Early Greek Philosophy & Other Essays: Collected Works, Volume TwoNietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Early Greek Philosophy & Other Essays: Collected Works, Volume Two
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Philosophy, Ancient
Plato's dictum that in the perfect State the family would cease to
exist, belongs to the most intimate things uttered about the relation
between women and the State. The Greek woman as mother had to vegetate
in obscurity, to lead a kind of Cranfordian existence for the greater
welfare of the body politic. Only in Greek antiquity did woman occupy
her proper position, and for this reason she was more honoured than she
has ever been since. Pythia was the mouthpiece, the symbol of Greek
unity.
ON MUSIC AND WORDS. Music is older, more fundamental than language.
Music is an expression of cosmic consciousness. Language is only a
gesture-symbolism.
It is true the music of every people was at first allied to lyric
poetry; "absolute music" always appeared much later. But that is due
to the double nature in the essence of language. The _tone_ of the
speaker expresses the basic pleasure- and displeasure-sensations of the
individual. These form the tonal subsoil common to all languages; they
are comprehensible everywhere. Language itself is a super-structure on
that subsoil; it is a gesture-symbolism for all the other conceptions
which man adds to that subsoil.
The endeavour to illustrate a poem by music is futile. The text of
an opera is therefore quite negligible. Modern opera in its music is
therefore often only a stimulant or a remembrancer for set, stereotyped
feelings. Great music, _i.e.,_ Dionysean music, makes us forget to
listen to the words.
HOMER'S CONTEST. The Greek genius acknowledged strife, struggle,
contest to be necessary in this life. Only through competition and
emulation will the Common-Wealth thrive. Yet there was no unbridled
ambition. Everyone's individual endeavours were subordinated to the
welfare of the community. The curse of present-day contest is that it
does not do the same.
In THE RELATION OF SCHOPENHAUER'S PHILOSOPHY TO A GERMAN CULTURE an
amusing and yet serious attack is made on the hollow would-be culture
of the German Philistines who after the Franco-Prussian war were
swollen with self-conceit, self-sufficiency, and were a great danger to
real Culture. Nietzsche points out Schopenhauer's great philosophy as
the only possible means of escaping the humdrum of Philistia with its
hypocrisy and intellectual ostrichisation.
The essay on GREEK PHILOSOPHY DURING THE TRAGIC AGE is a performance
of great interest to the scholar. It brims with ideas. The Hegelian
School, especially Zeller, has shown what an important place is held by
the earlier thinkers in the history of Greek thought and how necessary
a knowledge of their work is for all who wish to understand Plato and
Aristotle. _Diels'_ great book: "Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker",
_Benn's, Burnet's_ and _Fairbanks'_ books we may regard as the
peristyle through which we enter the temple of Early Greek Philosophy.
Nietzsche's essay then is like a beautiful festoon swinging between the
columns erected by Diels and the others out of the marble of facts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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