Walking the Tightrope

The final lecture on education never materialized. Nietzsche’s mind drifted to a previously unexplored century of Greek literature and writings. He started blazing a new path, working on a new book on the Greeks with which to follow the by now much criticized The Birth of Tragedy . But work on the book also didn’t last. Fritz’s attention was conflicted between a growing admiration for some unexplored Heraclitus and his desire to critique the “pseudo-culture” and effects of “journalism” on German society. In truth, he was rather at a loss as to what to do next. Cate summarizes the way Fritz questioned himself: “Was Nietzsche’s predestined role simply to be a critic of society, as Socrates had been in Greek antiquity, and Schopenhauer in modern times? Was his role essentially a negative one, compared to the positive creations of the artist? Nietzsche fancied he had found an answer to this troubling question in assigning to philosophy an essentially curative role. Which is why…he spoke ...

In the early months of 1872, just as The Birth of Tragedy was published but before it had yet caused Nietzsche any professional consequences, he held a series of public lectures delivered before packed auditoriums at Basel University on the subject of education in Germany. They were, perhaps, the highlight of his academic career. Professor Nietzsche (indeed this is the title he preferred) delivered these five lectures over the course of about 8 weeks from January to March. A sixth lecture was never completed, perhaps an indication of how the response (or lack thereof initially) to The Birth of Tragedy affected him at the time. What is most interesting to me is not only the ideas presented in these lectures but the fact that Nietzsche places the philosophy inside a story about two young men coincidentally meeting two old philosophers in a beautiful, isolated clearing on a wooded hill overlooking the Rhine River. This is a parable. A parable delivered by Nietzsche orally, telling a dif...