Culture and Truth: Nietzsche and Classical Philology

Abstract

Several recent studies have returned to the famous controversy over the reception of Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872). By reinterpreting it within the immediate context of Germany in the early 1870s, James Whitman understands this controversy as a Methodenstreit within Classical Philology and James I. Porter claims that, through this controversy, Nietzsche developed an extensive critique of modern culture. I contend that Nietzsche’s reaction to the scholarly rejection of his first publication resulted in no immediate response on his behalf; rather, it led to three years of intense rethinking and strengthening of the position he took in The Birth of Tragedy. This is evidenced in his early published essays and notebooks of 1872–1875. From the first readers of these early notebooks, Karl Schlechta and Anni Anders, to its most recent interpreters, Richard T. Grey and Alexander Nehamas, these scholars are unanimous in understanding them as Nietzsche’s attempt to work through a number of conventional philosophical problems. I argue that Nietzsche developed in these essays and notebooks a type of criticism that broke away from all traditional philosophical problems and creatively introduced such notions as cultural horizon, background phenomena, and life as a philosophical measure — all of which would be further refined in his mature texts of the 1880s and underpin his innovative concepts of the will to power and eternal recurrence.

Notes

1. Viewed in these terms, the “storm” over The Birth of Tragedy easily fits into a generic formula: genius, at first attacked by conventional attitudes and prejudices, ultimately triumphed, resulting in the inevitable progress of knowledge. Most individuals currently interested in the controversy — philosophers, literary critics, and even Nietzsche scholars — have accepted some version of this account of the controversy.

The controversy has also become a commonplace in Nietzsche’s biography. See, for instance, Curt Paul Janz, Friedrich Nietzsche: Biographie, 3 vols. (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1978), 1.410–43, and Rüdiger Safranski, Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002), 82–84. In perhaps the most detailed study of the origins and impact of the publication of The Birth of Tragedy, Michael Stephen Silk and Joseph Peter Stern speak of it as a “violent controversy” and emphasize the utter ridiculousness of the response it provoked. M. S. Silk and J. P. Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 90ff. These accounts of the reception of The Birth of Tragedy are all too often framed in regards to Nietzsche’s subsequent reputation.

2. Instead of an all-too-readily understandable storyline, two recent studies have reinterpreted the controversy within its immediate context. In “Nietzsche in the Magisterial Tradition of German Classical Philology,” James Whitman argues that the controversy should be seen as a battle in this ongoing war over the methods and ends of classical philology. On the one hand, the dominant group valued detailed, textually-oriented, and “factually based” research. The weight given to the recovery of “facts” (Realien) set positivistic standards for the profession. The other tradition, which Whitman labels “the magisterial tradition,” emphasizes the value of broad and bold interpretations and a “subjective” approach to interpretation (465). James Whitman, “Nietzsche in the Magisterial Tradition of German Classical Philology,” Journal of the History of Ideas 47.3 (1986): 455.

In Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future, James I. Porter argues that Nietzsche enacts the cultural crisis of his times: “In Nietzsche’s hands, critique requires first and foremost strategies of posturing and positioning, of staging and voicing.” “His theatrical improvisational talents, his ability to launch himself into a role even when he has arguments against the tendency of the position he adopts” (12). Porter also contends that the publication of The Birth of Tragedy essentially ended Nietzsche’s academic career. James I. Porter, Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 15.

3. Whitman, “Nietzsche in the Magisterial Tradition,” 455.

4. One of the leading classical philologists of recent times, Hugh Lloyd-Jones, describes the controversy in terms most generally accepted today: “This work was greeted with derision by most of his professional colleagues.” Hugh Lloyd-Jones, “Nietzsche and the Study of the Ancient World,” in Studies in Nietzsche and the Classical Tradition, ed. James C. O’Flaherty, Timothy F. Sellner, and Robert M. Helm (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1976), 7.

