Philology requires a sense of wholeness

(translated from my Chinese blog)

This is my new project, “Nietzschean Philology”. In each installment, I’ll read a passage from Nietzsche’s original writings. By practicing text analysis, we can enhance our ability to understand the world.

The reading of "We Philologists" continues. In Section 24, Nietzsche cites Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Wagner as examples to show that the true philology or classical studies in his mind must have a perspective and practice of the whole life. He also quotes Newton's famous saying to satirize the modern superstition of science and progress, and to indicate that, life cannot progress by accumulation.

People in general think that philology is at an end--while I believe that it has not yet begun. The greatest events in philology are the appearance of Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Wagner; standing on their shoulders we look far into the distance. The fifth and sixth centuries have still to be discovered.

"We Philologists" 24, Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by J. M. Kennedy 

Nietzsche's "people" certainly does not refer to everyone but only the educated class, yet today this statement can indeed be used to refer to everyone, at least a significant portion of the population (about 430 million with a high school education or above, 30% of China's population). For example, may the reader ponder: to what extent do you think the academia today has mastered ancient Chinese history (here, "philology" refers to ancient studies in a broad sense)? Is it already mastered to a great extent, or does it only touch the tip of the iceberg? Do they have a good understanding of various aspects of ancient China's politics, economy, culture, society, and technology, or are they basically still in a state of confusion?

Before I delved into the subject myself, I genuinely believed that the edifice of history was already mostly constructed, with future generations only needing to make minor adjustments and add details. It was only later that I realized how mistaken this impression was: we know very little about China not only from a thousand or two thousand years ago, but even to recover the economic data from China a hundred years ago is quite impossible. Historical research is far more challenging than one might imagine. Researchers often feel that they can only obtain fragmentary data, and from these fragments, they can propose several hypotheses. Based on these hypotheses, they then attempt to piece together a relatively complete picture. Each step involves a great deal of uncertainty. Therefore, from the perspective of academic consensus over a hundred years later, Nietzsche was quite right: the discipline of history is very young, and the understanding of history—not just knowing what happened but also why it happened—is only just beginning.

In what sense are Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Wagner "the greatest events in philology"? One is a writer and scientist, another a philosopher, and the third a musician—none of them philologists or historians (at that time, there were already famous historians like Gibbon and Ranke, who did not meet Nietzsche's approval). Why does Nietzsche consider these three individuals to have the most significant impact on philology?

This is certainly related to the "just beginning" of the study of literature. We begin to pay attention to the deeper meanings behind historical events, especially the social pressures and individual motivations, the "spirit" and "personality" presented in history. Nietzsche specifically cites Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Wagner. In his mind, it is these three people who truly lived the appearance of the ancients, and these three people have a sense of antiquity.

Goethe's sense of antiquity lies in his emphasis on physical beauty, sense of proportion and form. Goethe was a disciplinarian, and this discipline was the most valuable lesson he learned from the ancients. In his view, the ancients relied on complete control over their bodies and minds to survive and thrive in the chaotic and terrifying natural world, pursuing balance, symmetry, and harmony in self-discipline. Goethe was also a renowned science enthusiast, making contributions in fields such as morphology, anatomy, color theory, optics, mineralogy, and geology. He approached his life with an experimental attitude. Achieving all-around excellence in science, philosophy, and art, such figures seem to belong only to the ancient times, and are unknown to us moderns who are accustomed to the saying "a profession is a mountain apart."

Schopenhauer's sense of antiquity lies in his shared pessimistic insight into the world and life with the ancients. Before Schopenhauer, people generally believed that the lives of the ancients were beautiful, comfortable, and carefree, as epitomized by Rousseau's "noble savage" image and Thoreau's depiction of solitary life in Walden. However, Schopenhauer shattered this illusion, revealing that the world is fundamentally irrational, meaningless, and not worthy. Ancient tragedies are a dramatic reflection of the tragic lives of all people. ("Oedipus the King": knowledge only leads to self-harm; "Prometheus": mistakes result in eternal punishment without the chance of repentance; "Medea": love leads to destruction.)

