theses in
German, but Nietzsche chooses to write his in Latin.267 He writes a letter to Pinder and
Krug on the 12th of June, 1864, telling them that he plans to write on Theognis and has
“won a new perspective for the consideration of this man” and has in fact a different
perspective “in most points” from the usual views, having already thoroughly studied
“the best materials” on the topic.268 He asks them to help him by securing a dissertation
on Theognis recently written, without which he cannot begin his study.269 They do not
get the dissertation for him, as is clear from a letter from the 4th of July in which he
thanks Pinder for trying to get “the book” and wishing he really would have.270 In this
Paul Deussen has just graduated from Schulpforta in the spring. He and
Nietzsche become friends in the fall of Nietzsche’s second year at Schulpforta. They
soon came to call each other “Du,” where the formal is usual between pupils at
Schulpforta.272 Nietzsche writes him on the 8th of July, announcing he has just completed
the last page of his theses, making the total time of composition five days, and noting that
267
Hoyer (2002), 152.
268
“einen neuen Standpunkt bei der Betrachtung dieses Mannes errungen” “in den meisten Punkten” “die
besten Sachen”
269
KGB I/1, 282-284
270
“das Buch”
271
“Meine Theognisarbeit habe ich heute morgen begonnen.”
272
Janz (1978), 83-84.
122
it will be sixty pages or more when written out in fair copy (it fills forty-four pages of the
Complete Critical Edition, nine pages more than his Oedipus paper).273
“On Theognis of Megara” consists of three sections. 274 The first establishes the
historical context of Theognis’s time, the second explores the poems attributed to him,
and the third examines Theognis’s views on gods, morality and public affairs as
expressed in the poems. Going against current and ancient opinion, Nietzsche argues that
Theognis’ poems are not normative and are not written for moral education. The modern
foil he respectfully challenges with this thesis is Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker, a pioneer in
the field of archeology who is for a time the tutor to Humboldt’s children and is, at the
time of Nietzsche’s writing this study, a highly respected professor at the University of
Bonn. Nietzsche specifically appreciates Welcker’s work in collecting and combining all
of the ancient sources, rejecting some and improving others and judging “more precisely
and correctly” than previous editors.275 Interestingly, he praises Welcker as the first to
offer a “new and correct” understanding “of the popular use of the Greek words for
‘good’ and ‘bad’.”276 He honors Welcker as one who “holds by rights his first place until
now” on the subject of Theognis, but Nietzsche cannot follow him in assigning a gnomic,
Theognis as “a most strict moral teacher,” giving Welcker long-respected support for his
views and making Nietzsche’s proposition all the more daring.278 Still, at one point,
273
KGB I/1. 289-292.
274
“De Theognide Megarensi”
275
“accuratius et rectius”
276
“novum rectumque” “de usu verborum ἀγαθός et κακός civili”
277
KGW I/3, 420-421. “adhuc suo jure primum obtinet locum”
123
Nietzsche goes so far as to say of Welcker that his reading “does not square with the
historical method.”279
In the first section of the study, Nietzsche examines various ancient sources,
including the Suda, to arrive at his chronology for Theognis, establishing him as a poet
living in Megara in the pre-classical period specifically at a time when the lower classes
are infiltrating and displacing the aristocracy to which Theognis belongs. Theognis is
disgusted by the marrying in of plebeians to nobles, by the power the plebeians are
As he has done in his paper on Oedipus Rex, Nietzsche makes use of Goethe.
This time, however, Goethe does not simply provide an example of a modern poet doing
the same thing examined in the ancient source. Goethe gives the methodological
direction Nietzsche follows in his second section where he reads Theognis’ poems.
Goethe explains, in the two large paragraphs Nietzsche quotes in full from him, that he is
unable to any longer consider Theognis a moralist after looking at Theognis’ situation in
Megara. Nietzsche quotes a third paragraph from Goethe to explain that too often we
read ancient texts from within our own contexts and, thus, misunderstand them, a central
tenet of the historical-critical method.281 Nietzsche reveals here, without hesitation, that
both the direction of his reading of Theognis and the way in which he is conducting it
(i.e., reading him within his historical context) are taught to him by Goethe. In being
278
KGW I/3, 433. “magistrum morum severissimum”
279
KGW I/3, 431. “cum rationae historica non quaderet”
280
KGW I/3, 426-429.
281
KGW I/3, 435-436, 440. Nietzsche’s appeal to a German classicist like Goethe to argue for the
ascendant institutional approach in order to argue against reading according to the prejudices of his own
time is the exact kind of irony explored in depth throughout Porter’s Nietzsche and the Philology of the
Future (2000a).
124
willing to include such lengthy quotes from Goethe, he also reveals how comfortable he
is to cite him as a guiding authority, an attitude that would not be entirely out of place at
Classicism. Other commonplaces Nietzsche has put to use before, such as Climate
Theory and the Lebensalter Theory, have no place in this discussion. Nietzsche is not
reverting back to German classicism, but is using its brightest light to argue that his is the
In the third section, Nietzsche lays out Theognis’ views on religion, morality and
public affairs as he finds them in his poems. He offers none of the textual critical
questioning the correctness of the texts to draw from them his worldview. Nietzsche
judges this worldview to be continuous with the earliest worldview of the Greeks passed
down to his time: “Excellence, wealth and honor” can only be recognized when closely
connected.282 That is, religion and morality, for Theognis, are tightly bound to his
political thinking, as the wealthy nobility has long had a contract with the gods to
maintain their fortune and prominence in exchange for piety. Excellence cannot be
recognized without wealth and honor any more than honor can be understood without
282
“virtutem et divitias et honorem”
125
excellence and wealth. For Nietzsche’s Theognis, it is the correct and stable religious
order of the cosmos that the three go together and be proper only to the nobility.
Similarly, time, wealth and a cultivated manner of living are connected and have resulted
the nobility keep the classes separate and keep the plebeians subjected to the
aristocracy.284 As the plebeians become wealthier through maritime trade, not only are
they able to infiltrate noble spheres previously closed to them, but the nobles themselves
become more like the plebeians, abandoning martial skills and virtue for indulgence in
excess. Simply put, the nouveaux riches spoil the stratified order of Theognis’ world, or
provide how-to tips for becoming someone great, they celebrate the ancient, generational
manners of those who simply are great. They are elegies for a lost, noble time:
The old aristocracy however did not survive beyond the Persian Wars. The
transition of wealth to the men of the people destroyed the nobility of blood just
as the generalization of knowledge and art did. With this the elegies of Theognis
lost the basis necessary for their being understood.287
283
“praeceptorum”
284
KGW I/3, 455-459.
285
KGW I/3, 460. “πλοῦτος ἔμιξε γένος”
286
“aristokratische” “ethischen”
287
KGW I/3, 465. “Die alte Aristokratie aber erhielt sich nicht über die Perserkriege hinaus, der Uebergang
des Reichthums zu den Männern des Volkes, ebenso wie die Verallgemeinerung des Wissens und der
Kunst vernichtete den Geblütsadel. Hiermit hatten die Theognideischen Elegien ihre nothwendige Basis
um verstanden zu werden verloren.”
126
kalokagathia with his poems, but is mourning the loss of kalokagathia specifically
through the dissemination of previously aristocratic knowledge and culture among the
lower classes.288 Theognis does not want the education of the masses, he mourns it. We
will later see Nietzsche arguing vehemently against making education more accessible in
the Lectures on Bildung and worrying about the lack of an elite class. It is important to
note at this point the Nietzsche does not interject his own opinion here on what he sees in
it.
As already noted, this study by Nietzsche shows no reflection on how the Greeks
can be used by moderns for their cultural benefit. What little it does say about art and
culture is simply that they are, for Theognis, the preserve of an elite used to exclude the
masses. Anyone familiar with Nietzsche, however, cannot help but notice how similar
this discussion is to that in works like Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and Towards a
Genealogy of Morals (1887).289 Here he praises Welcker and gives him credit for the
correct understanding of the ancient usage of “good” and “evil,” a central insight at the
heart of those works. These later works by Nietzsche will outline a large-scale shift in
Western morals from the good/bad valuations of pagan antiquity to the good/evil
however, only outlines a small, local shift in one region of Greece in a single man’s
lifetime. It is the same kind of shift: the loss of the values of the aristocracy in favor of
288
καλοκαγαθία, a noun form combing adjectives meaning “beautiful” and “good” to denote, originally
among the aristocracy then more generally, the ideal of physical and behavioral perfection.
289
Jenseits von Gut und Böse and Zur Genealogie der Moral
127
those of their former subjects. In fact, Theognis is featured as the “mouthpiece” of Greek
concerned with the Winckelmannian task of using Greek art to create peerless, modern
works, nor with the Humboldtian task of using the Greeks in a program to educate and
develop people. They both look at the Greeks to see how morality shifts over time, how
one set of valuations replaces another. The Greeks are a case study, not an ideal. How,
or why, does Nietzsche swerve off of this trajectory with Birth into concerns and modes
of thought that are nowhere expressed in his years at Schulpforta, nor in a work like
Towards a Genealogy of Morals? This is the question to be answered in the next two
Paul Deussen, announcing that he has finished the last page of the study. What is most
interesting about this letter is that Nietzsche only discusses his work on Theognis for two
paragraphs, giving the bare-bones data on it that may interest a former schoolmate: how
long it took to write, how long it is, a brief outline, and whether he is satisfied with it.
These paragraphs take up less than a fourth of the letter. The rest of the letter is taken up
with a description of his daily routine and the fact that he will soon be joining Deussen as
a university student at Bonn, and it ends with a discussion of music including Nietzsche’s
own compositions.291
290
KSA 5:263. “Mundstück”
291
KGB I/1, 289-292.
128
A letter written four days after the one to Deussen is to Rudolf Buddensieg,
another schoolmate at Schulpforta who has just graduated in the spring. Now that the
writing of his study on Theognis is a few days behind him, he only spends two sentences
mentioning it. He mentions in another sentence that he hopes he will pass his exams.
But this is all shop-talk, and not the purpose of the letter: “And nothing would be more
desirable for me than to express myself about music to you again, to describe to you the
musical state of Schulpforta, and to share with you some things about my own musical
with Pinder and Krug, and is at least an interest he shares with Deussen. After producing
such a lengthy and in-depth discussion of a Greek poet, one with insights central to some
of his best-known works written later, it is music Nietzsche wants to discuss with his
friends. Among his friends at Schulpforta and those back at the Domgymnasium in
This is not to argue that Nietzsche has no interest in the Greeks. As his most
recent biography indicates, he does. Much of his work on Greek authors is on works that
are apparently not assigned for school. In the final assessment of his maturity upon
leaving Schulpforta, the following is said of his work with the Greek language: “As in
proves in his written and oral examinations to have good knowledge.”293 Even if his
technical skills are only adequate, his teachers do notice enthusiasm for the Greek
292
KGB I/2, 292-294. “Und nichts wäre mire erwünschter als mich Ihnen gegenüber wieder einmal über
Musik aussprechen zu können, Ihnen den musikalischen Zustand Schulpfortas zu schildern und Ihnen
einiges über meine eignen musical[ischen] Bestrebungen mitzutheilen.”
293
Hoyer (2002), 152-153. “Wie er in der Klasse stets ein löbliches Interesse für den Gegenstand zeigte,
[… ] so bewährte er bei der schriftlichen und mündlichen Prüfung gute Kenntnisse.”
129
materials in class. Nietzsche clearly does have interest in the Greeks, but there is no
evidence to suggest that this interest is primary for him or more than academic. There is
certainly no evidence that he places any hope in the Greeks to rectify any ills he may be
seeing in his own time after having been educated for the full six years at one of the most
prestigious humanistic Gymnasien shaped by Humboldt’s reforms. The Greeks are still
neither singular nor exemplary for Nietzsche. They are a subject at school for which he
classicism in his final two years at Schulpforta. For the first time we see Nietzsche
Aesthetic Education, though he offers no comment on it. We also see him using
Schiller’s concepts of the naïve and the sentimental in an essay with no connection to the
Greeks. Similarly, we see his first explicit reflections on art and aesthetic theory, though
they are on music and have no relation to the Greeks. In essays tightly directed by their
topics as chosen by his teachers, we see him reflecting on the relation of modern to
ancient practices of exile, on Goethe’s idea that proverbs describe nations, and on the
value of studying German history. In none of these does he privilege the Greeks and only
the essay on exile has anything to do with the Greeks. It is clear that Schulpforta is
indeed pushing him to think about topics important to German classicism, just as it is
clear that none of them produce statements on the singularity or unique value of ancient
The two biographies Nietzsche writes while in the Prima indicate that he begins
school passionate about music without any similar passion for the Greeks, though the
130
second biography, written for and turned into his school, does offer a sentence about his
developing inclination for the Greeks. These biographies let us know that he has a very
wide range of interests and that he is abandoning his previous approach of trying to
master them all and is working hard to focus instead on one thing at a time. A request to
his mother in a letter shows him asking for her thoughts on where he should focus. None
of this indicates any passion for the Greeks that could be driving him at this time. We
also see in one of his two biographies and in a list of what he is reading that he now has a
We do see a brief return to his more youthful practice of using Greek material for
his own creative productions in his Latin epigrams. These show his continuing reflection
on issues from earlier years such as Andromache in the moment before she loses her
husband, and they show a continued tendency to Christianize ancient material when he
makes Antigone about the preservation of souls in heaven. These epigrams also show an
interest in tragedy, as three of the four Greeks he handles are all featured in tragedies.
on Cassandra from the Agamemnon, and especially by his two essays on the Ajax and on
Oedipus Rex. Where the Ajax essay shows developing skill, the Oedipus essay shows
just how philologically talented Nietzsche is and how diligent he can be especially in its
textual critical section which shows both technical dexterity and productive insight.
His graduation thesis on Theognis shows some of the technical skill of the
Oedipus essay, even if it lacks textual critical work, and especially demonstrates his
ability to arrive at original insights through careful reading. These insights seem to be on
131
morality, raising again the question of why Nietzsche turns to the particular form of
classicism central to Birth and the Lectures on Bildung in 1872. For all of this impressive
philological work Nietzsche produces in the Prima, it is not indicative of any classicism,
though it is clear that Nietzsche does have a genuine interest in tragedy, which he already
relates to modern music composition, a fact that presages the sharp turn his relationship
paid to the society for mutual artistic and intellectual improvement Nietzsche forms with
his two friends, Pinder and Krug, while he is at Schulpforta: Germania. That Nietzsche’s
relationship with Pinder is artistically and intellectually stimulating is clear before the
society is created. In a letter to Pinder from February of 1859, Nietzsche asks Pinder
what he is reading and whether he will soon send him his biography. In another letter
that same month, Nietzsche sends Pinder a poem he has written about the way spring has
affected him.294 In a letter from the around the end of March that year, Nietzsche asks
Pinder to send him a topic on which he can write an essay in German, and he sends
drama, he wants to collaborate with Pinder on the project.296 A letter from Pinder in
April promises that he will take on the essay topic Nietzsche recommends and includes a
294
KGB I/1, 46-48.
295
KGB I/1, 55-56.
296
KGB I/1, 60-61.
132
poem for Nietzsche’s evaluation.297 A year later in April of 1860, we see Nietzsche
asking how things are going with Pinder’s plans and whether he has completed multiple
because on it the resolution was made on our monthly submissions and on the joint
account.”299 Nietzsche is clearly enthusiastic about the prospects for his society of three
recently founded. At the time of its founding, as he describes in the August account, he is
visiting his uncle in Gorenzen near Mansfeld in today’s southern Sachsen-Anhalt when
Pinder has come to visit him.300 While in the woods, they sit down to discuss a plan that,
at the time, only includes poetry and “scholarship,” but would come to include music.301
Then in a sentence eliding any personal responsibility, Nietzsche explains that “In regard
head back to his Uncle’s garden, and in a reconciliation which again indicates no
personal fault the plans are finished. On this day, every year, they are to celebrate at the
Rudelsburg, a castle ruin overlooking the Saale southwest of Naumburg and just beyond
297
KGB I/1, 73.
298
KGB I/1, 103-104.
299
“berühmt, weil an ihm der Beschluß zu unsern monatlichen Sendungen und zu der gemeinschaftlichen
Kasse gefasst wurde.”
300
Hödl (1999), 39-40.
301
“Wissenschaft”
302
“Ueber einzelne Forderungen und Bedingungen enstand ein Streit.”
133
Schulpforta. At this celebration, each member, which means Nietzsche, Pinder and
Nietzsche, two years later in September of 1862 offers the clear reminder that each
The submissions begin in August of 1860. Already in November and December, Pinder
neglects to offer his submissions. In August and then October and November of 1861,
Krug neglects to offer his. In May of 1862, none of the three send anything in. From
June until September, when the chronicle is written, Nietzsche is the only one submitting
anything. Accordingly, this chronicle notes that a fine has been instated, against the two
not writing it, for neglected submissions, and it offers a passionate plea for all laziness to
cease so that the society may live up to the noble elements upon which it is founded.304
It would appear it is Nietzsche who feels the need for this society most deeply,
and it also is likely that his passion causes the conflict and silence (for which he
conveniently assigns no blame) on the day of the society’s founding. Pinder and Krug go
as far as they can, but apparently do not feel the need for the benefits of the society as
Nietzsche does. If it is Nietzsche who needs this society most, and the indications point
that way, it is clear that his classical education at Schulpforta is not enough for his
creative and intellectual needs. Germania presents a second outlet for his passions and
History in the Time of the Peloponnesian War.” 305 It is on Greek historiography, not on
303
KGB I/1, 106.
304
KGW I/2, 475-483.
305
“Griechische Geschichte aus der Zeit der pelopon. Kriegs”
134
Greek art, and is also not an exploration of what the Greeks have to offer moderns. Six
(all submitted before July 1861) are music on a Christian theme, portions of a Christmas
Oratorio he worked on for a year and a half. Seven others are also musical.306 A list of
submissions from October 1862 to June 1863 shows that Pinder and Krug continued to
fail to submit anything, though this could very well be caused by the fact that they are six
months ahead of Nietzsche in school and are consumed with Abitur preparations at the
time.307 None of Nietzsche’s nine faithfully submitted contributions on this latter list
In the same biography submitted as a bequest to Schulpforta upon his leaving, the
first to mention the ancients or his study of them, Nietzsche comments also on Germania,
which he states helped him fight his unfocused wandering in search of his universal
knowledge:
Nietzsche is proud enough of the society he helps to create, or persuades others to help
him create, to mention it in this record of his education to remain at Schulpforta, and he
praises it for his ability to help him focus his mental powers. It is clear, however, that,
whatever need Nietzsche hopes Germania could fulfill, it is not to provide further outlet
306
KGW I/2, 480-483.
307
See Young (2010), 27.
308
KGW I/3, 143.
309
KGW I/3, 419. “Die monatliche Einlieferung von Abhandlungen und Kompositionen und deren Kritik,
sowie vierteljährige Zusammenkünfte zwangen den Geist, kleine aber anregende Gebiete genauer zu
betrachten und auf der andern Seite durch ein gründliches Erlernen der Kompositionslehre der
verflachenden Einwirkung des ‘Phantasierens’ entgegen zu arbeiten.”
135
for his engagement with the Greeks at Schulpforta. Carl Pletsch sees Germania as a
Germania, not his family home and not Schulpforta, as the place to express and explore
his break with Christianity.311 Curt Paul Janz believes Germania primarily serves as an
Now let us turn to Nietzsche’s years as a university student and see how his
thoughts on the Greeks, his passion for music, his coping with his existential crisis, and
310
Pletsch (1991), 52.
311
Cancik (1995), 11-12.
312
Jana (1978), 89.
136
2.0.0 NIETZSCHE’S UNIVERSITY BILDUNG (1864-1869)
this chapter, we will begin by sketching out the history of the philological methodology
that Nietzsche encounters at both schools, a methodology he first masters and then later
comes to severely critique in the Lectures on Bildung. Then we will look at his time in
Bonn to see how his thinking on the Greeks, his love of music, his coping with his
existential crisis, and his thinking about his career path develop there. After that, we will
follow him to Leipzig to see how those elements of his life continue to unfold and steer
university at Bonn where fellow Schulpforta alumnus, Paul Deussen is also studying.1
As part of the Prussian educational reforms begun half a century earlier by Humboldt, the
university is founded in 1818 in order to further unite the Rhineland, recently gained by
Prussia during the Congress of Vienna, with the rest of Prussia.2 It becomes one of the
philological studies, stands with the university at Berlin as a symbol of Prussian cultural
1
Hoyer (2002), 156.
2
Cancik (1991), 12.
methodology that deeply impacts on Nietzsche’s approach to antiquity. Before the tenets
of the Bonn School and its impact on Nietzsche are considered, we would do well to turn
universities more than any other and trace his influence down to the time of Nietzsche’s
matriculation.4
embodies much like Humboldt the link between the classicism of Weimar and the
academic, historical-critical philology that makes Germany the center of classical studies
librarian in Dresden in the 1750s. Though Heyne produces some critical editions of
classical texts, his lack of rigor dooms them to rapid obsolescence. He does establish the
branch of classical studies concerned with material remains, teaching the first course on
Archeology in 1767, and he masters a wide-ranging knowledge of ancient art history that
3
Hoyer (2002), 157.
4
Altertum means “antiquity” and, as noted in the Introduction, “Wissenschaft” is a body of knowledge
studied by professionals and students. Thus, Altertumswissenschaft is the rigorous study of all aspects of
antiquity, as we will see in the continued discussion.
5
Sandys (1958), 51.
138
allows him to correct Winckelmann on historical and chronological points. Heyne also
According to Wolf, he learns much from the library at Göttingen, but little from
Heyne’s lectures.7 He prepares quite thoroughly for Heyne’s course on the Iliad and then
finds Heyne’s lectures sufficiently vague and superficial to stop attending after finishing
the first book.8 In 1782 Wolf is made professor of Philosophy and Pedagogy at Halle.
Within just a few years, he changes the direction of this university reproached for lacking
philology, and in 1786 he founds the Philological Seminar there. By the time Halle is
closed in 1807, Wolf is the dominant scholar in northern Germany, and has had his class
visited by his eminent friend, Goethe, who remains hidden behind a curtain to hear
Anthony Grafton explains how Wolf offers his explanation of his scholarly
Concept, Scope, Purpose and Value (hereafter Presentation) of 1807 is intended as both
Wolf is deeply influenced by Humboldt’s conception of the value of the study of the
Greeks for moderns. Like Humboldt, he holds up the study of the ancient Greeks in their
6
Sandys (1958), 38-42.
7
Grafton (1981), 102.
8
Sandys (1958), 52.
9
Grafton (1981), 102.
10
Grafton (1981), 102. Enzyklopädie der Altertumswissenschaft
11
Darstellung der Altertumswissenschaft nach Begriff, Umfang, Zweck und Wert
139
literature as the best way in which moderns can develop all of their own faculties and
Humboldt’s opinion that only the study of the ancients, and especially the Greeks, “can
lead to true philosophical knowledge of humanity.”13 In this passage, Wolf himself states
that the final goal of Altertumswissenschaft is “the knowledge of ancient humanity itself,
remains.” This indicates that he shares Humboldt’s opinion of the potential for
individuals studying antiquity expanded by his own belief in the virtue of such study for
the nation.14
For Wolf, the Greeks and Romans are able to achieve a level of development
unequaled by any other nation. Where he sees other nations, and here he is specifically
discussing those of the Levant, only achieve what he calls “civilization,” a state of safety
achieved by communal policing, the Greeks and Romans rise to a “higher, original
intellectual culture.”15 This culture has, in addition to the necessities of safety, order and
comfort, “more noble inventions and knowledge.”16 Its literature is not limited to official
12
Wolf (1986), 122.
13
“kann zu wahrer philosophischer Kenntniß des Menschen führen”
14
Wolf (1986), 124-125; see also 126—130. “die Kenntniß der alterthümlichen Menschheit selbst, welche
Kenntniß aus der durch das Studium der alten Ueberreste bedingten Beobachtung einer organisch
entwickelten bedeutungsvollen National-Bildung hervorgeht”
15
“Civilisation” “höherer eigentlicher Geistescultur”
16
“edlere Erfindungen und Kenntnisse”
140
member of the nation confident of “better insights” for the enlightenment of all.17 Thus,
for Wolf, the Greeks and Romans may as the only “peoples refined by intellectual
culture, erudition, and art” be referred to as Altertum.18 Wolf, however, in the tradition of
Winckelmann and most German classicists does not see the Greeks and Romans as
equals. He sees the Romans as borrowers from the Greeks, being only original in their
ability to conquer and reign. It is only the Greeks who are able through their own
intrinsic gifts to demonstrate the full development of their human potential.19 In most
points, Wolf’s reasons for privileging the Greeks and for valuing the study of them
not, according to Grafton, entirely original. Heyne also already believes that one must
see the Greeks as living in a different time with different mores, as historical, and that all
available data, whether textual or archeological should be utilized in their study as should
all scholarly disciplines that might also be helpful. In fact, Grafton elaborates on a
tradition running through the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of setting
texts into “a rich context,” which leads him to state that much of Wolf’s work” is
“traditional in character.”20
Heyne also already finds value for moderns in the study of antiquity. He believes
a serious engagement with the ancients can provide understand for “pressing modern
problems.” This expresses itself in some of his scholarship that serves as indirect
17
Wolf (1986), 16-17. “bessern Einsichten”
18
Wolf (1986), 19. “durch Geistescultur, Gelehrsamkeit und Kunst verfeinerten Völker”
19
Wolf (1986), 20-21.
20
Grafton (1981), 103-105.
141
commentary on contemporary political issues. Heyne does not, however, ascribe to the
Greeks the same cultural power Humboldt and Wolf see, and he certainly does not load
the study of the Greeks with the same individual and national aspirations that drive
others.21 Göttingen, where he teaches, is founded in 1734 as the university for training
nobles as public servants.22 It is not imbued with the cultural mission of Berlin or Bonn
Halle, where Wolf teaches, also lacks the institutional vision that will soon lie at
the foundation of Berlin and Bonn. By the time Wolf arrives, theorists there have already
been calling for years “for the abandonment of ancient languages in favor of more
modern, useful subjects.”23 Thus in the years before Humboldt’s reforms establish
universities offering a new model of philological study, Wolf has to provide an argument
for the robust study of the Greeks (let alone the continuance of teaching Greek and Latin)
at Halle. Heyne and others have a method for studying antiquity, but lack an argument
for the value of this study. Humboldt has the argument, but he lacks experience as a
professor to outline this study in an institutional setting. Grafton, then, sees Wolf’s
with the culturally aspirational argument Humboldt has articulated to produce what Wolf
names Altertumswissenschaft.24
21
Grafton (1981), 108.
22
Grafton (1981), 104.
23
Grafton (1981), 102.
24
Grafton (1981), 109.
142
Wolf’s contribution to nineteenth century classical studies goes beyond this fusion
into the way he adapts the historical and interdisciplinary methods he has learned from
others. As Grafton writes, the most important claim for Wolf’s originality “lay not on his
the Iliad and the Odyssey are produced. Wolf argues that at first oral poems short enough
to remember are recited by bards, and that a written version of them does not appear until
the time of Peisistratus (late sixth century BC) in Athens. These texts are then further
“altered, emended, cut and added to by early revisers” the most important being the
modern world now has, Wolf argues, are manuscripts preserving a corrupt form of the
final Alexandrian editions produced by the Hellenistic critics. The most a modern critic
or editor can hope for, Wolf believes, is to restore “the Alexandrian vulgate,” without any
Gaspard d’Ansse de Villoison’s Venetus A (1788), the Venetian scholia on the Iliad,
containing multiple strata of annotation, commentary and glosses. It is through the very
careful reading of these scholia that Wolf believes he discovers what each Alexandrian
critic has done to the text of the Iliad.27 In this way, Wolf produces “a history of
25
Prolegomena ad Homerum
26
Grafton (1981), 109-110.
27
Grafton (1981), 111.
143
scholarship rather than the history of scholia.”28 His careful and exhaustive approach
helps him to bring to life figures from antiquity. Grafton points out in his introduction to
the text of Wolf’s Prolegomena that “where Villoison heaped up without structure or
order texts and data” Wolf is able to move “systematically through the scholia,
and critics: rash Zenodotus, the thoughtful Aristophanes of Byzantium, and the latter’s
pupil Aristarchus, who had been superior to his teacher in ‘precise, truly grammatical
investigations.’”29
philology and how he bridges the gap between Weimar Classicism and the historical-
critical method of the German university. Through the painstakingly careful work of
sifting through evidence, based on a wide and deep base of familiarity with the languages
and contexts of this evidence, Wolf is able to produce a living picture of antiquity.
Though this may be a limited reanimation of the splendor Wolf and his friends see in
ancient Greece, it is still a reanimation. As Grafton notes, Wolf’s chapters bringing the
Alexandrian critics to life “reveal impressive technical dexterity and attention to detail”
and that every claim “rest[s] on a solid base of close-packed references and quotations,”
but what is more, that “Wolf’s work [is] not only thorough but full of insight.”30 Wolf’s
is not simply an approach to antiquity that orders and arranges ancient data but one that
28
Grafton (1981), 119.
29
Grafton (1985), 18.
30
Grafton (1981), 111.
144
A more detailed look at some of the aspects of Wolf’s method will help us
understand his heritage as carried on in Nietzsche’s work later in the century. For this we
turn again to Wolf’s introduction to and summary of his Encyclopedia (the explanation of
divides the remains of antiquity into three categories: written, artistic (whether aesthetic
or utilitarian), and artifacts combining the first two categories. Of these three categories,
Wolf privileges the first, texts, as they naturally hold the first rank and provide the
primary means of correctly judging and understanding the other two. Ancient texts help
familiarity with “the ideas and forms of expression” of the ancients.31 With a thoroughly
expert familiarity with the languages of the texts and with the texts themselves one can
identify what is authentic and what spurious, what was written earlier and what later.
This expert familiarity with the authors combined with a highly developed sense for
authenticity and age are the first requirements for Wolf’s scholar of
scholarly approach to antiquity to be used gainfully when guided by linguistic and textual
expertise.
Wolf then moves on to the three constituent tools of his philological method:
of grammar does not take language as an object of study but much more as an instrument
31
“den Ideen und Ausdrucksarten”
32
Wolf (1986), 32-35.
145
language determined by the laws of the mind, this instrument follows Greek and Latin as
each language develops diachronically producing varieties over time. That is, grammar
here does not mean a limited system of prescriptive rules for a language at one point in its
flowering, which Wolf does think can suffice for modern languages. It comprehends
instead “every period in the life of a language” including its origin, its construction, and
its continued formation.33 Wolf’s grammar describes language as a living entity, dynamic
in its development over time and across regions. Wolf calls the pursuit of this grammar
both historical and philosophical. The former, as any rule that can be attributed to a
textual passages. The latter, as no linguistic rule can stand without being grounded in the
nature of the way speech is used [Redegebrauch]. Grammar can only become a secure
language historically and philosophically, as linguistic usage in its many forms during the
progression of a nation’s culture must be recognized and worked out in order to decide on
the correct sense of an author and what should be considered authentic and inauthentic
for that author.34 Only once one has mastered this dynamic of a language in all of its
developments sufficiently to determine what does or does not belong to an author, one
In his own time, Wolf believes that hermeneutics still needs to develop “the art”
of discovering with the requisite insight an author’s thoughts as expressed in that author’s
33
“alle Zeiträume des Lebens einer Sprache”
34
Wolf (1986), 35-37.
146
texts.35 This interpretive art also needs to be able to establish by investigation word
best, hermeneutics allows entry of the “the genius of the interpreter-artist” and the
“expertise of the mind” into the manner of thinking of earlier centuries in multiple
languages and ages, into the peculiarities of every form of speech, and into the personal
comparing literary expressions from before and after, this genius and expertise is able to
Then this, this is nothing more than understanding in its higher meaning, the
understanding through which the interpreter, a native everywhere, lives now in
this now in that period with all of his soul and with proofs of his judgment puts on
display here an excellent author to be admired, there an imperfect one to be
censured by the reader.38
Such an ability! Even more than just wanting to bring individual Greeks to life –
already a bold, if not Faustian desire – Wolf’s method hopes to take the scholar himself
to live among the ancients “with all of his soul” and to be so naturalized a citizen of any
particular author really would say or not. Where Wolf’s friend Goethe has his Iphigenia
seeking with her soul for the land of the Greeks, Wolf formulates an
147
modern, can spiritually inhabit that lost land.39 Antiquity and its beauty may never be
recreated in modernity, but a select few moderns, those with the right education, can
return to enjoy it through the art of hermeneutics. And yet, by calling these well-trained
few “interpreter-artists,” Wolf admits that the Greece to which they return is one of their
This sweeping power is only available to one who has already mastered Wolf’s
grammar. The other requirement for hermeneutics is criticism. Very little of what Wolf
holds out through his hermeneutics, especially the ability to understand as one native to
them the unique aspects of specific times, is possible without first sufficiently
determining the times and authors upon which the interpreter-artist is working. Similarly,
no text can be explained for Wolf with the necessary conviction of the harmony of our
thoughts with those of the author without first demonstrating, down to the smallest
details, the authenticity and correctness of that text. These two considerations give rise to
“philological criticism,” related to which are rhetorical and aesthetic criticism, which are
necessary for claims of a text’s beauty and are indispensible for the philological critic.40
The division in criticism that Wolf recognizes that will have the strongest hold on
professional philology is that between lower and higher criticism. Lower criticism, or
textual criticism, is concerned with producing accurate critical editions of texts. Once
such an edition is produced by lower criticism, higher criticism uses external sources to
place the text in its historical context and to develop a picture of the process by which it
39
“Das land der Griechen mit der Seele suchend”
40
“die philologische Kritik”
41
Wolf (1986), 38-40.
148
There are a few more aids Wolf proposes beyond the central three of grammar,
hermeneutics and criticism. Another aspect of Wolf’s method is the art of style and
composition. He believes that only when one has developed the ability to write like the
describes the art of writing in ancient languages as a means for gaining “hermeneutic and
critical agility and depth.”42 Finally, one needs the help of many disciplines, especially
some that have recently been developed in Wolf’s time.43 Wolf lists twenty-four
subdisciplines at the end of his Presentation which are needed for Altertumswissenschaft
including, among others: ancient astronomy, ancient morality, archeology, art history,
numismatics, and ancient architecture in addition to the more literary disciplines like the
In sum, Wolf’s method privileges texts but incorporates all available evidence
from antiquity and all available disciplines for examining that evidence. This method
requires first and foremost an intimately familiar linguistic knowledge aware of the
feel at home in any given period of antiquity and habituated enough to pass judgment on
the correctness and authenticity of passages, phrases and even single words. The
philologist who has mastered this grammar and thereby gained access to antiquity can
42
“hermeneutische und kritische Gewandtheit und Tiefe”
43
Wolf (1986), 42-44.
44
Wolf (1986), 143-144.
149
Two main schools of philological thought follow Wolf’s foundational work in the
early nineteenth centuries, one headed by Philip August Boeckh (1785-1867), the other
by Johann Gottfried Jakob Hermann (1772-1848). Boeckh studies at Halle where Wolf
helps him to narrow his study from theology, philosophy and philology to just philology
focused on the Greek literary classics. In his early career at Heidelberg, Boeckh produces
considerable work on Plato, Pindar and the Greek tragedians. He soon turns his focus
more to material evidence and to aspects of the Greek world beyond literary texts, and for
his fifty-six year career at Berlin he works towards an understanding of the entirety of
on Wolf’s, and sees his work as a continuation of and improvement on that of his teacher.
One of his students, Otto Jahn, is at Bonn when Nietzsche studies there as is one of
Ritschl studies at Leipzig, however, with Hermann, Boeckh’s rival. Hermann also
conducts his university studies at Leipzig. While there he takes three main ideas from his
teacher Friedrich Wolfgang Reiz: “(1) never to study more than one writer, or one
subject, at a time, (2) never to take any statement on trust, and (3) always to be able to
give a good reason for holding any opinion which he deemed to be true.” Hermann stays
festivals and on the ancient Greek theater. Hermann produces work on meter more
thorough than his predecessors have, as he is more systematic and bases his insights on
his extensive familiarity with the Greek poets. Similarly, in his textual criticism his
45
Sandys (1958), 95-100.
150
“conjectures rest on a fine sense of Greek idiom.” Even though he does not study under
Wolf, he believes that insights into a text must rest upon a vast familiarity with its
language, and he believes, like Wolf, that criticism “must go hand in hand” with
interpretation. He produces many critical editions during his career, especially of the
Greek tragedians.46
The so-called Philologenstreit between the two begins when Hermann thoroughly,
and in John Edwin Sandys’ opinion, justifiably, excoriates Boeckh’s Corpus of Greek
Inscriptions, which first begins to be published in 1825.47 For it, Boeckh fails to use
Beyond that Boeckh makes mistakes based on what is even in those transcriptions and
between the two philologists and many of their supporters and students join in, turning it
into a battle between two swelling camps.49 It seems the heat of this conflict contributes
more to the perception of the distance between the two camps than do actual
methodological differences.
within Wolf’s methodology as it requires knowledge of the “entire doing, of the whole
life, and of the activity of the people.”50 Hermann’s approach, called “word philology”
[Wortphilologie], focuses instead on textual criticism, grammar and meter. In his textual
46
Sandys (1958), 90-92.
47
Philologenstreit means “quarrel” or “battle” of the philologists. Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum
48
Sandys (1958), 98. See also Nippel (1997), 244-245.
49
Nippel (1997), 244-245.
50
“gesamten Tätigkeit, des ganzen Lebens und Wirkens des Volkes”
151
criticism, Hermann relies on a well-cultivated feel for the language above all else, and he
believes that working in ancient languages provides a formal, not material Bildung, being
in fact the “pattern of Bildung and of taste.”51 Though Hermann is not a direct student of
thorough knowledge of and familiarity with the ancient languages, and his belief that the
study of the ancients provides the best formal Bildung all have much in common with
Wolf’s Altertumswissenschaft.