5. In “Nietzsche and the Study of the Ancient World,” Lloyd-Jones points to the limitations of German nineteenth-century philology: “Dominated by the prevailing materialism, scholars had become fatally ambitious to emulate the positive and concrete achievements of natural science. The passionate devotion to antiquity that still marked German scholarship had become mechanized; and most members of the vast learned profession that had been created were devoted to the accumulation of facts for their own sake” (11). Even if we do not side with the much abused Nietzsche in this account, he continues, the story still exemplifies a well-known moral. More than exhibiting the petty squabbles that are endemic to academe and the myopia and vitriol that often play leading roles in such controversies, it shows how academic institutions are often slow to accept innovative ideas and radical changes of perspective.

6. While not disagreeing with Porter, I think Nietzsche himself suggests another interpretation of this controversy. In Porter’s account in Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future, the Nietzsche that emerges from his early writings is not unlike the Nietzsche of his later writings. He “is not a philosopher but a critic of culture and its institutions; he is not a free spirit but highly conscious of the delusion that any such freedom can only be; he is not emancipated from cultural forms but reminds his readers of their position as cultural subjects, and of his own as well” (8).

7. Whitman undermines most of the anecdotal evidence surrounding the controversy. Usener’s death certificate on Nietzsche’s scholarly career, for instance, never appeared in print and was never widely circulated in any form. It was merely an off-the-cuff response to a student’s question, eliciting the professor’s opinion of Nietzsche’s thesis. And Nietzsche himself could dismiss the two reviews of Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. The twenty-four-year-old Wilamowitz was hardly in a position to speak for the profession of classical philology at large. His criticism of the work of the Ordinarius of Basel was not only not the masterstroke of professional condemnation but was also somewhat unseemly. Whitman, “Nietzsche in the Magisterial Tradition,” 455. See also Silk and Stern, 95–98, 106–107.

8. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Zukuntsphilology (Sping, 1872), reprinted in Der Streit um Nietzsches “Geburt der Tragoedie: Die Schriften von E. Rohde, R. Wagner, U.v.Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, ed. Karlfried Gruender (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1969), 31; hereafter cited in the text. All translations from Wilamowitz’s works are mine. In a second review (early in 1873), mainly directed against Erwin Rohde’s defense of Nietzsche, “There thus emerges an abyss between works of genius and careful scholarship and science.” “An abyss yawns here which can never be bridged” (33–35).

9. As helpful as Wilamowitz is in leading us to read The Birth of Tragedy from the perspective of the 1870s, it has its own limitations. Wilamowitz clearly missed precisely what today’s philologists and classicists admit to be of lasting importance in The Birth of Tragedy. In direct contradiction to Nietzsche’s argument about the orgiastic origins of Greek tragedy, the value of intoxication, and the ecstatic loss of individuation, Wilamowitz stresses the more conventional view that emphasizes the Greek sense of restraint, balance, and measure. And he misses the subtle relationship between intoxication and restraint, of the manifestations in the forms of Dionysus and Apollo as basic drives rather than as “factual” accounts of the gods and their cults, or of the type of cultural history that Nietzsche was embarked on. For recent evaluations of Nietzsche’s interpretation of Dionysus, see Wiebrecht Ries, “Zur Nietzsche-Philologie in der gegenwärtigen Nietzsche-Reception,” Nietzsche Studien 24 (1995): 324–35; and James I. Porter, The Invention of Dionysus: An Essay on ‘The Birth of Tragedy’, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.

10. Nietzsche did not immediately consider publishing his response to the reception (or lack of reception) of The Birth of Tragedy. Only in 1874 do his notebook entries indicate plans for such a publication. He labeled this section of his notebooks “Wir Philologen” (“We Philologists”). Although he continued working on this essay into 1875, ultimately he decided not to publish it.

11. See Manfred Riedel, “Ein Seinstueck zur ‚Geburt der Tragoedie‘. Nietzsches Abkehr von Schopenhauer and Wagner und seine Wende zur Philosophie,” Nietzsche Studien 24 (1995): 45–61.

12. A second, less well-known, set of essays presents a radically new interpretation of Greek culture. These essays often include reflections on the method of classical philology and its relation to modern culture. As with the first group, these essays remained unpublished or were published privately. The most important include: “The Greek State” (1871), originally intended for inclusion in The Birth of Tragedy before it became a Wagnerian polemic, and “Homer’s Contest” (1872), included in Five Prefaces to Five Unwritten Books” (PT 3 n. 3). In other essays Nietzsche upholds ancient Greek culture as a model for the evaluation of modernity: “The Relationship of Schopenhauerian Philosophy to German Culture” (1872) and “On the Future of our Educational Institutions” (1872) are the most important in this sense. In all of these essays Nietzsche raised, above and beyond all specific arguments, the relationship of Greek culture to modern Germany and the more encompassing problem of judgment in history.