Wagner, on the other hand, attempted to create a modern mythology single-handedly, aiming to reenchant the modern world. If meaning can only come from the world of symbols, and the grandeur of the ancients lay in their complete immersion in the world of symbols, where every action and every surrounding plant carried meaning, then to imbue modern life with meaning, one must reconstruct a symbolic world that belongs to the modern age. This is what Wagner attempted in works such as "The Ring of the Nibelung."

The commonality among the three lies in their holistic perspective on ancient times. This allows them to bring this overall impression back to their respective historical contexts and personal lives. Nietzsche's emphasis is precisely on this sense of wholeness. "Philology has not yet begun," because the sense of wholeness has not yet been formed.

But this idea is dangerous. Because, Nietzsche's advocacy is no longer the discipline norm, but a life paradigm. He is not calling for the profession of philologist, but demanding those with aspirations in philology, those "born philologists," to dedicate their entire lives. However, for modern people, work is only a part of life. We dare not imagine dedicating one's entire life to a certain vocation, it sounds too terrible and irrevocable. We hope for some measures to stop losses, some exit mechanisms. Nietzsche opposed this timid and risk-averse attitude of the last man, but this meant that he, in turn, made an almost terrifying demand on his followers, namely, whole-hearted dedication. You either achieve it all or lose it all.

It is precisely for this reason that Nietzsche's true followers are often not seen as disruptors of any discipline, as they have stepped out of their respective disciplines to confront issues with their whole life, rather than simply limiting issues to a single discipline. The history of the 20th century has undoubtedly benefited greatly from Nietzsche's teachings, from Croce's "all history is contemporary history" to Collingwood's "all history is history of thought," historians have begun to realize that to truly understand an era, one must start from the whole, understanding both its thoughts and actions, and cannot view history as a simple accumulation of historical events. But this is still far from "faithful" to Nietzsche, because, scholars like Croce and Collingwood are still trying to parse meaning rather than live it, and are still merely spectators of history rather than participants. Such is the limit of scholars, and crossing this line will one reach the realm of the madman.

The last two sentences are probably not as simple as they seem. Newton's famous saying is based on the premise that scientific achievements can accumulate infinitely, which is why one can speak of 'standing on the shoulders of giants.' But is it possible for life to accumulate in the same way? Can the achievements attained by the sweat and effort of the father be passed down to the sons effortlessly? If Nietzsche cites Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Wagner as exemplars of living in accordance with the totality of antiquity, he is clearly comparing life and the eras to a high mountain: Progressivism believes that the era is a continuously rising slope, so that modern dwarfs can surpass ancient giants; Nietzsche, of course, does not accept this interpretation. In terms of the meaning of life, there is no such thing as the support of the era. The modern dwarf is significantly shorter than the ancient giant, fails to understand, or even see, the full grandeur of ancient giants, and is ignorant of the totality of life.

This is precisely Nietzsche's satire on modern scientific progressivism, another of Nietzsche's oxymoron. Nietzsche's meaning is that not only life cannot accumulate, but science also cannot accumulate. What you think is accumulation is probably just an illusion, like a convergent sequence in mathematics. Science is also a cultural phenomenon, equally subject to human vitality and creativity. In an era when vitality is exhausted, we can't even stand on the shoulders of giants, let alone see far ahead. Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Wagner have shown us a holistic life perspective. Once this perspective is adopted, what accumulates is not knowledge but the perspective itself. 

Without a holistic perspective, we can still reconstruct the thoughts of the three Greek philosophers from a large number of texts, but to delve into ancient Greece in the 5th to 6th centuries BC, the wilderness era of giants like Parmenides and Heraclitus, textual analysis alone is fundamentally impossible. We now know that the era of the Greek Three Philosophers was a time when this nation had begun to decline from its peak. Ortega was right; historical writing is a product that emerges after a nation's vitality has waned, much like how a person in their prime has no time for an autobiography, but only begins to reflect on their life when their energy starts to wane. The emergence of Herodotus and Thucydides is a clear sign of the senility of the ancient Greek nation. (This makes one think of the rich and ancient historical writing tradition of ancient China and realize how premature and sophisticated this nation was.) How can we restore the historical dynamics of a nation without historical records? Only by grasping its spiritual outlook, from a holistic perspective.