Boeckh both value text-related and archeological research and they believe that both are
needed to complement each other within a thorough and effective philological method.52
Both forms of philology attacked and defended in the Philologenstreit are really
prioritizing archeology before philology and Hermann differs from Wolf in devaluing,
though not entirely, the study of archeological remains. The two schools really represent
two different focuses within the program laid out by Wolf at the beginning of the century.
2.1.4 Ritschl
Welcker (1784-1868).54 Welcker, whose interests are more archeological and art-
51
“Muster der Bildung und des Geschmacks”
52
Nippel (1997), 245-247; see also Vogt (1979).
53
Sandys (1958), 139.
54
Sandys (1958), 216.
152
historical than literary, and who stands as Nietzsche’s foil for his theses on Theognis, has
already helped establish the Philological Seminar at Bonn in the first years of the
university’s existence. In 1854 Welcker gives the younger Ritschl the directorship over
the Seminar as his own energy and productivity are waning.55 In the same year, Ritschl
has Otto Jahn (1813-1869) appointed as professor at Bonn without Welcker’s knowledge.
Jahn, who focuses on archeology and art history, is a student of both Hermann’s at
Leipzig and of Boeckh’s at Berlin.56 With Ritschl in control of the Philological Seminar
and with his new colleague now teaching with him at Bonn, the Bonn School of
method.57
Christian Benne describes the Bonn School as seeing itself in the tradition of
Humboldt and Wolf, first and foremost. Though a student of Hermann’s, Ritschl
principle of using the written record to investigate the other remains of antiquity.
Following Wolf again, Ritschl teaches that this must be done through the production of
accurate critical editions, which is for him the primary task of philology. Thus a method
First, Jahn shares Ritschl’s penchant for methodological rigor, establishing with him the
55
Herter (1975), 650-651.
56
Sandys (1958), 220.
57
Benne (2005), 54.
58
Benne (2005), 54-59.
153
Bonn School without any methodological conflict. It is also likely that Jahn has some
the only course Nietzsche ever takes from Jahn is on art history, and it is difficult to
determine to what extent the course may shape Nietzsche’s understanding of method.
Ritschl dominates the Bonn School and its method, and, when Nietzsche’s entire time at
university is considered, Ritschl has far greater influence on him than Jahn. Second, we
need to keep in mind that though the method of the Bonn School is critical in
understanding Nietzsche’s ideas on the value of the Greeks for modernity in his student
and professor years, this method has no intrinsic interest in or tie to the Greeks. It could
aspect of the Bonn School. Ritschl does not focus his attentions primarily on the Greeks.
He is a Latinist.60
Unlike Wolf, Ritschl is not studying the Greeks (or the Romans for that matter)
within a cultural agenda, and, as Benne points out, Ritschl finds it necessary to defend the
finds classicism, as this study defines the term, rather artificial as it “rests on an uncritical
and nostalgic admiration of antiquity which is far from being scholarly rigorous.”62 It is
59
Both Benne and Hans Herter discuss how the so-called Philologenstriet between Ritschl and Jahn was
about academic politics and had nothing to do with scholarly method, as both were indeed quite close in
method. See Benne (2005), 58-59 and Herter (1975), 649-654.
60
Benne (2005), 46.
61
Benne (2005), 50. “Absolutheitsanspruch von Kunst und Philosophie”
62
Emden (2004), 381.
154
critical to note that Ritschl has departed from Wolf in at least this one aspect: his
methodically than to find what is true unmethodically, i.e., by chance.”63 Benne notes
that observers of Ritschl in the nineteenth century are unanimous in seeing his name as a
synonym for “method.” In teaching his method to students, Ritschl makes them quite
achieved quickly, that success only follows strenuous work, and that, to produce honest
work, one must begin with the smallest things. He teaches them, in fact, that nothing in
Wissenschaft is small, and that things considered small can, when taken lightly,
circumvented, and one must assess honestly how well difficulties are treated. General
statements and reliance on authority should never give confidence. Finally, everything
Like most of his contemporary philologists, Ritschl recognizes the three Wolfian
theories of linguistic origin. Etymology has its place, but only as examined in each
concrete context. This philological grammar is still for Ritschl, as one would expect, the
prerequisite for hermeneutics and criticism.65 Ritschl views these latter two as aspects of
the same process of understanding, and he uses the terms “hermeneutics” and “criticism”
63
“Besser methodisch irren, als unmethodisch d.h. zufällig das Wahre finden.”
64
Benne (2005), 47-49.
65
Benne (2005), 72, 75.
155
relationship of higher to lower criticism and warns against proceeding with either logical
sources and other objective foundations from which he proceeds to more subjective work.
Like Wolf, Ritschl believes it is only after much work with materials to produce
exact familiarity that one can begin to produce insight into their meaning. He certainly
does not think this can ever by achieved by means of just any theory selected and applied
to a text. Also like Wolf, he believes assiduous lower criticism producing accurate
critical editions is primary. Then divination can play a decisive role, but only “in the
form of a methodically inspired and controlled supposition” that comes after “laborious
find and then applying methods that will produce those results. His commitment is to the
method. The results simply end up being whatever is produced and can be justified by
method.
Benne boils what Nietzsche learns from Ritschl and the Bonn School down to
thought, 2) though philology has the knowledge of the whole of antiquity as its goal, one
must focus on single points to be examined as thoroughly as possible, 3) one should think
of the reader and produce written findings artistic in their own right, 4) philology cannot
extensive textual knowledge with every text requiring its own approach, 5) textual
66
Benne (2005), 81.
67
Benne (2005), 75-77. “in Form einer methodisch inspirierten und kontrollierten Vermutung” “mühsame
Abwägung und Kombination”
156
criticism is the center of philology, first as a basis for other classical studies and second
other, they must be kept distinct, 7) the characteristic activity of philology is reading,
both slow reading accompanied by looking many things up and cursory reading to
develop broad knowledge and linguistic skill, and finally 8) all research and knowledge
Byzantium “heroes of truly great scholarly Bildung.”69 Ritschl chooses the Alexandrian
scholars as his intellectual ancestors. Seeing himself in their great company, Ritschl calls
himself an Alexandriner.70
Before moving on to Nietzsche’s time of study under Ritschl, let us pause to look
at three of Nietzsche’s works completed at Schulpforta to see to what extent the tradition
of Altertumswissenschaft and its method have already been introduced to him there.
These three works are his essay on the Ajax, his essay on the Oedipus Rex and his thesis
on Theognis.
If one looks for the three tools of philology as delineated by Wolf and Ritschl,
grammar, hermeneutics, and criticism, one finds primarily a weak form of hermeneutics
in the Ajax essay, as Nietzsche is mostly offering an explanation for the order and nature
68
Benne (2005), 60-64.
69
Die Alexandrinischen Bibliotheken; “Heroen wahrhaft grossartiger Gelehrtenbildung”
70
Benne (2005), 47. See also 28.
157
of events in the first stasimon. There is the slightest bit of philological grammar in
Nietzsche’s discussion of the usual contexts of a specific Greek word and in his
discussion of another point at which two adverbs are used with one verb. In both cases
this leads to a bit of lower criticism, as he argues against the correctness of the line in
each case. In general, Nietzsche offers “facts” about Sophocles’ style, tragedy, and the
Greeks in general that are not supported by any citation or comparison, and it is on these
unsupported premises that Nietzsche offers his argument for why the stasimon develops
Nietzsche’s Oedipus essay from a year later shows substantial improvement in his
literary texts, arguing that Greek tragedy is a combination of the two and that a tragedian
is simultaneously Dichter and musician. This is certainly not something he would have
instance of Nietzsche bringing his true passion, music, into his daily work, philology.
He strays even further from historical-critical methods in using modern music theory,
specifically that of Wagner, to understand the nature of tragedy. The idea he uses, that
the music of tragedy corresponds to the emotion expressed in the words is then used to
offer a structural understanding of the first choral ode. It is hard to imagine Wolf or
tragedy.
However, in the middle of the Latin section of this essay, Nietzsche does use some
158
grammar, in the detailed discussion of the many Greek words and phrases he accepts,
rejects or improves. This enables some important textual criticism through which
Nietzsche is able to establish his reading of the choral song, his hermeneutics. Nietzsche
even displays what is the height of historical-critical work for both Wolf and Ritschl, an
ability that is only made possible through the rigorous application of grammar, criticism
and hermeneutics: an aesthetic sense for what is right or wrong for an ancient author.
Based on his wide reading, Nietzsche is able to not only reject or improve readings
through arguments of usage, but also because they simply do not please his developed
sense.
His work on Theognis is the most Ritschlian of the three in its focus, as it
addresses the sources and process of collection behind the works attributed to Theognis.
None of Nietzsche’s other work on classical texts at Schulpforta have featured this focus
on text sources, one of Ritschl’s few professional foci. It lacks the grammar necessary
for lower criticism, but proceeds confidently to higher criticism and hermeneutics in its
discussion of Theognis’ world and the meaning of his elegies within that world. Benne
notes that the topic for this study is suggested to Nietzsche by Diederich Volkmann, a
new teacher only six years Nietzsche’s senior who starts at Schulpforta in 1861.
Volkmann’s has written his dissertation at Bonn under Ritschl on the Suda.71 Though
Volkmann is not mentioned in Nietzsche’s letters or other writings from his last year at
Schulpforta, he clearly has a significant impact on the younger pupil’s thesis. Not only is
Nietzsche’s essay well within the tradition of Hermann and Ritschl, it features the Suda
71
Benne (2005), 53. See also Janz (1978), 122.
159
It would seem that Volkmann did more than simply suggest the theme of the work.
It appears to be the case that an infusion from Volkmann of Ritschlian focus on a single
give up his quest for his “universal” knowledge in his last year at Schulpforta. Indeed, as
we saw in the last chapter, he abandons the trivializing attempt to learn many things in
favor of a new commitment “to take a detail back to its deepest and widest
foundations.”72 It is hard not to see an effect from Ritschl through Volkmann here.
we are ready to examine his time at Bonn. This examination will focus on his thinking
on the Greeks, what there is of it, at Bonn, as it will also track his love for music and his
attempt to enjoy life in a burst of social activity without precedent and without any
As for why Nietzsche chooses to study at Bonn, There is little evidence to point
us in any specific direction. Schulpforta alumni teach there, and a number of alumni are
also there as students. Curt Paul Janz believes Nietzsche chooses Bonn to be with his
friends, while Julian Young thinks it is both Nietzsche’s friend Paul Deussen as well as
the eminent Professors Ritschl and Jahn that attract him there.73 It may also be that
72
KGW I/3, 419. “das Einzelne auf seine tiefsten und weitesten Gründe zurückzuführen”
73
Janz (1978), 142 and Young (2010), 51.
160
2.2.1 Franconia
After Nietzsche graduates from Schulpforta, he and Paul Deussen spend a few
days at Nietzsche’s home in Naumburg and then take off for Bonn. One of the first
things he and Deussen do is take a steamboat trip on the Rhine and visit sites along the
river. One of the their excursions is a ride on horseback up to the Drachenfels, the ruins
of a medieval castle built on a hill where legend locates the cave in which Siegfried kills
the dragon and bathes in its blood to gain invincibility.74 This location will play a key
role in Nietzsche’s Lectures on Bildung in 1872. Not long after, Nietzsche and Deussen
founded in “1815 by young Germans recently returned from the ‘wars of liberation’
against Napoleon’s armies of occupation,” with the original intent to “promote a united,
generally liberal, Germany.” By the time Nietzsche and Deussen join, most
Burschenschaften are little more than clubs where university men socialize, drink and
duel.75
fact that Janz entitles his chapter on Nietzsche at Bonn “The Bonn Franconian,” as, for
the most part, that is what he is there.76 That his membership in the society is outside of
Nietzsche’s comfort zone is reflected in the letter home in late October defending the
decision. He explains that he has inspected another society, the Marchia, with whom he
was able to enjoy a trip to Rolandseck, a town just across the Rhine from the Drachenfels.
In addition to this research behind his decision, he further explains that Deussen and six
74
Janz (1978), 133 and Young (2019), 52.
75
Young (2019), 53.
76
“Der Bonner Frankone”
161
other graduates fresh out of Schulpforta have also joined. Not only are the Schulpforta
alumni in the society an important draw, Franconia also includes many philologists and
music lovers.77 Almost a full year later in September of 1865, Nietzsche will describe
Franconia as having the advantage of uniting within it “pretty well all the Schulpforta
make new friends, and Young sees Nietzsche’s membership in the society as highly
motivated by the desire to build a social and professional network, though there is no
Franconia has two pub nights per week, one of which is to deepen the young
scholar’s academic experience. Hoyer believes many other events are not officially
compulsory but nearly so, like trips to Cologne, Burschenschaft festivals, and many duels
in which the young men can gain their Mensur scar, a life-long mark of honor.80 The
energy with which Nietzsche engages social life in Franconia derives from Nietzsche’s
need to make up for his lack of socialization at Pforta.81 Though his attempts to loosen
up and just be one of the boys are never natural and always a bit awkward, Nietzsche
throws himself into the project with characteristic commitment.82 In his notes is a list of
77
KGB I/2, 14-16. See also Janz (1978), 135 and Hoyer (2002), 165.
78
KGB I/2, 83. “ziemlich alle Bonner Pförtner”
79
Young (2019), 53.
80
Hoyer (2002), 166-167.
81
Hoyer (2002), 165.
82
Janz (1978), 136 and Pletsch (1991), 65.
162
thirty-six Burschenschaften giving the colors of each society.83 His letters home are at
first full of praise for Franconia, though certainly in part to sell his mother on the idea.
By February of 1865 he can still write home that Franconia is becoming “dearer day by
day.”84
In a letter to his sister he describes yet another trip to the area below the
Drachenfels, this time taken with Franconia as part of their three-day commemoration of
their founding. The noisy group fires shots off into the air on their arrival in Rolandseck,
and enjoys some song and wine on the steamboat. The nature-loving Nietzsche caps this
description of college-aged revelry off by observing that the place he has just described
by its natural features “makes an impression of the deepest peace.”85 We will return to
this location and perhaps this very party in the Lectures on Bildung.
preferring tea and sweets to beer.86 He does eventually get his Mensur scar, though
Deussen reports it is on the bridge of his nose, obscured by his glasses.87 Hoyer believes
that Nietzsche is not particularly concerned with the politics of Franconia upon joining,
as most societies are similarly nationalistic and conservative.88 Before too long,
which he finds much too democratic for his tastes. He expresses this displeasure in
83
KGW I/4, 39-40.
84
KGB I/2, 44. “von Tag zu Tag lieber”
85
KGB I/2, 24-25. “macht den Eindruck der tiefsten Ruhe”
86
Janz (1978), 137.
87
Janz (1978), 140.
88
Hoyer (2002),165.
163
opposition to their decision to change colors from white, red and gold to black, red and
gold, which represent a popular desire for national unification.89 By May he is already
writing to his mother that he cannot and would not like to stay in the society for longer
than a year.90 In a letter to his aristocratic friend from Schulpforta studying in Göttingen,
Carl von Gersdorff, also written in May he explains that he cannot stand certain
individuals due to their “beer-materialism.”91 After the end of the school year, in August
Franconia for a wasted first year, describing their capacity for political judgment as
Janz believes Nietzsche’s fraternizing first year is the result of his needs for
release and a break after six years at the neohumanist cloister-barracks of Schulpforta.93
Nietzsche admits as much in a letter home in which he discusses the possibility of future
military service. At one point he wonders if he should have gone straight from
Schulpforta to the military, but then rejects this idea immediately: “But first Pforta – and
then non-commissioned officers! No, ‘Freedom loves the desert beast!’”94 Franconia has
89
Janz (1978), 158-159 and Pletsch (1991), 66.
90
KGB I/2, 52.
91
KGB I/2, 55. “Biermaterialismus”
92
KGB I/2, 80. “sehr gering” “plebejisch”
93
Janz (1978), 135.
94
KGB I/2, 45. “Aber erst Pforta – und dann Unteroffiziere! Nein, ‘Freiheit liebt das Thier der Wüste!’”
164
not surprisingly, in music. In his letters, he often mentions concerts he attends, musical
performances in which he participates, and the piano he rents (and cannot afford). A note
from the period provides a long list of performances he has attended.95 The skill he has
developed in improvising on the piano makes him a hit in social settings, according to his
own report.96 He is also still writing songs and composes twelve in November and early
three-act opera on Ermanaric.98 In a letter home towards the end of his first semester, he
writes that his experiences have been limited recently “to enjoying art.”99 “Art” here
does not refer to art galleries or to anything other than music, as he goes on only to
discuss music. In the same letter he goes on to explain how he is something of a musical
authority in his social circles.100 Though he will give up theology in this year at Bonn, he
is not able to give up music by any means. In fact, Jahn, who has written a Mozart
biography still used today, gets him to consider the possibility of becoming a music critic
and historian alongside his work as a philologist. As Janz indicates, and perhaps
understates, this musical avocation will surface in Nietzsche’s advocacy for Wagner. 101
95
KGW I/4, 16-17.
96
KGB I/2, 4 and Janz (1978), 134, 136.
97
Janz (1978), 135.
98
KGW I/4, 65-68.
99
“auf Kunstgenüsse”
100
KGB I/2, 42-43.
101
Janz (1978), 158.
165
A list written in the late summer of 1865, which seems to be organizing the
sections of Nietzsche’s life during the Bonn year, possibly in preparation for another
autobiography, gives insight into how he prioritizes his activities. The first section is “A
Look Back on Life at School,” continuing his tradition of explaining his present with a
look at the past, though it focuses on the recent trip with Deussen that brought him to
Bonn.102 The second section is “The Burschenschaft,” showing how prominent the effect
of his membership has been. This is followed by what may be construed as its opposite,
“My Domesticity,” or the solitary activities of the previous year necessary to sustain his
animated social life.103 The fourth point is “Piano.”104 Interesting that though the
subpoints listed here show a concern with music in general, including the many
performances by others he has taken in, the title of this section focuses on the place of his
own musical creation. One of the subpoints for “Piano” is “Jahn” and another is “My
Intentions as Reviewer and Historian of Music,” indicating that Nietzsche does indeed
take Jahn’s advice to heart.105 The fifth point is “Life in Nature,” reflective of the fact
that he continues to love nature and time in it as much as he has since his childhood.106
The sixth and final point is “Theology and Philology.”107 Conspicuous is the
combination of the two here, especially with theology first, as Nietzsche has at this time,
102
“Rückblick auf Schulleben”
103
“Meine Häuslichkeit”
104
“Klavier”
105
“Meine Absichten als Recensent u. Musikhistoriker”
106
“Naturleben”
107
“Theologie u. Philologie”
166
which will be discussed below, dropped the study of theology. The fact that these two
constitute the final point in the list may be another indication that they are not so much
passions to be enjoyed as the compulsory or necessary section of his life. They are
Nietzsche’s work.108 Such a reading is supported by the fact that this list is a modified
repetition of a similar list from the spring. This first list includes similar points like “Life
in the Burschenschaft,” “Life in Nature,” and “Artistic Life” followed by “Work and the
Philological.”109 What these two lists make clear about Nietzsche’s study of the Greeks
at Bonn is that philology is associated with work and not at all with art, which means
That philology is work for Nietzsche may also be indicated by the way he has
difficulty jumping into it during this year at Bonn. Biographers repeatedly see Nietzsche
making little effort academically in his year at Bonn, and Hoyer wisely observes that one
should not expect from the year at Bonn any “great gain in Bildung” for Nietzsche,
though as we will see, he does pick up at least one seminal idea at Bonn.110 In November
of his first semester, Nietzsche assures his mother that he is attending lectures and tells
her how he has had a discussion with Ritschl about philology and theology (without
telling her the content of the conversation) and that he is also being influenced by Jahn
who, “like me pursues philology and music without making either one a minor matter.”111
Clearly he still feels philology has not overtaken music for him. Again in December, as
108
KGW I/4, 62-64.
109
KGW I/4, 32-33. “Das Leben in der Burschenschaft” “Naturleben” and “Kunstleben” “Die Arbeit und
das Philologenthum”; the final English translation is, admittedly, not the most elegant
110
Hoyer (2002), 162-163. “großen Bildungsgewinn”
111
KGB I/2, 17-18. “ähnlich wie ich, Philologie und Musik treibt, ohne eins von beiden zur Nebensache zu
machen”
167
part of his campaign to convince his mother that she is not wasting her money and that
her son is not wasting his time, Nietzsche writes home protesting that he is indeed taking
his studies seriously and gives proof by noting that Professor Jahn has been invited to one
of Franconia’s parties.112 By May he is more honest about his lack of interest in his
studies and explains his rough start by arguing that he has needed to get used to
he blames his lackluster performance in his first year at university on his membership in
Franconia.
His Abitur certificate at Schulpforta has the two in reverse order. Lack of concern for
their order likely says more about Nietzsche’s indecision than it does about conscious
strategies for portraying himself to either institution. We will get to philology but first
must ask just why does Nietzsche study theology at Bonn? Most biographers believe it is
for his mother’s sake. Her husband had been a pastor from a family of pastors as had her
father and most of the men in her family.114 This is surely a good part of the reason. As
a young boy, Nietzsche is deeply pious and wants to follow in father’s footsteps out of
his own motivation. The secondary education available to him, first at the
classical education standard for preparing for theological studies at the university level,
112
KGB I/2, 22.
113
KGB I/2, 53. See also Hoyer (2002), 163.
114
Hoyer (2002), 155.
168
standard for studying anything at the university level. From a very early age, he is on
By the time he gets to Bonn, his crisis in belief has already advanced to a point of
writes his mother from Schulpforta asking for advice on what he should study. That he
matriculates at Bonn in both disciplines shows that he is not yet able to focus with the
may also show that he does not know what he wants to do professionally. It is clear what
his passion is at this point, music. But he has not had any of the training needed to make
a career out of music. He has never had any formal training in music. It is most likely,
then, that Nietzsche signs up for theology and philology at Bonn because of the
momentum of his life’s course up to this point: theology has long been an expectation for
him, and philology is a field in which he has shown promise after receiving an already
still hanging on to music, hoping to himself that it is still equal to philology in his
needing to decide what he wants to be when he grows up, which is not easy as his
The university at Bonn features two dominant forms of learning: the Kolleg and
the Seminar. The former is a leftover of medieval university education that strictly
separates teacher from student; it is a lecture where the teacher speaks and the student
silently listens and learns. The latter form is a product of Humboldt’s reforms and
169
reflects his belief that there is no hierarchy at the university level between teacher and
student, but that they are all equally tasked with expanding knowledge. Thus, the
Seminar is ideally an equal exchange of ideas between teacher and students all searching
for truth together.115 In his winter semester at Bonn, Nietzsche attends six Kollegs: The
Gospel of John, Church History Part I, Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus (from Ritschl), History
of German Art, The Life of Michelangelo, and a course on politics (simply listed as
Politik).116 The two religion courses make sense for one still enrolled as a student of
theology. What is more interesting is that he only has one course on classical philology,
and not one focusing on Greek works, and that he is taking two courses on art history and
one on politics. Perhaps he is taking Ritschl’s course to get to know his former teacher’s,
Volkmann’s, Doktorvater. Also interesting is that the two art history courses focusing on
visual arts are unable to derail Nietzsche from his focus on music, as they do not result in
a flowering of his interest in visual arts. In general, this course load reflects Nietzsche’s
inability to commit yet to one topic for deep study and his continuing quest for focus.
Near the end of this winter semester, Nietzsche is able to write home that he is
committing himself to philology, which means of course without saying it to his mother,
that he is dropping theology. The unapologetic manner in which he announces this to his
mother indicates that he now owns this decision as an adult, which in turn indicates an
awareness of his mother’s likely disappointment. He simply writes: “This too: my turn
towards philology is settled. To study both is something half done.”117 Then he begins a
new paragraph ending the letter with well-wishes but no further explanation of or defense
115
Hoyer (2002), 159.
116
Hoyer (2002), 160.
117
“Noch dies: meine Wendung zur Philologie ist entschieden. Beides zu studieren ist etwas Halbes.”
170
for his decision.118 This sharp break initiates a new stage in Nietzsche’s relationship with
his mother that will last the rest of his life. No longer is he the deferential, chivalrous
young boy. He is a man with independent thoughts and plans, even if he still has to
humanizes Jesus, that brings Nietzsche to this final break with Christian belief.120
Nietzsche begins his second and final semester at Bonn as a dedicated student of
philology. The six lectures he attends are: The Essentials of Archeology (from Jahn),
Latin Grammar (from Ritschl), General History of Philosophy and Plato’s Life and
there are no lectures on theology, though there are courses from two fields that interested
him at Schulpforta: philosophy (i.e., Plato), and German literature. He is also taking a
course from Ritschl again, and we should be clear that “Latin Grammar” is not the kind
of introduction to grammar that one needs to begin reading in Latin. Nietzsche has more
than mastered that at Schulpforta. This is a course delving deeper into what Wolf and
Ritschl call grammar, the deep, dynamic and diachronic understanding of a language that
allows one to make the judgments of criticism and achieve the insights of hermeneutics
within the historical-critical method. He is finally also taking a course from Jahn. In
118
KGB I/2, 40.
119
Janz (1978), 148-149.
120
Janz (1978), 146.
171
addition to these lectures, Nietzsche is also taking part in a philological seminar led
Hubert Cancik, a philologist and one of the editors of The New Pauly, the
standard German dictionary for antiquity, describes Jahn’s course on archeology as one
intended to prepare students for a course he plans to teach in the winter called “The
History of Greek Art.”122 Comparing the notes Nietzsche takes to those taken by another
student, Eduard Hiller, Cancik can give us the plan for the semester. It consists of
thirteen parts of which the middle point, the seventh, is dedicated to Winckelmann. The
course features sculpture prominently while also covering everything Jahn believes
archeology can examine.123 Cancik describes the central section on Winckelmann as the
Nietzsche’s notes: “Throughout the course of his life and development his uncommon
down. At the same time he possessed the full intellectual and moral energy.”124 This is
the first time in Nietzsche’s entire education that we see him learning from someone who
clearly has and expresses great respect for Winckelmann and his work. Long before
121
Hoyer (2002), 161. On Scharschmidt, see 164.
122
Der neue Pauly
123
Cancik (1991), 29.
124
“Durch seinen Lebens- und Entwicklungsgang ist seine ungemeine Bedeutung nicht erklärt. Er erscheint
uns wie ein Gefäss, in das eine große Idee niedergelegt ist. Dabei besaß er die volle geistige und sittliche
Energie.”
172
“knight.”125 In his comparison of Hiller’s and Nietzsche’s notes, Cancik finds the
former’s complete and the latter’s incomplete, full of holes, and disorganized.126 This
course and the one on Plato are the only two courses Nietzsche takes that are focused on
the Greeks while at Bonn. Both courses from Ritschl are on Latin language and
literature.
We do see Nietzsche doing some work on Greek material during this year. In a
note dating from somewhere between the spring of 1865 and the spring of 1866, we see
Nietzsche listing sources on Simonides, along with some other books, most likely ones he
needs to acquire.127 He does turn into Jahn, most likely for the seminar and not the
is likely a forerunner to a paper he will publish in 1867 discussing issues of meter and
other musical aspects of Greek lyric poetry.128 Picking up where his Oedipus essay left
during this year. A brief note from Spring of 1865 asks, “What does poetry have in
common with music?” and includes the observation that “Music is analogous to feeling,
not identical or the language of feeling.”129 Here we see his interest in finding
commonalities between music and Greek poetry not limited to tragedy, but extended to
125
Cancik (1991), 38-39. “Schöpfer” “Prophet” “Ritter”
126
Cancik (1991), 31.
127
KGW I/4, 44, 46.
128
Hoyer (2002), 161. “Simonides lamentatio Danae”
129
KGW I/4, 32. “Was hat die Poesie gemeinsam mit der Musik?” “Die Musik ist analog dem Gefühl, nicht
indentisch oder Sprache des Gefühls”
173
Like his friend Deussen, Nietzsche arrives in Bonn with letters of introduction to
Jahn and Ritschl.130 Curt Janz thinks that the talk Nietzsche has with Ritschl is decisive
in his turn from theology and commitment to philology. Beyond this, he sees Nietzsche
having no further personal interaction with Ritschl at Bonn and believes Nietzsche
purposely, even if not consciously, avoids Ritschl as he is still undecided about philology
and the strength of Ritschl’s personality could pull him decisively into the discipline.131
This is quite plausible. We have seen that Nietzsche describes the followers of Ritschl,
not Ritschl himself, as one-sided. Though it is unclear to what this exactly refers, it is
possible that it means a strong partisan commitment on the part of his students within the
conflict between Ritschl and Jahn, as it is written in the summer when the conflict is at
full steam. It does not seem to refer to Ritschl’s philological approach, as Nietzsche
eventually adopts it almost entirely once he commits to being Ritschl’s student, and since
Ritschl and Jahn are so similar in method and Nietzsche offers no similar criticism of
Cancik sees Nietzsche taking up not only Ritschl’s methods but also almost all of
his professional interests except that Nietzsche stays with Greek literature while Ritschl is
a Latinist, and he does not pick up Ritschl’s pursuit of linguistic and epigraphic studies.
Nietzsche does share Ritschl’s interest in literary history written anciently as well as
Ritschl’s focus on ancient libraries and librarians. We have already seen in his Theognis
essay, the direction of which was influenced by Ritschl’s student Volkmann, Nietzsche
130
Hoyer (2002), 15.
131
Janz (1978), 143, 163.
174
beginning to look into issues of sources, collections and Byzantine lexicographers, and he
will continue to work in precisely these areas of Ritschl’s expertise while under Ritschl at
Leipzig.132
influence while at Bonn is most likely correct. A letter written in August of 1865, after
Nietzsche leaves Bonn but before he arrives in Leipzig, would seem to confirm this. The
letter is written to Hermann Mushacke, a friend Nietzsche makes while at Bonn who is
also transferring to Leipzig and who apparently also takes courses from Ritschl at Bonn,
perhaps with Nietzsche, since Nietzsche talks to him about Ritschl as one familiar with
his teaching and research. He admits to Mushacke that he wasted the year at Bonn and
that he would be grateful to Ritschl, had he taken advantage of what he has to offer. But,
Nietzsche insists, he has been working on his own personal development, and it is too
easy, he continues, for one “to be destined by men like Ritschl, to be swept away perhaps
even on paths that lie far from one’s own nature.”133 Then he continues to praise the
understanding of himself he has gained as the greatest achievement of the past year.134
Indeed we do see Nietzsche wary of Ritschl’s potential influence, his protection of this
period of personal development, and an admission that he consciously made less use of
We have clear signs that he does absorb some of the Bonn School’s method, most
likely in Ritschl’s lectures, but possibly also in Jahn’s course on archeology and in
132
Cancik (1995), 15-16.
133
“von Männern wie Ritschl bestimmt werden, fortgerissen werden vielleicht gerade auf Bahnen, die der
eignen Natur fern liegen”
134
KGB I/2, 79-81.
175
Ritschl’s and Jahn’s seminar to the extent that Nietzsche participates in it. In the letter
home at the end of February in which Nietzsche defends his lack of discipline by pointing
out that having gone straight from Schulpforta to the military would have been too much,
and thus that he could not let Bonn be like either Schulpforta or the military, he does
protest: “Given that, I have tidily steered into the philological channel here.”135 Earlier
that month he has announced to his mother and sister that he is done with theology, and
certainly that is part of what he means here. He may also be indicating that he is learning
things that are improving his philological skills and even increasing his commitment to
still happy he spent this first year in Bonn and then goes on: “What really matters of
course is learning method as a philologist, and where better than here?”136 This is a clear
indication of the reputation of the Bonn School’s rigorous method and of Nietzsche’s
awareness of it. He speaks of it as if even his family members back home should know
that there is no better place to learn it. At this point he has had Ritschl’s course on
Plautus and is currently in his course on Latin grammar. He is also attending Jahn’s
We get a critical clue as to what Nietzsche is picking up from the Bonn School’s
method in a letter written in June only to his sister. She is angry with him for the way he
has discussed his loss of religious faith with other family members. He is writing to
135
KGB I/2, 45. “Dazu bin ich hier ordentlich in philologisches Fahrwasser gekommen.”
136
KGB I/2, 53. “Es kommt ja wesentlich darauf an, als Philologe Methode zu lernen; und wo besser als
hier?”
176
Is what matters then to receive the opinion of God, the world, and atonement that
allow one to feel most comfortable? Is not the result of his research for the true
researcher rather something indifferent? Do we seek then quiet, peace, and
happiness in our research? No, only the truth, and even if it is most repulsive and
ugly.137
The key word in this passage for us is “result.” Just what result is one trying to get from
their religious belief on the one hand or from their scholarly research on the other?
Religion has a predetermined result it wants, and shapes itself towards that end.
result in mind, the researcher works carefully through the data. What is produced,
“truth,” is completely unknown before the end of the research process. The result may
end up horrifying and ugly and bring no comfort or happiness whatsoever. This is
my Two Years in Leipzig,” written sometime between the fall of 1867 and the spring of
1868 and to which we will later return, Nietzsche describes Ritschl’s teaching and
research thus: “At the same time he was free from every scholarly creed, and he was
Nietzsche already learned this attitude from Ritschl by his second semester at Bonn?
Was this an attitude Nietzsche already had and then found appealing in Ritschl? The
former seems more likely, as we have never before seen Nietzsche speaking of a
137
KGB I/2, 60. “Kommt es denn darauf an, die Anschauung über Gott, Welt und Versöhnung zu
bekommen, bei der man sich am bequemsten befindet, ist nicht viel mehr für den wahren Forscher das
Resultat seiner Forschung geradezu etwas Gleichgültiges? Suchen wir denn bei unserem Forschen Ruhe,
Friede, Glück? Nein, nur die Wahrheit, and wäre sie höchst abschreckend und häßlich.”
138
KGW I/4, 520. “Rückblick auf meine zwei Leipziger Jahre” “Dabei war er frei von jedem Credo in der
Wissenschaft; und besonders verdroß ihn ein unbedingtes urtheilloses Hingeben an seine Resultate.”
177
Ritschl’s work, and we see Nietzsche adopting and promoting it only once he is in a
His biographers do not connect Nietzsche’s statement to his sister in this letter
with philology, reading it instead as a step in Nietzsche’s own existential quest – which it
certainly is.139 Earlier we noted Hollingdale’s surprise that after religion begins falling
apart for Nietzsche at Schulpforta, Nietzsche does not immediately reach for another
dogma to take its place, and we saw that this would have been a likely time for someone
such a new dogma, which Nietzsche does not. What we see in this letter to his sister is
Nietzsche beginning to find a replacement for his religious belief. It promises nothing as
grand as Christianity and Classicism offer and embraces more risk and pain than either,
but Nietzsche’s new commitment to Wissenschaft does give his life and activities
purpose: he is searching for truth, whatever form it may take. Biographers are surely
right to see Nietzsche’s statement to his sister as a step in his existential quest. For
recognize that he has learned this step from the historical-critical method of professional
philology, likely bolstered by his reading of David Strauß’s The Life of Jesus which both
undoes religion for him while demonstrating the historical-critical method. Classicism is
not turned to as a new dogma for Nietzsche at Schulpforta, but the historical-critical
139
See Janz (1978), 152-153, Pletsch (1991), 69-70, and Young (2010), 59-60.
178
Another indication that Nietzsche does indeed learn this non-teleological search
for truth from Ritschl is found in the same letter in August to Hermann Mushacke
preparation for going to Leipzig and goes on: “Now and then, when every way appears
closed off, I would like to despair of the whole investigation. Whether results are
produced, – something I can hardly assess – they will be transformed into a paper for the
seminar at Leipzig.”140 It would appear that his dramatic protestation that he has no idea
whether his research will even produce results, that he is clearly working with no results
in mind, is meant to assure his friend that he is staying true to what they have both been
taught. Otherwise, such a statement is hard to explain. It is much more precise than, “if
the paper turns out to be any good, I’ll present it.” Nietzsche’s words specifically paint a
picture for another Ritschl student of Nietzsche working diligently without any thought to
results.
new energy and renews his academic diligence. In the summer of 1865, we see
Nietzsche starting to refocus on his studies as his rejection of life in the Burschenschaft
solidifies. Already in May he writes to his mother and sister that he has “the proper
140
“Mitunter, wenn jeder Weg verschlossen scheint, möchte ich an der ganzen Untersuchung verzweifeln.
Kommen Resultate heraus, – was ich kaum übersehen kann – werden sie in eine Arbeit für das Leipziger
Seminar verwandelt.”
179
commitment to focus has returned and he writes that he now endeavors “to centralize”
himself in every aspect of his life.142 We have seen that he is more intellectually active in
the summer semester, participating in Ritschl’s and Jahn’s philological seminar for which
list of works to read during the Easter break includes Theognis.143 In the letter to
Mushacke in which he tells him that he is now working hard on Theognis, he describes
him as being horribly mistreated and as someone from whom Nietzsche has to daily cut
“tacked on frills,” presumably attached to him by those undiscerning critics who have
been mistreating him, as one of the tasks of criticism is to clear away all spurious
readings.144 If anything comes of this work, as we have seen, it will be turned into a
seminar paper.145 Not only is he working, he is working so that he can hit the ground
running at Leipzig. As we shall see, this work spent on Theognis now is a great
investment as it wins him Ritschl’s favor and thus, eventually, secures his professorship
at Basel. In two more letters written in September just before he gets to Leipzig, another
to Mushacke and one to Raimund Grainier, an old Schulpforta friend to whom Nietzsche
141
“das rechte philologische Bewußtsein”
142
KGB I/2, 49-50. “centralisiren”
143
KGW I/4, 50-51.
144
“aufgeflickten Flitter”
145
KGB I/2, 81.
180
once sent his odd “Euphorion” fragment, Nietzsche again mentions that he is working on
Theognis.146
It should be observed that in a note dated May through June of 1865, we see
Nietzsche seriously reading Lessing’s Laokoon, though he says nothing explicit about the
expresses, Bonn is too expensive for him, so the fact that he transfers at all is, if nothing
else, financially necessitated.148 In fact, by the time he leaves Bonn, he owes what equals
a year’s worth of rent in debt.149 It should also be kept in mind that it is quite normal at
this time for students to move around frequently during their university years.
