A pastor’s son, Nietzsche learned Greek and Latin at an early age and was an accomplished classicist long before he became a philosopher (Reibnitz 1992, 9-35). Like his nemesis Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, he was an alumnus of Germany’s foremost humanistic boarding school, the Royal State School at Pforte in Saxony, from which he graduated in 1864 with a Latin thesis on Theognis. Greek tragedy was an integral part of the curriculum at Schulpforte, and the twin concepts of ‘‘the tragic’’ and of a tragic or ‘‘Dionysian’’ philosophy of life remained central concerns for Nietzsche long after his career as a classicist had come to an early and unhappy end.
During his two semesters at Bonn as a student of theology (1864/65), Nietzsche was preoccupied with the study of classical philology and archaeology, apart from his
Active participation in the Bonn music scene. Preliminary drafts on the poetry of Theognis, on Simonides’ Danae poem, and on Longinus’ On the Sublime survive. In the fall of 1865 he transferred to the University of Leipzig, where he enrolled as a student of philology for four semesters. After a year of military service in the cavalry he returned to Leipzig in search of a dissertation topic. While still a student there, in 1867/68, he published four innovative and meticulously researched articles on the Theognidea, on Simonides’ ‘‘Lament of Danae,’’ and on the sources of Diogenes Laertius (KGWII 1, 1-245; Reibnitz 1992, 15-24, 347). In addition, he worked extensively on Democritus and on Greek tragedy and laid the foundation for his two groundbreaking articles on the treatise titled About the Lineage of, and Contest between, Homer and Hesiod, the core of which he traced back to the late fifth-century Sophist Alcidamas (KGWII 1, 271-337).
Nietzsche was never to learn that his conclusions about Alcidamas as the ultimate source of the Contest were corroborated decades later by the discovery of two new texts on papyrus (Vogt 1962; Lloyd-Jones 1979, 6-7; Reibnitz 1992, 127-28). Nietzsche’s studies of the Contest reinforced his notion of archaic and classical Greece as an ‘‘agonistic culture,’’ a concept shared by his Basel colleague, the eminent cultural historian Jacob Burckhardt. Nietzsche was well aware, of course, that Attic tragedy was an essential part of that culture. After all, the annual dramatic performances in Athens were organized as a competition (agon) among several playwrights under the aegis of Dionysus (see Scullion and Seidensticker, chapters 2 and 3 in this volume), a competitive pattern that is comically dramatized in the Frogs of Aristophanes (405 bce).
In March 1869 the University of Leipzig awarded Nietzsche a doctoral degree solely on the basis of his published work without his having written a dissertation, a procedure that was unusual but not unprecedented (Gutzwiller 1951, 150-51). Six weeks earlier, in a surprise move, the University of Basel, Switzerland, had offered him the position of professor extraordinarius. In his letter of recommendation, his Leipzig teacher Friedrich Ritschl said of Nietzsche’s promise as a scholar: ‘‘Indeed, he will be able to do anything he wants’’ (Stroux 1925, 36). Ritschl’s judgment turned out to be right, in ways he could have never imagined. By waiving the usual requirements for the doctorate, the Leipzig faculty tried belatedly to normalize the circumstances of Nietzsche’s Basel appointment, which had raised many eyebrows in Germany’s academic circles and made Nietzsche at the age of twenty-four one of the youngest classics professors on record.
Nietzsche’s tenure as a professional classicist at the university level came none too soon. Tormented by chronic self-doubts and deep disenchantment with Germany’s classical establishment, he was toying with the idea of abandoning classics to study chemistry as late as January 1869 (Cancik 1995, 20). Nevertheless, in April 1869 the Prussian subject gave up his nationality, moved to Switzerland, and took up residence in Basel as a stateless alien, a status he retained until his death. In May he visited Richard Wagner in Tribschen near Lucern for the first time. His visit marked the beginning of an intellectual friendship that ended acrimoniously in 1878.
Also in May, he gave his inaugural lecture, ‘‘Homer and Classical Philology’’ (KGW II 1, 247-69), which revisits the Homeric Question and culminates in the quintessentially Nietzschean paradox that ‘‘what used to be philology has become philosophy.’’ Most classicists of Nietzsche’s time, including his mentor Ritschl, were adamantly opposed to any contamination of philology, a discipline sworn to rigorous method and objectivity, with philosophical speculation. Not so Nietzsche, whose philosophical calling would ultimately prevail over the philologist in him. Even his views on tragedy are characterized by a distinct philosophical dimension: both the figure of Socrates and the tenets of Arthur Schopenhauer play a pivotal role in BT.
In April 1870, one year after his arrival in Basel, Nietzsche was promoted to full professor. But due to health problems, inner turmoil, and a latent disdain for his profession, he never settled fully into a happy and productive academic life as a classicist. In January 1871 he tried to escape from it by applying unsuccessfully for the vacant chair of philosophy at his own university (Stroux 1925, 72-80). He declares in his application that he is better suited for philosophy than philology. Two months later, in a letter to the Hellenist Erwin Rohde, a close friend, he mentions his ‘‘exuberant alienation from philology.’’ As he became more disillusioned with the ‘‘philistine’’ nature of the German educational system and with the classical profession that embodied it, he gradually transformed himself into a cultural critic and a philosopher, a process that took ten long years and brought him repeatedly to the brink of physical and mental breakdown (Cancik 1995, 1999). As far as Nietzsche was concerned, the classical philologists entrenched in the German gymnasiums and universities of his time were incapable of understanding themselves, let alone the Greeks (KGW IV 1, 203; Henrichs 1995, 433-36). As he saw it, philology as an academic discipline was very much part of the problem, one of the principal causes of the cultural malaise, whereas the Greeks were the solution. For Nietzsche, the ‘‘physician of culture’’ (KGW III 4, 141; KGB II 3,132 and 136), the ancient Greeks provided the antidote against many of the ailments that beset modern society: ‘‘Greek antiquity... offers a way to understand ourselves, to pass judgment on our own time, and thereby to overcome it’’ (KGWIV 1, 173, an aphorism from We Philologists).
Plagued by chronic illness, Nietzsche had to cancel his courses in March 1879, one week before the official end of the term. Less than three months later, he took early retirement and left Basel for good, thus effectively ending his academic career. A professor emeritus at the age of thirty-four, he spent the next decade of his life homeless, an itinerant intellectual and solitary philosopher, constantly traveling, writing, and convalescing while in a perennial state of ill health and inner restlessness. His entire philosophical oeuvre, from Human, All Too Human (1878/79) to Twilight of the Idols and Ecce Homo (1889), dates from this period. Recognition, fame, and material wealth all eluded him - his books did not sell until after his death. On 3 January 1889 he collapsed in the streets of Turin, apparently after embracing a horse. He gradually lapsed into irreversible insanity and spent the rest of his life in the care of doctors, nurses, and family members, largely detached from his surroundings and oblivious of his own past. Almost until the end, however, he remembered that he had written ‘‘nice books,’’ whose titles he could still recite but which he would now hold upside down, as if to mark the distance that separated him from his former self (Benders and Oettermann 2000, 802-3).
World History
