Homer and Classical Philology
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~8,420 words · 40 passages
Cite this work
- APANietzsche. (n.d.). Homer and Classical Philology. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/nietzsche/homer-and-classical-philology
- MLANietzsche. "Homer and Classical Philology." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/nietzsche/homer-and-classical-philology.
- ChicagoNietzsche. Homer and Classical Philology. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/nietzsche/homer-and-classical-philology.
What it is about
The inaugural lecture at Basel (1869), aged twenty-four and newly appointed to a chair without having finished his doctorate.
Context and history
On the 'Homeric question' — whether Homer existed or is the name of a tradition — and, beyond it, on what philology ought to be. It is the document of the academic Nietzsche just before he began to stop being one. Forty fragments: it is a lecture. English translation from the complete edition edited by Oscar Levy (1909-1913), the one in the public domain. It is over a century old and it shows. The original is GERMAN, and citation should follow the original: the catalogue holds two of them, Also sprach Zarathustra and Der Wille zur Macht; for the rest, only the translation is here.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
At the present day no clear and consistent opinion seems to be held regarding Classical Philology. We are conscious of this in the circles of the learned just as much as among the followers of that science itself. The cause of this lies in its many-sided character, in the lack of an abstract unity, and in the inorganic aggregation of heterogeneous scientific activities which are connected with one another only by the name "Philology." It must be freely admitted that philology is to some extent borrowed from several other sciences, and is mixed together like a magic potion from the most outlandish liquors, ores, and bones. It may even be added that it likewise conceals within itself an artistic element, one which, on aesthetic and ethical grounds, may be called imperatival—an element that acts in opposition to its purely scientific behaviour. Philology is composed of history just as much as of natural science or aesthetics: history, in so far as it endeavours to comprehend the manifestations of the individualities of peoples in ever new images, and the prevailing law in the disappearance of phenomena; natural science, in so far as it strives to fathom the deepest instinct of man, that of speech; aesthetics, finally, because from various antiquities at our disposal it endeavours to pick out the so-called "classical" antiquity, with the view and pretension of excavating the ideal world buried under it, and to hold up to the present the mirror of