13. Nietzsche, PT xxiv; letters to Rohde (19 March 1874 and Meysebut, 25 October 1874).

14. Nietzsche, PT xxv.

15. The leading interpretations of Nietzsche’s early notebooks emphasize the importance of his “theory of knowledge” [Erkenntnisslehre]. Karl Schlechta was the first to point this out in (Der Fall Nietzsche [Munich: Hauser, 1959]). Schlechta initially argues that there are no important ideas in the Nachlass, compared to the published works (90). In his pioneering study, however, Schlechta tends to be more general than specific, schematic than analytic. However, he reverses his position in Karl Schlechta and Anni Anders, Friedrich Nietzsche. Von den vergorgenen Anfangen seines Philosophierens (Stuttgart-Bad Connstadt: Frommann, 1962), 33–34. For Schlechta and Anders the value of these fragments lies in the fact that Nietzsche questions “What in us demands knowledge?” and eventually comes up with an answer (Friedrich Nietzsche, 7–8). What wants knowledge is a powerful “drive for knowledge” [Erkenntnisstrieb] (19 [21]). Schlechta and Anders argue that in these notebooks Nietzsche produced original insights into the nihilism of knowledge, which Greek philosophy exhibits. Nietzsche’s interest in pre-Socratic philosophy was at base epistemological (40–41, 61–62, 99; PT xxv, PT xlvii). In his edition of the notebooks, Daniel Breazeale concurs with Schlechta and Anders’ view (see PT xiii–xlix).

16. The more recent studies of this notebook follow this line of argument. Richard T. Gray and Alexander Nehamas contend that in it Nietzsche was concerned with establishing a theory of knowledge (UW 447–481, WEN xxxi–xxxvi). I diverge from the interpretations of the notebooks that emphasize the importance of that section of the “Philosophers Book,” for they overlook the fact that Nietzsche raises the problem of the drive for knowledge only because he wants to limit it. He finds this limit no longer in a form of aestheticism, as he did in The Birth of Tragedy, but in his new understanding of culture (Kultur).

17. Nietzsche, PT xxv.

18. Gray speaks of the “rhetoricity” of language and consciousness and points to the probable source of this theory in Gustav Gerber’s Die Sprache der Kunst (UW 487).

19. Gray understands what Nietzsche sees as the ultimate purpose of philosophy in other terms. “The predominant theme of Nietzsche’s ‘philosopher’s book’ is the relationship between the philosopher and culture, in particular the role the former plays in generating a common, unified culture for any people or nation” (UW 477).

20. Nietzsche formulated it in Kantian terms: “Man’s longing to be completely truthful in the midst of a mendacious natural world is something noble and heroic. But this is possible only in a very relative sense. This is tragic. That is Kant’s tragic problem! Art now acquires an entirely new dignity. The sciences, in contrast, are degraded to a degree. The truthfulness of art: it alone is now honest. Thus, after an immense detour, we again return to the natural condition (that of the Greeks). It has proven to be impossible to build a culture upon knowledge” (19 [104]).

21. As a student of classical philology at Bonn and then at Leipzig, Nietzsche was exposed to a wide-ranging study of Greek culture, generally called “the encyclopedia of Greek culture.” Nietzsche later learned from Burckhardt that a culture has a specific type of integrity and certain cultures, like the Greek, even constitute a type of cultural totality. To comprehend this notion of culture, compare Nietzsche’s early Encyclopaedie der klassische Philologie, his version of he encyclopedia of Greek culture, to Burckhardt’s Griechische Culturgeschichte. In Nietzsche’s Enclyclopedie there is no, or at least, little, attempt to uncover a connecting thread among the various aspects of Greek culture, let alone an underlying set of values or even attitudes as Burckhardt (and Nietzsche of the mid-1870s) attempt to do (WKG Abt. 2 Bd.3: 339440; Jacob Burckhardt, Gesammelte Werke (Basel: Benno Schwabe, 1955), vols. 5–8.

