Homer and Classical Philology

The inaugural lecture in which Basel's youngest-ever professor, aged twenty-four, turned the question of who "Homer" was into a case for treating scholarship as the servant of art.

by Friedrich Nietzsche51 passages held

German, the original language

Original title: Homer Und Die Klassische Philologie
Original language: German

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Overview

Friedrich Ritschl's recommendation carried his student into the classical philology chair at Basel in 1869, at twenty-four and before the doctorate was even finished, and on 28 May Nietzsche climbed the podium to earn the appointment with an inaugural address he had first drafted under the title "On the Personality of Homer." He took up the oldest quarrel in the field: does "Homer" name a single poet, or a whole tradition of singers whom a later age fused into one author? Rather than pick a side, Nietzsche asks what kind of question it is — and answers that philology cannot settle it by evidence alone, because the belief in one Homer rests on an aesthetic judgment about artistic unity that scholars smuggle in while claiming to deal only in facts. The discipline that prides itself on hard science turns out to stand on a value it will not admit. He ends by rewriting a line of Seneca's so that philology answers to philosophy rather than standing as a science on its own, and by calling it the handmaid of art. Delivered aloud and printed for the record, the lecture was a young man's manifesto; three years later The Birth of Tragedy would push the same conviction past what his colleagues could tolerate. It is read now less for anything it settles about Homer than as the first public statement of the fracture — science against art — that runs through everything Nietzsche wrote.

Key concepts

What is the Homeric question?

The Homeric question is the old scholarly dispute over whether Homer names one historical poet who composed the Iliad and Odyssey, or whether the name gathers up a whole tradition of oral singers whom a later age fused into a single author. Nietzsche takes it up not to settle it but to expose what kind of question it really is.

What was the original title, On the Personality of Homer, about?

On the Personality of Homer was the lecture's first title, and it frames the whole argument. To speak of Homer's personality is to assume a single creative individual behind the poems — exactly the belief Nietzsche says scholars smuggle in as fact. He argues that this sense of one unified authorial mind rests on an aesthetic feeling for artistic unity, not on evidence.

What is philology, the discipline this lecture addresses?

Philology is the scholarly study of ancient languages and texts — the classical world reconstructed through grammar, manuscripts, dates and the careful editing of Greek and Latin authors. It was Nietzsche's own profession and the field this lecture speaks to. He accepts its tools but denies its claim to be a pure science, since its central judgments, he argues, secretly rest on taste.

What is an inaugural lecture, and why does this one matter?

An inaugural lecture is the public address by which a newly appointed professor takes up a chair. Nietzsche delivered this one in 1869 at Basel, aged twenty-four, to earn the post before his doctorate was even finished. It matters because a routine academic ceremony became a manifesto — the first public statement of the science-against-art conviction that runs through all his later work.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Philology as the Handmaid of Art

Can evidence alone decide whether one poet or a whole tradition of singers wrote the epics? The belief in a single Homer rests on an aesthetic verdict about artistic unity, and a discipline that claims pure science is exposed standing on a value it will not admit.

Taking up the oldest quarrel in the field, Nietzsche refuses to name Homer one poet or many and asks instead what kind of question it is. His answer turns on the scholars: their conviction of one author is a smuggled-in aesthetic judgment, not a fact, so philology cannot be the hard science it prides itself on. Rewriting a line of Seneca, he subordinates the discipline to philosophy and calls it the servant of art, the young professor's first public statement of the science-against-art fracture that would run through everything after.

aesthetics
authorship
hermeneutics
methodology
tradition
genius
historiography
cultural history
classical philology
folk poetry

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Within this work

passages held: 51
distinct concepts: 115
by passages held, corpus-wide: #231

What this book thinks together

Every arc around the wheel is one concept in this book. A ribbon joins two the text reaches for together, and its width is how many of its passages hold both. Strongest: aesthetics with creativity.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 19 pairings. 67 shared passages in all. 37 weaker pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
aesthetics	creativity	9
authorship	tradition	6
creativity	individualism	5
aesthetics	genius	4
authorship	creativity	4
collective consciousness	creativity	4
creativity	genius	4
creativity	tradition	4
aesthetics	individualism	3
authorship	cultural history	3
collective consciousness	individualism	3
creativity	cultural history	3
cultural history	tradition	3
aesthetics	authorship	2
aesthetics	collective consciousness	2
aesthetics	tradition	2
collective consciousness	genius	2
genius	individualism	2
individualism	tradition	2

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1873 Aufsätze und Vorreden aus dem Nachlaß
Not a book he wrote but a volume his editors gathered from his early papers — prefaces to books he never actually wrote among them.
DE
1873 On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne)
An essay he left in manuscript in 1873; its picture of truth as forgotten metaphor did its real work a century later.
DE
1881 The Dawn of Day (Morgenröte)
The book Nietzsche later marked as the start of his campaign against morality — the least read of the mature works, and the seed of the Genealogy.
DE
1882 The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza)
Aphorism 125 gives us the madman and "God is dead"; aphorism 341, the eternal return — the most personal of the mature books.
DEEN
1883 Thus Spake Zarathustra (Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen)
His one work of fiction and his most famous, written across 1883–85; the fourth part he withheld from the public entirely.
DEEN
1889 Twilight of the Idols (Götzendämmerung)
A short, savage précis of his whole philosophy, written in a week in 1888 as his last lucid year ran out.
DE
Beyond Good and Evil (Jenseits Von Gut Und Böse)
The 1886 prelude to his late assault on morality, arguing in the open what Zarathustra had delivered in parable.
DE
Ecce Homo (Ecce Homo: Wie Man Wird Was Man Ist)
His last book, a self-portrait written weeks before the collapse and kept from print by his sister until 1908.
DE
Homer and Classical Philology (Homer Und Die Klassische Philologie) you are here DE
Human, All Too Human (Menschliches Allzumenschliches Ein Buch Fuer Freie Geister)
The turn from Wagnerian metaphysics to the cool aphorist — the book in which the "free spirit" first speaks in his own voice.
DE
Nietzsche contra Wagner (Nietzsche Kontra Wagner)
A montage of passages taken from his own earlier books, put together at the very end to show he had judged Wagner rightly all along.
DE
The Antichrist (Der Antichrist)
Intended as the first book of the "revaluation of all values" he did not live to finish — his fiercest word on Christianity, held back until 1895.
DE
The Birth of Tragedy or Hellenism and Pessimism (Die Geburt Der Tragödie)
His first book, and the one that cost him his standing among classicists; its discursive prophecy he would spend the next decade outgrowing.
DEEN
The Case of Wagner (Der Fall Wagner)
His settling of accounts with the composer he had idolised, written in the same 1888 burst as Twilight of the Idols.
DE
The Genealogy of Morals (Zur Genealogie Der Moral)
Three treatises, written quickly in 1887 as a "supplement" to Beyond Good and Evil — his most sustained argument and his most studied book.
DEEN
The Will to Power (Der Wille Zur Macht)
The most notorious book under his name, and one he never assembled: his sister and Peter Gast made it from his notebooks after his collapse.
DE
We Philologists (Wir Philologen)
The scholar's turn against his own discipline: notes for an "untimely meditation" on philology that he abandoned around 1875.
DE

— or open another of their works