Nietzsche’s friend Deussen, for example, studies at Bonn, Tübingen and Berlin before
graduating with a dissertation written at Marburg.150 Any discussion of his transfer must
keep this basic fact in sight to avoid digging up problems where there are none. In a
letter home in May he is uncertain about where to study next, his only criteria, besides the
quality of the faculty, are that he would either like to live in southern Germany or go to a
foreign university so that he can go where he does not have friends that will pull him into
146
KGB I/2, 84-86.
147
KGW I/4, 58-59.
148
KGB I/2, 45.
149
Young (2010), 61.
150
Reich (2004), 53.
181
predetermined social circles.151 Another letter from May sent shortly after that one, but
to his old Schulpforta friend Gersdorff explains that Nietzsche decides firmly to transfer
to Leipzig once he hears Gersdorff is going there and that Ritschl’s recent decision to
move there only strengthens him in that choice.152 This shows a serious vacillation in
Nietzsche’s thinking as he quickly goes from wanting to escape all former acquaintances
at his new school to claiming to choose his next place of study because a friend will be
going there. As Nietzsche himself observes, much of this year is about finding himself.
Janz depends on this letter in his diagnosis of motivations, arguing that Gersdorff
initiates the decision and Ritschl cements it. Young also gives credit to both for
motivating the choice.153 In another letter home at the end of May, Nietzsche cites
Ritschl’s move as his main reason, but also notes that he has friends that will be in
Leipzig. Here he adds one more key element: music. In another letter home in June he
again expresses his excitement about having friends and family close, but he is especially
letter to Gersdorff in early August, Nietzsche writes, “Now I am not in fact going to
Leipzig just to pursue philology, rather I want to gain considerable musical training. In
Bonn I simply have no opportunity for it.”155 Here not only do we have Nietzsche’s clear
intention to enjoy the musical opportunities in Leipzig but specifically to finally receive
151
KGB I/2, 53.
152
KGB I/2, 54-55.
153
Janz (1978), 153-155, and Young (2010), 61.
154
KGB I/2, 65. “mitten in einer Fülle von Musikanregungen”
155
KGB I/2, 75. “Ich gehe nun zwar nicht nach Leipzig, um dort nur Philologie zu treiben, sondern ich will
mich wesentlich in der Musik ausbilden. Dazu habe ich in Bonn schlechterdings keine Gelegenheit.”
182
training in music, something he has never had in all of his years of philological
education.
least, by Jahn’s encouragement and example. It does not seem that Nietzsche is sticking
with philology simply because it is his only hope for a profession. At the same time, it is
clearly not a passion, and he still assigns the Greeks no exemplary role in leading
moderns to a higher cultural plane. Also, it does not seem that Nietzsche sees philology
offering him access to the kind of ideal art-world like the one Winckelmann projects on
the ancient Greeks. At this point, art (which means music for Nietzsche) and philology
are two separate things, though he is continuing to build what ties he can between the two
with his thoughts on the musical nature of Greek tragic and lyric poetry.
mid-October, 1865. The founding of the university in 1409 predates those of both Bonn
and Schulpforta. In the 1830s, administration of the medieval university is taken over by
Nietzsche is registered there for four semesters, twice as many as he spends at Bonn,
starting in the fall of 1865 and ending in fall of 1867, when he begins his military
service.157 After his year in the military, Nietzsche will give another presentation to the
156
Hoyer (2002), 168.
157
Hoyer (2002), 168, and Janz (1978), 176.
183
discussed below, but he will no longer consider himself a student at the university as he
the high points mentioned are courses or lectures.159 Based on Nietzsche’s leaving
certificate, his preserved lecture notes, and statements he makes, Hoyer has reconstructed
the courses likely attended by Nietzsche. In the Winter Semester of 1865-66, he takes:
History of Greek Tragedy and Introduction to Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes (Ritschl),
Roman Epigraphy as Aid to the Study of Latin Grammar (Ritschl), History of Greek
Literature (G. Curtius), and Foundations of Practical Politics. In the Summer Semester of
Introduction to Greek and Latin Linguistics (G. Curtius), Comparative Statistics and
Political Science of European States, and other courses for which we lack the names. In
the Winter Semester of 1866-67, he takes: Latin Grammar (Ritschl), Greek Grammar (G.
Paleography for Theologians and Philologists (C. von Tischendorf). In his last semester,
Summer 1867, he takes: The Most Important Lessons [Lehren] of Latin Grammar
(Ritschl), History of Political Theories, and Old French Grammar. 160 We see a much
higher density of philological courses than he has taken at Bonn, with the only known
distraction being a few political courses. We also see Nietzsche taking a number of
courses from Ritschl, including at least three on method. His focus is finally narrowing.
158
Janz (1978), 248, and KGB I/2,328.
159
Hoyer (2002), 169.
160
Hoyer (2002), 174.
184
All the same, in a letter to Hermann Mushacke in late April 1866, Nietzsche
explains that he finds the lecture courses he is taking boring and most useful for sleep and
relaxation.161 In his Retrospective on the two years at Leipzig, he explains that what
interests him most is method, and that, though content is esteemed highly, very little of it
is actually taught. The content rarely appeals to him anyway, and he focuses instead on
the form in which a teacher conveys his wisdom [Weisheit]. Indeed, it seems to be the
method of teaching that most interests him at Leipzig where he limits himself “to
observing how one teaches, how one transmits the method of a Wissenschaft to young
would seem to indicate not only an interest in a teaching career, but that he finally
where his existential crisis and commitment to a career in philology begin to turn him
decisively towards the classicism expressed in Birth and the Lectures on Bildung.163 First
we see how his encounter with the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Lange give him
both new ways to cope with the conceptual vacuum left by his loss of faith and a new
way to think about philology. Then we discuss his time in the military and early attempts
to pursue philology in a more philosophical manner. Finally, we look at how his thinking
161
KGB I/2, 129.
162
KGW I/4,511. “zu beachten, wie man lehrt, wie man die Methode einer Wissenschaft in junge Seelen
überträgt”
163
The third motivation, his love of music, does not drive his classicism until he moves to Switzerland, at
which point it causes this classicism to crystallize into its most solid and sparkling expression, though it has
already led Nietzsche to the explore the relationship of music and text in tragedy as seen in his paper on
Oedipus Rex written at Schulpforta.
185
on his career develops, discuss the first indications of a nascent classicism, and examine
by two discoveries he makes during his student years in Leipzig: the philosophy of
home to his mother and sister, written on the 5th of November, 1865, just a few weeks
after school begins in Leipzig, he asks them if it really is so easy for them to bear “this
whole existence full of contradiction, where nothing is clear other than that it is
unclear?”164 The existential crisis caused by losing his religious faith is becoming
overwhelming enough that he needs to express it to the one person he should least like to,
his mother. In response to having been earlier admonished to do his duty, most likely by
his mother, he now writes, “From which source, then, do I know everything that is a duty
for me to fulfill?”165
We do not have any indication of the exact date when Nietzsche first buys
Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation (1844) in his landlord’s bookstore
and begins to read it.166 Perhaps Nietzsche’s questions to his mother are being posed as
he begins the book, or perhaps they are only a clear indication of a need requiring the
relief he will very soon find in Schopenhauer. He does not explicitly mention
Schopenhauer to his family until a letter in December, in which the twenty-two year old
164
“[…] dieses ganzes widerspruchsvolle Dasein, wo nichts klar ist als daß es unklar ist?”
165
KGB I/2, 94-95. “Woher weiß ich denn das alles, was mir zu erfüllen Pflicht ist?”
166
Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung
186
scholar gives his mother a list the books he wants to be given for Christmas, a tradition he
has observed since his first year at Schulpforta, when it was perhaps a bit more age-
the November 5th letter, we see Nietzsche still very much without conceptual clarity or
moral guidance. He is hovering precariously above the pit of nihilism he spends the rest
already.168 What is key for us to note here is how Schopenhauer affects Nietzsche’s
thinking on Greece as exemplary for moderns. As mentioned above, Nietzsche does not
seen in the letter to his sister in June of 1865 that he does begin to see purpose in
pursuing truth through Wissenschaft, regardless of the results of that pursuit, which is to
say that he hopes the Bonn School’s method will give him some existential purpose. As
Janz notes, Schopenhauer presents a similar “fight for the truth without compromise or
fear” that appeals to Nietzsche, building on the courageous purpose he finds in his
professional work, and courage has been a virtue quite important to Nietzsche since he
was a boy.169
Protestantism once was for his desire for epistemological orientation and moral direction.
He also finds a vision of art as redemptive.170 Nietzsche has since his youth had a deep
167
KGB I/2,101.
168
See, for example, Simmel (1920), Most (1977), Kopij and Kunicki (2006), and Dahlkvist (2007).
169
Janz (1978), 182. “kompromiß- und furchtloser Kampf um die Wahrheit”
170
Janz (1978), 179-81.
187
appreciation for art, writing poetry and music, dabbling in fiction, and beginning some
dramas. But he has never consciously discussed the value of art or presented it as serving
a specific purpose in life. It is from Schopenhauer, not classicism, that Nietzsche first
gains this conviction of the redemptive value of art which will be so central to the form of
Schopenhauer’s idea of the way art serves life, as Nietzsche receives it, proposes
that life is constant willing and, thus, constant suffering. Art and aesthetic experience
temporarily suspend human volition, lifting the perceiver of art temporarily out of
experiences oneself as an individual, willing ceases, and the object one perceives is not
an individuated object, but an a-spatial, a-temporal Platonic Form. Thus, art can provide
us with a privileged vision closer to the truth than our usual spatially and temporally
others with this privileged wisdom and temporary reprieve from suffering is
Schopenhauer’s “genius,” the rare individual who has access to will-less objectivity.173
This idea of the genius as one with clearer vision unperturbed by the will and
In his student years at Leipzig, Nietzsche says only a little specifically about art or
its value in these Schopenhauerian terms. He discusses the value of the cessation of
188
Schumann’s music and going for walks, as one of his great forms of recuperation after a
day of his philological work.175 Schopenhauer’s theories have clearly deeply impressed
Nietzsche, but it will take another encounter, or two, for the questions of the value of art
to really become central for him. For now, what is most important to him is the idea of
seeing, by means of art, concepts similar to Plato’s ideas that are neither the objects of
daily perception nor, for Schopenhauer, the absolute truth of existence but mediating
to an interest in the history of philosophy. By the late summer of 1866, almost a year
after discovering Schopenhauer, this interest brings Nietzsche to read Friedrich Albert
Lange’s newly published History of Materialism (1866), a history stretching from the
pre-Socratics up into the 1860s.176 Much less attention has been given to Lange’s
influence on Nietzsche than has been to Schopenhauer’s, and, as James I. Porter points
out, the importance of his ideas for Nietzsche “has never been fully appreciated.”177 This
is perhaps because Wagner’s strong influence on Nietzsche’s language leads him to rely
himself says so little of Lange outside of the letters of these Leipzig years. A third
possible reason may be that Lange is not canonized in the history of philosophy the way
174
“interesseloses Auge”
175
KGB I/2,119, 194-197, 198-202
176
Geschichte des Materialismus
177
Porter (2000b), 9.
189
Schopenhauer has been, and gets little traction with professional philosophers today.178
George J. Stack provides a thorough and useful analysis of Lange’s formative influence
on Nietzsche in his Lange and Nietzsche (1983), which should have opened up a field of
study that remains much too neglected even still. Though he focuses on how Lange
affects Nietzsche’s philosophical program throughout his middle- and late-period, the
implications of Stack’s analysis make quite clear that Lange is also integral to the curious
classicism Nietzsche pursues in Birth and the Lectures on Bildung of 1872, even if it does
not focus on this early period. Porter’s Invention of Dionysus (2000) does give more
attention to the impact Lange has on Nietzsche’s thinking in Birth, though his study is not
focused on Lange.179
parts. First, the advance of Wissenschaft has led to the realization that our knowledge is
only of phenomena and is formed by our own organization. To this clearly Kantian
proposition, Lange adds that our own organization that forms our knowledge of
phenomena is itself only known as a phenomenon, which is to say the entire Kantian and
perceptions of the world. The second part of Lange’s view is that the loss of what was
178
This seems to be determinant in the shape of Paul Swift’s Becoming Nietzsche: Early Reflections on
Democritus, Schopenhauer, and Kant (2005). The book says very little about Lange despite his formative
importance on Nietzsche’s thinking. It is written from the perspective of the discipline of philosophy with
a focus on teleology. Thus, it considers only the canonized figures of Democritus, Kant and Schopenhauer,
whom Swift designates as “primary thinkers,” “traditional philosophers,” and “pivotal thinkers” (2). For
the question of Lange’s influence, Swift refers readers in a footnote on page 3 to Stack’s book.
179
He offers a useful summary of Lange in relation to Nietzsche more concise than Stack’s. See Porter
(2000b), 9-16.
190
Wissenschaft is the positivism of his time, the genealogy of which he traces back to pre-
Socratic atomists in his History. Despite his neo-Kantian skepticism, Lange does not
think that we should have better scientific explanations than positivism provides. Beyond
his worries of their corrosive effects on human purpose and existential comfort, he knows
that we simply have no way to validate them as objective, which is not the same thing as
wanting to throw them out in the hopes of something better. He is not at all anti-
Wissenschaft, he is simply compelled to admit that even basic concepts like “thing” and
“matter,” though quite useful, have no validity as actual reality.181 Another critique
Lange offers of Wissenschaft as currently practiced is that it is too fractured into sub-
disciplines and methodologies. He suspects, in fact, that Wissenschaft can never offer a
unified theory using its actual methodologies, and that any attempt at such a holistic
This is indeed a dire situation for Western humanity, losing the existential
comfort of its religious faith to a Wissenschaft that itself is extremely limited. Lange
fears that only the most “disciplined scientific mind” can continue to live with the
agnosticism of Wissenschaft and that an entire people, its culture and civilization will be
180
Stack (1983), 302-303.
181
Stack (1983), 17.
182
Stack (1983), 304.
183
Stack (1983), 18.
191
Christian religion is irretrievable and any attempts with metaphysical systems to explain
reality are “doomed to failure.” Thus, with religion, Wissenschaft, and metaphysical
philosophy unable to provide humanity with the comfort, orientation, and direction it
needs, Lange proposes the only possible source of salvation he can see: the projection of
a poetic, myth-creating, ideal world. This world of artistically created ideas provides a
empirically verifiable, nor even taken to be such, but simply an expression of values.
This poetic activity is not metaphysical and never masks its artistic, which is to say
fictive, nature.184
Where religion and Wissenschaft are failing humanity and human culture, artistic
philosophy needs to step in. Lange feels that philosophers should be allowed poetic
freedom as long as they are edifying, and thus for him a philosopher should at best be a
kind of artist.185 In this, Lange is still working from Kant. He takes Kant’s noumenal
world, where Kant believes useful forms of the thing in itself called “regulative ideas,”
such as God and the soul, can still have an effect on our thinking and behavior, and
proposes what he calls “the standpoint of the ideal.”186 This standpoint is a heuristic
position from which a poetic philosopher can project edifying concepts and myths. This
standpoint and the “truths” it allows one to create do not and need not have any empirical
or even rational validation. They are to be valued for the “effects that such ideals would
have upon human life, the feelings, sentiments needs and aspirations of mankind.”187 To
184
Stack (1983), 304.
185
Stack (1983), 11.
186
Stack (1983), 308, 312. “der Standpunkt der Ideal”
187
Stack (1983), 11, 306, 319.
192
be clear, this creation of “truths” valued for their effects or results is what Nietzsche has
Apparently living with the unembellished results of rigorous method has not been
focused on his later works and names the will to power, the eternal recurrence, and the
Übermensch as the three main elements of the mythology Nietzsche creates and projects
from his own standpoint of the ideal.188 He does not look at any of Nietzsche’s works of
1872, though it should be quite clear that Lange’s ideas, especially his standpoint of the
ideal, go a long way towards explaining the bewildering mélange of myths Nietzsche
deploys there. Though it depends on Schopenhauer’s concept of the Will viewing all of
Birth that, “only as an aesthetic phenomenon are existence and the world eternally
justified,” makes even more sense as a program explaining the style of his philosophy,
This call for artistic philosophy is not to replace modern materialism but to
supplement and even utilize it. Using Lange’s two terms, Stack explains that “Dichtung
Lange sees a sharp distinction between scientific “truth” and what he calls “figurative
truth,” and he sees beauty as standing opposed to whatever truth about actuality may be
188
Stack (1983), 319. Nietzsche’s Übermensch is often translated as “overman” or “superman.”
189
KSA 1, 47. “nur als aesthetisches Phänomen ist das Dasein und die Welt ewig gerechtfertigt.”
190
Stack (1983), 304. Dichtung, related to Dichter already encountered above, can be translated as
“poetry,” “literature,” or “fiction.” For Lange it is the creative part of the philosopher’s attempt projected
from the standpoint of the ideal to give existence meaning and life direction.
193
their representations are not true, but edifying and meant to raise humanity “above the
limits” of what is known by the senses. Similarly, scientists would be wise not to
overvalue their work, specialized and limited as it is, and to keep in mind that only a
poetic vision has the best chance at giving humanity ideals worthy of continuing culture
and civilization.192
the end of August, 1866, after he has been reading Schopenhauer for a year. In it, he
describes both the undoing of Schopenhauer and his reclamation. After summarizing
Lange, he writes, “the true being of things, the thing in itself, is not only unknown to us,
rather the very concept of it is nothing more or less than the final quintessence of a
his noumenal, regulative ideas, Lange sees nothing but edifying human poetic creation.
Schopenhauer, of course, has indulged in many concepts crucial to his system, describing
explaining that Lange argues we should let the philosophers be free, even in the region of
[Irrthum] in Raphael’s Madonna. Schopenhauer is not lost but remains for them, he
191
“bildliche Wahrheit”
192
Stack (1983), 313.
193
“das wahre Wesen der Dinge, das Ding an sich, ist uns nicht nur unbekannt, sondern es ist auch der
Begriff desselben nicht mehr und nicht weniger als die letzte Ausgeburt eines von unsrer Organisation
bedingten Gegensatzes”
194
writes, “even from this most strictly critical standpoint; yes, he becomes almost even
something more for us.”194 Thanks to Lange, Nietzsche loses Schopenhauer as the
metaphysically accurate descriptor of reality, but can now keep and cherish him as a
poetic philosopher who provides what Nietzsche still finds to be the best edification: “if
philosophy is to edify, then I at least know no philosopher who edifies more than our
existence. Yet Schopenhauer represents the best performance of Lange’s ideas, the best
existence that give it meaning, all of which makes him the best example of what
Nietzsche calls a “personality.”196 As we will see, his most frequent use of Lange’s
This understanding of what Nietzsche adopts from Lange should temper any
edifying myth-maker years before writing Birth, we should be very hesitant to attribute
book. Lange has really left him with very little. He can still believe that Wissenschaft
194
“selbst bei diesem strengsten kritischen Standpunkte, ja er wird uns fast noch mehr”
195
KGB I/2, 159-160. “wenn die Philosophie erbauen soll, dann kenne ich wenigstens keinen Philosophen,
der mehr erbaut als unser Schopenhauer”
196
“Persönlichkeit”
195
provides the best view of reality based on the senses, though it can never be verified even
in its most basic propositions such as matter, nor can it produce an image of reality worth
living for. This is a very deep and thorough skepticism Nietzsche gets from Lange that
reveled in for the past year, has even less truth value. What Nietzsche gains from Lange
is permission to project poetry combined with his scholarly work on to the universe in
also see him continuing to use metaphysical concepts, such as the thing in itself, which,
as Stack points out, is critical to his argument on linguistics in On Truth and Lie in the
Extra-Moral Sense, written a year after Birth in 1873.197 Porter points out that Nietzsche
learns from Lange not only that metaphysics is a mistake but that it arises from a deep
need and can provide edification as a kind of “conceptual poetry.”198 As we will see
below, Lange gives Nietzsche a framework, if not permission, to use many ideals,
metaphysical or otherwise, in which he no longer believes or never did in order to try and
find aesthetic justification for his life. They have simply become artistically created
any other form of Dichtung Nietzsche could combine with the findings of Wissenschaft.
This does not mean that his use of these concepts needs to be understood as cynical or
meant merely to reveal to those who seek to follow his thought the limitations of their
thinking. Nietzsche’s need for existential meaning and purpose in his life activities is
197
Stack (1983), 14. Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne
198
Porter (2000b), 8.
196
serious and quite sincere, and, despite his Langean epistemological uncertainty, his use of
the artistic ideas he borrows or creates to give meaning to existence is just as sincere.
the late 1860s, with a healthy appreciation for Schopenhauer practically serving as a
Erwin Rohde, who becomes Nietzsche’s closest and most valued friend in the late 60s, he
lists Schopenhauer alongside Byron (a poet, note) as his favorite reading after work,
In a letter from the same time to Deussen, we see Nietzsche continuing to hammer
him into the shape Nietzsche requires, which above all now includes Schopenhauer.
Though he has finally quit theology and switched to philology at Tübingen, as Nietzsche
has been commanding him to do, he is still not reading Schopenhauer. In his continued
logical grounds. He tells Deussen, “The best thing we have in order to feel at one with a
great mind, to enter into the paths of his ideas sympathetically, to have found a home for
thought and a place of refuge for gloomy hours – we will not want to rob others of this,
we will not even let it be robbed from us. Let it be an error, let it be a lie – – –“201
Strong protestations, and ironic, considering they are addressed to a future leader of the
199
Young (2010), 87-88.
200
KGB I/2,230.
201
KGB I/2,229. “Das Beste, was wir haben, sich eins zu fühlen mit einem großen Geiste, sympathisch auf
seine Ideengänge eingehen zu können, eine Heimat des Gedankens, eine Zufluchtsstätte für trübe Stunden
gefunden zu haben – wir werden dies andern nicht rauben wollen, wir werden es uns selbst nicht rauben
lassen. Sei es ein Irrthum, sei es eine Lüge – – –”
197
Schopenhauer’s philosophy an error and a lie, Nietzsche is convinced Deussen could also
in August 1867, or a year after his discovery of Lange, Nietzsche gives much more
importance to his own development than to Lange, who is not mentioned in the body of
the text nor in the chronological list of “noteworthy points” at the end of it, which begins
how teachers teach than in the material they are teaching, he describes the point a student
A young man should first find himself in that state of astonishment, that state
which one has called the “preeminent philosophic pathos.” After life dismantles
itself before him as nothing but enigma, he should consciously, but with strict
resignation, keep to that which can possibly be known and choose within this
large region according to his capabilities. How I have come to this point of view,
I will explain first. Here then for the first time the name of Schopenhauer appears
on these pages.203
Curiously enough, he gets quite distracted in his account and never returns in it to the
subject of how to teach. He also does not discuss how Schopenhauer leads him to his
202
“bemerkenswerthe Punkte”
203
KGW I/4, 512. “Der junge Man soll erst in jenen Zustand des Erstaunens gerathen, den mann das
φιλόσοφον πάθος κατ᾽ ἐξοχήν genannt hat. Nachdem das Leben sich vor ihm in lauter Räthsel zerlegt hat,
soll er bewußt, aber mit strenger Resignation sich an das Wissensmögliche halten und in diesem großen
Gebiete seinen Fähigkeiten gemäß wählen. Wie ich zu diesem Standpunkte gekommen bin, will ich
zunächst erzählen. Hier erscheint denn zum ersten Male der Name Schopenhauer auf diesen Blättern.”
198
Here was every line that cried renunciation, negation, resignation; here I saw a
mirror in which I caught sight of the world, life, and my own disposition. Here I
saw the full, disinterested sun-eye of art; here I saw sickness and healing, exile
and refuge, hell and heaven. The need for knowing myself, indeed for gnawing at
myself, seized me violently [….]204
Schopenhauer, who looms so much larger in Nietzsche’s mind than Lange despite
the fact that Lange actually gives him the only framework for thinking he can really trust,
does not give Nietzsche the solutions to his existential concerns. Instead, he is a
sympathetic mirror for Nietzsche. He is a reflection of his own feelings of being without
orientation in the riddle of existence and provides him with the image of one who,
nonetheless, courageously takes existence seriously and projects, by means of art, visions
giving life meaning. He rescues Nietzsche from his mental solitude by laying out for him
all of his concerns, and embodying someone who is resolute in continuing on despite
dogmatically followed and defended. Or as Janz puts it: it is not Schopenhauer’s ascetic
and negating ideas that appeal to Nietzsche, but “the personality of the philosopher and
204
KGW I/4, 513. “Hier war jede Zeile, die Entsagung, Verneinung, Resignation schrie, hier sah ich einen
Spiegel, in dem ich Welt, Leben und eigne Gemüth in entsetzlicher Großartigkeit erblickte. Hier sah ich
mich das volle interesselose Sonnenauge der Kunst an, hier sah ich Krankheit und Heilung, Verbannung
und Zufluchtsort, Hölle und Himmel. Das Bedürfniß nach Selbsterkenntniß, ja Selbstzernagung packte
mich gewaltsam [….]”
205
Janz (1978), 182. See also Pletsch (1991), 71. “die Persönlichkeit des Philosophen und seine
schöpferische Moral”
199
something Nietzsche can still value and pursue after reading Lange. He must simply
extend it beyond the method he has learned. Lange’s “philosophy” that he hopes brave
souls will pursue is, after all, the combination of Wissenschaft and Dichtung. Nietzsche
must simply find a way to bring Dichtung to his scholarship, an idea that will, of course,
not please Ritschl, though an aesthetic sense has been central to philology since Wolf and
back to the beginning of his student time in Leipzig, the fall of 1865. After arriving in
Leipzig, Ritschl invites four students, including Nietzsche, to his home for a social
evening on the 4th of December. There, he presents to them the idea of a Philological
Association to be run by the students as a forum in which they can present and discuss
their research, without Ritschl or any other faculty present.206 Nietzsche gives a paper to
the Association in all four of his semesters at Leipzig and is elected president in his third
semester.207 In the first semester, Nietzsche presents the revised version of his work on
206
Janz (1978), 184, and Hoyer (2002), 171.
207
Pletsch (1991), 73.
208
This revised work will not be handled here as it has been discussed already by others. In his own
summary of it, Nietzsche describes his continued work on Theognis as focused on two points: “die
Wiederherstellung der letzten Redaktion und das richtige Verständniß der Suidasnotiz,” which is to say, he
is continuing to look at the sources and the history of the production of a version of the collection (KGB
200
account in his Retrospective, Ritschl tells him that he, “has never yet seen from a third
combination.”209 Ritschl instructs him to prepare it for publication, offering his help.
“After this scene my self-worth shot into the air,” Nietzsche writes, “it is the time when I
This extremely positive impression will soon develop into multiple career
enthusiasm. He feels that Nietzsche’s work at the time is very much in line with that of
and that Ritschl’s high praise in these early years is well deserved.211 Until now,
Nietzsche has received an education at Schulpforta ideal for preparing one for
professional philology, he has had an unfocused year at Bonn, and he has had no
professional training in music. He could have become a pastor after Schulpforta, but he
already decided against that earlier in the spring. His best career option at this point, and
the one for which he has the most talent, is philology. As he writes, Ritschl’s high praise
makes him from this moment on a philologist, a logical and promising choice for the
young Nietzsche
After this episode, Ritschl is appreciated and respected by Nietzsche for the rest
of his life. At this early point in his career, Ritschl also becomes an intimate mentor and
I/2,117). James I. Porter discusses it in detail in chapter 5 of his Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future.
(2000a).
209
“noch nie von einem Studierendenden des dritten Semesters etwas Ähnliches der strengen Methode
nach, der Sicherheit der Combination nach gesehen zu haben.”
210
KGW I/4,515, and KGW I/4,515. “Nach dieser Scene gieng mein Selbstgefühl mit mir in die Lüfte” “es
ist die Zeit, wo ich zum Philologen geboren wurde.”
211
Cancik (1995), 17.
201
promoter for Nietzsche, who comes to visit him in his office twice a week, where they
not only discuss philology, but where Ritschl freely shares with Nietzsche his thoughts on
school politics, his own idiosyncrasies, and other matters usually passed over in such a
relationship. Nietzsche also often comes to his home where he discusses theater and
music with Frau Ritschl.212 As part of his fostering of Nietzsche’s professional promise,
Ritschl sets the subject for an essay contest in the fall of 1866 as “On the Sources of
Diogenes Laërtius” after Nietzsche tells him that he is interested in the 3rd century AD
biographer of philosophers.213 Nietzsche turns in his essay, finished in July of 1867 and
wins, as he writes to Rohde, “against Mr. Nobody,” indicating, it would seem, his was the
only submission.214
Yet despite the success and recognition he finds under Ritschl at Leipzig,
philology is still just his day job. This is seen in expressions like the one already cited
above where he names Schopenhauer, Schumann’s music and solitary walks as his forms
of recovery from his philological work.215 And despite Nietzsche’s deep appreciation for
Ritschl’s attention and assistance, in his first semester at Leipzig he already feels he has
nothing more to learn from him, as indicated by letters discussing his desire to transfer in
September 1867 and especially one in April 1866 in which he tells Hermann Mushacke
212
KGW I/4,519, Pletsch (1991), 74.
213
KGW I/4,526, and Janz (1978), 190. “De fontibus Diogenis Laertii”
214
KGB I/2,230. “gegen Herrn Οὔτις” - a play on the name Odysseus gives Polyphemus in Book IX of the
Odyssey. Porter discusses Nietzsche’s work on Diogenes on p. 116-125 of Nietzsche and the Philology of
the Future. As he writes on page 119, the texts under consideration, “give the appearance of being a
reconstruction, by way of a late ally of the atomists, of the historical antagonism between Plato (or
Platonism) and Democritus.” Nietzsche’s interest in Diogenes is clearly caused by his reading of Lange
and his subsequent interest in materialism. The conversation Nietzsche has with Ritschl that leads him to
set this as the subject in the fall of 1866 clearly happens in the wake of Nietzsche’s very recent discovery of
Lange. See also Gigante (1994).
215
KGB I/2,119.
202
that he should be glad to be in Berlin instead of Leipzig as “it is very boring, Curtius is
repulsive, Ritschl is no longer new, Voigt is stale.”216 In a similar letter from January
1866, however, Nietzsche indicates that, despite his plan to transfer in September, it will
be difficult to get away from Ritschl, “for you cannot believe how tremendously the
considerable personality of Ritschl captivates us and how hard, indeed hardly to be born,
We have seen how Nietzsche likely avoids too much interaction with Ritschl
while at Bonn in order to maintain his independence, and Nietzsche’s concerns seem to
have been well founded. Though he grows much closer to him at Leipzig, Nietzsche
does try to still maintain some distance. Not only does Ritschl propose the founding of
critical difference is that Ritschl leads the Society and attends its meetings. Nietzsche
avoids joining the Society for its first year, while enjoying the student-only Association.
In October of 1866, he feels obligated to also join the Society, as he writes to Mushacke,
“At least I cannot turn it down, if [Ritschl] offers it.”218 That semester, he does join.219
His discomfort with being Ritschl’s disciple, or with at least feeling too under his
influence, is counteracted by his gratitude for the professor’s generosity. As the time for
his planned transfer to Berlin in the fall of 1866 approaches, Nietzsche writes to
216
KGB I/2,103, and 127. “es ist sehr langweilig, Curtius abscheulich, Ritschl nicht mehr neu, Voigt
altbacken”
217
KGB I/2,107. “denn Du glaubst nicht, wie gewaltig uns die bedeutende Persönlichkeit Ritschls fesselt
und wie schwer, ja kaum erträglich die Trennung von ihm sein wird.”
218
KGB I/2, 168. “Wenigstens darf ich es nicht wieder ausschlagen, falls er es anbietet.”
219
Janz (1978), 189-90.
203
Gersdorff that, “Ritschl is continually friendlier towards me,” and that he will stay in
Leipzig next semester “where, all things considered, it pleases me splendidly.”220 What
Ritschl has recently procured for Nietzsche, which Nietzsche also tells Gersdorff about.
Ritschl has arranged for Nietzsche to help another colleague put together an index of
scholarship on Aeschylus, which wins Nietzsche, for the first time in his life, a degree of
financial independence from his mother.221 Writing again to Gersdorff in October of the
same year, Nietzsche lists all of the things that made his year at Leipzig better than that at
Bonn, which includes “unearned preference from Ritschl,” and he describes how “Ritschl
always finds the nicest way to see that I am working,” referring to, at least, the rigged
essay contest and the Aeschylus index job.222 Nietzsche is both humbly grateful to
help that leads him to his first stark criticisms of the profession. As just noted, Nietzsche
starts telling friends about the job working on the index in August of 1866. In October,
he writes about the work to Mushacke that “It means drilling heartwood. One learns
much doing it.”223 It is worth noting that this enthusiasm for the project comes just
before he actually begins to work on it, and just at the time he first discovers Lange. At
the end of the month, after he has begun, he writes home, describing the work as
220
“Ritschl ist immer freundlicher gegen mich” “wo es mir, alles gerechnet, vortrefflich behagt”
221
KGB I/2,157.
222
KGB I/2,172. “unverdiente Bevorzugung von Seiten Ritschls” “Ritschl findet immer einen hübschen
Weg, mich zum Arbeiten zu veranlassen”
223
KGB I/2,167. “Es heißt Kernholz bohren. Man lernt viel dabei.”
204
requiring more hand than head.224 In November he writes again to Mushacke telling him
that, of the various scholars working on Aeschylus he’s been reading, among one
hundred critics [κριτικοί] one barely finds two legitimate sons [γνήσιοι] and ninety-eight
bastards [νόθοι].225 So far, he is hardly impressed with his colleagues and the field they
This does not dim his appreciation for Ritschl, nor for the financial means the
work provides. In April of 1867, he writes to Deussen of Ritschl that, “You cannot
imagine how this man thinks, worries, and works for every individual he is fond of,” and
goes on to explain how his income for the next few years appears to be guaranteed and
that he wants to stay in Ritschl’s proximity.226 The same month he writes to Mushacke,
explaining that Ritschl is quite ill and that he fears losing him: “I cannot express to you
Also in that April he writes to Gersdorff, complaining that “most philologists lack
too close to the image and investigate a spot of paint instead of admiring the grand and
bold strokes of the entire painting and – what is more – enjoying it.”228 By the end of his
time at Schulpforta we have seen him learning, likely from Volkmann, to focus on one
thing and study it in depth, and he has certainly been further trained in this focus on
224
KGB I/2,177.
225
KGB I/2,180.
226
KGB I/2, 205. “Du kannst nicht ahnen, wie dieser Mann für jeden Einzelnen, den er lieb hat, denkt,
sorgt und arbeitet [….]”
227
KGB I/2, 214. “Ich kann Dir nicht ausdrücken, was ich an ihm verlieren würde.”
228
“jene erhebende Gesammtanschauung des Alterthums fehlt den meisten Philologen, weil sie sich zu
nahe vor das Bild stellen und einen Oelfleck untersuchen anstatt die großen und kühnen Züge des ganzen
Gemäldes zu bewundern und – was mehr ist – zu genießen”
205
details by Ritschl, as such focus is central to his method. Thanks to Ritschl he has the
opportunity to work for pay on an intricately fastidious philological assignment. Yet, just
half a year earlier Nietzsche has also discovered Lange and his proposition of a poetic
philosophizing that can bring holistic meaning to life. The signs of the strain between the
Langean direction he believes his work should go – towards unity, and the Ritschlian
direction his work does take – specialized fragmentation, are beginning to show. By
October of 1868, a year and half later, he frankly tells Rohde he finds the work on the
The image of the philologist standing too close to the painting and examining
only one spot anticipates what will soon become one of Nietzsche’s favorite ways of
describing the work of a philologist: the turning of a single screw by a factory worker.230
Following Lange’s concern that Wissenschaft has become too specialized to provide
edifying, if artistically invented, images of the whole, Nietzsche’s work on the Aeschylus
index is bringing him to see philology as a discipline much too specialized, where each
worker is limited to a very small problem, with no vision of the whole. This produces an
entire field, or perhaps industry, where much is being done and little is being
combined with edifying, philosophic ideals that focus on the whole, not on details. As he
229
KGB I/2, 321. “Sclavenarbeit”
230
See, e.g., KGB I/2, 316 and KGW I/4, 222.
231
KGW I/4, 363. “Es ist ein schrecklicher Gedanke, eine Unzahl mittelmäßiger Köpfe mit wirklich
einflußreichen Dingen beschäftigt zu wissen.”
206
tells Gersdorff in the April 1867 letter cited above, most philologists lack an uplifting,
comprehensive view of antiquity. In a note he writes that a single historical event does
not deserve the kind of agonizingly detailed attention it currently receives from
philologists, if it does not lead to further questions. “My method is to grow cold towards
a single fact as soon as the farther horizon shows itself.”232 What he hopes to find on
that horizon is a place to rest, with “rest” being a usage of the Schopenhauerian idea of
being free from the suffering of the will, a doctrine Nietzsche no longer has to believe in,
but which he can use as a standpoint in the construction of his poetic philosophy. Such
places of rest on the horizon are “insights full of essential influence on us.”233 Nietzsche
standpoints of the ideal, which can have real influence on his life.
Nietzsche can no longer defend the idea of objective truth, he is no longer so worried
about doing so. Even if philology makes errors, what matters most is the effect.
Considering the choice between pure Wissenschaft and artistic philosophy, erring towards
grand, edifying visions and away from scrupulous analysis of details is preferable, for the
“poetic force and the creative drive have done the best things in philology. The greatest
influence has been achieved by some beautiful mistakes.”234 This is not the method of
Ritschl’s Bonn School, neither is it the aesthetic sense or even the ability to transport
oneself to a living antiquity Wolf proposes. This is the willful creation of antiquity that
232
“Meine Methode ist, für eine einzelne Thatsache zu erkalten, sobald der weitere Horizont sich zeigt.”
233
KGW I/4, 395. “Einsichten voll wesentlichem Einfluß auf uns”
234
KGW I/4,399. “[…] dichtende Kraft und der schaffende Trieb haben das Beste in der Philologie gethan.