22. Gray makes the mistake of universalizing what Nietzsche claims of Greek culture onto all cultures (UW 487).

23. It is not that Nehamas and Gray do not understand that Nietzsche is concerned with the question of culture; it is only that they understand culture as just one topic among several more important topics Nietzsche addressed in these notebooks. In Nehamas’ words: Nietzsche “worries about the connections between philosophy, art, science, and religion, and speculates on the origins of the desire for knowledge and truth and its effects on life in general” (WEN xxiii).

24. See Johann Gottfried Herder, J. G. Herder on Social and Political Culture, trans. F. M. Barnard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 181–87. When Nietzsche thinks about culture in a positive sense, he does not refer—following Herder—immediately to German national culture or any other national culture but to a more generic form of culture. Nietzsche continually speaks of national cultures but overwhelmingly in negative terms. They are variations upon a common modern (and indeed) Western form of culture.

25. The problem of Moral versus Sitte is played out throughout the notebooks of the early 1870s, for instance: “If we could create custom, a powerful custom! We would then also have an ethics (Moral)” (19 [39]).

26. Nietzsche’s art of interpretation has been studied by a number of scholars, including; Tracy B. Strong, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1975); Joan Stambaugh, Nietzsche’s Thought of Eternal Return (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972); and Bernd Magnus, Nietzsche’s Existential Imperative (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1978). Yet even when his art has been the subject of analysis, it is understood in a fairly limited manner. For three very different approaches to this issue, see Sarah Kofman, Nietzsche and Metaphor, trans. Duncan Large (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), and Alan D. Schrift, Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation: Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction (London: Routledge, 1990). Kofman emphasizes the “artistic force of interpretation” and suggests that Nietzsche replaces a theory of metaphor with interpretation (17), but she does not develop this line of argument. Schrift provides a careful examination of the specific issue of interpretation (7–9). While I agree with him that Nietzsche has no “theory” of interpretation, he does not analyze how interpretation “structures” his major texts or forms the basic strategies of his thinking.

Erich Blondel offers a challenging approach to reading Nietzsche by pointing out the complexities of his modes of interpretation. See Erich Blondel, Nietzsche: The Body and Culture, trans. Sean Hand (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991). But while emphasizing such central terms as the “body” and “culture,” Blondel fails, I think, to comprehend any larger strategy at work in these interpretations.

27. Nietzsche, WKG IV, 1, 107; and Jacob Burckhardt, The Greeks and Greek Civilization, trans. Sheila Stern (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 135; hereafter cited as GGC.

28. In addition to “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” see GS 280. Although Nietzsche adopts Burckhardt’s concept of culture in his essays of the 1870s, he continued to employ this concept in his mature texts of the 1880s. In fact his best known example of the notion of cultural horizon is in Book Three of The Gay Science. “The madman” announces the death of God and more devastatingly that all of us have murdered him. How has God been murdered? “How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?” (GS 181). The loss of God is comparable for Nietzsche to the destruction of the horizon of a culture and the resultant loss of meaning. The death of God is not a theological argument but a cultural condition.

29. See Jacob Burckhardt, History of Greek Culture, trans. Palmer Hilty (New York: Ungar, 1963), 53–56; GGC, 160–213.

30. Burckhardt, GGC, 114.

31. Burckhardt, GGC, 106.

32. See Werner Keagi, Jacob Burckhardt, eine Biographie, 6 vols. (Basel: Schwabe & Co. Verlag, 1947–77), 5.501–559, 613–42.

33. Recently, emphasis has again been placed upon Nietzsche’s interpretation of the Greeks for his entire philosophic project. But this approach overwhelmingly takes the form of establishing The Birth of Tragedy as definitive of his view of the Greeks and thus underplays Nietzsche’s own attempt at self-criticism in the second edition of The Birth of Tragedy. For a fuller discussion of Nietzsche’s understanding of the Greek tragic drama, especially as developed in The Birth of Tragedy, see Silk and Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy, and Tracy B. Strong, “Aesthetic Authority and Tradition: Nietzsche and the Greeks,” History of European Ideas 11 (1989): 989–1008.