FIRST PERIOD
CHAPTER IV
GENERAL VIEW OF THE WORLD; THE FUNCTION OF ART
I
In passing to the detailed study of Nietzsche's intellectual history, we begin with him in Basel, where he is professor of classical philology at the University. He is happy in his relations with his colleagues, and as a teacher he is uncommonly beloved. Professor Rudolph Eucken, for a time his colleague, recalls his "kind and pleasant manner" in examining students for the doctor's degree, "without in any way impairing the strict demands of the subject-matter." a Jacob Burckhardt, another colleague and well-known for his writings on the Renaissance and Greek culture, remarked at the time that Basel had never before had a teacher like him. b Nietzsche is particularly happy in his intercourse with Burckhardt, who was much his senior. He is also happy in a friendship with Richard Wagner, with whom and Frau Cosima he often spends delightful week-ends at their villa above Lake Lucerne. His lectures are strictly professional, and only the few devoted to philological study attend them.
At the same time his interests are wide, and he finds himself wishing to do more than train efficient philologists.[1] The root-problems of life and the world engage him. He has at bottom the philosophical instinct, and philological study becomes more or less a means to its satisfaction. Greek philology opens for him the door to Greek thought and speculation—enables him, he thinks, to reconstruct more accurately than would otherwise be possible the Greek view of life. The broader outlook appears in a preliminary way in his inaugural address, "Homer and Classical Philology," and it bore rich fruit in his
- ↑ Werke (pocket ed.), I, xxviii.
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