Den größten Einfluß haben einige schöne Irrthümer erlangt.”
207
certainly uses, but is not bound to the data studied by philologists. It should also be noted
that this dramatically reverses the position he took in the letter to his sister where he
criticizes religion for seeking comfort at that cost of truth and praises Wissenschaften for
Such motivation and ideas as he now has obviously set Nietzsche at odds with his
colleagues. Thus, it is for the next generation, the future, that Nietzsche believes he must
practice philology. As he writes in another note from the same period, “Gradually it is no
longer the time to crouch over letters. The endeavor of the next generation of philologists
must finally be to conclude and to enter upon the great legacy [….] Humanity has more
to do than pursue history. If we do it, however, then let us seek the bildenden points.”235
There is more to life than philology, though Nietzsche is fine with doing it as long as it
presents points that are formative, bildend, in one’s life. Another note states, “Something
need not be investigated just because it has existed, rather because it was better than now
and has an exemplary [vorbildlich] effect.”236 One way that philology can be bildend is
antiquity in his philology that give meaning to life and provide examples of acting in a
meaningful manner. That is, he wants to investigate and present antiquity as exemplary
for modernity. This is a crucial first step for Nietzsche in the development of his
classicism.
235
KGW I/4,397. “Es wird allmählich Zeit nicht mehr über den Buchstaben zu hocken. Das Bestreben der
nächsten Philologengeneration muß endlich sein abzuschließen und das große Vermächtniß der
Vergangenheit antreten [….] Die Menschheit hat mehr zu thun als Geschichte zu treiben. Wenn er es aber
thut, so suche er die bildenden Punkte.”
236
KGW I/4,496. “Darum weil etwas gewesen ist, darf nichts untersucht werden, sondern weil es besser
war als jetzt und also vorbildlich wirkt.”
237
Vorbilder are examples, like images set up in front of someone to be emulated.
208
And it is not just influence over a single life that concerns Nietzsche. Following
Lange, he feels that this power is necessary to save culture itself, to which not only the
Wissenschaften, but also individuals are obligated. In a letter to Deussen from October of
1868, he writes “To be sure I ask to see the license of every individual Wissenschaft, and
if it cannot prove that some grand, cultural purposes lie in its horizon, I, admittedly, let it
pass all the same” as “oddballs” have as much right “in the kingdom of knowledge” as
anyone else, though he has to laugh when they don buskins and gesture with pathos.238
This attempt to affirm even the oddballs will be tested throughout Nietzsche’s life, but
what is key is that what lies on the horizon, what Nietzsche must find at the standpoint of
the ideal, must serve culture in general. As will be discussed below, Nietzsche already
feels that he has no career options outside of philology at this point. Thus, he commits to
beyond historical factory work and towards inspiring, comprehensive images for the sake
of modern culture.
For the first time we see him wanting to make use of the past, Greek antiquity in
fact, in order to provide exemplary points to inspire current humanity to salvage its
culture. Nietzsche is aware that this project is fraught with poetic creation, that his very
hope in the power of projecting ideals from the past is itself the projection of ideals he
has been encountering. Since reading Lange, he has no reason to believe he has any other
options. The creation and projection of new ideals derived from antiquity, along with the
238
KGB I/2, 329. “Allerdings frage ich jede einzelne Wissenschaft nach ihrem Freipaß; und wenn sie nicht
nachweisen kann, daß irgend welche großen Kulturzwecke in ihrem Horizont liegen: so lasse ich sie zwar
immer noch passieren [….]” “Käuze” “im Reich des Wissens”
209
re-projection of some old ideals, in hopes of inspiring and edifying have now become
Nietzsche’s task.
before we discuss that, we should flesh out a little of the biography that helps shape it.
After Nietzsche’s four semesters at Leipzig from October 1865 - September 1867 he
spends a year in the military, stationed in his hometown of Naumburg, though he hoped
early March of 1868 that crushes his breastbone against his saddle. He convalesces until
commitment to the cause of German unification under Prussia. Already in the summer of
1866, during the Austro-Prussian war that lasts through June and July, Nietzsche
expresses strong support for Prussia and Bismarck. In July of 1866 he writes to his
mother and sister about the war being waged. He praises Bismarck for the “revolutionary
freeing Germany of its princes “the most comfortable in the world,” praising him for his
“courage and ruthless determination.”241 He calls himself an “enraged Prussian” and sees
239
Janz (1978), 223-224. See also KGB I/2,225.
240
Janz (1978), 232, 236. See also KGB I/2,261.
241
“revolutionäre Weise” “die bequemste von der Welt” “Muth und rücksichtslose Consequenz”
210
the day coming soon when he will be called to risk his life for his fatherland.242 In a
letter from the same time to Gersdorff he again shows enthusiasm for getting rid of the
princes of the German states and writes, “Never before in the last fifty years have we
been so close to the fulfillment of our German hopes,” referring back to the early days of
the Burschenschaften and their push for unification shortly after the victory, won in no
There is no reason to assume that his service little over a year after the victory of
Prussia in the Austro-Prussian war is motivated by anything other than his belief in
Bismarck’s program and hope for unification. There is no sign of irony anywhere in it.
What we have seen up to this point is Nietzsche’s love of war games as a child, the
continual reference to politics in his letters to his mother, the courses he takes on politics
at the university and the strong support he currently shows for Bismarck and his policies.
We will keep tracking the development of his political thinking as we continue towards
1872.
For now we return to Nietzsche’s year in the military beginning in the fall of
1867. It seems that the break from student life gives Nietzsche an independence that
While still working on the Aeschylus Index and other philological projects, Nietzsche
begins an intense study of the pre-Socratic materialist Democritus, to whom Lange has
led him.244 Porter devotes two thorough chapters of his Nietzsche and the Philology of
242
KGB I/2,134-136. Simply reading this one letter makes quite clear the sincerity of Nietzsche’s support
of Bismarck, Prussia and a united Germany. “enragierter Preuße”
243
KGB I/2, 143. “Niemals seit 50 Jahren sind wir der Erfüllung unsrer deutschen Hoffnungen so nahe
gewesen [….]”
244
See Janz (1978), 195, Cancik (1995), 18, and Porter (2000a), 34.
211
the Future to this study, so we need only consider how it illuminates Nietzsche’s
developing relation to the Greeks and the value they can have for moderns.
Dated between July and September of 1867 is an essay “The Lists of the Writings
letter to Ritschl from the end of September announces that his progress on the Aeschylus
Index may be slowed as he is currently working on a project “on the inauthentic writings
of Democritus.”246 This shows that, at least in its inception, the work on Democritus is
focused on determining which of the works attributed to him are done so justifiably. This
puts the work squarely in line with all of Nietzsche’s other philological work that has
focused on determining the authenticity of sources, it also puts it squarely within the
bounds of what he has learned from Ritschl and the Bonn School. By February of 1868,
however, Nietzsche writes to Gersdorff that, though at first the project was being led by
the concept “of a great literary counterfeiting,” he has begun to see “a new, whole image
of the considerable personality of Democritus,” and that pursuing the task as he now is
requires “leisure and fresh health of thought [Denken] and of composition [Dichten].”247
The pair Denken and Dichten are rather reminiscent of Lange’s Wissenschaft and
245
KGW I/4, 283-339. “Die πίνακες der Democritea”
246
KGB I/2, 224. “über die unechten Schriften Demokrits”
247
KGB I/2, 255. “einer großartigen litterarisch Falschmünzerei” “ein neues Gesammtbild der bedeutenden
Persönlichkeit Demokrits” “Muße und frische Gesundheit des Denkens und Dichtens”
212
Porter notes that as one reads chronologically through the various notes that
comprise the record of this unfinished project, one sees earlier judgments continually
overturned, though in favor of accepting more titles as authentic, not fewer.248 This
raises the question of Nietzsche’s use of skepticism in the project. Part of what informs
the rigorous method of the Bonn School is a need to stay on guard against casually
accepting certain variant readings or even entire texts as correctly constituted and
attributed. Skepticism is necessary, and as Porter points out, Nietzsche sees it as “the
state of the art of philology” and wears it “proudly like a badge.”249 In a note from
between winter 1867 and spring 1868, Nietzsche discusses how modern criticism is
characterized by a considerable skepticism as boundless as trust had earlier been, and that
doubt now has a moral necessity to it. He sees virtue in the current skepticism as it is
perhaps coming to show that the tradition, born of less skeptical roots “was right,
Porter points out that Nietzsche’s own skepticism is intensified by the model
provided him by Valentin Rose, a contemporary scholar who privileges skepticism even
more than Ritschl, and this skepticism is again compounded by his reading of Lange.251
be revealed by philology’s peeling away of all the distorting additions and alterations
made during the history of its transmission, which is to say, if the task of philology is to
clear away from a document the tradition that produced the document in order to clearly
248
Porter (2000a), 41.
249
Porter (2000a), 39. “Recht hatte, obwohl sie auf thönernen Füßen stand”
250
KGW I/4, 536.
251
Porter (2000a), 41.
213
see its undistorted form, the implications of Lange’s neo-Kantian skepticism become
quite clear. After all of the work performed by a critic to reveal the original, it must be
admitted that what is revealed is the product of all of the work performed by the critic.
As Nietzsche writes in a note from between the fall of 1867 and the spring of 1868:
The medium through which a historian sees are his own ideas (as well as those of
his time) and those of his sources. [….] We have enough to do, indeed perhaps
more to do than is possible, when we seek to strip off the “subjectivity” of our
appearance and that of the sources: the “objectivity” for which we can strive is a
long way from being it. It is nothing but “subjectivity” on a further level.252
This thorough skepticism that renders everything all-too subjective and never arrives at a
pure object would only be maddening for Nietzsche if he were still trying to pursue the
task of restoring “original” texts or of determining the “genuine” catalog of texts that
should be attributed to an author. Lange has already set him on another path.
This Langean skepticism only intensifies his disillusion with his professional
field. In discussing the greatest artists of history, Nietzsche writes in a note, “The
average minds need a terrible quantity of material in order to ‘understand’ their Dichter,
because they precisely want to understand the material and can actually only do so.
Hence the expansion of literary studies.”253 Critics are actually distancing themselves
from the great artists of antiquity by their specialized obsession with material, to say
nothing of the fact that, if they were to focus directly on the artists, what they see would
still be shaped by the way they see it. Thus, Nietzsche writes in February of 1868 to
252
KGW I/4, 367-368. “Das Medium, durch das der Historiker sieht, sind seine eignen Vorstellungen (auch
die seiner Zeit) und die seiner Quellen. [….] Wir haben genug zu thun, ja vielleicht zu viel zu thun als
möglich ist, wenn wir die ‘Subjektivität’ unsrer Erscheinung und der der Quellen abzustreifen suchen: die
‘Objektivität’ die wir erstreben können, ist weit entfernt es zu sein. Es ist nichts als ‘Subjektivität’ auf
einer weitern Stufe.”
253
KGW I/4, 224. “Die Durchschnittsköpfe brauchen schrecklich viel Material, um ihre Dichter zu
‘verstehen’: weil sie eben das Stoffliche verstehen wollen u. eigentlich auch nur können. Daher die
Ausdehnung der Litteraturstudien.”
214
bitter truths to the philologists.”254 This indicates one of the new uses Nietzsche hopes he
can put philology to: sending messages to his colleagues about the inadequacies of their
current approach to antiquity. This critical function is one of the main aspects Porter
focuses on and details at length in his Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future.
Another use is also indicated in the letter to Rohde, “Until now I have the most
background, something that has never worked out for me with any of my papers.”255
This marks a turning point in Nietzsche’s practice of philology, and much hinges on what
After reading Lange, he is not going to believe that any form of materialism is correct.
As Porter writes, Nietzsche does not reduce all of reality down to anything “let alone to
its material substance or shape.” Nietzsche’s interest in Democritus is not based on any
Democritus. “Philosophy” for Nietzsche here (and for a long time) means what it means
for Lange, what Lange helps him to see and salvage in Schopenhauer. It is the
254
“Ich habe erstaunliche Lust den Philologen eine Anzahl bittrer Wahrheiten zu sagen.”
255
KGB I/2, 248. “Bis jetzt habe ich für denselben die schönste Hoffnung: er hat einen philosophischen
Hintergrund bekommen, was mir bis jetzt bei keiner meiner Arbeiten gelungen war.”
256
Porter (2000a), 22, 25.
215
Nietzsche for edification and inspiration. In this case, as with Schopenhauer, the
wholeness is the personality of the philosopher, as Nietzsche sees it, independent of any
correctness of his thought, certainly independent of any accuracy to the actual life lived
and thoughts thought by the historical Democritus. Janz recognizes that as Nietzsche’s
personality to an intense interest in it.257 Porter also sees precisely this, seeking the
personality of an ancient “rather than the vaporous diffusion of its ideas” as the natural
Gersdorff in 1868, cited above, that after having started out wanting to establish which
texts are to be correctly attributed to Democritus, what one would expect to be the task of
a philologist trained in the Bonn School, he ends up with the whole image of his
personality.259
How that emerging personality can be used to edify humanity is far from obvious,
especially to Nietzsche. He is still working more with aspirations here than with results
he can put his finger on. As he describes him in the letter to Rohde, Democritus would
appear to be one of the geniuses of history who provide enlightening ideas to humanity
that determine future human activity, but little more is clear.260 Discussing the same
letter, Porter comments on the goal towards which Nietzsche thinks all of his projects are
pointing and calls the goal “unforeseen but increasingly visible.”261 Without arriving at a
257
Janz (1978), 229.
258
Porter (2000a), 59.
259
KGB I/2, 255.
260
KGB I/2, 248.
261
Porter (2000a), 44.
216
finished product that successfully weds Wissenschaft and Dichtung, Nietzsche abandons
What is easier to see, as is usually the case with Nietzsche, is the negative value
his work on Democritus produces, which Porter discusses thoroughly. As he writes, “The
world [Democritus] depicts is drained of moral and aesthetic significance [….] Viewed
against the featureless background of atoms and void, meanings appear more starkly than
ever to have been imposed and invented.”262 That is, Democritus does not give Nietzsche
an edifying picture of life and existence, but makes quite clear just how meaningless it is
and how all meaning is imposed, reinforcing what he learns from Lange without
producing the poetic vision of wholeness Lange hopes for and is also unable to provide.
And Porter is right. The hope Nietzsche begins to feel with the new philosophical
nature of his work on Democritus does not produce the new life-affirming mythology he
is seeking. Though he later in life offers some bold ideas like the Übermensch and the
will to power, Nietzsche’s attempts to provide something positive at this early point are
failures. Ambitious and hopeful, but failures. Thus it is clearest to see how Nietzsche’s
ideas function negatively, to counteract and dismantle other ideas. Porter’s discussion
examines this aspect thoroughly and shows quite accurately how Nietzsche serves to
highlight all of the problems in the thinking of his contemporaries and the tradition that
leads up to them. This insight, however, threatens to obscure the fact that Nietzsche is
earnestly trying to create something that can affirm existence for him.
262
Porter (2000a), 109.
217
The goal towards which all of his work is pointing and of which he does have
some concept is a history of literary history from antiquity to the present. Literary history
is one of Ritschl’s research interests, so he would likely approve the pursuit, but
Nietzsche’s approach is entirely his own. As Nietzsche describes it to Rohde, “now the
general-human attracts me, how the need for a literary-historical research forms itself and
how it takes shape under the forming hands of the philosophers.”263 As he can clearly see
that those who create and maintain the tradition of literary history give it its form,
Nietzsche wants to discover the human need that produces a practice like literary history
and the tendencies that form it. It is right after this sentence that Nietzsche mentions the
geniuses throughout history who have contributed ideas to the way humanity now lives
and indicates that his study of literary history could perhaps bring to light “a new cult of
the genius.”264
A letter to Gersdorff later that same February also announces his plans to conduct
a study of literary history, focusing on his desire to see how such a practice ever
of being mere factory workers, a note from the period clarifies which great ideas
Nietzsche is interested in: “I mean a distinct presentation of the points of view that have
become fruitful from which one observes antiquity including all the wrong turns; in short
263
“jetzt zieht mich das Allgemein-Menschliche an, wie das Bedürfniß einer literar-historischen Forschung
sich bildet und wie es unter den formendenden Händen der Philosophen Gestalt bekommt”
264
KGB I/2, 248. “einen neuen Kultus des Genius”
265
KGB I/2, 255.
218
those borderlines between the philosophical ideas and the history of literature.”266 He
wants to identify the ideas contributed by geniuses that have made the study of antiquity
one that promotes human life, the philosophical contributions, and separate them out
from the sterility of the remaining practice of literary history.267 He equates Lange’s
philosophers with Schopenhauer’s artist-geniuses, the ones who can see and contribute
more comprehensive views. Thus we see Nietzsche planning to examine precisely how
the kind of philosophy Lange promotes can, when combined with philology, provide
humanity with, if not the same kind of edifying ideas, at least an understanding of how
Nietzsche clearly sees many problems with the profession for which he has nearly
philology and believes he can see possible solutions. In a letter to Deussen from
September of 1866, in which Nietzsche is still trying to persuade him to switch from
theology to philology, he warns him that humans only a have a few productive years tied
directly to one’s twenties and that philology requires a degree of erudition and routine to
be acquired in a timely manner.268 Nietzsche’s concern about timing his training and
career properly comes out even stronger in a letter to Rohde from early May of 1868.
There he tells him that they both must have academic careers, “we simply must, because
266
“Ich meine eine deutliche Darlegung der fruchtbar gewordenen Gesichtspunkte, von denen aus man das
Alterthum betrachtet, sammt allen Verkehrtheiten, kurz jene Grenzlinien zwischen den Philosophemen und
der Litteraturgeschichte.”
267
KGW I/4, 223.
268
KGB I/2, 162.
219
we cannot do anything else, because we have no more appropriate life course in front of
us, because we have simply taken the wrong course for other, more useful positions.”269
Perhaps the last reason is the most poignant. Nietzsche wants to do something useful, but
he feels he has grown too old to pursue anything else, including his true love, music. He
is telling Rohde: they have no options; philology is it. Nietzsche simply must make
Here pragmatism clearly outweighs any idealism Schopenhauer and Lange may
philological career out of any love of the Greeks, but makes clear that he sees no other
viable options for himself beyond the training he has already spent so many years on, and
he hopes that he can at least put what he considers a misguided and wasteful
Wissenschaft to uses that, at least for now, Lange is inspiring him to believe might be
redeemed. Hoyer and Janz both also point out that Nietzsche is interested in being a
university professor, rather than a teacher at a Gymnasium, to have the freedom to pursue
what truly interests him.270 A career at the university as a philology professor will give
Nietzsche more time away from philology to pursue his actual interests.
220
Leipzig. In his letter to Gersdorff from April 1867 in which he complains about his
counterbalance to scholarship. He goes on to talk about how the ancient Greeks knew no
divide between mental and physical activity and to suppose that Christianity is to blame
for the divide, calling the Greeks the “people of harmony.”271 This recalls Humboldt’s
idea that the Greeks most successfully developed all of their faculties and potential into a
Winckelmann’s idea of the Greeks as a people at one with nature. Greek “harmony” is
one of the oversimplifying ideals German classicists have returned to for over a century
Similarly, in a note written sometime between the fall of 1867 and the spring of
1868, Nietzsche discusses the need to see beyond the considerable respect given to
Wissenschaft to see it for what it really is, claiming that a “healthy people, like the
Greeks,” only knew it “to a minimal degree”272 His use of “healthy” as an evaluative
category is certainly consonant with his later usage, but the sweeping gesture that makes
the Greeks as a whole healthy is reminiscent of the reductive and apotheosizing rhetoric
of earlier German classicists and especially brings to mind Goethe’s statement that health
These two comments alone do not make Nietzsche the torch-bearer for the
tradition Winckelmann begins, but they are suspiciously simplistic for a scholar steeped
271
KGB I/2, 210. “Volk der Harmonie”
272
KGW I/4, 363. “gesundes Volk, wie die Griechen” “in geringem Grade”
273
Maximen 487. Nietzsche’s relationship to this maxim is discussed in Gooding-William (1990), von
Staden ( 1976), and Young (1992).
221
in the minutiae of antiquity and interesting for one newly wanting to oppose that very
obsession with detail with more holistic myths. They would have made the most sense in
with ancient Greece consisted more of simplifications and when his ability to blur
distinctions allowed him to consider, for example, the River Lethe a site for baptism.
What these couple of statements seem to indicate is that Nietzsche’s new approach to
philology is making him, for the first time, comfortable using clichéd simplifications
At the same time we see the beginning of what can reasonably be called a
classicist project, something Nietzsche has not indulged in before. As we have seen,
Nietzsche sees philologists of his generation obligated to teach the practice to the next
generation in a more philosophical manner that brings out what is bildend, that provides
Vorbilder and that nurtures culture. That is, he is beginning to see professional philology
He does not write much more about the German Classics in this period than he
has earlier. There is a mention of Grimm’s Festrede on Schiller, which Nietzsche calls
one of his favorites without explaining why.274 In a note discussing Wagner’s Die
One more note from between fall 1867 and spring 1868 that needs to be
mentioned here discusses how Germans want to create a historical sequence of growth
274
KGB I/2, 96.
275
KGW I/4, 127-128.
222
and decay when the three great Greek tragedians are mentioned. Rather than making
Sophocles the middle and high point, a philologist wants to set the peak already at
Euripides as the most tragic. Nietzsche’s own opinion, at this time, is that a three-step
model of growth and decay in succession is wrong to begin with as chronologically the
tragedians worked to a degree “next to each other.”276 If one does draw a line from
Here we see Nietzsche applying his considerable knowledge of historical data against the
tendency to simplify and mythologize. He will, of course, take another tack in Birth.
In letters of April 1867 we see Nietzsche reviving the attempt to improve his
prose style, a project he had begun as a young boy. The first is to Deussen and it lays out
the Scylla and Charybdis between which he would like to steer his writing: exposing too
much logical structure on one side and burdening his writing with too much erudition on
the other. The former needs to be dressed with a “somewhat artistic dress.”278 As for the
latter, he writes that “some superfluity must be trimmed away that just happens to please
us very much.”279 Thus, he is aiming for something closer to a “strict exposition of the
evidence in a light and pleasing presentation, possibly without that morose seriousness
276
“Nebeneinander” Nietzsche’s emphasis
277
KGW I/4, 490.
278
“etwas künstlerisches Kleid”
279
“manches Superfluum muß hinweggeschnitten werden, das uns gerade sehr gefällt”
223
display how all the reasons connect as a whole “in short, the outline of the structure,” and
it would seem that it is in its pursuit that he either falls into too logical a presentation, or
shalt and must write” and explains that he is once again seeking what he once sought at
the Gymnasium: to write well.282 He lists Lessing, Schopenhauer, and the aphorist
Mushacke he complains that his lack of style is actually hindering the production of his
philological work. He adds that one is taught nothing of style at the Gymnasium and does
not practice it at all at the university where everything one writes are “subjective
outpourings” that do not demand any artistic form.284 In a note from between the fall of
1867 and spring of 1868 he writes that the organic writer of history needs to be a Dichter
and that “it does some damage at any rate when he is not a Dichter.”285
Though it appears his desire to have more style is related to the mission he has
adopted from reading Lange of combining more unifying, artistic “philosophy” to his
scholarship, there may well be other reasons for Nietzsche’s resurging interest in style
which he does not make clear. In any case, Janz is certainly correct in assessing
280
“strenge Exposition der Beweise, in leichter und gefälliger Darstellung, womöglich ohne jeden morose
Ernst und jene citatenreiche Gelehrsamkeit, die so billig ist”
281
KGB I/2, 205-206. “kurz den Riß des Gebäudes”
282
“Du sollst und mußt schreiben.”
283
KGB I/2, 208.
284
KGB I/2, 214. “subjektive Ergüsse”
285
KGW I/4, 365. “es schadet jedenfalls etwas wenn er nicht Dichter ist”
224
Nietzsche’s desire for more style at this point as being itself somewhat superfluous as
Nietzsche’s writing, especially in his polished pieces, has indeed already long had its
Before we move onto Nietzsche’s momentous meeting with Wagner, let us take in
an overview of his experience with music in Leipzig up to that point. As we have already
seen, Schumann’s music, along with Schopenhauer and solitary walks, serves as
refreshing diversions from his philological work.287 Many of his letters home in his first
year at Leipzig either discuss concerts he is attending or invite his mother and sister to
see him perform with a choir he has joined.288 Despite his announced plan to study music
thoroughly in Leipzig, there is no sign that he has begun this study, limiting most of his
musical experiences to the performances he attends and gives. He does send his mother a
Kyrie for her birthday in January of 1866, noting that he has not composed for a year, but
related to music such as the rhythmic pulsation of atoms and their relation to musical
quantity.290 Thus, as it has since his time at Schulpforta, Nietzsche’s philological work
286
Janz (1978), 191. “Luzidität und Musik”
287
KGB I/2, 121.
288
See, e.g., KGB I/2, 94, 96, 98, 112, and 113. See also on p. 151 a similar letter to Gersdorff.
289
KGB I/2,108. “fast aufgegebene Thätigkeit”
290
Porter (2000a), 101-106. See also KGW I/4, 124-126.
225
continues to serve as an outlet for his love of music, though it also seems to continue to
overshadow his pursuit of it, especially as he has been devoting himself to and preparing
for a philological career. Now that he is committed to this career, seeing no way out, and
now that he has found in Lange an artistic way as a professional philologist to try to give
meaning to his life and to the lives of others, he is ready to have his love of music, among
other factors, thrust him into Wagner’s influence, where his nascent classicism ripens
226
3.0.0 NIETZSCHE’S EARLY PROFESSORSHIP (1869-1872)
begin any other, and he has begun to make use of Lange’s suggestion to enhance
Wissenschaft with an artistic creativity giving existence meaning. In this chapter, we see
Nietzsche begin his career as a professor hoping to make philology serve life with this
“philosophical” approach. His new friendship with Wagner allows him to experience
firsthand the immense energy and confidence with which Wagner is pursuing his goal of
cultural reformation for Germany. This gives intensified impetus to Nietzsche’s own
desire to provide himself and others with existential meaning in his philological career.
This culminates in his classicist plan to create new institutions of Bildung where the study
of the Greeks produces further artistic geniuses capable of sustaining the new culture
Nietzsche hopes Wagner is about to initiate. This friendship also turns Nietzsche’s
professional focus back to tragedy, one of the first philological subjects through which he
has attempted to find an outlet for his love of music already at Schulpforta. This leads to
that provides a classicist argument that Wagner’s Musikdrama has all of the culturally
This chapter begins with Nietzsche’s relationship to Wagner and Wagner’s ideas
on the Greeks. Then we discuss the beginning of Nietzsche’s professorship at Basel and
the inaugural address he delivers announcing the philosophical direction he hopes his
career will take. Next we look at Nietzsche’s renewed interest in tragedy in the work
preliminary to Birth. Then we examine his political thinking and the influence Jakob
Burckhardt likely has on his embrace of elitism both as a way to understand the Greeks
and as part of a cultural remedy for his own time. Finally, we will see the formation of
his desire to create new institutions of Bildung and the process leading up to the
publication of Birth.
Now we turn to Nietzsche’s relationship with Wagner, looking first at the period
from their first meeting in Nietzsche’s last months in Leipzig through the first year
Nietzsche spends in Basel. We also sketch out Wagner’s views on the value of the
When Nietzsche meets Richard Wagner on November 8th 1868, his cultural
aspirations receive life-changing stimulus that can only be compared to the effect
Schopenhauer and Lange have had on his thinking. Much has already been explored and
written about their relationship, so our focus on Wagner is, as always, kept to how he
affects Nietzsche’s views on the Greeks as exemplary and meaningful for modern culture
and how he inspires Nietzsche’s classicist hopes.1 Nietzsche has known of Wagner’s
music since Gustav Krug introduced it to the Germania in the early 1860s, from which
time until their meeting Nietzsche continues to pay some attention to Wagner’s theories
1
On Nietzsche’s and Wagner’s relationship and cultural partnership, see: Love (1966), Dietrich (1976),
Hollinrake (1982), Vogel (1984), Borchmeyer and Salaquarda (1994), Köhler and Taylor (1998), Sorgner
(2008) and Wildermuth (2008).
228
and music, oscillating between more and less appreciation for the composer.2 We have
already seen how this awareness affects Nietzsche’s essay on Oedipus Rex written in his
discusses how the composer brings all art forms together in his works and especially how
he matches his musical motifs to the emotions of the words – an effect Nietzsche is
exploring in his first major philological paper in order to use Sophocles’ tragedy to
discuss his passion, music. The relationship between music and text will be the question
with which Nietzsche returns to his study of tragedy as he now discusses this relationship
in person with the man from whom he first learned to formulate it as a question, Wagner.3
In a letter to Rohde from the 8th of November 1868, exactly a month before
Nietzsche meets Wagner, we see his enthusiasm for Wagner growing, due in part to the
an art that combines all other arts within itself, and is himself impressed by Wagner’s
considerable and varied talents and the energy to make use of them all, especially when
compared to the anemic world of “Bildung,” which Nietzsche puts in quotes to indicate
through irony how inappropriate he finds the term for professional scholarship.4
In Leipzig, Nietzsche has been visiting the Ritschls frequently, as much to visit
Frau Ritschl as to see his professor, if not more so. Music is one of their favorite topics,
and Nietzsche has even played some Wagner for Frau Ritschl who is friends with
2
For a concise summary of Nietzsche’s awareness of Wagner in the years before their meeting, see
Borchmeyer (1994), 305-321, 1223-1225 and, even more concise, Silk and Stern (1981), 24-28.
3
Though Nietzsche has indeed been working on the index of Aeschylus scholarship, it is very unlikely he
would consider this “slave labor” requiring more “hand than head” a meaningful study of Greek tragedy. It
certainly has no personal meaning for him beyond the money it provides.
4
KGB I/2,321-322.
229
Wagner’s sister, Ottilie Brockhaus. Frau Ritschl has let Wagner know that she is already
acquainted with his music through one of her husband’s musically and philologically
talented students. Wagner requests to meet the young man.5 Apparently, the prospect of
Janz points out that Nietzsche has only up to this point become personally
acquainted with scholars and literary types. He believes that Wagner presents him for the
first time with a creative artist, one who awakens in him “every hidden dream and secret
wish.”6 In a letter written to Rohde on the 9th of November, the day after this first
what occurs during the “strange fairy tale” of the preceding night.7 After Wagner plays
some of his own music, the two have a long discussion about Schopenhauer, and
Nietzsche is overcome to hear Wagner’s appreciation for the philosopher and that he
thinks Schopenhauer is the only philosopher to recognize the essence of music. Then
Wagner disparages professional philosophers and discusses their lack of appreciation for
Schopenhauer. After this, Wagner reads from his biography, a scene which still makes
Nietzsche laugh as he thinks about it. Finally, upon parting, Wagner takes Nietzsche’s
hand, invites him to visit in Tribschen on Lake Lucerne, and asks him to further acquaint
Ottilie and the others with his music.8 This initial meeting already encapsulates many of
the aspects that will characterize Nietzsche’s relationship to Wagner: their mutual
appreciation for Wagner’s music and Schopenhauer’s theories on music, their mutual
5
Reich (2004), 180 and Janz (1978), 248.
6
Janz (1978), 251. “alle verdeckten Träume und heimlichen Wünsche”
7
“wundersame Mär”
8
KGB I/2, 335.
230
disdain for professional scholarship, Wagner’s self-promotion (in the form of his
continuing reflection on the meaning of Wagner. A letter from the 20th of November
Rohde are. The two need, he suggests, to consider another pair, Schopenhauer and
Wagner, with their boundless energy to stand tall in the face of “the entire ‘gebildeten’
world.”9 How Schopenhauer and Wagner offer solutions to Nietzsche and Rohde is not
detailed. What seems to matter is simply the image of the two withstanding a flood of
barbarism. In regard to the particular venom for professional philology in this letter,
Rohde has just had an article turned down by Ritschl’s prestigious philological journal,
the Rheinisches Museum, after efforts on Nietzsche’s part to get it published. Nietzsche
may be enhancing his disdain out of solidarity for the hurt feelings of his friend. These
sympathetically bitter grapes aside, Nietzsche’s discontent with his profession has
already been developing before his encounter with Wagner. In the same letter to Rohde,
Nietzsche discusses their plans to move to Paris together independent of any university
after they finish their doctorates, an aspiration that only underscores their dissatisfaction
Nietzsche is still months away from his first visit to Tribschen and has not been
corresponding with Wagner in the past month, but Wagner has made a deep impression
and is very much on his mind. A letter to Rohde from early December expresses
9
KGB I/2, 344. “der ganzen ‘gebildeten’ Welt.”
10
KGB I/2, 345.
231
music, his writings, his aesthetic theories, and not least, from “that happy get-together
with him.”11 Where Schopenhauer has given Nietzsche a way to view existence that
makes continued life possible, and where Lange has made it clear to Nietzsche that even
Schopenhauer’s ideas are not to be taken as verifiably true but as aesthetically and
embodiment of Schopenhauer’s genius, the kind of person who justifies human existence,
seen Nietzsche avoiding too much contact with Ritschl at Bonn and even putting off as
late as possible joining the Philological Society at Leipzig that Ritschl forms and attends,
we already see what may be faint signs of a Nietzsche wary of being consumed by
Wagner’s personality – a concern he is quite right to have. From the beginning of his
relationship with Wagner, Nietzsche distances himself from and criticizes other
Wagnerians.12 A letter to Krug, whom Nietzsche has not written in a very long time,
In the letter to Rohde just discussed above, Nietzsche calls Wagner “Richard,” a
familiarity Nietzsche would certainly not assume in Wagner’s presence. Now to Krug,
startlingly, he calls Wagner not only by his first name, but renders him “that chap,
Richard.”13 In both cases, Nietzsche is likely overplaying his recent and limited
familiarity with the composer in a grotesque gesture of name-dropping. What may also
11
KGB I/2, 352. “jenem glücklichen Zusammensein mit ihm”
12
Janz (1978), 260.
13
KGB I/2, 343. “jener Knabe Richard”
232
be at work here is Nietzsche’s own need to feel some form of superiority in the
The first letter Nietzsche mentions having received from Wagner appears to be
one noted in a letter to Gersdorff in mid-January, 1969.14 The first preserved letter from
Tribschen is from Cosima Wagner to Nietzsche from May 20th 1869.15 Few of the letters
Nietzsche sends to Richard or Cosima are preserved, so it is difficult to know how much
Nietzsche is writing to them before his first visit to Tribschen on May 15, 1869, a month
after arriving in Basel.16 Nietzsche will visit the Wagners in Tribschen more than
held between Nietzsche, Richard and Cosima. What comes through in their letters and
Cosima’s journal is only a scant impression. We do, however, have a significant record
of Wagner’s attitudes towards the Greeks, and much of how these views impact
Wagner’s earliest impression of the Greeks is, as for most early nineteenth
14
KGB I/2, 364.
15
Borchmeyer (1994), 11.
16
Janz (1978), 293.
17
See Pletsch (1991), 116 and Janz (1978), 332, 336, 338, and 340.
18
Deathridge (2008), 105. John Deathridge provides a direct look at Wagner’s attitudes towards the
Greeks. Much of his study repeats Wolfgang Schadewaldt’s detailed study of the topic. He offers,
however, the important qualification that Schadewaldt prepares his sometimes too reverential findings for
presentation at Bayreuth on Wagner’s grandson’s invitation to commemorate Wagner, and he sometimes
233
independent and intensive study of the Greeks. Here for the first time, Wagner conducts
what he will long consider one of the most important experiences one can have with
originally have been staged at the City Dionysia in Athens. With the aid of Johann
Gustav Droysen’s recent translation (1841), Wagner feels he can present his imagination
with such a clear image of the performance that the Oresteia is able to affect him “with a
previously unheard of, penetrating power.”19 Throughout his vision of all three tragedies
he is transported, leaving him unable to ever really reconcile himself to modern literature
“such a fervently intimate insight into the wonderful beauty of Greek life,” that he is left
Schadewaldt describes Wagner’s writings after this intense reading in 1847 as having the
quality of immediacy and experience that is otherwise only seen among the great German
authors and Hellenists.21 He has experienced, or at least wants to imagine that he has
experienced, the kind of transporting “living-into” [Hineinleben] that Wolf once held out
materials from philologists including Droysen, Welcker, Boeckh, and Karl Ottfried
relies too uncritically on Wagner’s self-descriptions. While agreeing with most of what Schadewaldt
presents, Deathridge seeks to give more balance to his picture of Wagner’s ideas on the Greeks.
19
“mit einer bisher unerhört eindringlichen Gewalt”
20
“einen so innig vertrauten Einblick in die wunderbare Schönheit des griechischen Lebens”
21
Schadewaldt (1970), 348-349.
22
Hineinleben refers, in Wolf’s case, to one’s ability to enter with all of one’s soul into a living experience
of antiquity by means of highly developed philological skill, one of his goals for Altertumswissenschaft as
we saw in Chapter 2.
234
Müller. Schadewaldt believes, in agreement with the Austrian poet Johann Nordmann,
philologist.23 Regardless of how well Wagner’s philological expertise really does match
up to the professionals, what is certain is his sincere and intense attempt to really
understand Greek tragedy and the world that produces it. As John Deathridge argues,
Wagner is never able to see the Greeks as anything other than “the pristine source of a
lost culture—an ideal of fundamental origins projected onto the utopian future of a
Thus, his hard-earned image of the Greeks is caught up into his revolutionary
politics in the late 1840s and the aesthetic theory he develops to clarify art’s role in
revolution. In his study of Wagner and the Greeks, Ulrich Müller demonstrates that
Wagner’s three seminal essays on the theory of art written between 1849 and 1851 are all
influenced by his intense study of the Greeks.25 What Wagner finds so repellent in
humanity. Christianity devalues life in this world while modernity devalues humans by
using them as machinery and slaves. Humans are so exhausted they are incapable of the
Gesamtkunstwerk.26 The arts are all separated from each other as means to satisfy
23
Schadewaldt (1970), 350.
24
Deathridge (2008), 103.
25
U. Müller (1992), 229. The essays are: Die Kunst und Revolution [Art and Revolution], Das Kunstwerk
der Zukunft [The Artwork of the Future], and Oper und Drama [Opera and Drama].
26
“Gesamtkunstwerk,” a concept central to Wagner’s aesthetics, means “the total work of art,” and refers to
a work that combines all media within itself.
235
various specific demands, while society is equally atomized, and no one works together.
All are egoists and the state is the only force for cohesion.27
This more socialist and optimistic Wagner has not yet read Schopenhauer. Before
we can look more in depth at how ancient Greek art provides the solution for Wagner to
Wagner first discovers Schopenhauer in 1854. He is convinced by him that death is the
best of all, and that the best use of life is renunciation, attained by faith, in preparation for
death. In reading Schopenhauer, Wagner concludes that the socialism he has been
espousing could only rearrange suffering but never get rid of it. Like Nietzsche, Wagner
is aware that the world beyond plurality and individuation presented by Schopenhauer is
itself only a delusion, as much of a delusion as the individuated world. He embraces it,
however, as it is, in the words of Julian Young, a “healing rather than diseased Wahn.”28
Before reading Schopenhauer, Wagner has already been addressing the relation of
text to music in tragedy, believing that the text is primary. In reading Schopenhauer, he
comes to see music as the only key to accessing the world beyond plurality, giving music
priority over the text in his theory of tragedy. Wagner decides, in fact, that all great art,
even if not created out of literal music, is created out of the spirit of music.29 The
Wagner of the 1860s and early 1870s, the one influencing our young Nietzsche, is firmly
27
Young (2010), 113-114.
28
Wahn means “delusion” and is part of the name of the home Wagner builds for himself in Bayreuth,
Wahnfried, which Wagner explains as referring to the place where his delusions have found “peace”
[Friede].
29
Young (2010), 119-123.
236
committed to the idea that drama – the actions, words and emotions on stage – derives
Schopenhauer does not cause Wagner, however, to renounce his artistic creativity,
and he continues to see a social value in his art of the future, a value he believes he has
found among the ancient Greeks. Greek tragedy as the Gesamtkunstwerk gathers within
itself all of the arts, undoing their individuation. More than that, it brings all of Athenian
society together. At the City Dionysia, the wounds of individuation in art and society are
everyone access to the world of unity.31 The wholeness that has so consistently been
ascribed to the ancient Greeks since Winckelmann takes on both socialist and
Just as in his operas, however, Wagner is also inspired by the European Middle
Ages. He idealizes life then as one where all live in harmony with nature and the
seasons, with life given a stable rhythm by punctuating festivals and celebrations.
Everyone has beautiful, meaningful work, which is what Wagner still wants for all in his
time. If this still sounds like the socialism of his youth, Wagner would argue that
socialism only seeks to rearrange labor, where his vision of society brings beauty and
harmony to human life.32 As Young points out, however, Wagner does not display a
30
H. Reinhardt (1992), 290.
31
Young (2010), 114-115.
32
Young (2010), 116. See also U. Müller (1992), 231.
237
and pessimism after reading Schopenhauer. He never fully lets the socialism go.33
Wagner insists this vision is for the future, and not a simple recreation of the past.
Since the 1848 revolution, Wagner makes clear that he does not want moderns to become
Greeks again and try to revive their world. He especially does not want to recreate their
system of slavery. His study of the Greeks impresses on him a consciousness of his
distance from them that never leaves him. What he wants is for myth to be experienced
again, but anew and in a manner relevant for modernity.34 Wagner describes myth as
“the poetry of a common view of life.”35 It is as creative and dynamic as it is shared and
unifying. His operas are structured as much by Greek myth as by Germanic myth. There
is no better art form, Wagner believes, for transmitting myth than tragedy, as the
tragedians convey myth most convincingly and in the most accessible manner. George
Williamson points out that Wagner does not believe that myth can grow out of the soil of
modern Germany but must be created by a great, individual artist.36 By the time
myth for modernity that grows out of modernity. Thus, it must be “ideally socialist” even
if its matter is taken from Germanic sagas and shaped by Greek literature.37
The Gesamtkunstwerk, which is to be none other than the artwork of the future, is
a classicist project emulating the Greeks while not seeking to imitate them. It is an art
33
Young (2010), 124.
34
Young (2010), 114, Deathridge (2008), 108, and Schadewaldt (1970), 354.
35
“das Gedicht einer gemeinsamen Lebensanschauung”
36
Williamson (2004), 202.
37
Schadewaldt (1970), 354-355. “ideal-sozialistisch”
238
form driven by a rebirth of myth, relevant to modernity, conveyed in drama born out of
the spirit of music, and presented in a setting that brings all of society together in a time
of festival and celebration. It is the highest form of healing Wagner can offer to modern
humanity, and the model for it has only existed once before, in ancient Greece. Nietzsche
has already been introduced to much of this vision by Gustav Krug back in their
Germania days, and we have seen how elements of its theorizing turn up in his
schoolwork, specifically in his essay on Oedipus Rex. He has recently felt the power of
Wagner’s vision in its most charismatic embodiment when he meets Wagner himself in
his charisma.
3.1.3 Tribschen
One week after his first visit to Tribschen, Nietzsche writes Wagner on May 22,
1869 in the same spirit of praise we have seen in his letter to Rohde after first meeting
Wagner, and further elevated by a high degree of reverence. He tells Wagner that already
the best moments in his life are connected with his name and that only one other deserves
Nietzsche thinks with “a certain piety.”38 Nietzsche thanks Wagner for helping him with
the exact same things with which Schopenhauer has helped him, giving him strength to
hold fast to his seriousness about life (which is curiously “Germanic” here) and to a
38
“ihren großen Geistesbruder Arthur Schopenhauer” “religione quadam”
39
“vertieften Betrachtung dieses so räthselvollen und bedenklichen Daseins”
239
A letter to Gersdorff in early August reports Nietzsche’s plan to read in the next
“the most serious and worthy thinkers.”40 Where Democritus and Schopenhauer have
Wagner, Nietzsche believes, he encounters a personality at least as great, and in the flesh.
possesses “such a sublime seriousness about life” that Nietzsche feels himself in the
presence of divinity around him.41 Four more letters written just that August, to Krug,
Rohde, Nietzsche’s mother, and Deussen, all describe Wagner as a genius.42 His
“A fruitful, rich, moving life, entirely different and unheard of among average mortals!
For all of that, he also stands rooted firmly through his own force, with his gaze always
off beyond everything ephemeral and untimely in the most beautiful sense.”43 A result of
this vision he is sure Wagner has is the Schopenhauerian seriousness about life. Not only
how just being in Wagner’s presence transmits this ability for seriousness to others.44
This vague quality is never described but is most important to Nietzsche in his quest for
40
“den ernstesten und würdigsten Denkern”
41
KGB II/1, 35. “ein solcher erhabener Lebensernst”
42
KGB II/1, 39, 44, 69.
43
KGB II/1, 42. “Ein fruchtbares, reiches, erschütterndes Leben, ganz abweichend und unerhört unter
mittleren Sterblichen! Dafür steht er auch da, festgewurzelt durch eigne Kraft, mit seinem Blick immer
drüber hinweg über alles Ephemere, und unzeitgemäß im schönsten Sinne.”
44
KGB II/1, 37.
240
existential stability and would appear to represent the combination of a sober recognition
Nietzsche does not initially value Wagner for his vision of Greece or even for his
music as much as for his embodiment of the Schopenhauerian struggle to hold to a life
that makes no sense. Wagner’s value is, first and foremost for Nietzsche, existential.
Nietzsche’s coupling here of Wagner with Schopenhauer, which will be repeated many
times again in the coming years, is a clear indication of who Wagner is for Nietzsche, an
embodiment of Schopenhauer’s genius, the artist with the vision to make life bearable.
As great of an impact as Schopenhauer has had on Nietzsche through the written word,
Wagner now presents in the charismatic flesh the seriousness with which Nietzsche so
identifies and that vision he seeks. It is no surprise that Wagner dramatically inspires the
his existential crisis and provides a powerful example of the artistic vision Nietzsche
Another week later Nietzsche writes to Rohde, ecstatic about his visit to
“Wagner” and says of him that he is “really everything that we have hoped of him: a
lavishly rich and large mind, an energetic character, and an enchanting, charming
person.”45 He writes that he must cut his description short “otherwise I will sing a
Paean.”46 Another letter to Rohde a couple of weeks later in mid-June again confirms
45
“wirklich alles, was wir von ihm gehofft haben: ein verschwenderisch reicher und großer Geist, ein
energischer Charakter, und ein bezaubender liebenswürdiger Mensch”
46
KGB II/1, 13. “sonst singe ich eine Päan”
241
needs: “He makes everything true that we have only been able to wish for.”47 If
Nietzsche did earlier feel a need to avoid being drawn into Wagner, it was well founded –
Ritschl, has secured for him. Given how ambivalent Nietzsche feels about this career
opportunity to begin with, it is no surprise that his proximity to Wagner becomes far
more meaningful for him. Again in his letter to Krug from August, he tells him that his
days at Tribschen during the summer “are absolutely the most precious results of my
presence “I breathe deeply from time to time and am more refreshed than all of my
colleagues can imagine.”49 The quality of living that Wagner inspires with his mere
otherwise could ever know, and it is that proximity that helps Nietzsche to bear his work
in Basel. A few days later in August he writes to his mother that when he is with
Wagner, “much comes together in order to refresh me here and give me strength for my
job.”50
This statement to his mother probably might also indicate that the discussions
Nietzsche is having at Tribschen with Richard and Cosima, of which we have almost no
record, are inspiring his thoughts about the Greeks. A letter from Cosima to Nietzsche
47
KGB II/1, 16. “Er macht alles wahr, was wir nur wünschen konnten.”
48
KGB II/1, 39. “sind unbedingt die schätzenswerthesten Resultate meiner Baseler Professur”
49
KGB II/1, 42. “Juppiter [sic]” “ich von Zeit zu Zeit aufathme und mich mehr erquicke, als sich meine
ganze Collegenschaft vorstellen kann”
50
KGB II/1, 44. “es kommt viel zusammen, um mich hier zu erquicken und mir in meinem Berufe Kraft
zu geben”
242
from late August tells him how she and Richard have been reading an address he has
given on Homer “between Goethe, Schiller and Beethoven,” and she gives him
permission to seek this Homer at Tribschen in addition to the great Aeschylus, whom
they have already apparently been discussing – if “the great Aeschylus” is here not
Greek art and artists. After all, it is only after hearing that Sophie Ritschl knows of a
brilliant young philologist with good taste in music that Wagner requests to meet
Nietzsche. Wagner has long been a serious student of professional philologists, valuing
their aid in understanding Greek art, regardless of his expressed contempt for academia.
Now he has the opportunity to bind one to him as a friend and admirer.
This letter from Cosima mentions Goethe and Schiller three times, and their
names appear frequently in the letters exchanged between Nietzsche and the Wagners,
with the highest frequency being in her letters (which constitute the bulk of what is
available). The discussions at Tribschen center not only around the great Greek artists,
but also around the great German artists who deepen the German love for them.
Nietzsche writes to Rohde in early September of Tribschen: “what I learn and see there,
hear and understand, is indescribable. Schopenhauer and Goethe, Aeschylus and Pindar
live still; believe it!”52 At Tribschen Nietzsche is experiencing the reanimation of not
only his favorite and most inspiring philosopher, but of the great artists of Greece and
Germany.
51
“zwischen Goethe, Schiller, und Beethoven”
52
KGB II/1, 51. “… was ich dort lerne und schaue, höre und verstehe, ist unbeschreiblich. Schopenhauer
und Goethe, Aeschylus und Pindar leben noch, glaub es nur.”
243
long visit for the holidays. He maintains a lively written correspondence with them,
especially with Cosima, who comments thoroughly on everything he sends them.53 Much
of what happens at Tribschen when Nietzsche is not there is the reading of Greek authors.
A letter from Cosima to Nietzsche in early November mentions Richard reading out of
Plato’s Gorgias. From January on, her journal records their intense study of Greek
authors, with the intensity spurred by the visits from their new, brilliant, philologist
Sophocles, and later Herodotus and Thucydides.”54 A letter from Cosima to Nietzsche in
mid-January reports that she has reread his address on Homer and asks him to send his
other addresses as she and der Meister are expecting them. The same letter cites the
Odyssey. A letter from Richard in early February cites Theodor Mommsen on Cicero,
not a Greek author, but evidence that Richard still makes use of the secondary works of
professional philologists.55
Brambach, a former student of Ritschl’s who has also studied music and is teaching at
Wagner interested in the topic which has in turn given new impetus to his own interest –
53
Janz (1978), 344, 354.
54
“der ganzen Platon, aber auch Aristophanes, Aischylos, Sophokles und später Herodot und Thukydides”
55
Borchmeyer (1994), 28, 43, 48, 49 and, on Cosima’s journal, Janz (1978), 354.
56
KGB II/1, 122.
244
he has worked on Greek meter as a way to explore the music of Greek poetry since
Schulpforta. Either way, that Nietzsche’s own thoughts are focused on the subject is
evidenced by a letter later in July to Deussen in which he speaks of their friendship and
asks: “What is friendship? Two people and one meter.”57 This interest culminates in a
authors and artists are never far from the Wagners’ thoughts. Mentioned are: Schiller
twice, Beethoven, Goethe (multiple times, including the artist himself, his Faust, and his
Wilhelm Meister), and even Albrecht Dürer.58 In addition to these Greek and German
artists, Shakespeare is mentioned along with his Falstaff and Hamlet.59 At Tribschen,
Nietzsche finds himself in a world that engages with art and uses it to understand
existence in a way no other world he has previously inhabited did. Once again he calls
Wagner a genius in a letter to Deussen from February of 1870, and he says of him that he
holds to Schopenhauer as Schiller did to Kant, showing that the Wagnerian habit of
explanation through appeal to great artists is rubbing off on Nietzsche, a tendency quite
clear in Birth.60
surprised to learn that he has just been offered a professorship at the University at Basel,
57
KGB II/1, 127. “Was ist Freundschaft? Zwei Menschen und ein μέτρον.”
58
Borchmeyer (1994), 25, 26, 27, 55, 60, 77.
59
Borchmeyer (1994), 28, 34, 37, 46, 72.
60
KGB II/1, 98.
245
Friedrich Ritschl has recommended his young student for the position when asked for
everything he wants to do,” and also reassuring Basel that Nietzsche, if God grants him a
long life, will stand in the first rank of philologists and that he is currently a demigod to
all of the other philology students at Leipzig.62 That Nietzsche is appointed without a
doctorate and habilitation is rather unusual and demonstrates Ritschl’s power.63 Though
Nietzsche’s promoters would make his appointment at such a young age seem highly
unusual, it is actually standard practice at Basel at the time to hire young professors with
the expectation that they will move on after a few years to more prestigious positions at
German universities.64 What is more unusual in Nietzsche’s case than his youth is his
lack of standard qualifications and how long he stays at Basel, with his decade of active
been completed and that the position at Basel is his.66 Most of his letters at the time
announce not only his position to friends and family, they also detail his salary. Even the
calling card he has printed and sends to his mother and sister to distribute includes his
61
KGB I/2, 358.
62
Janz (1978), 253-254 and Hoyer (2002), 185. “Er wird eben alles können, was er will.”
63
See Silk and Stern (1981), 129.
64
Hoyer (2002), 184.
65
Janz (1978), 285-286.
66
Janz (1978), 257.
246
salary on it.67 Then in a letter home towards the end of February, he teases his mother
and sister for being so excited about his job and assures them that it is not that big of a
deal.68 It would appear he has already grown embarrassed of his own enthusiasm and
very recent letters asking his mother and sister to make a big deal out of both his new
position and his salary. At any rate, the salary finally achieved with this new position
provides more security than his short-term employment on the Aeschylus index and must
Mixed into his excitement and the embarrassment it is causing, Nietzsche is also
feeling disappointment. He and Rohde have been planning for a long time now to move
to Paris and study independently once they have both finished their doctorates. Thus, in
the letter from mid-January telling Rohde of his surprise appointment at Basel, Nietzsche
first has to tell him that the Paris plans will remain unfulfilled. Despite hopes to be seen
couple of philosophical flâneurs, “that devil ‘destiny’” now entices Nietzsche with a
philological professorship.69 Perhaps the salary he also details to Rohde in the letter has
something to do with the inevitability of that path. Nietzsche tells Rohde that just a week
earlier he planned to write him and suggest that they both cast philology aside and study
chemistry. But now destiny has kept him kept him tied just that much longer to
philology.70
67
KGB I/2 369-37.
68
KGB I/2, 373.
69
“überall zusammen” “der Teufel ‘Schicksal’”
70
KGB I/2, 358.
247
(among other topics between which he has vacillated), Leipzig decides that all of his
work already published in the Rheinisches Museum is sufficient evidence of his training
and awards him his doctorate on the March 23, 1869 without any further examination or
founding.72 Those who create the university are humanists, and as Hubert Cancik
control as is its university.74 Cancik describes the republican city-state upon Nietzsche’s
arrival as dominated by “an old, wealthy, gebildeten, and sophisticated patrician class.”75
Young writes that what Nietzsche would primarily notice about Basel in contrast to
Prussia is, “the absence of the self-assertive state. There was no king – the rector of the
university was elected by the professors rather than being a royal appointment – no
aristocracy, and no cult of the military.” He also describes Basel’s patrician families as
71
Janz (1978), 263.
72
Janz (1978), 281 and Hoyer (2002), 181.
73
Cancik (1995), 12.
74
Janz (1978), 278-279.
75
Cancik (1995), 23. “einem alten, reichen, gebildeten und weltläufigen Patrizier-Stand”
248
very concerned about culture and intellectual life, giving much attention to the
university.76
Basel reforms its schools, including the university, in the early nineteenth century
along the lines of the Prussian reforms.77 In 1818, the philosophical factually is raised in
status by these neo-humanist reforms. Both the neo-humanist emphasis and the
importance of the philosophical faculty remain strong throughout the nineteenth century,
in 1817 to provide three years of additional university preparation for graduates of the
faculty are required to teach at the Pädagogium where the curriculum includes homework
Nietzsche arrives in Basel on April 19, 1969, where he teaches 8 hours a week at
the university and 6 hours of Greek to the third year at the Pädagogium. 81 Nietzsche
76
Young (2010), 100.
77
Gossman (2000), 215.
78
Hoyer (2002), 182.
79
Hoyer (2002), 192 and Cancik (1995), 24.
80
Hoyer (2002), 192.
81
Janz (1978), 293 and Hoyer (2002), 186.
249
pupils translate from German into Greek.82 The texts Nietzsche teaches most both at the
university and the Pädagogium from the Summer Semester of 1869 through the Winter
Semester of 1871-1872 are Homer’s Iliad, various tragedies, and some of Plato’s dialogs.
He also offers a lecture course at the university introducing the study of philology that we
will examine in more detail below.83 Nietzsche promotes efficiency in the preparation of
his large teaching load by borrowing generously from others. As Fritz Bornmann details,
the course on Aeschylus’ Choephoroi relies heavily on someone else’s introduction to the
text, and other courses such as one on Sophocles and especially one on rhetoric given a
year after Birth is published, consist of entire pages taken from other philologists.84 His
classical authors that are presented and disputed after Nietzsche gives his treatment, all
conducted in Latin.85
As Nietzsche has never received any formal training in pedagogy, such emulation
and even borrowing is to be expected.86 It should be kept in mind that, though it is clear
he borrows techniques and material for some of his classes, we should by no means
assume that everything he does in class is unoriginal. The evidence for borrowing is only
82
Hoyer (2002), 194-195.
83
In his first six semesters at the university, Nietzsche teaches: Aeschylus’ Choephoroi (twice), Sophocles’
Oedipus Rex, Hesiod’s Erga, Cicero’s Academica (twice), Greek Lyric, Latin Grammar, Latin Epigraphy,
Greek Meter, The Introduction to Philology, and an Introduction to the Study of Platonic Dialogs. At the
Pädagogium he teaches: Homer’s Iliad (five of the six semesters), Plato’s Phaido (four times), Protagoras,
and Apologia, Sophocles’ Elektra (twice), Aeschylus’ Prometheus, Agamemnon, and Choephoroi (each
twice), Euripides’ Medea (twice), Hesiod’s Erga (twice), Pindar’s Odes, Demosthenes’ Philippics, and a
History of Greek Literature. See Bollinger and Trenkle (2000), 71-73.
84
Bornmann (1999), 71. See also Most and Fries (1994) on the rhetoric course given in the Winter
Semester 1872-1873.
85
Hoyer (2002), 199.
86
See Janz (1978), 386 and Hoyer (2002), 191.
250
limited to some of his courses. Nietzsche intends to teach his students a new form of
philology he is working to create, even if the reality of his heavy work load encourages
Gersdorff that his reading of Schopenhauer and seriousness will keep him from becoming
be more than just a “disciplinarian for competent philologists” inasmuch as his concern is
Basel for a month. He reports that in teaching the Phaido, he has “the opportunity to
infect his students with philosophy” and uses extemporaneous speaking to wake them
“out of their grammatical slumbers.”89 This is not what Ritschl has trained Nietzsche to
do. That Nietzsche describes his activities as “infecting” his students may reflect the
very perception he fears Ritschl might have of what he is doing. He may be ironically
claiming the word before it can be thought against him in accusation. This letter is rather
remarkable in having the most informal and least obsequious tone of all the letters
independence.
87
Hoyer (2002), 202.
88
KGB I/2, 384. “Zuchtmeister tüchtiger Philologen”
89
KGB II/1, 7. “Gelegenheit meine Schüler mit Philosophie zu inficieren” “aus ihrem grammatikalischen
Schlummer”
251
Less surprising is the letter to Rohde at the end of May in which Nietzsche
proudly reports that in his Plato course he leads “the fortunate lads with a gentle hand to
the philosophical questions: i.e., only to whet their appetites.”90 This is the most
thorough description of what Nietzsche means by infecting his students with philosophy,
and it probably means what he has earlier indicated in his Retrospective on his Leipzig
years in which he says a student must first be brought to the state of astonishment and
philosophic pathos where “life dismantles itself before him as nothing but enigma.”91 It
does not appear that Nietzsche brings his students to full existential crises giving rise to
towards one who threatens his individuality. In a mid-June letter to Rohde, he describes
the letter of high praise with which Ritschl has won Nietzsche’s position for him as
“fantastic.”92 Yet, he goes on, that letter made his position in Basel difficult at first, and
he hopes that through his inaugural address he has been able to distinguish himself “with
known simply as a disciple of Ritschl, and works like his address on Homer will ensure
that he indeed will not be. Yet Nietzsche’s gratitude is not at all diminished. In
September of 1869, after six months of visiting Wagner regularly, Nietzsche addresses
90
“die glücklichen Bengels an milder Hand auf die philosophischen Fragen hin: dh. nur, um ihnen Appetit
zu machen”
91
KGW I/4, 512.
92
“fabelhaft”
93
KGB II/1, 17. “mit entscheidenster Ausprägung der Individualität”
252
Ritschl as Meister in a letter, a title he usually reserves for Wagner (following Cosima’s
calls her husband both teacher and Meister.94 A letter from late December to Ritschl
himself is an expression of sincere gratitude for everything Ritschl has done for him.95
Nietzsche twice mentions to Rohde that Ritschl praises his inaugural address on Homer,
showing that he cares about his approval, something that will be harder to win as
On his move down to Basel, Nietzsche writes his inaugural address in a hotel in
Heidelberg.97 The fact that it is written off of the top of Nietzsche’s head and not with a
stack of a hundred books in front of him is reflected in the personal and philosophical
nature of the address. As this address has already received some close attention, here we
focus on what it says about Nietzsche’s incipient classicism as he begins his teaching
career. 98
Nietzsche begins his address titled “Homer and Classical Philology” and
delivered on May 28, 1869 with the observation that the practice of philology lacks a
conceptual unity and is in reality a multiplicity bound together by a name.99 This is, he
94
KGB II/1, 55, 89.
95
KGB II/1, 89.
96
KGB II/1, 43, 52.
97
Janz (1978), 267.
98
Porter provides an insightful discussion of the address. See Porter (2000a), 62-81.
99
Janz (1978), 267. “Homer und die klassische Philologie”
253
goes on to show, rather similar to what “Homer” is within the practice of philology.100 In
his attempt to offer and critique ways of seeing Homer as a unified concept, he also offers
a vision of how philology can serve as an entity, even if never a fully unified one. As
Porter points out, Nietzsche has originally titled the address “On Homer’s Personality,”
and it is with this aesthetic concept of a “personality” that Nietzsche has developed by
reading Lange, and with which he has been able to hang on to Schopenhauer as such a
powerful teacher, that he addresses the Homeric question and investigates the possibility
of unity.101 For Nietzsche, when one speaks of the Homeric question, what is meant is
“the question of the personality of Homer.”102 This appeal to the aesthetic construct of a
Nietzsche defends the idea of thinking about Homer from the perspective of a
personality as it has been “the center of a scholarly question […], from which a full
torrent of new views has poured” and has been the fruitful germ of an entire “cycle of
questions.”103 In Langean terms, it has been the standpoint of the ideal from which
considerable scholarship has been produced. And he believes that, because it has been so
fruitful and led to ideas that are themselves still productive, its importance deserves
100
KGW II/1, Homer, 249.
101
Porter (2004), 19. “Über die Persönlichkeit Homers”
102
KGW II/1, 254. “die Frage nach der Persönlichkeit Homers”
103
“das Centrum einer wissenschaftlichen Frage […], von wo sich der volle Strom neuer Ansichten
ergossen hat” “Fragencyklus”
104
KGW II/1, 254-255.
254
Throughout the address, Nietzsche reviews many of the possible ways in which
the postulating of a “Homer” or the denial of one has been attempted and has broken
down, constantly relying on the very language of these attempts, as he seems to have no
other option. He briefly recounts the history of the concept of “Homer” pointing out that
it goes far back beyond Wolf to at least the time of Peisistratus on up through the
Alexandrian grammarians.105 Early on, he argues, the name “Homer” has no necessary
relation to a concept of aesthetic perfection nor to the Iliad and Odyssey, denoting instead
a much broader body of literature. The idea of Homer as the Dichter of the Iliad and
Odyssey is not a historical tradition from earliest times but “rather an aesthetic
judgment,” a judgment made by the Alexandrians and still examined in Friedrich August
Wolf’s time.106 In just this one statement we see the kind of paradoxical doubling back
active from the Alexandrians to Nietzsche is indeed also clearly, a historical tradition.
out the paradoxes in Nietzsche’s thinking here. He argues that Nietzsche crisscrosses
between the idealizing moves of classicism and the data-based arguments of historicism,
105
KGW II/1, 255-257.
106
KGW II/1, 263. “sondern ein aesthetisches Urtheil”
107
Porter (2000a), 69.
255
to do more with this address than perform philology’s inconsistencies. By the end of the
address, he has not come close to taking sides with either the thesis that there was a
historical author of the Iliad and Odyssey or that the texts are composed of multiple
line: “We believe in the one great Dichter of the Iliad and the Odyssey – just not in
Homer as this Dichter.”108 Who could argue with that? Likely only someone who
understands it.
At the end of the address he moves from his performances of all of the problems
with both historical and aesthetic approaches to Homer and to philology in general and
assumes the tone of someone who has made his point. He returns to a problem discussed
early in the address, that the “artistic friends of antiquity,” including the likes of Schiller
and Goethe, oppose professional philology, “as if precisely the philologists themselves
were the actual opponents and devastators of antiquity and of the antique ideal.”109 Now
at the end of the address, he reminds those critical artists that antiquity was previously
buried and has only been made accessible due to the labors of philology.110 Does his
comment here about artists attacking philologists reflect something Wagner has said to
him at their first meeting in the previous fall and continually gnawing doubts arising from
108
KGW II/1, 266. “Wir glauben an den einen grossen Dichter von Ilias und Odysee – doch nicht an
Homer als diesen Dichter.”
109
KGW II/1, 252. “künstlerischen Freunde des Alterthums” “als ob gerade die Philologen selbst die
eigentlichen Gegner und Verwüster des Alterthums und der alterthümlichen Ideale seien”
110
KGW II/1, 267.
256
it? We do know from Nietzsche’s report to Rohde that Wagner does criticize
have already seen that Nietzsche himself is rather critical of philology, sometimes to
soothe a friend who has had a publication rejected, but also when working in the field of
Aeschylus studies and finding himself less than impressed by his guild.
It is clear that Nietzsche is struggling within himself about the value of philology
and its relation to art. In taking the job at Basel and forsaking his plans to research
something as irresistible as fate, at this point. It is within this struggle that we locate the
possibility of Nietzsche’s classicism in his inaugural address. We see both his clear
familiarity with and distance from traditional German classicism in his rhetorical
question whether its idealized antiquity is only “the most beautiful blossoming of the
Germanic, yearning love for the south.”111 This is not the question of someone who
Nietzsche sees the classicist tradition for the idealization it is. Nor have we ever seen
Nietzsche caught up in this idealizing longing for ancient Greece while at Schulpforta or
Bonn, though we do see a couple of small classicist gestures in writings of his Leipzig
years. Given his lack of serious classicism since his earliest engagement with the Greeks
and the assumption he here expresses that classicism may only express a German love for
the south, it is clear that Nietzsche has never been anything like a naively devout
classicist.
111
KGW II/1, 253. “die schönste Blüthe germanischer Liebessehnsucht nach dem Süden”
257
Yet he recognizes that classicism has its place and even functions as Lange’s
standpoint of the ideal, the only intellectual model he can rely on at this point to make
Nietzsche, is itself only an iteration of the standpoint of the ideal. Lange has given him a
way to make use of the classicism he has repeatedly encountered and chosen to ignore
throughout the years of his education. He also cannot help but notice that philology is
not simply the practice of historical criticism, but is often at least to the same degree an
aesthetic, idealizing practice – a form of classicism. He has decided that, at its best,
emulate it. The fact that the various and contradictory tendencies of philology,
performed with maddening brilliance in this address, are gathered under one name is
because, Nietzsche argues, they are a selection made for our Bildung.113 Thus, unlike
Ritschl and many other philologists of the time who believe philology is free of any
ethical and aesthetic imperatives, Nietzsche insists it must project an ideal for emulation
and Bildung. This is not, of course, because he has always learned to pursue philology in
this manner. As we have seen, his own philological work has been free of any such
aesthetic or ethical demands up until his reading of Lange. It is only after Lange has
offered him the combination of Wissenschaft and Dichtung that Nietzsche feels his own
112
“auf aesthetischem und ethischem Boden imperativisches Element”
113
KGW II/1, 249-250.
258
Bildung that makes philology imperative, and this relies on the aesthetic, idealizing vision
of Greece it can still produce. “Life is worth living, says art, the most beautiful
Bildende, indeed the original fragrance of the ancient atmosphere; we forget that yearning
stirring, which, as the most lovely charioteer, leads our thinking and enjoying with the
power of instinct to the Greeks.”115 In this essay demonstrating the problematic nature of
classicism and Nietzsche’s awareness that it is only a fictive construct, we see his first
clear statement of a classicizing intent. Where we earlier saw in his Leipzig notes a need
to find the bildende points in Greek antiquity, here we see an acceptance of the task of
creating them.
of the paradoxes of philology in this address, but it also does seem that Nietzsche is
trying out something much more personal and sincere than a demonstration of a
Lange has prepared him to try it out as a way to give meaning to the professional
philological career Nietzsche believes he has no choice but to pursue. Nietzsche is trying
114
“Das Leben ist werth gelebt zu werden, sagt die Kunst, die schönste Verführerin; das Leben ist werth,
erkannt zu werden, sagt die Wissenschaft.”
115
KGW II/1, 251-252. “das wunderbar Bildende, ja den eigentlichen Duft der antiken Athmosphäre, wir
vergessen jene sehnsüchtige Regung, die unser Sinnen und Geniessen mit der Macht des Instinktes, als
holdeste Wagenlenkerin, den Griechen zuführte”
259
on classicism for the first time, not as a secular faith, but as an aesthetic approach to his
profession, as a standpoint of the ideal, in order to make life bearable for him and,
perhaps, for future generations of philologists. This inaugural address is Nietzsche’s first
attempt to make this effort public and his invitation to others to approach not only Homer
Wissenschaft.
Once Nietzsche is settled in to his new job at Basel and has begun visiting
Tribschen, we see him returning, after all of his work on the Democritus, Diogenes
Laërtius, and the history of philosophy, to the topic of tragedy in his own research.
Interestingly he picks this study up precisely where he left it at Schulpforta, with the
question of the relationship between music and text, a question he first explored after
encountering Wagner’s ideas and one that allowed him to discuss music, his true passion,
in his schoolwork. Now that is able to discuss this relationship of music and text in
tragedy face to face with Wagner, we see his thinking on the subject develop rapidly. To
On January 18, 1870, less than a year after arriving in Switzerland, Nietzsche
gives a lecture entitled “The Greek Musikdrama.”116 A couple of weeks later, he gives
116
“Das griechische Musikdrama.”
260
another lecture on February 1, “Socrates and Tragedy.”117 They are presented in the
same venue where he has given his inaugural address on Homer, the aula of the city
museum, and are hosted by The Free Academic Society, an independent organization that
serves to support the university.118 Pletsch correctly notes that these lectures have more
published.119 They are similar to the address on Homer, though they are much more
linear and able to stake out a thesis supported by their arguments, which is that tragedy
must be born of music. Compared to Birth, for which these lectures prove to be
Birth, makes these lectures less boldly Langean than Birth will be, though, as we will see,
they do already contain some aestheticized Wissenschaft and are indeed a part of the
In October of 1869, a few months before delivering the lectures, Nietzsche writes
to Rohde of his desperate need for his intellectual companionship, “as a whole abundance
of aesthetic problems and answers have been brewing in me for the last year,” and a letter
is too limited to express them clearly.120 He will use public lectures to work out “small
portions of the system” as he has already done with the Homer address.121 Though he
117
Janz (1978), 340 and Hoyer (2002), 187. “Socrates und die Tragödie”
118
Janz (1978), 410 and Young (2010), 100. Die Freie Akademische Gesellschaft
119
Pletsch (1991), 124.
120
“weil eine ganz Fülle von aesthetischen Problemen und Antworten seit den letzten Jahren in mir gährt”
121
“kleine Theile des Systems”
261
really needs Rohde’s help, he is not all alone. “Naturally Wagner is beneficial to me in
the highest sense, above all as a specimen.”122 Again, in addition to whatever theoretical
Finally, Nietzsche admits to Rohde, his new system of aesthetics needs to go far beyond
what Lessing achieved with his Laokoon, a goal Nietzsche, long an admirer and student
of Lessing’s, has too much modesty to express “without inner alarm and shame,” but
feels compelled to pursue all the same.123 This indicates that what Nietzsche is working
on is not just a historical description of tragedy, but an entire system of aesthetics for
On January 17th, the day before Nietzsche delivers the first address, Cosima
writes to apologize that she and Richard will not be able to make it, a disappointment for
sure. She reminds him of a concert in Leipzig that has been particularly powerful for
him, and tells him to think of it as he delivers his lecture, in addition to thinking about
“the return of the creator of the German Musikdrama to Germany.”124 Reading through
the lecture, there can be no doubt that Wagner, his music, and his future plans are very
In the lecture, Nietzsche makes clear that what we moderns call Greek tragedy,
what he teaches in his courses, is only a part of what the Greeks created. From
Aeschylus and Sophocles, he says, we have only the librettos. We are missing an
262
these texts as a full representation of the tragedies that if we were to see “a real and entire
imagining of an Aeschylean tragedy with Attic actors, audience, and poets” it would have
harmony” in comparison to whom “our great Dichter might appear as, so to speak,
beautifully begun but not fully finished statues.”125 We moderns, Nietzsche is telling his
audience, do not even know what Greek tragedy is, and our great artists have only
imitated a fraction of its power. It would appear that Wagner has shared with Nietzsche
his experience in 1847 of imagining the entire Oresteia in detail and being transported
back to ancient Athens. Perhaps Wagner has even taken Nietzsche on this trip.
Nietzsche begins the lecture with an abbreviated version of this Wagnerian ecstasy,
describing a Greek tragedy and many of its aspects that may be unusual and unexpected.
Then Nietzsche returns to the point he has already made in his essay on Oedipus
Rex at Schulpforta in 1862 where his contact with Wagner’s ideas through Krug allows
him to discuss music in a philological essay. It will be remembered that in the Oedipus
essay he argues that music must dominate the action, the same position Wagner holds in
the early 1860s, and that tragedians are more than modern Dichter inasmuch as they are
also musical composers. Where Nietzsche found little opportunity to explore music as a
student, Wagner’s theories gave him a way to do so in tragedy. Now that he has Wagner
to discuss the matter face to face, his lifelong love of music forcefully brings him back to
tragedy and allows him to look at it in a way that will be shockingly new, if not wholly
125
KSA 1, 517, 523. “eine wirkliche und ganze Vergegenwärtigung einer aeschyleischen Trilogie, mit
attischen Schaulspielern, Publikum und Poeten” “eine zerschmetternde Wirkung” “den künstlerischen
Menschen in einer Vollkommenheit und Harmonie” “unsre großen Dichter gleichsam als schön begonnene,
doch nicht zu ende gearbeitete Statuen erscheinen möchten”
263
What we have been missing from tragedy all along, what even our great Dichter
have been missing, he makes clear in his lecture in Basel, is the music. That the core of
the tragedy is its music is seen in its origin as a choral song.126 Wagner has long thought
that music is the “womb” of tragedy, possibly based on a reading of Aristotle, but
certainly influenced by Schopenhauer, through whom he has come to his conclusion that
all great art is born out of the spirit of music.127 Making another point that recalls
Aristotle’s Poetics, Nietzsche argues that the suffering and emotion of tragedy is more
important than the action. This emotion is anciently conveyed in the music, so it is
irretrievably lost to us. All we have is the action as preserved in the text. It is through
this music that the pity of the audience members is stirred, meaning we are unable to
the original performances of the tragedies music and text are both present together, able
to move together.128
Germans have not yet created an original, indigenous form of Musikdrama. Since
the Reformation, Nietzsche argues, all German attempts have been copies of foreign
models.129 Most problematic, of course, is that all modern art lacks a mystic origin, such
as the Dionysianism at the root of Greek tragedy and the springtime enthusiasm that gives
rise to the medieval St. John’s and St. Veit dancing.130 Compounding this problem is the
126
KSA 1, 524-525.
127
Borchmeyer (1992), 330.
128
KSA 1, 528, 530. ” “musikalisch-rhythmische Periodenbau”
129
KSA 1, 516.
130
KSA 1, 521.
264
modern tendency to keep all art forms distinct, a practice moderns have grown up with
What modernity needs is a new art form, one like Greek tragedy. Luckily, this art
A sense of being bound as well as grace; multiplicity and yet unity; many arts in
the highest state of activity and yet one work of art – that is the ancient
Musikdrama. Whoever will be reminded in seeing it of the ideal of the current
art-reformer will at the same time have to say to himself that that artwork of the
future is not at all a shining yet deceptive mirage: what we expect from the future
was already once a reality – in a past more than two thousand years ago.132
Wagner, of course, is the artistic messiah alluded to here, and these last two sentences of
the lecture make clear what cultural purpose Nietzsche is driving at, an embrace of
Wagner’s artwork of the future as a rebirth of Greek tragedy in all of its power born of
music. That Nietzsche ends his lecture on this note makes clear the classicist nature of it.
copied, as Wagner is already prepared to recreate Musikdrama with all of its original
power. Nietzsche is only asking his audience to recognize this fact. Wagner, if properly
supported, is ready to reform modern culture with the rebirth of tragedy. For now
Nietzsche’s argument posits music as the power of both Greek and Wagnerian
Musikdrama. As he continues working out his aesthetic system he will develop a far
131
KSA 1, 529.
132
KSA 1, 531-532. “Gebundenheit und doch Anmuth, Mannichfaltigkeit und doch Einheit, viele Künste
in höchster Thätigkeit und doch ein Kunstwerk – das ist das antike Musikdrama. Wer aber bei seinem
Anblick an das Ideal des jetztigen Kunstreformators erinnert wird, der wird sich zugleich sagen müssen,
daß jenes Kunstwerk der Zukunft durchaus nicht etwa eine glänzende, doch täuschende Luftspiegelung ist:
was wir von der Zukunft erhoffen, das war schon einmal Wirklichkeit – in einer mehr als
zweitausendjährigen Vergangenheit.”
265
to the Wagners, and it is influencing his relationship to the Greeks. After the first lecture
on January 31st, he writes to Rohde revealing just how at home he has become with the
Wagners when he refers to them and himself as “We, i.e., we Tribscheners.”133 In this
same letter, we also find at last the sentiment we have been waiting to see Nietzsche
Naumburg: “I gain continually more love for Greek antiquity.”134 Finally, love for
expresses love for it! He goes on to invert Humboldt’s formula of developing oneself
through the study of the Greeks: “one has no better means of coming closer to [Greek
antiquity] than through tireless further Bildung” of one’s self.135 Similarly, in a letter to
Deussen in February, he reports how “wonderfully new and transformed” history now
appears to him, “above all ancient Greece!” before promising to send his two lectures to
him.136
Wagner is finally transforming the value of history and bringing him closer to the Greeks,
even bringing him to love Greek antiquity. Yet all is not well in his attempt to forge a
Langean approach to philology. His experiences with Wagner have made him feel
read that Nietzsche now clearly sees the historical-critical approach to philology in which
133
“Wir d.h. wir Tribschener”
134
“Ich gewinne immer mehr Liebe für das Hellenenthum.”
135
KGB II/1, 94. “man hat kein besseres Mittel sich ihm zu nähern als durch unermüdliche Fortbildung”
136
KGB II/1, 98. “wunderbar neu und verwandelt” “vornehmlich das Hellenenthum!”
266
he has been trained as 1,000 miles away from ancient Greece, and that it is becoming
increasingly impossible for Nietzsche to pursue. He even wonders now if he could ever
become “a proper philologist.”137 The best plan he can propose has echoes of their
shelved Paris plans: “four years of cultural work on myself, then a year-long trip –
perhaps with you.”138 At Tribschen, he feels he has begun to really get to know – and to
love – the Greeks, but this has only made the view down onto Basel all the harder to bear.
Nietzsche does not yet, however, give up on his new approach to philology.
Having explained the true musical power and origins of tragedy, Nietzsche now
moves on to how Greek tragedy ever lost that power in his second lecture on tragedy,
“Socrates and Tragedy,” delivered on February 1, 1870.139 Like the previous lecture, this
one does not depend on the structure derived from Schopenhauer’s dichotomy of Will
and Representation so important to Birth. It does, however, rely upon another dichotomy
of Schopenhauer’s. Nietzsche argues that the tragic effect of the pity created in the
audience by the music is pessimistic – embracing the futility and brutality of existence,
Indeed, this proposition works against the motives of the very lecture that contains it, a
lecture that is seeking to bring Dichtung and Wissenschaft together in a Langean attempt
to make existence bearable. He argues that “Wissenschaft and art are mutually
137
“ein rechter Philologe”
138
KGB II/1, 94. “vier Jahre Culturarbeit an mir, dann eine jahrelange Reise – mit Dir vielleicht”
139
“Socrates und die Tragödie”
140
KSA 1, 546.
267
exclusive.”141 This is less a moment of ludic posturing meant to embarrass his audience
than one of following the necessity of his argument too closely. Nietzsche is trying to
align the Wagnerian concern for the relationship of text and music he has contemplated
since his Oedipus paper in 1862 with Schopenhauer’s categories of optimism and
pessimism in order to argue that music is driven from tragedy, causing its death. If dialog
is dialectic and dialectic is optimistic, and if music is pessimistic, then dialectic must
drive out music, the power of tragedy he has identified in his previous lecture. That
“Musikdrama perished from a lack of music,” is the central argument of this lecture.142
Nietzsche buys this argument at the cost of making dialog and music mutually exclusive,
a drastic move. By the time of Birth, he will discuss instead a tension that must exist
between the two that only becomes fatal to tragedy when out of balance.
For Wagner, music is primary and text secondary, but both are still necessary for
tragedy. Nietzsche clearly still thinks that Wagner’s approach to tragedy as a union of
music and text is a promising route for explaining tragedy, and Nietzsche and the
Wagners have most likely been discussing this relationship at Tribschen. Thus Nietzsche
returns to it here, and, in fact, takes it as the starting point for structuring his whole
optimism on top of music and text, he finds himself insisting that the two are mutually
exclusive. Wagner wants precisely to bring the two, and all other forms of art, together
with the understanding that music is primary. We will return to this structural problem
141
KSA 1, 545. “Wissenschaft und die Kunst schließen sich aus”
142
“das Musikdrama gieng an einem Mangel der Musik zu Grunde”
268
and its rippling effects again below when we get to the appearances of Dionysus and
Nietzsche describes this process of optimistic text driving out pessimistic music
as beginning with Aeschylus. By introducing a second actor making argument and dialog
practice.143 Sophocles continues the process, and Nietzsche criticizes his Antigone,
Electra and Oedipus as all being too logical at times.144 Though Euripides furthers this
process, he still values the emotional aspect of tragedy, the music. This is why,
Nietzsche argues, he adds the prologue and deus ex machina. They help the audience
know exactly what is going on at all times, so as to follow the emotions conveyed by
Euripides has a very refined taste and is “a solitary thinker, not at all in
accordance with the taste of the masses ruling at the time.”146 He is fighting the decline
of tragedy that begins before him and decides on a solution that is, unfortunately, only an
ironic hastening of its death. He notices a disconnect [Kluft] between his audience and
his work and decides to make everything more easily understood. This makes reason his
primary aesthetic criteria and brings every potential artistic choice “before the bench of
this rationalist aesthetic.”147 This accessibility brings the viewer, no matter how low-
143
KSA 1, 545.
144
KSA 1, 548.
145
KSA 1, 538.
146
“ein einsamer Denker, gar nicht nach dem Geschmacke der damals herrschenden Masse”
147
“vor den Richterstuhl dieser rationalistischen Aesthetik”
269
class, on to the stage. Characters that have been a mirror reflecting only the best and
boldest features are now more honest “and thus more common.”148 Where Aeschylus has
presented an ideal Odysseus, Euripides makes him into a house slave, and “the fifth
estate, that of the slaves, comes, at least according to basic conviction, now to power.”149
Not just slaves but the middle class is also invited on stage, as it is the class on which
Euripides places all of his political hopes. With noble heroes reduced to everyday
Athenians, the “ideal nature withdraws itself into the word and flees from thought.”150
Wagner has believed since mid-century that Euripides kills tragedy.151 He most
likely adopts this view from Aristophanes’ Frogs. He is an admirer of Aristophanes and
especially appreciates The Frogs.152 Much of Nietzsche argument echoes The Frogs, in
which Dionysus goes to Hades and oversees a contest determining who is the greater
tragedian, Aeschylus or Euripides. In this lecture, Nietzsche cites Aristophanes from the
beginning and even quotes many translated lines from The Frogs. At the end of the
decline.153 He will still acknowledge Aristophanes in Birth, but he does not make as
148
“und damit gemeiner”
149
“der fünfte Stand, der des Sklaven, kommt, wenigstens der Gesinnung nach, jetzt zur Herrschaft”
150
KSA 1, 534-537. “Idealität hat sich in das Wort zurückgezogen und ist aus dem Gedanken geflüchtet”
151
Young (2010), 132 and Borchmeyer (1992), 330.
152
U. Müller (1992), 231, 233.
153
KSA 1, 533, 535, 539. See Silk and Stern (1981), 36-37 for the similar role Aristophanes’ The Frogs
continues to play in Birth.
154
See KSA 1, 76-77.
270
Nietzsche’s earlier expressed views on the ranking of the three tragedians has
always agreed with Aristotle that Euripides is the most tragic, and he has even argued that
a model of linear decline with a high point is misguided to begin with. Still, despite his
clearly taking stands in disagreement with Wagner. First, Euripides does not
intentionally kill tragedy, but tries to save it with a Socratic cure that is unfortunately
fatal. Further, dialectic is not the introduction of a totally foreign element into tragedy as
the tendency towards dialectical argument has already been present since Aeschylus –
Aeschylus is really the one who introduces dialectic to tragedy as a naturally Greek form
that even the plebs of ancient Athens have good taste, an egalitarian view that could only
please Wagner.155 As we have seen in this second lecture, Nietzsche’s attitude towards
the lower classes of ancient Athens is something quite different. They do not understand
tragedy, and it is in condescending to entertain them that Euripides finally completes the
process of tragedy’s death. This is not the Wagnerian picture of the City Dionysia where
all are united in a common bond of humanity, equally able to enjoy the mystical-artistic
rites of the festival. This is a city clearly divided into classes, the largest of which lack
the sophistication to enjoy high quality art. Euripides gives tragedy an increased dose of
It must also be pointed out that these Greeks need ideals as much as moderns do.
Earlier tragedy, with Aeschylus, presents them with a noble humanity that heals the scars
155
KSA 1, 520.
271
of existence, an ideal. This proposition strongly undermines the idea that these people
are themselves an ideal enjoying any kind of ideal existence. Instead they are rendered
simply as other humans in need of ideals. They are not what modernity needs. They
need what modernity needs. Nevertheless, tragedy as a combination of poetry, music and
other media is an exemplary art form that would benefit modernity in its return in
Nietzsche’s opinion.
One last aspect of this lecture bears closer attention. In the previous lecture on
Musikdrama, the Dionysian character of tragedy has been mentioned. This is not
innovative as the tragic festival, the Dionysia, is held in honor of Dionysus. Additionally,
many commentators stretching back to Aristotle believe that tragedy has developed out of
the dithyramb.156 There is no mention of Apollo in that first lecture. In this second
lecture, both gods are mentioned, though not in order to establish a dualistic structure
based on Schopenhauer’s ideas of Will and Individuation. The two gods are not
mentioned together or in any kind of comparison. Early in the lecture, the Dionysian
dithyramb is mentioned as the historical source of tragedy, and then later in the lecture
no other mention of the deity and absolutely no role given to him within the creation or
maintenance of tragedy.157
The association here of Socrates with Apollo points to a structural problem that
returning to his own work on Wagner’s theory of Musikdrama as the union of music and
156
Although, as George Williamson points out, Wagner actually associates tragedy with Apollo. Perhaps
this is part of the reason Nietzsche arranges his argument to have tragedy born out of both deities. See
Williamson (2004), 197.
157
KSA 1, 538, 544. “apollinische Klarheit”
272
text. By aligning text with both optimism and Wissenschaft on the one hand and music
with pessimism on the other, Nietzsche finds himself arguing that art and Wissenschaft
are mutually exclusive in order to explain how music is driven from tragedy to result in
its death. Nietzsche cannot really want to argue that art and Wissenschaft are mutually
exclusive, as his hopes for a meaningful philological career depend on their union as
illustrated by his image of the “centaur” featured in his inaugural address. Though this
move achieves the goal of explaining how tragedy comes to an end, it also introduces the
problem of tragedy having never stably existed since the moment Aeschylus introduces
the second actor into it. Nietzsche will try to alleviate this by weaving more subtlety into
his use of a Schopenhauer, shifting from the dichotomy of pessimism and optimism to
that of Will and Individuation, to avoid the problems he creates here. The further
complexity resulting from that shift, and the traces of the original dichotomy beneath it,
with Apollo in this lecture. Nietzsche addresses the problem of tragedy consisting of two
mutually exclusive elements, Socratic text and Dionysian music, with the solution of
three distinct elements in Birth. Dionysus in Birth is now most like Schopenhauer’s Will
though he is still very much aligned with music and has a clear relation to pessimism.
Apollo is now aligned with Individuation, imagery, and the Homeric Olympians. His
ability to cover existence with beauty rather than an attempt to change it. Socrates in
Birth is now a third, foreign element not at all natural to or necessary for tragedy aligned
with an optimism that can easily infect the dialog of tragedy. Though this three-element
273
solution seems to avoids the mutual exclusivity of elements both Nietzsche and Wagner
where Socrates and Dionysus still end up forming the real duality and Apollo recedes as
unnecessary and a bit too similar to Socrates. This solution obscures the original problem
while only adding to the complexity of the “impossible” and “hardly accessible” structure
of Birth.
Making the question of Greek tragedy one of the proper relationship between text
and music once again allows Nietzsche to study and discuss music in his philological
work, allowing him a professional outlet for this passion he has been pursuing since
Schulpforta. The fact that this way of bringing music into philology originates in
Wagner, whom Nietzsche is now conversing with face to face, makes his return to it quite
tragedy. Unfortunately, the way he attempts to overlay it with a narrative of the decline
of tragedy following The Frogs while also braiding into it multiple dualities borrowed
To his friends, Nietzsche has been happy to report that his address on Homer has
been well received. This last lecture on Socrates and tragedy has, unfortunately, stirred
arouses “hatred and wrath,” after which he resigns himself to the notion that offense is
158
KGB II/1, 95. “Schrecken und Missverständnisse”
274
unavoidable.159 His letter home is less dramatic if not less candid, saying his two lectures
After reading the second lecture Wagner responds, in a demonstration of how the
politic lion pushes the cub back down, by saying that Cosima was upset about certain
points, and, though she was right, he had to calm her down by explaining why Nietzsche
made those mistakes. The only mistake he goes on to mention is a lack of reverence for
great men who are treated in much too modern a fashion. Wagner himself is shocked by
one looks beyond the details, the brilliant young professor is after all proclaiming
Wagner’s work to be the rebirth of tragedy. He does not want Nietzsche to overwhelm
himself by putting such deep ideas in short essays and encourages him to write a more
extensive treatment. This will allow him to find “the right word for the divine mistakes
of Socrates and Plato,” who still deserve our worship.161 He appears to be fine with the
blame placed on Euripides, but is uncomfortable with how culpable Nietzsche makes the
that they have taken issue with the blame Nietzsche assigns Aeschylus and Sophocles for
159
KGB II/1, 98. “Haß und Wuth”
160
KGB II/1, 108. “lebhaftes Interesse”
161
“das richtige Wort für die göttlichen Irrthümer des Sokrates und Platon”
162
Borchmeyer (1994), 49.
275
already introducing dialectic into tragedy and with the characterization of Socrates. She
Another letter soon after from Wagner in mid-February admits that he can often
only barely comprehend Nietzsche’s work, and must laugh at his own lack of Socratic
knowledge, making clear who in their relationship plays the part of Socrates. In fact, he
insists that Nietzsche must remain a philologist, and that he, Wagner, will be the
musician, telling him that as a philologist he can let himself be directed by music. He
asks him to help bring “the grand Renaissance” to pass, in which Plato will embrace
Homer, and Homer, filled with Plato’s ideas, will finally be the greatest Homer.164
Wagner does not follow the necessity of the second lecture’s logic so strictly and has no
need to make art and Wissenschaft mutually exclusive of each other. As Nietzsche wants
to unite the two in his own work, he will soon try to rectify this structural problem in his
argument.
With his statement to Rohde written between the deliveries of the two lectures
that he is finally beginning to love ancient Greece, we see Nietzsche’s strongest classicist
stance yet. This love did not arise after six years of rigorous engagement with the Greeks
has played a personal role in shaping the neo-humanism of the curriculum. It did not
arise after studying antiquity with the illustrious founder and embodiment of the Bonn
art as a rebirth of what Wagner and the musical Nietzsche no doubt believe is the most
163
Borchmeyer (1994), 51-52.
164
Borchmeyer (1994), 58. “die grosse Renaissance”
276
important and genuinely Hellenic of all Greek art forms, tragedy. It is critical to note that
what Nietzsche is most passionate about and wants to promote is not ancient Greece or its
art. It is Wagner. This is not surprising as Nietzsche’s love for music has long
overshadowed his quotidian work on classical texts, and it is a passion Wagner certainly
shares and inspires. Wagner is the ideal, and ancient art is simply used to prove that
Wagner is the source of cultural salvation. The argument is not, following Winckelmann,
that modern artists need to understand the Greeks to create existence-justifying art, it is
that if moderns understand Greek art properly, they will see that Wagner is already
creating existence-justifying art. Nietzsche’s love of music comes first. Wagner gives
this love, along with Nietzsche’s need for existential and professional meaning, a
powerful outlet. Nietzsche’s expertise in antiquity, won without the great passion that
has infused his love of music, is now helpful in making one of the arguments needed by
Wagner to bring his own dreams to pass, which Nietzsche at this point sees as the
fulfillment of his own. Nietzsche needs Wagner to provide him with a vision of an artist
justifying existence just as Wagner needs Nietzsche to provide expert arguments for a
We should also note, as the Wagners do, just how irreverent Nietzsche’s
classicism is. His ancient Athenians do not present a picture of ideal humanity but a city
filled with an uncomprehending, tasteless mob, to which artists must stoop if they want a
wider appeal. These dim Greeks need ideals as much as moderns do and are not simply
at one with nature in a perfect existence. They are also responsible for the death of their
own greatest art-form in a process that implicates Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and
Socrates. Plato is also blamed in the second lecture for the final full turn from art. The
277
narrative of decline is indeed intrinsic to Winckelmann’s view of the Greeks, but happens
only after his high-point, the classical period. Here Nietzsche makes decline the
plays no role whatsoever – nor with the medium that came to replace sculpture in the
focus of German Hellenism, literary texts. The true power of art is in and out of music, a
medium that has never been the focus of classicism or philology, much to Nietzsche’s
chagrin throughout his student years. Related to this turn from literature is the demotion
the great German tragedians receive as mere imitators of foreign models, which they do
not even understand in their entirety. Nietzsche’s audience members educated by the
neo-humanist educational system of the nineteenth century have many options to choose
holds up Greek art as an exemplary ideal for the cultural redemption of modernity.
Despite the unorthodoxy of the two lectures, Nietzsche has still been holding
back. To Rohde he confesses in the mid-February 1870 letter, after both of his lectures
have stirred up “horror and misunderstanding,” that the time is coming when he must
philosophy are growing together so much in me that I will certainly one day give birth to
centaurs.”166 Here we see no echo of his recent move in the second public lecture to
165
“ernst und friemüthig”
166
KGB II/1, 94. “Wissenschaft Kunst und Philosophie wachsen jetzt so sehr in mir zusammen, dass ich
jedenfalls einmal Centauren gebären werde.”
278
make art and Wissenschaft mutually exclusive – a move only necessitated by following
Instead, we see Nietzsche still fully in a Langean mood, bringing art and scholarship
together in a grand vision that attempts to makes sense out of existence. He calls this
union a centaur, as he has done in his Homer address, and combines it with the
Wagnerian metaphor of birth – a birth for which Nietzsche will be the mother!
He writes to Ritschl in late March telling him that he is now “quite pregnant with
hope in regard to my philology.”167 He then tells Ritschl he is sending him the Homer,
Musikdrama, and Socrates lectures, which have been “very offensive for some,”
reiterating his high hopes for his philology as he comes closer to “a comprehensive view
of Greek antiquity.”168 Despite the precarious structure of his second lecture, he is not
straying from Lange at all. He in fact has more hope than ever that art and Wissenschaft
can be brought together to achieve an image of the whole of antiquity, if not of existence.
In early April, he tells Rohde that all of these thoughts are forming into a book
“for which new ideas keep coming.”169 He fears it will make no philological impression,
“but who can act against his nature?”170 He knows a time of great offense is coming after
having been so loved and praised while still been wearing “the old, familiar house shoes,”
referring to the more conventional philology he has pursued with such success so far.171
He calls the book a “book of the future,” indicating that Wagner’s classicist project is
167
“recht hoffnungsschwanger in Betreff meiner Philologie”
168
KGB II/1, 110. “für manche sehr anstößig” “einer Gesammtanschauung des griechischen Alterthums”
169
“zu dem immer neue Einfälle kommen”
170
“[…] aber wer kann wider seine Natur?”
171
“die alten wohlbekannten Pantoffeln”
279
inspiring Nietzsche to pursue his own.172 Nietzsche is not at all deluded that his book
will be embraced by his guild but he feels compelled by his need for meaningful
professional activity to proceed with the formulation and presentation of the ideas coming
to him daily.
Gesamtkunstwerk as the rebirth of Greek art while explaining the origin of tragedy and
providing a holistic vision of Greek antiquity, Wagner begins thinking about creating the
seat for his artistic festival at Bayreuth, a long distance from Tribschen and Basel. To
move forward with building a ritual and institutional center for the entire Wagnerian
project must be thrilling and fulfilling for Nietzsche. Having the Wagners move far away
During July and August 1870, Nietzsche completes an essay, “The Dionysian
Worldview,” that is not meant for public presentation.173 It presents a fully formed
upon which its argument is now structured, though Apollo is still explicitly aligned with
optimism.174 The tragic artist is put forth as a parallel to Schopenhauer’s saint as the two
possibilities for a life fully aware of “the vanity of existence” and yet able to live on.175
Art seduces one to continue living by producing a “feeling of delight for existence” in
Apollinian dream and Dionysian intoxication.176 The drive that creates art is the same
172
“Zukunft-buches”; in the genitive in the original phrase
173
Janz (1978), 410 and Young (2010), 135. “’Die dionysische Weltanschauung’”
174
KSA 1, 566.
175
KSA 1, 570. “der Nichtigkeit des Daseins”
176
KSA 1, 553. “Wonnegefühl des Daseins”
280
one that gives rise to the Olympian world, “a world of beauty, peace, and pleasure,” that
seduces humanity on to continued life.177 Where the earlier two essays on tragedy had
only focused on music as the power of tragedy, Nietzsche is now developing the
Schopenhauer’s Will. Where his earlier lectures had made Aeschylus problematic, with
Sophocles and Euripides increasingly more so, in a history of the Greeks with no
particular apogee, now early tragedy is a decided, ideal high point, such as Winckelmann
assigns to the sculpture of Praxiteles’ period. This high point for Greece occurs at the
union of Apollo and Dionysus, a Dionysus, it is worth noting, able to dissolve all class
distinctions.178 It is among the Greeks that the Schopenhauerian Will is able to speak
most openly, and this is the reason why moderns look longingly back to Greece, as this
open expression of Will is heard as “the full harmony between nature and human.”179 It
is in this singular moment in history with the Greeks that the Will wants to see itself
“translated into a work of art.”180 The Greeks are not, however, simply a work of
historical art for the Will or for moderns. They are their own ideal. In order for the Will
to glorify itself, its own creations have to find themselves worthy of celebration, they
need “to see themselves again in a higher sphere, raised so to speak to the ideal, without
177
KSA 1, 560-561. “eine Welt der Schönheit, der Ruhe, des Genusses”
178
KSA 1, 555-556.
179
“den vollen Einklang zwischen Natur und Mensch”
180
“zum Kunstwerk verklärt”
181
“sich in einer höheren Sphäre wiedersehen, gleichsam in’s Ideale emporgehoben, ohne daß diese
vollendete Welt der Anschauung als Imperativ oder als Vorwurf wirkte”
281
clearly see Lange influencing Nietzsche’s thinking on tragedy as he elaborates on his idea
from the second lecture that the Greeks have to provide themselves with their own
This structure and narrative is more familiar to readers of Birth and represents a
major step in Nietzsche’s thinking towards it. In this private essay, written for Cosima in
the summer but not given to her until December, we see Nietzsche much more willing to
explain Greek tragedy and its era with explicitly Schopenhauerian language.182 If his
earlier lectures have raised concern and opposition, a text such as this, as he has
prophesied, could only cause more offense. Nietzsche has removed some of the offense
he has caused the Wagners: Aeschylus and Sophocles are no longer accused as
accomplices in the death of tragedy but discussed briefly as the best representatives of
tragedy achieving the union of Apollo and Dionysus. Euripides is only mentioned as the
beautiful art comparable to one of Skopas’ or Praxiteles’ statues. The very concept of
intoxicating beauty indicates that this new distinction between the Apollinian and the
Nietzsche also raises the Greeks to a level of exemplarity and singularity that is lacking
in the public lectures, and though they too still need ideals, they are now able to serve as
182
Pletsch (1991), 128.
183
KSA 1, 558.
282
This is certainly not Winckelmann’s classicism, nor is it his explanation for how
nationalism does play a role in it. Before we get to the rest of the development of
Nietzsche’s classicism, we need to review his attitudes on politics, how they are shaped
by his experience in the Franco-Prussian War, and how they continue to shape his views
of the Greeks. We will begin with Nietzsche’s political thinking in Leipzig just before he
In one of his letters to Basel suggesting and promoting Nietzsche for the opening
in philology, Ritschl says of him that he is not a partisan Prussian.184 This has truth to it,
though Nietzsche is not free of all partisanship at this point. In his own letter to Wilhelm
Vischer-Bilfinger, the professor leading the search for the new professor of philology,
Nietzsche explains that he will have to give up his Prussian citizenship to avoid being
pulled into another conflict he is sure will soon come. He suggests it is his duty to the
Prussia.185 A month later, in April, Nietzsche does give up his Prussian citizenship. He
184
Janz (1978), 255.
185
KGB I/2, 381.
283
never does gain Swiss citizenship simply because he does not ever stay in Basel long
enough without interruption to do so.186 This commitment to his new employer over any
commitment to Prussia would seem to indicate that, as Ritschl avers, Nietzsche is not a
partisan Prussian. We will see, however, that Nietzsche’s relationship to Prussia is still
In the summer semester of 1870, Nietzsche’s life is once again disrupted by the
Prussian military, indeed in what, for Prussia, is the war of the last half-century. On July
19, France declares war on Prussia.187 In a letter to Rohde written that day, Nietzsche
could already be at the beginning of the end! What a wasteland! We will need cloisters,
and we will be the first friars.”189 He signs the letter as “the loyal Swiss.”190 Though the
thought that they will once again need cloisters seems to indicate that Nietzsche thinks
this war will take them backwards to the Middle Ages, as we will see below, it may
actually be the first indication to Rohde of new and serious plans Nietzsche may have for
them.
affiliation Nietzsche feels in the moment. In a letter written to his mother also on that
day, he tells her he is “in gloomy spirits to be a Swiss! This is about our culture! And for
186
Janz (1978), 263-264.
187
Hoyer (2002), 188.
188
“Donnerschlag”
189
“Wir können bereits am Anfang vom Ende sein! Welche Wüstenei! Wir werden wieder Klöster
brauchen. Und wir werden die ersten fratres sein.”
190
KGB II/1, 130. “Der treue Schweizer”
284
that no sacrifice could be large enough! This monstrous, French tiger!”191 That
Franziska Nietzsche is an extremely patriotic Prussian – she did name her little Friedrich
Wilhelm after the king it should be remembered – and that she raised her son to be such
bears remembering. As we have seen, one of the regular topics of the letter exchange
over the years has been Prussian politics, in which Nietzsche always appears a loyal
Prussian. Is he being ironic with Rohde in calling himself Swiss? He is most likely
expressing frustration over the fact that he has given up his Prussian citizenship
(intentionally to avoid being pulled into service) and must now watch events as a Swiss,
A letter to Sophie Ritschl the next day shows a further development in tone:
“What a shameful feeling to have to remain quiet now” at the moment when his military
training is most needed.192 He takes comfort in the fact that “at least some of the old
elements must remain for the new period of culture,” though he can still think of
his gallant letters to his mother and female friend he displays a strong desire to serve in
the war. And this desire is proven sincere when he writes to Vischer-Bilfinger a letter
requesting time off to serve, even after having explained to him that he has given up his
191
KGB II/1, 131. “[…] betrübten Muthes, Schweizer zu sein! Es gilt unsrer Kultur! Und da giebt es kein
Opfer, das groß genug wäre! Dieser fluchwürdige französische Tiger!”
192
“Welche beschämende Empfindung, jetzt ruhig bleiben zu müssen [….]”
193
KGB II/1, 132. “für die neue Culturperiode doch wenigstens Einige der alten Elemente übrigbleiben
müssen”
194
KGB II/1, 133-134.
285
could examine to understand his remaining connection to the state at this point in time.
The only textual evidence we have is what we see in letters like those just cited. Of his
biographers, Pletsch gives the most persuasive argument that the Prussian patriotism
Nietzsche is raised with remains at this late date because his relationship to the state has
“not yet been subjected to the same critical examination” that leads to his break with
Christianity.195 Nor has it received, one could add, the level of examination to which we
What is certain is that Nietzsche does not take time off from teaching to serve
because of any inspiration or prompting from the Wagners, who make it clear that they
completely disagree with his choice. He makes the choice to serve, as Janz writes, “in
not until his later years, these years at Tribschen, that his more nationalistic tendencies
express themselves.197 For Wagner, German art is currently much too stifled by French
models, and it does seem unlikely to Wagner that what he calls “the German spirit” can
really flower while France maintains its cultural superiority. He will, at the defeat of
France celebrate Prussia as the “saviors of a united Germany” and hope that the new
German Empire will help establish a German identity and spirit in the world.198
Nevertheless, his vision of cultural renewal never includes military action or the
dominance of a state like Prussia. He and Cosima are outraged by France’s declaration of
195
Pletsch (1991), 111.
196
Borchmeyer (1994), 96-97, 101 and Janz (1978), 372. “gegen Tribschen”
197
Young (2010), 117.
198
Aberbach (2003), 95-98.
286
war and their sympathies are with the German side, but they have no love or need for war
and certainly do not want to see their promising, serviceably philological friend drawn
into it.199
medical orderly due to his lack of citizenship. He is trained in Erlangen, after which he
travels to various stations in southwestern Germany and France. In his travels in train
cars filled with mutilated men sick and dying, and in his limited ability to help them,
Nietzsche faces a horror of existence he has only previously been able to theorize. He
himself comes down with dysentery and diphtheria and has to return to Erlangen at the
Naumburg, where he will spend over a month convalescing until late October when he
finally makes the return trip to Basel after begin gone little over three months.200
encounter with the nausea of existence, this experience and the continued emotional and
mental discomfort resulting from it lead Nietzsche to his new preoccupation with human
violence and his “newly critical focus on Bismarck’s Prussia.”201 From a wider
thinking on war, Prussia and nationalism, but even after returning, he still shows a strong
solidarity with the German cause. In late October he writes to Ritschl from Basel,
describing the political atmosphere there as “quite dreadful,” with people celebrating “the
treachery of Laon” (an engineer exploding a powder magazine as German troops enter
199
Janz (1978), 370.
200
Janz (1978), 375-378.
201
Young (2010), 139.
287
the town).202 One cannot even expect understanding from “German-minded Baselers” as
the “hate for Germans is instinctive here and the lust for news of French victories
great.”203 Back from the war and back on his feet, he has certainly not turned his back on
Germany or Prussia at this point. His criticisms will develop over time as he now has a
thinking that colors his view of the Greeks and shapes the form of his classicism.
many pieces in his youth and loves writing poetry, though he is unlike Nietzsche in that
he enjoys sketching.204 At no point does Burckhardt ever develop any appreciation for
Wagner, the man, the music, or the movement, considering him, to use Janz’s word, “a
horror.”205
Burckhardt has so far attended all of Nietzsche’s public lectures and will continue
to do so through the Lectures on Bildung in 1872.206 In late October and early November
1870 Burckhardt presents a series of public lectures on history attended by the very
recently returned and still convalescing Nietzsche.207 The views he expresses in them
202
“geradezu scheußlich” “die Verrätherei von Laon”
203
KGB II/1, 152. “deutschgesinnten Baslern” “deutschenhaß ist hier instinktiv und die Lust an den
französischen Siegesberichten groß”
204
Gossman (2000), 208, 214.
205
Janz (1978), 325 and Young (2010), 103. “ein Greuel”
206
Pletsch (1991), 114 and Gossman (2000), 303.
207
Janz (1978), 387-388.
288
(1905), which contains Burckhardt’s thoughts on the subject from the 1850s through to
1873.208 In addition to the ideas Nietzsche hears in these lectures, we must also consider
the private conversations the two have been having since Nietzsche arrives in Basel,
many of which likely focus more on the Greeks than these lectures given in 1870. The
best representation of Burckhardt’s view of the Greeks is his Greek Cultural History
(1898-1902) published just after his death.209 As both of these sources contain ideas set
down, if not formulated, after Nietzsche arrives in Basel in 1869, we must be careful not
to assume that influence only flows one way. Before we discuss Burckhardt’s ideas on
Greece, history, and modernity, let us look at some more of his background.
Burckhardt is born in 1818 into one of Basel’s patrician families. He attends both
the Gymnasium and then the Pädagogium before studying theology at the university.
While a university student, he moves to Berlin to study history from 1839 to 1843. He
also spends a summer in Bonn in 1841, where he takes a course from Welcker. He later
describes this summer and how he and his friends loved to visit an inn in Rolandseck
with a view of the Drachenfels, one of Nietzsche’s own favorite stomping grounds from
his Bonn days.210 While still studying theology at Bonn, religion falls apart for
Burckhardt, forcing him to realize he will not follow in his father’s footsteps and become
a pastor. For the rest of his life, he does maintain a certain personal religion, in which
“the beauty of art and nature is a manifestation of the divine.”211 He already believes in
208
Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen
209
Gossman (2000), 304-307. Griechische Kulturgeschichte
210
Gossman (2000), 206 and Janz (1978), 323.
211
Gossman (2000), 211.
289
nothing other than God’s handwriting, making its study the act of understanding and
In his more mature years, however, Burckhardt comes to reject nineteenth century
progressivism and optimism, withdrawing “to his native city-state in order to stand his
ground against them.”213 Like Nietzsche and Wagner, Burckhardt has discovered and
By 1850, however, he delivers an address for the centenary of Schiller’s birth describing
“Ode to Joy” as indeed intoxicating but unable to withstand logical examination. The
his mature view, there are no perfect historical ages, as all mix good and evil.215
Even given these views, Burckhardt is not entirely able to withstand the desire to
see some kind of singularity and exemplarity in ancient Greece. His cultural history is
not an examination of any one medium or cultural activity, but a search for the spirit
behind them all. The most universal expression of the human spirit, as it turns out, is
indeed in ancient Greece. Greek art, and especially Greek sculpture, always retains for
212
Gossman (2000), 217.
213
Gossman (2000), 218.
214
Gossman (2000), 423.
215
Gossman (2000), 301, 319.
290
Burckhardt a normative character despite the development of this thinking.216 Greek art,
made possible by what seems to be an inexhaustible creative energy, is the only thing that
redeems Greek life from an otherwise unhappy existence. As it does for Schopenhauer,
The greatness the Greeks are able to achieve artistically and culturally comes at a
great cost. Burckhardt paints a bleak rather than sunny picture of classical Athens and of
all the ancient poleis. Any greatness ever won by any of them is achieved by a sacrifice
of happiness and freedom, and always by means of violence. War, not a balance of
power, is the normal relationship between the poleis, with Sparta presenting the most
fully developed polis. The polis is defined by hatred towards all outsiders and
to the state and its religion, with the democratic poleis the most illiberal and repressive of
them all.
Burckhardt’s sympathy, though never uncritical, is generally with the aristocracies, and
he believes one of the sources of decay for the poleis is the resentment of the masses
towards the wealthy and powerful. The introduction of democracy and equality only
makes the masses recognize as problems aspects of life they previously accepted.
Individuals set themselves above the whole, using reasoning and argument to escape
what were earlier duties. The state becomes common property to be exploited by
individuals. Where the natural pessimism of the Greeks is earlier combined with the
216
Gossman (2000), 309, 382.
217
Gossman (2000), 319, 339.
291
cheerfulness of the aristocrats who provide works of art and heroism, the empowering of
the mobs by democracy makes the great withdraw, hastening the leveling of the culture –
an inevitable feature of democracy. For Burckhardt, the greatness of a polis like Athens
depends on slavery and submission, not on freedom and sunshine. He privileges the pre-
The state is only justified, for Burckhardt, by cultural achievement. Power is evil
but necessary and only justified by the culture created by a small, elite few. The Greek
culture celebrated today, he argues, would never come to be without the Peisistratean
tyranny. The state must not use culture as a means to its own ends, but understand its
role as the means for supporting culture. Bildung is not something to be strewn out over
the masses. Cultural history does not provide professional training, and specialization
and careerism are only diluting the power of Bildung. The study of the Greeks,
moreover, must finally engage the Greeks as Burckhardt believes they really were, and
the happy, delightful image of them must finally be laid to rest. Education is the
responsibility the state carries towards the few who will be empowered by it to justify the
Before we finish with Burckhardt’s thinking about the Greeks, this study would
Apparently following the same Aristophanic line of thought that leads Wagner to blame
Euripides for the end of tragedy, Burckhardt also believes that Euripides begins the
decline of tragedy by replacing a timeless, mythical view and poetic language with
218
Gossman (2000), 319-332.
219
Ruehl (2004), 90 and Gossman (2000), 311-313, 334-337, 345.
292
figures with realism. Related to this, Burckhardt sees rational philosophy as inherently
recently been at one of Burckhardt’s weekly, one-hour lectures on history. The fact that
the series only runs for a few weeks and that it is only an hour a week makes it quite
likely that all of the views we have just reviewed are not systematically presented in their
entirety at these public presentations. Nietzsche does give some clue as to what is
presented, namely that the lectures are in the spirit of Schopenhauer, whom Burckhardt
has “on intimate strolls” called “our philosopher.”221 As Burckhardt is given to neither
“misrepresentation” nor to “concealing the truth,” Nietzsche believes himself one of the
few in the audience to catch “the deep paths of thought” in the lectures.222 To Rohde a
few weeks later he reaffirms that the lectures have been in the spirit of Schopenhauer.223
As noted above, it is hard to say with certainty that an idea Burckhardt and
Nietzsche share originates with the former and is adopted by the latter, as the documents
we have, and indeed the public lectures Burckhardt gives, are all formulated after the two
have already shared many conversations. It is clear that both get ideas from
tragedy are more influenced by Wagner or Burckhardt is impossible to say, as the view
Nietzsche is expressing is already found in Aristophanes’ The Frogs, and the additional
220
Gossman (2000), 333, 336.
221
“in vertrauten Spaziergängen” “unseren Philosophen”
222
“Verfälschungen” “Verschweigungen der Wahrheit” “die tiefen Gedankengänge”
223
KGB II/1, 155, 159.
293
encouraged to express these views, knowing that both Wagner and Burckhardt endorse
them.
study are already in Nietzsche’s thinking before he arrives in Basel. Nietzsche is already
though the reality of his feeling stuck with his career and dependence on its pay belie this
latter attitude. Burckhardt’s focus on the pre-classical Greeks may eventually sharpen
Nietzsche’s focus on the period before the fifth century, but in these first few years at
Basel, Nietzsche’s focus (as evidenced by the topics he writes and teaches on) stretch
from Homer to the fourth century, featuring authors typical for the time without any
pronounced emphasis on the sixth century. It would be a mistake to think that Nietzsche,
at this time, is focusing more on archaic Greece than on other periods. Some of his most
that as a child his grandmother considers the educated a part of the upper-classes, a
sentiment he echoes while at Schulpforta. His thesis written there also discusses
Theognis’s views on the harmful effects of broadening education and his mourning of a
lost elite, though Nietzsche does not take any stance on what he identifies as Theognis’s
views. We have also seen his criticism of his fraternity at Bonn for being too plebeian.
294
superiority to the masses since coming to Basel, which is safely attributed to his
association with the patrician Burckhardt. The embrace of slavery as necessary for
culture at Basel has not been seen at all in Nietzsche’s thought to this point, and is most
That Nietzsche gets from Burckhardt his distaste for the masses is the first of four
points Martin Ruehl offers in summarizing Burckhardt’s influence on him. The second
point is the notion of the state as a protector of culture. We can safely accept this as an
on art and culture, has been devoid of reflection on the role of the state up to this point.
Ruehl’s third point is the glorification of contest and war, which again may be safely
competition in his recent public lecture on Socrates and tragedy, where Aeschylus’
element that he argues Nietzsche gets from Burckhardt is the idea of the great
individual.224 This is much harder to accept as an idea Nietzsche gets from Burckhardt as
he has already been thinking in terms of Schopenhauer’s genius, which may be one of the
key sources of Burckhardt’s own concept of the great individual. It is likely, however,
that Burckhardt gives Nietzsche’s thought on the subject new inflections, especially on
how a state can foster or hinder such individuals. Overall, what Nietzsche appears to get
from Burckhardt is a more political view of art and an intensification of his own elitism,
224
Ruehl (2004), 92.
295
an elitism that shapes his image of Greece as well as the classicist project he has already
begun to announce.
view of Prussia, if not a greater one, than his recent experience in the war.225 As we have
seen, Nietzsche’s concern about the new Prussian Reich is generally expressed as a
concern for culture. It is Burckhardt, not Wagner, who sees the new super-state as a
cultural threat. A letter written at the end of December 1870 to Ritschl shows Nietzsche
hoping above all that “the unfolding of state power in Germany is not purchased with too
considerable sacrifices of culture!”226 Burckhardt rings more loudly in this concern than
Nietzsche is by no means turned against the new Germany at this point. As late
as March of 1871, he writes to his roommate, Franz Overbeck, about the intense hatred of
Germans in Basel, and how in Lugano, from which he writes the letter, they have safely
been able to celebrate Kaiser Wilhelm’s birthday without worrying about being shot at.227
He clearly still has some patriotic affection. He just hopes that recent political
developments will not doom his developing classicist project, which is not for him alone
225
This is the view Janz takes. See Janz (1978), 387-388.
226
KGB II/1, 171, 173. “[…] die staatliche Machtentfaltung Deutschlands nicht mit zu erheblichen Opfern
der Kultur erkauft werden!”
227
KGB II/1, 187.
296
Early in 1871, Nietzsche writes a text that clearly expresses the influence from
and common ground he shares with Burckhardt. Ruehl sees it as a rupture with the
Wagners.228 It certainly displays thought that must be deeply offensive to the Wagners,
but it is not a turning point. It is rather part of the continuous development of thoughts
that put stress on his relationship with the Wagners. We have already seen him publicly
expressing elitist views in the Socrates lecture, targeting ancient Athenian plebs, no less.
He would already have been aware that Wagner would not agree with a view of Greece
or aspirations for modernity that relied on dividing humanity into classes, some of which
are oppressed and exploited. For Bayreuth, Wagner plans a seating arrangement that in
no way divides the audience by class, so that all may sit as democratic equals as he
envisions they did in Athens.229 What Nietzsche describes in this essay is a celebration of
the military ethos of Sparta and Plato’s oppressive republic, with a strict segregation of
classes and dependence on slavery as essential for civilization. Nietzsche directly attacks
the socialist concept of the dignity of work and even the dignity of human existence. The
masses appear here as a threat to culture, and culture must be protected by the state.
Schopenhauer’s pessimism, are clearly the greatest influence on this vision. It is not
228
Ruehl (2004), 80-81.
229
U. Müller (1992), 230.
230
KSA 1, 764-777 and Ruehl (2004), 84-91.
297
exemplary, indeed, as having a culture at one with “nature” (in that it does not fight
division and oppression), and inasmuch as Nietzsche actually intends this as a model for
The ideas of this short text are at times included in Nietzsche’s vision for his book
on tragedy, made clear by the persistence of chapter headings on slavery and the state in
the outlines in his notes. They are even part of a draft for the book he shares with the
Wagners in April, 1871. They are edited out of Birth, which may be a sign of Wagner’s
still considerable influence. Where Ruehl wants to see this text as a seminal rupture with
and rebellion against Wagner, the fact that Nietzsche does not hide it from Wagner shows
that he is willing to push back against him, not in one grand gesture but continually from
at least the Socrates lecture of February 1870 until their final break years later.
During these first couple of years in Basel, we see that Nietzsche’s classicist
project has two aspects. So far we have focused on how he has been using his
bringing to modernity Musikdrama with the same powerful existential benefits he argues
Greek tragedy once had. This aspect of his classicist project will culminate, of course, in
Birth. He slowly, however, also reveals the role he would like to play in the new culture
he hopes Wagner will initiate: the creator, or one of the creators, of new institutions of
298
Bildung capable of producing more artists like Wagner through the study of the Greeks.
He wants to put his philosophical philology to use not only to give himself existential
comfort, but to support the culture he hopes will soon benefit all Germans.
Wagner has been inspiring Nietzsche to think big. In a letter to Gersdorff from
mid-December 1870, Nietzsche discusses various signs showing that the reception of
Schopenhauer is growing in Germany. In a couple more years Nietzsche will show him
“a new influence on the study of antiquity” hopefully bound to “a new spirit in the
struggle of the German spirit to express itself artistically to the war with France,
Nietzsche calls his own project a battle and underlines its urgency: “for this we must
live!”232
A letter to Rohde a few days later is even more concrete. He suggests they both
get a couple of years of experience at the university in order to learn how to teach – but
only a couple of years. He describes how he constantly sees the truth in Schopenhauer’s
critique of the universities and that “a radical existence in truth” is impossible at the
university.233 Then, once they have thrown off the academic yoke, he plans to found “a
231
“eine neue Einwirkung auf die Alterthumskunde” “einen neuen Geist in der wissenschaftlichen und
ethischen Erziehung unsrer Nation”
232
KGB II/1, 162. “darum müssen wir leben!”
233
“ein radikales Wahrheitswesen”
234
“eine neue griechische Akademie”
299
Nietzsche means one modeled on the pedagogical program and methods of Plato’s
academy, as he has not been analyzing or otherwise working on what that would be. It is
more likely that Wagner and Schopenhauer are the formative influences on an institution
that will partner with Bayreuth in producing more of Schopenhauer’s geniuses, artists of
the future like Wagner. Though Nietzsche is still in the process of creating the Greece to
inspire this classicist project, it is clear his classicist project is becoming very serious for
him and even taking on concrete plans of his own in the real world.
He goes on to remind Rohde of Wagner’s plans for Bayreuth and tells him of how
he has seriously considered that they support Wagner’s plans to reform German art with
their own effort to create this new educational institution, breaking with existing
philology and its “perspective on Bildung.”235 He is preparing an adhortatio for all who
will need convincing, which seems to indicate that he is already formulating his Lectures
on Bildung. Few will join them, Nietzsche is sure, but they can form a little island, a
“monastic-artistic cooperative,” in which they will live, work, and have joy together,
“maybe this is the only way in which we are to work for the whole.”236 This shows that
when Nietzsche says he is concerned with the education of the entire nation, what he
really means is the education of the very few who can redeem the entire nation. He does
not need to restructure every German institution, as the Prussian reforms have done. He
only needs to establish one school, perhaps a few, that can train the small number capable
of becoming geniuses. Nietzsche will save all of his money, he tells Rohde, try some
235
“Bildungsperspektive”
236
“klösterlich-künstlerische Genossenschaft” “vielleicht daß dies die einzige Art ist, wie wir für das Ganze
arbeiten sollen”
300
lotteries, and charge the highest payment he can for publications in order to make
Clearly, this is not all theoretical for Nietzsche. It is existential, personal. For
this we must live! He is planning the creation of a real school as revolutionary and new
as Wagner promises his festival at Bayreuth will be. The fact that he refers to their
projected school as a “cloister” indicates that this idea has been stewing in Nietzsche for
a while. His letter written half a year earlier in mid-July 1870, on the day France
declared war on Prussia, suggested that they may now have to move to a “cloister” of
which he and Rohde will be the first friars. It appears he was already thinking of an
active role for them in saving culture upon the announcement of war back in the summer
and now feels ready to begin to share his real plans with his closest friend.
The high spirit that envisions this cooperation with Rohde (note that he does not
extend the same invitation to Gersdorff a few days earlier) is inspired to learn that a
professorship in philosophy is opening up at Basel. He tries to win the chair and have
Rohde take his position as professor of philology, joining him in Basel. Yet he only sees
the two teaching positions at Basel as provisional, embarrassing even. His theorizing is
expanding quickly and dominating his aspirations, though it is far from mature or settled.
He lacks, as he tells Rohde, a philosophical compass to direct his thinking, “Now I see a
piece of a new metaphysics, now a new aesthetic growing: then again a new educational
principle occupies me with the full rejection of our Gymnasien and universities.”238
Nietzsche is taking on quite a bit: new theories of education and the institutional forms
237
KGB II/1, 165. “unser Kloster zu gründen”
238
“Bald sehe ich ein Stück neuer Metaphysik, bald eine neue Aesthetik wachsen: dann wieder beschäftigt
mich ein neues Erziehungsprincip, mit völliger Verwerfung unserer Gymnasien und Unversitäten.”
301
needed to pursue it, the metaphysical essence of Greek tragedy and its historical
expression, and the existential redemption both need to provide for him. It is no wonder
he is having a hard time getting it all to settle down into a coherent philosophical
system.239 In April 1871 he receives final word that he will not get the chair in
philosophy, meaning, of course, his chair in philology will not be available to Rohde. He
passes the news on to Rohde with disappointment and disgust.240 Beginning in June
1871, we see Nietzsche asking Ritschl if there is any way to get Rohde a job at Zurich.
In mid-July he writes to Rohde to apply for an opening. A week later it is already clear
that Rohde will not get the job.241 Meanwhile, in a June letter to Rohde he tells him that
he has discussed the idea of a journal focusing on the reformation of culture with
Wagner, another venture in addition to Bayreuth and Nietzsche’s new Greek academy.242
In his fifth semester at Basel during the summer of 1871, Nietzsche delivers a
Porter devotes an entire chapter to it.244 He shows how the course is another example of
Nietzsche exploring and performing all of the contradictory and paradoxical tendencies
239
KGB II/1, 189-191.
240
KGB II/1, 192-193.
241
KGB II/1, 199, 208, 211.
242
KGB II/1, 197.
243
“Encyclopaedie der klassischen Philologie”
244
Porter (2000a), 167-224.
302
their own inevitable classicism.” In the end it shows, Porter argues, that Nietzsche
attacks his fellow philologists as unaesthetic, not because they do not idealize, but
because they absolutely do so while refusing to admit as much. That is, his colleagues
are doing the same thing that he cannot help but to do as a philologist. Nietzsche “is his
own object-lesson, an accomplice of the prejudices he would dispel” and this lecture
course is a perfect performance of that fact.245 Porter is again correct that Nietzsche does
reveal by performance all of the paradoxes of philology and classicism that neither he nor
his colleagues can avoid repeating, thereby revealing some of the prejudices of modernity
itself. In this study, we are looking to see if Nietzsche also has sincere aspirations for
This summer course is firmly within a tradition initiated by Wolf who gives the
first such set of lectures seeking to introduce the entirety of the study of antiquity and
thereby define the borders of both antiquity and its study, as we saw above in Chapter 2.
Other professional philologists follow this example, as we have seen, including Boeckh.
At Leipzig Nietzsche attends just such a lecture course given by Curtius. Ritschl also
offers such a lecture course, though Nietzsche has not attended it.246 Nietzsche’s lectures
contain pronounced classicism of a very traditional nature, and it is important to note that
they are not meant for Wagner at all as there is no indication he ever sent a copy of any of
them to Tribschen. Without any signs of borrowing or plagiarism in the sections we are
245
Porter (2000), 183, 207.
246
See Porter (2000), 168-169 for more on the history of Encyclopaedie courses.
303
focusing on here, these are clearly Nietzsche’s own thoughts, related to his own project of
developing a new form of Bildung and the institutions needed to provide it.
That Nietzsche’s vision in these lectures is bold is made clear when he asks,
ostensibly of the Greeks, what a nation must be like “to produce such geniuses?”247 Yes,
imitating Greek art. But he wants more than better sculpture. He wants to know how to
produce the kinds of geniuses German classicism has envisioned among the Greeks. The
production of these geniuses is one of the primary goals of the philology he is introducing
in this course.
Rather than starting with geniuses, however, these lectures focus first on how to
simultaneously the plan for how to teach students, as teaching students is nothing less
than preparing future teachers. What German institutions have been good at producing so
far has been “scholars” who have only had scholarly teachers.248 This will produce a
philologist, which Nietzsche thinks is easy enough to do, but it is not sufficient to bring
that philologist to the level of a teacher, something much less common. A teacher does
not primarily need to be a linguistic philologist, a role requiring skills, “having absolutely
247
KGW, 344. “[…] um solche Genien zu erzeugen?”
248
KGW, 367. “Gelehrte”
249
“die gar nichts mit seinem Lehrberuf zu thun haben”
304
scholars to the great Dichter has something laughable about it.”250 Later in the lectures,
Nietzsche gives an even clearer idea of what his teachers need to be: “Teacher and bearer
of the material for Bildung, the mediator between the great geniuses and the new,
developing geniuses, between the great past and the future.”251 This for Nietzsche is not
simply a teacher of dead languages or of how to use a critical apparatus. This is someone
who is able to transmit greatness from ancient geniuses to geniuses of the future.
This requires that the teacher stand close to antiquity in three points. First, the
teacher must be internally receptive to antiquity. Second, the teacher must educate
[erziehen] himself with antiquity. Third, the teacher needs to be actively researching and
working on antiquity to be able to familiarize the young with the spirit of Wissenschaft.
The most important and most difficult requirement is the need “to live into antiquity full
by Wolf and has long been desired by German students of antiquity, including the young
Wagner who imagines for himself the Athenian Dionysia in full, living detail. Nietzsche
is not just radicalizing philology here but also returning to its most traditional aims.
In fact, he explicitly recommends that his ideal teacher begin back beyond Wolf
Winckelmann, Lessing, Schiller and Goethe. Importantly, reading them is not suggested
so that one can understand antiquity correctly but so that one can feel “what antiquity is
250
KGW, 345. “Das Verhältniß der Gelehrten zu den großen Dichtern hat etwas Lächerliches.”
251
“Lehrer u. Träger der Bildungstoffe, der Mittler zwischen den großen Genien u. den neuen werdenden
Genien, zwischen der großen Vergangenheit u. der Zukunft”
252
KGW, 368. “in’s Alterthum liebevoll hineinzuleben u. die Differenz zu empfinden”
305
for a modern.”253 Reading the German classics helps the ideal teacher to understand what
is paired with having the students try actually recreating the ancient art they are studying.
“Do everything.” [Alles ποεῖν.] Nietzsche’s use of the Greek present infinitive poien
here defies translation. It is a basic verb meaning “to do,” but it also means “to make or
create” (similar to German machen). In its sense of creating, it is the root of English
“poetry” and German Poesie, bringing a strong artistic sense to it and tying it to
motto for Bildung is to have the students engage in the hands-on activity of trying to
recreate the various artistic activities of the ancients. The students should try to create
poetry, music, visual art, even to draft up state constitutions and to speak Latin and Greek
“in order to feel the distances.”254 All of this is to be done before the students are
introduced to antiquity or to any philosophic approach to it. The first step is “practical,
artistic activity” in order to establish the distance of modernity from antiquity.255 At this
point in their education, the future teachers are still nowhere near living into antiquity.
The next step is a study of philosophy, at least a full year, in order to avoid
becoming a factory worker, “who turns his screw year after year.”256 Meaningful
philosophical assumptions, an idea we have already seen Nietzsche exploring with his
306
combination of Wissenschaft with art, we see that the most determinant assumption of the
classic at all is an artistic vision we project on it in order to take it beyond dry facts and
make it in to something meaningful for life: “We want to comprehend the very highest
“Living-into” introduced in this context takes on a new meaning it never had with
Wolf. Students first try their hands at art while reading the German classics to become
aware of their own ineluctable modernity, and then they study enough philosophy to
understand how philosophical assumptions always shape any look at history. Students
thus prepared now pursue living-into as a philosophical understanding of, and developing
with, the highest vision of their philosophical assumption. This highest assumption is, of
course, that there is anything singular or exemplary about antiquity to begin with. This
then allows one to live into this heightened antiquity shaped by this very assumption.
The best prepared student, the student worthy of teaching future teachers, is one who
This is not what Wolf was proposing. Lange’s influence is unmistakable here:
any approach to history is a process of construction, and every step that is taken to clear
obstructions away from what is assumed to be “really” there only adds to the character of
257
“die Klassicität des Alterthums”
258
KGW, II/3, 344, 369. “Wir wollen die allerhöchste Erscheinung begreifen u. mit ihr verwachsen.
Hineinleben ist die Aufgabe.”
307
what is constructed. The more work that is done to return to a pristine antiquity, the more
that work produces a modern creation. Had Lange not proposed for Nietzsche
unlikely Nietzsche would now be proposing this creative power be consciously and
intentionally harnessed to project an ideal antiquity that inspires future geniuses able to
Details are not so important when one knows that one is dealing with one’s own
idealization. Thus, the teacher who has come to justify his “instinct of classicality” by
understanding its philosophical, which is to say creative, nature can pursue antiquity
without worrying about being drawn into needless details, the purview of the factory
workers of philology.259 Nietzsche is aware that such an approach does not fit into
current practices and even that it must strike others as deeply flawed. This is why the
philologist must study philosophy “out of the most internal need.”260 A study of
idealism, especially of Plato and Kant (the two most important influences on
Schopenhauer, and two philosophers who are given respect and attention at the
provides the courage to stand firm in the face of “apparent paradoxes” and no longer be
be isolated, but will “have the courage to seek his path alone.”263 This is the very
259
“Instinkt der Klassicität”
260
“aus innerstem Bedürfniß”
261
“Anschauungen von Realität”
262
“anscheinend [sic] Paradoxen”
263
KGW, II/3, 372. “den Muth haben, allein seinen Weg zu suchen”
308
courage we are seeing Nietzsche try to find as he slowly develops and reveals his
The end goal of it all, Nietzsche says, the reason one makes a youth familiar with
antiquity is “joy in what is and passing this joy on.”264 Nietzsche’s philology of the
future is not a dry cataloguing of facts or a sweeping of dust from artifacts. And it is also
not just a cynical performance of the paradoxes and prejudices of modernity. Like the
image of Homer’s personality that has so long held fascination, it is to be a fruitful error,
and the fruit is joy. Nietzsche’s philosophical philology is a Gay Science, a delight in life
Before we briefly sketch out in our conclusion how Birth and the Lectures on
review Nietzsche’s thoughts on the book leading up to its publication. To begin with, it
seems very telling that in its early stages Nietzsche calls it “The Book on the Greeks.”265
One thing indicated by the fact that he steps all the way back to a name so general as
“The Book on the Greeks” is his attempt to arrive at a comprehensive view of all that is
Greek.
More, however, is at work here than just that. Nietzsche is a philologist and
teacher of Greek who has been working on Greek antiquity for many, many years now.
He does not call his work on Democritus his “Paper on the Greeks” to Rohde or Ritschl,
264
KGW, II/3, 345. “Freude am Vorhandenen u. diese weiter zu tragen”
265
Janz (1978), 410. “das Griechenbuch”
309
but is always very specific when discussing his work with his colleagues. This is to be
expected as they would need to know if he means his work on say Aeschylus, or on
Homer and Hesiod, or on Theognis, all of which is work on “The Greeks.” The
extremely vague signifier “The Book on the Greeks” reveals something about his
relationship to the Wagners. It is only for them that such a title could make any sense
and be coined in a useful way. Their primary concern is art and culture. Professor
this may be why he is ever invited into their circle in the first place. The Wagners want a
case made about the Greeks and how Richard is related to them, and this book about
“The Greeks” is Nietzsche’s contribution to that end. Nietzsche has always wanted to be
a musician and it is probably in that capacity that he would most like to contribute to the
culture of the future. Wagner, however, has made clear that he is the musician and that
Nietzsche needs to remain the philologist. It is with “The Greeks” that Nietzsche can
make his contribution, even if he has only developed a love for them during the past
couple of years. Even after the Wagners leave Tribschen for Bayreuth in the early
summer of 1872, Nietzsche will continue to offer to quit his job and work to promote
Wagner full time, only to be reassured that he is most needed and useful as a chaired
authoritative voice on the “The Greeks” that supports everything Wagner is working for.
The manuscript for the book would appear to be quite far along already in April
of 1871, when Nietzsche begins negotiations to publish the book.267 A letter in early
266
Young (2010), 108 and Cancik (1995), 33.
267
KGB II/1, 193-194, 211.
310
August to Rohde discusses the problems other professional philologists are already
having with his use of Dionysus and Apollo. Otto Ribbeck, for example, who will go on
to write Ritschl’s biography, wants some citations to back up Nietzsche’s claims. But,
Nietzsche asks Rohde, what kind of evidence can be provided? He is laying out “a
guild.268
After problems with his first printer, Nietzsche finds another, Wagner’s printer in
Leipzig, Ernst W. Fritzsch. By mid-October he writes to Deussen that the book has been
sent to this printer.269 In late November he writes to Rohde asking him to write a review
as he fears philologists will not read the book due to the music, the musicians due to the
philology, and the philosophers due to the music and philology. He hopes Rohde can
spur the philologists to read it. This demonstrates that, despite his anxieties, he is hoping
it will be read by his colleagues and that at least some of them will appreciate the vision it
promotes.270 By late December, this anxiety turns into a nervous courage as he writes to
Rohde of the final part of the book, which Rohde has not seen and that will certainly
surprise him. Nietzsche has dared much he writes, and he is resigned to it being as
is beyond the scope of this study to discuss the fulfillment of this prophecy, it is worth
noting Nietzsche’s prescience. He is not at all naïve about the reactions this book will
cause. He knows better than anyone that it is not traditional philology, and he knows he
268
KGB II/1, 215. “eine sonderbare Metaphysik der Kunst”
269
KGB II/1, 231.
270
KGB II/1, 247-248.
271
KGB II/1, 256. “Schrei der Entrüstung”
311
is inventing his own image of Greece without footnotes to serve a very modern purpose.
It is interesting to see how much he has already prepared Rohde to come to his defense,
second day of January, 1872. He demurs that everything he has to say about tragedy has
advance that Wagner will find many slips and errors. In the final draft he actually sends
Wagner he writes, “Perhaps I will be able to improve much of it at a later time: and
‘later’ here refers to the time of ‘fulfillment,’ the Bayreuth age of culture.273 He receives
a letter from Wagner written a week later that indicates that Wagner is quite sincerely
One last aspect of Nietzsche’s experience in this period deserves attention before
we turn to our conclusion. A few days before Christmas, Nietzsche writes to Rohde
this is what I mean with the word ‘music,’ when I describe the Dionysian, and nothing
else!”275 This should give some idea of what Nietzsche means by the intoxicating effect
only a few hundred people in the next generation could experience this kind of music in
the depth to which Nietzsche has experienced it, “then I expect an entirely new
272
For the famous conflict that arises after the publication, see Gründer (1969) and Calder (1983).
273
Borchmeyer (1994), 149-150. “Vielleicht werde ich manches später einmal besser machen können: und
‘später’ nenne ich hier die Zeit der ‘Erfüllung’, die Baireuther Culturperiode.”
274
Borchmeyer (1994), 152-154.
275
“Und genau das meine ich mit dem Wort ‘Musik’, wenn ich das Dionysische schildere, und nichts
sonsts!”
312
culture!”276 He goes on to discourage Rohde from trying to publish anything else in “the
damned philological periodicals.”277 He need only wait “for The Bayreuther Pages!”278
A letter to Gersdorff a couple of days later also gushes about the sublime concert
describe the preparations for Bayreuth.279 A letter home from the 27th of December, just
days before the publication of Birth and the delivery of his Lectures on Bildung, informs
his mother and sister of the impending publication and says “with it I begin the new year,
and now people will know what I want, what I strive for with all of my strength: my
activity begins.”280 There is no irony or posturing here. We see only a very sincere and
very gifted young man caught up with visionary energy believing he has a very important
and very real role to play in saving German culture. The redemption of Germany’s
culture is intertwined with Nietzsche’s need to provide for himself and others an artistic
vision of the Greeks, idealized and exemplary, that can give meaning to life. Nietzsche is
276
“[…] so erwarte ich eine völlig neue Cultur!”
277
“den verfluchten philologischen Zeitschriften”
278
KGB II/1, 256. “auf die Baireuther Blätter!”
279
KGB II/1, 260.
280
KGB II/1, 266. “[…] mit ihr beginne ich das neue Jahr und jetzt wird man wissen, was ich will, wonach
ich mit aller Kraft strebe: meine Thätigkeit beginnt.”
313
CONCLUSION
In our Introduction we pointed out that Nietzsche uses boldly classicist language
in the early 1870s, specifically in The Birth of Tragedy (Birth) and in his lectures “On the
Future of our Institutions of Bildung,” (Lectures on Bildung), both from early 1872. That
is, he sets up Greece as an ideal that can lead modern Germany in both art and education
to become a great cultural nation. Though no one has before, we asked, “why?”1
Though he begins his formal study of Greek language and literatures in 1855, Nietzsche
never strikes a classicist pose nor expresses an admiration for the Greeks as singular and
Working from his earliest writings on Greek subject matter up to the time when
Birth is published and the Lectures on Bildung are given, we have tracked the three main
motivations for Nietzsche’s brief and curious classicism: his passion for music, his need
for existential meaning, and his feeling of being unable to escape his philological career.
Now in conclusion we will briefly outline the form of Nietzsche’s classicism in 1872 and
1
Porter does indeed answer the question “how” Nietzsche’s strikes this pose, in a performance of the
paradoxes of modernity, but he does not seek the motivations behind this classicism.
This first section outlines the form of Nietzsche’s classicism as found in Birth and
the Lectures on Bildung. We will begin with some classicist aspects of Birth that have
not received attention before then move on to the classicism found in the Lectures on
Bildung. Something all biographers and commentators have failed to notice is that
Nietzsche at this time is envisioning his own project parallel to Wagner’s festival center
certainly doing that. In the spirit of Bayreuth, he plans to create his own institutions to
keep Germany stocked with geniuses to maintain the culture Wagner plans to initiate at
Bayreuth. Thus, the Lectures on Bildung are summarized and examined in greater detail
than Birth as they have never received attention before as part of the classicist project
announced in Birth.
As stated in the introduction to this study, much focus has already been given to
Birth, including how Nietzsche presents Apollo and Dionysus as the originating forces of
tragedy, his purported thesis for the work. It was also stated that the purpose of this study
is not to offer a reading of Birth but to reveal instead the motivations that lead to the
classicism evident in it. It is assumed that readers of this study are familiar enough with
Birth to recognize its two main arguments. 2 First, it provides a very creative explanation
for why Greek tragedy should be considered singular and exemplary – its ability derived
from its origin in two sources to present the pessimistic truth of existence while
2
Again, those unfamiliar with Birth should see Silk’s and Stern’s (1981) efficient summary. 62-89.
315
simultaneously seducing its audience to continue living. Second, it strongly implies that
Wagner’s Musikdrama is the rebirth of this same tragic power and that it is going to
initiate a new tragic age where people aware of the meaningless of existence still find
beauty in existence and a desire to continue living. Here we limit our comments on Birth
to those elements that have not earlier received attention as expressions of Nietzsche’s
The pairing of Apollo and Dionysus is likely the most memorable aspect of Birth
for most readers, and it is important to understand how they play a role in his classicism.
What has not received attention is that each god serves as a personality, Nietzsche’s
preferred version of Lange’s standpoint of the ideal. This fact that they are creatively
constructed personalities with some historical elements rather than more purely factual
descriptions of what appears in texts from antiquity is what allows them to serve
Nietzsche’s classicism. Silk and Stern recognize something similar about the function of
Archilochus and Homer in Birth. They describe each of these two functioning as “an
archetype: a single, symbolic figure who sums up the whole drift of a movement, a whole
constellation of forms or ideas,” though they do not discuss the Langean source of this
conceptual approach.3
As one reads the first few pages of Section 1 of Birth, one is struck by how little
the discussion of Apollo and Dionysus has to do with the ancient Greeks. These two
figures function within a Langean myth holistic enough to offer not only an origin for
tragedy, but an explanation of the value art has for the living. This explanation is
3
Silk and Stern (1981), 151.
316
his artistic creativity. The structure of the vision it presents is also Langean as it
The specific myths created by the union of these two personalities at the origin of
tragedy, the plots of the tragedies, also serve to make an unbearable existence bearable.
Nietzsche describes the content of a tragic myth as primarily “an epic occurrence with the
glorification of a fighting hero.”4 Though this hero and the occurrence have a universal
quality to them, they are far more specific and individual than the effect produced by
Dionysus and the comprehensible and reassuring specificity of Apollo, the plot or myth
of each tragedy allows one to, on the one hand, listen at the “heart chamber” of the Will
(an experience that would usually destroy the listener) to see the meaningless of existence
while, on the other hand, allowing one to enjoy the beautiful, heroic figure experiencing
the beautiful story, thus confirming the tragic wisdom while seducing one to continued
life.5
This concept of myth, which presents what Nietzsche calls a “world in between”
is clearly influenced by Lange’s proposal to seek out and create myths which offer
holistic views and consist of as much art as knowledge, even though the knowledge here
4
KSA 1, Geburt, 151. “ein episches Ereignis mit der Verherrlichung des kämpfenden Helden”
5
KSA 1, Geburt, 135-136, 149-150. “Herzkammer”
6
“Mittelwelt”
317
mythology for Nietzsche has nothing to do with the ethnic or linguistic origins of a story,
but it resides rather “in the aesthetic and ethical meaning.”7 Indeed, Nietzsche’s myth is
astonishingly modern or, if he would forgive the description, timely. His myth of Apollo
Lange’s ideas into practice with a Schopenhauerian vocabulary.8 This myth explains
others through art, how moderns can both accept a pessimistic vision of existence and
still be seduced to continued life. This is, in turn, the classicist argument for what makes
Greek tragedy singular and exemplary and why Germans should offer their full support to
Wagner.
Now we turn to the Lectures on Bildung to trace out what we can of Nietzsche’s
future schools and their role in his classicist project. Though Nietzsche obscures his role
in the creation of these new institutions within the Lectures on Bildung, they provide, in
addition to what we have already seen in the “Encyclopedia” lectures, another glimpse at
the plans he has begun revealing to Rohde, plans to create a new kind of school for the
The very title of the Lectures on Bildung, “On the Future of our Institutions of
Bildung,” poses a question: when Nietzsche speaks of the future of “our” institutions, to
7
Williamson (2004), 242
8
KSA 1, Geburt, 135. It would be a solid service to Nietzsche scholarship, beyond the scope of this study,
to examine the extent of Lange’s influence on Birth.
318
precisely which schools is he referring?9 The Lectures on Bildung are offered in the
same venue in which he has given his inaugural address and the lectures on tragedy,
meetings of the Academic Society in Basel held on five nights stretching from the middle
of January through March 1872.10 Is Nietzsche talking about the future of the university,
Pädagogium, and Gymnasium in Basel? He protests quite loudly that he is not referring
to Basel’s schools and makes clear that it is to the German schools under the control of
Prussia that he is referring.11 It is clear, however, that he is not really talking about a
Nietzsche does not have Prussian schools in mind for the same reason he does not
have the schools in Basel in mind: he is not referring to any existing schools. The
argument of the Lectures on Bildung themselves posits that true Bildung, the kind offered
by the institutions Nietzsche is proposing, can only ever be achieved by a very small
number of individuals and that the masses simply are not made for it.12 Nietzsche states
in the Lectures on Bildung that only a few institutions at most will actually be needed. 13
We have already seen him express to Rohde that the cloister-like school they will create
will only need to teach a few people to benefit many. As we noted then, Nietzsche does
not have anything sweeping like the Prussian educational reforms in mind. He is only
9
Ueber die Zukunft unserer Bildungsanstalten
10
Hoyer (2002), 264.
11
KSA 1, 643-644.
12
KSA 1, 665.
13
KSA 1, 697.
319
If Nietzsche can overcome his self-doubts, his dream is that he and Rohde will
create the new institutions of Bildung. “Our” schools of the future will belong to
Nietzsche and those few inspired by his call to act. Nietzsche is sure those who work
towards such schools must be selfless and brave, ready to fight against the leveling
tendencies of the masses.15 Nietzsche the solitary thinker contra mundum has already
begun to emerge, though he hopes Rohde at least is still with him for now.
to Humboldt’s original desire to have Bildung transcend class boundaries. “Nature,” one
of the favorite terms of the earlier German classicists, is used repeatedly by Nietzsche the
way we have seen him use it in his essay, “The Greek State.” It consistently refers in
these lectures to a necessary bifurcation between the very few geniuses possible and the
masses who need to work to support them. It is “nature” that qualifies the few to be
geniuses and to deserve the Bildung necessary to become such.16 This elitist tendency
barely appears in Birth when, for instance, Nietzsche argues that Euripides degrades
tragedy by bringing slaves and the lower classes on stage.17 Later in Birth he argues that
the Alexandrian or scholarly culture now dominating modernity requires a slave class,
even though it is desperately trying to deny this. If this modern, Alexandrian culture
continues to promote concepts like “human dignity” and “the dignity of work,” the
14
See KSA 1, 648.
15
KSA 1, 650.
16
See e.g. KSA 1, 697.
17
KSA 1, 77.
320
masses will see their existence as an injustice and will indeed rise up and seek revenge.18
Interestingly, Nietzsche shies away from arguing for the necessity he sees of a slave class
He is not so shy in the Lectures on Bildung. There the leveling tendency threatens
the rebirth of an artistic culture just as it threatens the continuation of an Alexandrian one
in Birth. This tendency is spread by the schools themselves, which Nietzsche believes
achieve little more than improving the earning potential of their graduates. This tendency
also opposes the difficult work necessary to support the few geniuses that can redeem a
culture. Current schools, he believes, seek to emancipate the masses from great
individuals, making them the enemy of true Bildung whose task it is to form these few
all of these Lectures on Bildung, a fact that may encourage Nietzsche to reveal this
elitism that Wagner must find distasteful, an elitism with a much smaller presence in
Birth.20
As for their form, the five lectures offer a serialized account of a fictional
encounter between four men in the woods above Rolandseck on the Rhine and facing the
Drachenfels. Nietzsche and a friend, both university students at Bonn, constitute half of
the group. The other two men are an aged philosopher and his younger companion, a
18
KSA 1, 117.
19
KSA 1, 668, 698.
20
Janz (1978), 447 and Gossman (2000), 303.
321
former teacher who has recently quit his job to pursue philosophy.21 Nietzsche and his
friends are shooting pistols. This irritates the aged philosopher greatly and sets the tone
for this encounter between a very serious philosopher and a couple of frivolous students
currently at university. The young Nietzsche and his friend are straw men representing
the failure of the current schools and the real needs of students. The encounter leads to a
dialog between the philosopher and the other three clearly meant to recall Plato’s works.
Hoyer proposes that the old philosopher in the dialog may be Schopenhauer,
while Hollingdale (in one of the very few things he has to say about the Lectures on
Bildung) sees him as a vision of Nietzsche’s future.22 What comes across in the actual
times he speaks as the actual philosopher Nietzsche encounters in his books, expressing
personality “Schopenhauer,” to whom Nietzsche has clung ever since Lange made the
holding to life with a seriousness that does not deny the meaninglessness of existence and
21
KSA 1, 653-655. The details of the friendship and history of the two students blends aspects of the
Germania society and Nietzsche’s year at Bonn into an account that, though relied on by some as
autobiographical, clearly goes beyond fact into invention. The two friends have known each other since
before their Gymnasium days, giving the friend some of Wilhelm Pinder’s identity. They are also,
however, students together at Bonn, giving the friend, perhaps, also a bit of Paul Deussen. Before
beginning Gymnasium they had formed a society for mutual improvement that required monthly
submissions of art and literature and mutual critique, which they maintained while at Gymnasium, though
the spot for the foundation of that group is placed here above Rolandseck, not back in Saxony where the
real Germania society was actually founded. It would seem that centering all of the action here in the hills
above the Rhine not only makes the explication of the setting more efficient, but it could be a nod to
Burckhardt who also went to school at Bonn and made trips down to Rolandseck, as well as a nod to
Wagner, for whom the Drachenfels – legendary location of Siegfried’s fight with the dragon – has great
significance.
22
Hoyer (2002), 266 and Hollingdale (1965), 94.
322
a joy that keeps him living. As this personality is something Nietzsche strives towards,
Of the four interlocutors, one character in the story is quite similar to the
Nietzsche writing it. This is the philosopher’s younger companion. Having recently
given up his career and teaching position out of disgust in order to philosophize in
solitude like his master, he nevertheless shows deep regrets about quitting and wishes he
had found a way to make use of his career for the sake of culture.23 This is a potential
Nietzsche of the near future, a Nietzsche who has failed in developing his philosophical
philology. Hoyer believes the old philosopher along with his younger companion act as
the mouthpieces for the Nietzsche writing the Lectures on Bildung.24 As the two agree
with each other in every point, except when the younger companion sets the philosopher
up to explain something, and as they both say things that Nietzsche says elsewhere in his
though similar to the nationalism we see in Birth. One of the clear influences Wagner
has on Nietzsche at this time is this augmented nationalist tendency. As we have seen,
Nietzsche has been interested in politics and military affairs since his childhood and has
felt a fervent identification with Prussia in his student days, making the chauvinism he
shows now in Switzerland less of a new effect Wagner has on him than an amplification
of tendencies he has long had and is yet to shed. At this point in time his main concern is
culture, which he understands as the product of collective effort. The collective for
23
KSA 1, 653, 694.
24
Hoyer (2002), 268.
323
which he currently has the highest expectations is the Germany of the new empire under
Prussian leadership. It would seem that the new empire has fired Nietzsche’s hopes and
anxieties concerning serious change in the cultural sphere. As he writes in the foreword
to Wagner in Birth, that book deals with a “seriously German problem” placed before
In both Birth and the Lectures on Bildung Nietzsche makes use of Wagner’s
vague concept of the “German spirit.” Echoing Wagner, Nietzsche wants to free
Germany of French cultural influences. In the Lectures on Bildung he argues that these
influences have grown naturally in France from their Roman roots but are not suitable for
Germans.26 He does not claim an ancient Teutonic source for the German spirit but
claims without explanation instead in Birth that the German spirit grows out of a
“Dionysian soil” and in the Lectures on Bildung that it has a mysterious and
unexplainable tie to the Greek genius.27 This spirit has begun to reveal itself in the
Reformation, German music, and German philosophy.28 The music of the future is born
out of the German spirit in Birth. In the Lectures on Bildung the schools of the future are
For both Birth and the Lectures on Bildung the salutary cultural effects Nietzsche
envisions arising from both his schools of the future and the future artwork of geniuses
25
KSA 1, 24. “”ernsthaft deutschen Problem” “in die Mitte deutscher Hoffnungen”
26
KSA 1, 689-690.
27
KSA 1, 127, 691. “dionysischen Grunde”
28
KSA 1, 691. In Birth, he describes it arising “von Bach zu Beethoven, von Beethoven zu Wagner” (KSA
1, 127). Throughout both Birth and the Lectures it is clear that Kant and Schopenhauer are the German
philosophers he means. See KSA 1, 128.
29
KSA 1, 127, 645.
324
like Wagner, all of which rely on the Greeks, is meant to benefit Germany. He is not yet
thinking in pan-European terms. He is also not aiming, it should be made clear, at any
sort of military, economic, or political goals. His nationalist concerns are squarely
focused on culture.
Though the title of the Lectures on Bildung promises a view of future schools,
much more time is spent discussing what is wrong with current schools and how their
results are undesirable. Before we move on to what few ideas Nietzsche has on pedagogy
and the role the Greeks will play at his schools of the future, we examine the problems he
sees in the current schools, the very kinds of schools he has attended and at which he
currently teaches.
Nietzsche believes the process of Bildung, the kind that engages ancient Greece to
save German culture, begins at the Gymnasium. Once the Gymnasium is properly
organized, all other institutions will fall into place. He even proposes a “spirit of the
Gymnasium” that, like the German spirit and the spirit of music, stands in need of a
“rebirth” and to be “purified” and “renewed.”30 The primary form of instruction at the
Gymnasium, and the one where reform is needed first, is German instruction. True
Bildung, Nietzsche argues, begins with the mother tongue, the “fruitful soil” in which all
other educational aims grow.31 What he sees in actual German instruction treats the
language as if it were dead, approached with a historical method that dissects it and
30
KSA 1, 675. “Neugeburt” “gereinigt” “erneuert”
31
KSA 1, 683. “fruchtbare Boden”
325
studies it as parts rather than focusing on its ability to produce beautiful, meaningful
wholes. The teachers who are only capable of this are too caught up in linguistic details
to be able to connect this language instruction to the great authors of German literature,
essays on personal topics are assigned much too often. These essays on one’s identity,
individuality, and life, he believes, enthuse the most gifted pupils, causing a premature
formation of their self-identity and giving them a false sense of the worth of their
opinions. This affects the writing of their later years, producing at best the kind of
writing prevalent in journalism that Nietzsche so detests or in the current literature which
he finds no better. It also makes pupils feel entitled to speak about and pass judgments
on great Dichter, where Nietzsche feels they have earned no such right nor the faculty to
even do so meaningfully.33 As we have seen, Nietzsche has many times written just these
kinds of essays since he was rather young, more often out of his own motivation than as
assignments for school. It would appear that all of his efforts to improve his style
beginning in Leipzig have caused Nietzsche to reconsider the effect his more personal
essays have had on his writing. His complaint that pupils feel too entitled to pass
judgment would also seem to have developed in Leipzig where we first see him disparage
At least the current instruction in classical languages has one virtue, Nietzsche
thinks. Greek and Latin are still taught rigorously over the course of many years. This
32
KSA 1, 677-678, 703-704.
33
KSA 1, 678-680.
326
allows pupils to learn standards by which they can identify errors and inelegance.
Unfortunately, due to the rigor of this instruction, German is often treated as a resting
place where teachers do not have similar standards for its use.34 Despite the rigor that
still exists in the learning of classical languages, pupils are unable at the end of their
study to express themselves comfortably in writing and speech, nor can they read Plato or
Tacitus for pleasure, abilities Nietzsche’s fictional philosopher claims he and his
generation have enjoyed. Instead, teachers are most likely at best to produce Sanskritists
Finally, Nietzsche criticizes the educational institutions of his time for being
much too focused on the economic potential of their students. The state, he believes,
and demand as possible, in order to produce the greatest amount of happiness in the state.
In this rush to expand the economy and the happiness that rests upon it, the process of
thinking goes back at least as far as his study of Lange. It is also one of Humboldt’s
should only be given after a student has received a general, formal Bildung. Lange
England, that proposing that selfishness and even private vice are for the social good. He
dislikes the Manchester School as having no real concern for the whole, especially for the
34
KSA 1, 688.
35
KSA 1, 705.
36
KSA 1, 667.
327
quality of culture.37 It is this lack of concern for culture, even a distraction from it, that
to its own interests as a state rather than letting them serve and nurture a culture
complementary to it. Prussia has been rapidly multiplying the number of schools in
dependent on graduation from the humanistic Gymnasien. From the state’s perspective,
serve it. This is causing many, many more young men to go through the Gymnasien than
Those who end up scholars are also little more than servants of this system, as
their job is really to produce more bureaucrats and officers, an idea that must be very
uncomfortable for Nietzsche in his new position. They themselves are unable to
contribute to culture as their training has prepared them for nothing more than specialized
work, inasmuch as Nietzsche believes current Bildung is aimed only at details rather than
wholes. As he has before, he calls these scholars “factory workers” who turn the same
screw their whole lives.39 The wissenschaftliche person and the gebildete person belong
to two entirely different spheres, though these two spheres may sometimes touch within
the same person.40 The philosopher’s younger companion has left his career as he feels
37
Stack (1983), 276-281. As an indication that Nietzsche takes Lange’s critique seriously, we see him
mentioning the Manchester School and the understanding he has gained of it from Lange in a letter to
Gersdorff from February, 1868 (KGB I/2, 257).
38
KSA 1, 707.
39
KSA 1, 670.
40
KSA 1, 683.
328
he is only the former, producing more of the former. Nietzsche’s hope, as we have seen,
Thus, Nietzsche sees only Gymnasien that produce servants of the state who have
not been trained rigorously in the use of their own language, who lack real standards of
judgment, who have been led at too tender an age to form an estimation of themselves
and their opinions, who approach classical antiquity without proper preparation, and who
are destined only to expand their nation’s economy. None of this requires, he believes,
any study of the Greeks. Neither does he see Gymnasien producing geniuses capable of
maintaining the culture of the coming tragic age he believes Wagner is about to initiate.
future are rather sparse, even given his warning at the beginning of the lectures that
detailed regulations are not to be expected.41 In fact, he only offers one concrete activity
that should occur in these future schools, and it brings us back to German instruction.
We have seen that he believes all true Bildung begins with the mother tongue. He also
believes it is a place where a pupil can develop his relationship to art. He recommends
that teachers take their pupils line by line through the literature of great German authors,
making them aware of thousands of details demonstrating how these authors wrote and to
awaken within them a feeling for art. Then when the pupils write, the teachers have
standards by which they can push the pupils to continually improve their expressions in
every detail. Hopefully, gifted pupils will then be inspired to pursue better writing, and
41
KSA1, 648.
329
the less gifted will be scared off from the task altogether.42 As this study is aimed more
on Humboldt’s formal education. Humboldt also thinks formal Bildung is best achieved
in language study, though for him it is in the study of dead languages, especially Greek.
exemplars to further lead them in art. There they are in a state that strikes Nietzsche as
frightfully independent, being only connected to the university by their ears, though even
then they can choose what they hear and how much of it they believe.44 Though
Humboldt also envisions the Gymnasien as sites of strict discipline preparing pupils for
university study, Nietzsche departs dramatically from him in his criticism of the freedom
of students at the university. Where Nietzsche bemoans students not taking lecture
courses seriously enough, Humboldt is not even sure that they are necessary. Nietzsche
continue at the university. He complains that students actually celebrate their freedom at
the university as what the Gymnasium has prepared them for. The Bildung they have
received there marches into the university where “it demands, it gives laws, it sits in
judgment.”45 The last thing these students have been prepared with is a need for “great
leaders” and the idea “that all Bildung begins with obedience.”46 His view of a student’s
42
KSA 1, 675-676.
43
KSA 1, 747. “Ziele, Meister, Methoden, Vorbilder, Genossen”
44
KSA 1, 739.
45
KSA 1, 741. “sie fordert, sie giebt Gesetze, sie sitzt zu Gericht”
46
KSA 1, 749. “große Führer” “daß alle Bildung mit dem Gehorsam beginnt”
330
needs at the university stands in stark opposition to Humboldt’s vision of mature and
independent scholars.
Where current university students feel entitled to write literature, to judge great
poets, to choose what they should or should not be learning, Nietzsche believes the
them to strict obedience “under the scepter of genius.”47 What is required is to make
Gymnasien pupils follow the same rigorous and difficult path in mastering German that
the great German Dichter have had to take, so that these pupils can see with what ease
and beauty these Dichter write. The only way to develop a faculty for correct aesthetic
judgments is “upon the thorny path of language.”48 What Nietzsche wants to see coming
out of the Gymnasien is not university students prepared for historical scholarship, but
students accustomed to a discipline that allows them to use their mother tongue well
according to standards.49 All feel for art and the sense for aesthetic judgment begin, here
in the Lectures on Bildung, with the careful study of German. Note that Nietzsche does
not place music at the center of his pedagogy and, in fact, assigns it no role here.
It is artists – or at very least those with a refined feel for the artistic use of
language – not scholars, and certainly not bureaucrats, who should come out of the
Gymnasien and enter the universities. Three needs should be awakened at the
Gymnasium that qualify a pupil for entrance to a university: 1) their need for philosophy,
2) their need for an artistic instinct, and 3) their need for antiquity as the “incarnate
47
KSA 1, 680. “unter dem Scepter des Genius”
48
KSA 1, 683-684. “auf dem dornigen Pfade der Sprache”
49
KSA 1, 694.
331
categorical imperative of all culture.”50 We have just seen how the need for an artistic
instinct should be nurtured in German instruction. The need for philosophy should
already occur naturally in young pupils, and it is the task of the Gymnasien not to
extirpate it. It is in one’s youth, Nietzsche believes, that the ambiguity of existence is
most influential as one loses the firm foundation of opinions received earlier. Historicism
and philosophy as it is currently taught kill this state. It is important to note that for
Nietzsche “philosophy” has meant precisely this grappling with ambiguity by means of a
combination of art and scholarship since reading Lange. Universities, as far as he can
see, have no relationship to art, and without art and philosophy, he cannot imagine how a
student will feel any need for antiquity. This only makes sense as the needs for art and
philosophy are what have finally driven him to his need for antiquity.51
Though he appreciates what respect and care is still given to the teaching of
classical languages at the Gymnasien, Nietzsche rather regrets what he sees as teachers
taking pupils directly to Homer and Sophocles without any intermediate study.52 The
guides to antiquity he recommends are the great German authors he has already
marvels no one in the past half century has mentioned the value Goethe, Schiller, Lessing
and Winckelmann have in leading modern Germans to antiquity. They are, he believes,
Here he does not say, as he does in his “Encyclopedia” lectures, that the value
they have is helping one feel one’s distance from antiquity, to see how even these great
50
KSA 1, 741. “leibhaften kategorischen Imperativ aller Kultur”
51
KSA 1, 741-743.
52
KSA 1, 686.
332
Germans felt a vast distance from classical Greece. He makes no suggestion at all that
observing the experience of earlier Germans who tried to approach Greece will deepen
one’s sense of distance. Rather, the value he gives to the great German authors as guides
to antiquity here in the Lectures on Bildung is in the feel for form that they can help a
pupil develop, if the pupil is taken through the kind of rigorous German instruction he
recommends. All “classical Bildung” has only “one healthy and natural starting point,
the artistically serious and strict habituation in the use of one’s mother language,” a claim
he makes based on his belief that it will lead modern German pupils to the need for art,
which in turn makes them worthy of studying the Greeks and based on his observation
that education in ancient Rome and Greece consisted of the careful study of one’s native
tongue.53
Once the feel for form is developed in such a course of study, wings sprout that
take the pupil to “the land of longing … to Greece,” which is “the only home of
Bildung.”54 Otherwise, he believes there is no hope of accessing the alien world of the
Greeks. Gymnasium education must be grounded in the pupils’ “native soil.”55 What it
is that pupils and teachers will do once pupils have come to the study of Greece is not
discussed at all. One can only assume that it will be more akin to Humboldt’s formal
Bildung than to a focus on learning content as the point of Nietzsche’s concept of Bildung
is to produce artists, but this is not specified. Nietzsche actually rejects the label of
“formal” Bildung inasmuch as he thinks anything that can be called “material” Bildung is
53
KSA 1, 685-686. ”klassisch Bildung” “einen gesunden und natürlichen Ausgangspunkt, die künstlerisch
ernste und strenge Gewöhnung im Gebrauch der Muttersprache”
54
KSA 1, 686. “dem Lande der Sehnsucht […] nach Griechenland” “einzigen Bildungsheimat”
55
KSA 1, 689. “heimischen Boden”
333
approaching antiquity through German authors is underscored by the fact that he here
claims the only real starting point for classical education is the study of the German
language, a claim he has not previously made in relation to German authors. We have
earlier seen Nietzsche show a concern for the development of his own writing style, but
never in connection to understanding the Greeks. Both reasons for studying German
authors, feeling the distance from antiquity and developing a feel for form, are consonant
with Nietzsche’s thinking in general, which makes the switch here all the more curious.
Why not offer both reasons? One could assume that Nietzsche is nervous to tell his
audience that the great German authors will only make clear the distance of moderns
from antiquity, but given the confidently polemic tone throughout the lectures, this seems
quite unlikely. He does not shy away from much more offensive theses. Rather, it seems
that Nietzsche’s thoughts on the subject are still rather fluid and that he is trying out a
different use for the great German authors, in search of the best one(s).
What this indicates is that the conclusion that one must start with German
literature to approach the Greeks is already settled upon before the premises supporting it
have been worked out. A conclusion in search of an argument is the sign of an agenda
looking for cover. On the one hand, we have repeatedly seen Nietzsche studying and
enjoying Goethe, Schiller and Lessing, and we have seen him take a course from Jahn at
Bonn that focuses on Winckelmann, even though he has never had anything else to say
56
KSA 1, Bildung II, 682-683.
334
about Winckelmann in his letters and notes before coming to Basel. On the other hand,
we also know that all questions of aesthetics are approached at Tribschen in a vocabulary
rich with appeals to all of these men and their ideas. It seems most likely that Nietzsche,
thinking within the context of these intense conversations with the Wagners, has
absorbed the idea that these German authors must play a great role in any approach to art
or the Greeks, and that he is still trying to work out just what that role would be, offering
Here in the Lectures on Bildung a feel for form, or an artistic sense developed
among German authors, causes the need for antiquity. This is very different from the
scholarly need for knowledge Socrates represents in Birth. Nietzsche argues that F.A.
Wolf himself, though the founder of the Wissenschaft of antiquity, went beyond a simple
need for scholarship and did not end up overvaluing it. Instead, a classical spirit flowed
from him to poets like Goethe and Schiller and then on into the Gymnasien where
eventually scholarship became ascendant, choking the classical spirit. 57 Without ever
mentioning Humboldt, but appealing rather to Wolf, Goethe, Schiller, Lessing and
Winckelmann, Nietzsche is here calling for a return to what he sees as a classical Bildung
The fact that the only concrete pedagogical activity Nietzsche can propose is a
German instruction that goes line by line through authors to determine standards and
develop a feel for form, and the fact that this has replaced using German literature to help
pupils sense their distance from antiquity, indicates that Nietzsche is quite far from a firm
grasp on what exactly will happen at his schools of the future. He is still working out
57
KSA 1, 688-689.
335
what should be taught as well as how. He claims that his rigorous German instruction
will prepare one for, and bring one to, Greek antiquity, but he gives no idea of what needs
to occur in an engagement with the Greeks once the pupil arrives there in order to form
the pupil into a genius or a teacher of other geniuses. The Greeks are repeatedly held up
as critical to the formation of geniuses, but Nietzsche never explains how. He clearly
feels a need for the Greeks to be central in future Bildung along with the great German
created and is to be reborn in Birth is astonishing in its complexity. He has clearly given
much more thought to working out the rebirth of tragedy than to the form of his future
he says that one should not expect detailed “regulations” from them.58 In fact, Nietzsche
promises to deliver six lectures (and at one points plans on seven), but only writes and
gives five.59 Clearly he still has much to do to work out for himself just what a school of
the future would be, and, thus, what a viable, enjoyable, fulfilling career would look like
for him, as it is clearly not the more linguistic and historical teaching he now provides
planning with Rohde for the past year. The reality of how difficult it would be to find the
means and support for the establishment of his first new school would have to be
intimidating, no matter how inspiring it must be to watch Wagner rise from past failures
58
KSA 1, 648. “Tabellen”
59
Janz (1978), 444.
336
to boldly move forward with his Bayreuth vision. Nietzsche has also been focused for
the last two years on the ideas presented in Birth. He has clearly not taken the time yet to
work out his ideas on how to use the study of the Greeks at an ideal school to produce
artists like Wagner. He may even have intimations already that such a task is not even
possible. As Nietzsche never completes or publishes the Lectures on Bildung, and as his
plans for new schools quickly disappear, never to be mentioned again, it is clear that his
sincere hopes to reform philology, and especially to reform his own career in philology,
The core of Nietzsche’s classicist project is the use of the Greeks, the subject of
his professional expertise, to support and nurture artistic geniuses. Birth heralds the birth
of a new tragic age through the Musikdrama of Richard Wagner, the first art-form to
properly unite the Apollinian and Dionysian artistic tendencies since Aeschylus and
Sophocles. Birth speaks of “dragon slayers” of the future, which we can safely assume
will be few in number and turn their back on optimism in order “to live resolutely” in the
face of a meaningless existence, aided by tragic art that both admits the truth and offers
seduction to life counteracting it.60 This cultural reformation proceeds from the German
We have also seen how Nietzsche hopes there is a role for him in this reformation
60
KSA 1, 118-119. “resolut zu leben”
61
KSA 1, 127.
337
provisional idea of what this work might entail in the Lectures on Bildung, though he is
unable to get very far. In Birth, he addresses “us” who are on the border between two
“forms of existence,” who stand among both the optimistic scholars and the pessimistic
artists. Hopefully those on this border are moving backwards in history from an
Alexandrian age to a tragic one.62 German culture, then, can become free of all “Latin
civilization,” if it will only learn from the Greeks, a task that Nietzsche finds “a
the rebirth of all that is great in Greek tragedy through philosophical philology like Birth,
then in schools of the future continue to support the newly born tragic age by using his
training in Greek language and literature to continue to produce geniuses for German
recognized that in early 1872 Nietzsche is as ambitious as Wagner and hopes to actually
create a school or schools that can support and perpetuate Wagner’s project at Bayreuth.
What has not been explained at all before this study is why Nietzsche desires any such
classicist project and why he gives the Greeks such a central role in it. Why does he
resort to such oversimplified, reductionist praise of “the Greeks” that is not only clichéd
by 1872, but is embarrassingly inadequate for a fully trained classical philologist familiar
with the variety and complexity of the many centuries of Greek antiquity? Above all,
what motivates Nietzsche, the philosopher who consistently attacks just these kind of
62
KSA 1, 128. “uns” “Daseinsformen”
63
KSA 1, 129. “romanischen Civilisation” “eine auszeichnende Seltenheit”
338
As we have seen throughout this study, these three motivations are his love of
music, his need for existential meaning, and his commitment to his career path. Now we
will examine these motivations as they appear in Birth and the Lectures on Bildung. Two
of these motivations appear quite clearly in these texts. The third does not.
Birth is, at its core, a book about music. We saw in Nietzsche’s public lectures on
“Musikdrama” and “Socrates and Tragedy” that his thinking in Birth develops out of the
question he first tackles in a paper on Oedipus Rex as a seventeen year old at Schulpforta:
the relationship of music to text in tragedy. Already at that point, music is more
important than text in Nietzsche’s thinking, just as music is more important to him than
his schoolwork. The relationship of text and music as a way to think of Greek tragedy
had been presented to him by his friend Gustav Krug in their mutual-improvement
society, Germania. This problem of the relationship of music and text in tragedy is
greatest written effort in support of Wagner, he has returned directly to this problem.
We noted that in “Socrates and Tragedy” (January 1870) the adjective used to
Dionysian Worldview” (August 1870) Apollo becomes a fully formed personality still
aligned with optimism while Socrates is left out entirely. Now in Birth, the problem of
the relationship of the text of a tragedy to its music is discussed with all three
personalities: Dionysus, Apollo, and Socrates. This was discussed in Chapter 3 where we
339
saw that this three-personality solution makes unstable who Dionysus’ real antithesis is,
Apollo or Socrates, and we noted that new associations from Schopenhauer’s philosophy
are given to each figure without entirely erasing the original alignments with text and
contribute to what Nietzsche finds problematic in this “image mad” text. The fact that
each figure, Dionysus, Apollo, and Socrates, is so loaded with association also shows the
extent to which they are functioning more as Langean personalities than as philologically
concern for the proper relationship of text and music in a Musikdrama still comes through
Archilochus where he examines the “relationship between poetry and music, word and
tone.” He continues to vacillate between image and word to represent the verbal aspect
of poetry through Section 6, a section dedicated to the question of the relationship of the
appearances.”64 Image, appearance, and word are all the domain of Apollo in Birth. At
the beginning of Section 9 Nietzsche specifically calls dialog the Apollinian aspect of
tragedy.65 Again in section 16, the beginning of his discussion of modernity, he equates
the union of Apollo and Dionysus with the question of how music is related to “image
and concept.”66
64
KSA 1, 49-51. “Wort” “Bild” “Verhältniss zwischen Poesie und Musik, Wort und Ton” “Organ und
Symbol der Erscheinungen”
65
KSA 1, 64.
66
KSA 1, 104. “Bild und Begriff”
340
As has been true for Nietzsche since his essay on Oedipus Rex and equally true
for Wagner since his reading of Schopenhauer in the mid-1850s, the music is primary and
text is secondary, while both are necessary for tragedy. If the importance of the
dominance of music is not made clear enough by the need to reintroduce it to tragedy, or
to bring Dionysus back to art, Nietzsche approaches it from another angle in his
discussion in Section 19 of the optimistic form of opera prevalent in his time. In opera,
the stile rappresentativo subordinates music to words, needing the words at all times to
be understandable, and using the music primarily to imitate phenomena mentioned in the
libretto.67 This is precisely the inversion of what Nietzsche and Wagner believe is the
proper relationship of music and text and is what makes modern opera so hateful to them.
As the original title of Birth already reveals, Nietzsche’s thesis concerning tragedy is that
The layering of the alignment of Will and Representation with Dionysus and
Apollo over the relationship of music and text in Birth produces problematic complexity
such as Nietzsche’s attempt to blur the distinction between text and image as they now
also gives further support to the primary role of music in Nietzsche’s conception of Greek
tragedy. Schopenhauer is the first modern aesthetic theoretician to argue that music
derives from a source different than all other forms of art. Nietzsche argues that the
67
KSA 1, 120.
68
The original title is, of course, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music [Die Geburt der Tragödie
aus dem Geiste der Musik]. See KSA 1, 102.
341
value of his concepts of the duality of the Apollinian and the Dionysian aesthetic
Birth is not just an argument about the nature of tragedy and its derivation from
music. It is clearly also about the relationship of scholarship to art. Thus, the text shifts
from the question of the relationship of Apollo and Dionysus, of text and music, to “the
new opposition: the Dionysian and the Socratic.”70 As much as the character of Socrates
serves to show how tragedy is stripped of music, and consequently how it can be reborn
out of music, Socrates also allows Nietzsche to explore a question very personally
relevant to him and likely not too pressing to Wagner – just what can one trained as a
classical philologist, what can Nietzsche, do for German culture in this time of existential
crisis?
Nietzsche’s provisional answer to this question is not found only in the Lectures
on Bildung and in his “Encyclopedia” lectures. We see him probing another possibility
within Birth itself. There he proposes the possibility of a musical Socrates, a role he
would sincerely like to play. For now though, Wagner has made clear to him that his role
is philological and that Wagner will take care of the music. At the very least, Nietzsche
hopes, his love of music is providing him with a new vision of ancient of Greece. He
believes that with his new Apollo and Dionysus duality, he has arrived at an insight into
the Greek character so unique that, by comparison, all of the work of German historical-
critical philology has so far only enjoyed shadow plays.71 Similarly, even those who
teach the German spirit most, Winckelmann, Goethe, and Schiller, do not see into “the
69
KSA 1, 103-104.
70
KSA 1, 83.
71
KSA 1, 104.
342
core of the Hellenic being.”72 We have already seen him say of these great authors that,
in comparison to the musical ancient poets, they lack something essential. Here in Birth
The insight Nietzsche believes he is able to offer into the art and culture of
ancient Greece in Birth has been made possible by his initial desire to think about the
musical aspect of poetry as a student writing on Oedipus Rex. It has been nurtured by his
reading of Schopenhauer and his many conversations with Wagner. Returning in Section
20 to the image of the “magic mountain” of Greek culture, Nietzsche argues that Schiller
and Goethe were unable to “break open the enchanted gate” leading into it.74 Perhaps,
Nietzsche suggests, one can get the gate to open from an angle that has never been tried
before, with “the mystical sound of the reawakened music of tragedy.”75 Music allows
Nietzsche, he believes, as the first in all of modernity, into the core of the being of Greek
culture.
It is still not yet clear to him how he can function as a musical Socrates in the
schools of Basel or even in the future at schools he would like to create. At this point he
can only make suggestions about how to read German literature. However, Birth makes
clear that Nietzsche’s passion for music is very much alive and is at the center of his
thinking on the ancients. Music has, he believes, given him access to ancient Greece
72
KSA 1, 129. “den Kern des hellenischen Wesens”
73
KSA 1, 43. This is a slightly less reverent variation on what he calls them in the “Socrates and Tragedy”
lecture: “beautifully begun but not fully finished statues.” See KSA 1, 523.
74
In Section 3 this magic mountain is Olympus and is more narrowly related to just the Apollinian vision
of the gods. See KSA 1, 35. “Zauberberg” “jene verzauberte Pforte zu erbrechen”
75
KSA 1, 131. “dem mystischen Klange der wiedererweckten Tragödienmusik”
343
denied to Germany’s greatest Dichter and scholars. The insights made possible by music
Without his lifelong passion for music, it is impossible to imagine him publishing
this first book in support of Wagner. He likely never would have met Wagner. To be
clear, his passion for music motivates the specific nature of his classicist project, and it
has bound him to Wagner in a way that gives him much of the energy he needs to
imagine this project. Without this love of music, his need for existential comfort and the
facts of the career path to which he has committed himself may still have brought him to
Despite his difficulty in the Lectures on Bildung in bringing music to the center of
his vision of philosophical philology, lecture five does end with an image of a genius as
an orchestra conductor inspiring and leading all others.76 Where Nietzsche has made a
dazzling attempt at being the musical Socrates, of bringing music to his professional
work in Birth, the Lectures on Bildung make clear just how difficult it is for him to really
bring music into his teaching career, to practice music as a professional Socrates. His
fervent hope that music can somehow play a role in his career certainly gives vibrant life
to his classicist aspirations at this point, but as he continues to see that he cannot actually
make music the center of his work as a teacher of Greek antiquity, that he as a philologist
and never really a musician, his classicism quickly loses its momentum.
76
KSA 1, 751-752.
344
Nietzsche has another need that is much easier for him to fulfill: to create myths
that impel him on to continued life. We have seen how after Nietzsche’s Protestant faith
it is severely compromised within a year by his reading of Lange. In the vacuum left by
the collapse of his Christian faith, one thesis of Schopenhauer’s that Nietzsche does not
as the wisdom of Silenus. It represents not just the problem that gives birth to tragedy
within Nietzsche’s book, but it is the problem that has been driving all of his thinking
about life since he could no longer console himself with his childhood religion. In Birth
he calls the Wisdom of Silenus “the same drive that calls art into life as the supplement
permission to supplement his knowledge with his own artistic license, including concepts
“philosophy.”
seriousness – remaining honest about the problematic nature of existence, and we have
seen him repeatedly praise Wagner and Schopenhauer for their seriousness. In his
“Foreword to Wagner” in Birth, he writes that he hopes readers will appreciate the book’s
“courageous seriousness” and “cheerful play,” two qualities that could be used to
77
KSA 1, 35. “derselbe Trieb, der die Kunst in’s Leben ruft, als die zum Weiterleben verführende
Ergänzung”
78
KSA 1, 24. “tapferem Ernst” “heiterem Spiel”
345
argues throughout Birth, it is the seriousness that requires the play to make existence
bearable.
calls out “It is a dream! I will dream on!”79 Later he clarifies that life itself is like a
dream, the “appearance of appearance,” rendering the decision to dream on the same as
the decision to allow artistic play to seduce one to live on.80 As he writes in Birth, “the
greedy Will always finds a means through which an illusion spread over things keeps its
hold on its creations and compels them to live on.”81 Nietzsche knows that his
Greeks as singular and exemplary is. But maybe supporting Wagner’s ambitious project
with this argument and creating his own school where he can use his training to produce
further geniuses is enough to seduce him to further living, to make life beautiful and
joyful. In describing the way the playful Apollinian impulse counteracts the serious,
paralyzing truth about the Dionysian root of existence, Nietzsche offers his own
justification for the highly irregular and irreverent centaur that Birth is. More
As I noted above, two of the three motivations for the curious classicism
demonstrated in Birth and the Lectures on Bildung are easily found within these works,
79
KSA 1, 26. “Es ist ein Traum! Ich will ihn weiter träumen!”
80
KSA 1, 39. “Schein des Scheins”
81
KSA 1, 115. “immer findet der gierige Wille ein Mittel, durch eine über die Dinge gebreitete Illusion
seine Geschöpfe im Leben festzuhalten und zum Weiterleben zu zwingen”
346
music and the need for existential meaning. The third is hardly to be found in them, but
is just as strong as the other two in driving Nietzsche to hold up the Greeks as singular
and exemplary after so many years of indifference to them. This third motivation has
appeared, as we have seen, in his letters to his friends and family: Nietzsche requires
needs meaningful employment, and he needs classical philology to provide him with it.
As we have seen, he believes it is too late for him to begin on any other career track. He
has never received any professional training for his true passion, music, while he has
philology. Additionally, Wagner repeatedly makes clear to him that his calling is not in
music.
It is not hard to explain why this motivation does not surface in Birth or in the
against consistently. He has had an auspicious rise in a field that provides him a salary he
proudly displays on the calling cards he sends home to have his mother and sister
distribute before quickly becoming embarrassed by his enthusiasm and downplaying his
new job. It is also no mystery why his job in Basel leads him to hope to find cultural
redemption among the Greeks – that is the field in which he works, and the only one for
Perhaps this motivation does appear somewhat in the figure of the philosopher’s
younger companion in the Lectures on Bildung. He has quit his career as a teacher to
philosophize independently. At this point, Nietzsche is working hard not to do the same,
and Birth and the Lectures on Bildung represent his classicizing attempt to make his
347
career path work for him. If only he could make his new Greek academy a reality, he
might be able to find the middle ground between his artistic passions and philological
classicizing in early 1872, he still hopes he can use his training to pursue a meaningful
career as a philosophical philologist. Though Nietzsche does not realize this dream, he is
more practical than the character of the young teacher who has quit his job in his Lectures
on Bildung. Years later, when he does finally leave his teaching job, he is still able to
The story told here of Nietzsche’s high but problematic hopes as a classicist is in
many ways a rather sad one. Though he is conscious that classicizing is an illusion as he
embraces it for the sake of life, he soon finds it does not provide what he needs. His
failed classicism is not the only source of his disappointment. Nietzsche’s myth of the
birth of tragedy shows how the optimistic Socrates drives music from it, though it has
Where Dionysus and Apollo lead us to Wagner and his Musikdrama, the personality of
Socrates leads us right to Nietzsche and the cultural contribution he hopes to make. He
writes of one who has felt the desire for Socratic knowledge and been stimulated to
one who “mostly with maieutic and educative effects upon noble youths” seeks to create
82
See, e.g., Kaufmann (1950), 343-345.
83
“ganze”
348
further geniuses.84 It is impossible for us to mistake how these descriptions clearly refer
to Nietzsche himself.
account of the origin and demise of tragedy and is about to turn to contemporary culture,
he suggests we now look to see if perhaps there are points where Wissenschaft breaks
down and needs art in order to lead us “to ever new configurations of genius and
especially of the Socrates who creates music.”85 We can already see from the course
Nietzsche’s life takes and from the trouble he is having envisioning and establishing his
school where he can be such a scholar making music that this possibility remains
unfulfilled. He simply never becomes a composer, and his musical activity throughout
his life will never be anything more than what we have seen in the years considered here:
attending the concerts of others, playing the piano alone, and occasionally playing the
piano for others. Birth is the closest he ever comes to making philology musical, and
forth the more general possibility of “the birth of an ‘artistic Socrates’.”86 Nietzsche may
never compose music that redeems German culture (neither does Wagner for that matter),
but he has artistic gifts beyond music, especially in writing. Becoming an artistic
Socrates who combines highly developed analytic skills and a broad base of knowledge
with artistic creativity is a goal he certainly does realize as seen in Thus Spoke
Zarathustra and all of his other publications. It is perhaps fitting that Nietzsche’s
84
KSA 1, 101. “zumeist in maeeutischen und erziehenden Einwirkungen auf edle Jünglinge”
85
KSA 1, 102. “immer neuen Configurationen des Genius und gerade des musiktreibenden Sokrates”
86
KSA 1, 96, emphasis added. “die Geburt eines ‘künstlerischen Sokrates’”
349
concrete ideas for an ideal Bildung all relate to German authors, as it is as an author that
even nihilism.
Were it not for the existential crisis that brings him to his Langean classicism
combining philological knowledge with artistic creativity, were it not for his years of
rigorous training to think, write, and publish as a philologist, and were it not for his
passionate love of music, he likely never would have taken a chance on something so
inventive and risky as his classicizing myth of the origins and power of tragedy. These
motivations and their culmination in the experimental classicism of The Birth of Tragedy
350
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