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date: 24 February 2020

Abstract and Keywords

This article explores notions about Nietzsche’s career as a philologist and his fascination with the Greeks. It considers his interest in Homer and the Greek philosophers—in particular, Heraclitus and Pyrrho. For Nietzsche, ancient Greeks such as Heraclitus and Homer were interesting not because of their doctrines, but because of the example they themselves provided of certain psychological types. Like the ancient skeptics following Pyrrho, Nietzsche was generally more interested in the psychological consequences of philosophical doctrines than in their content, and like those skeptics he often rejected any ambitions to limn the true nature of reality.

Keywords: Greeks, philology, Homer, Greek philosophers, Heraclitus, Pyrrho, skeptics, Friedrich Nietzsche

Jessica N. Berry

Jessica N. Berry is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgia State University in Atlanta, where she works on late eighteenth- to early twentieth-century German philosophy (especially issues in epistemology and value theory in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche) and in ancient Greek philosophy (especially the pre-Socratic and Hellenistic philosophers). Her book Nietzsche and the Ancient Skeptical Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2011), finished with generous support from the National Endowment from the Humanities, brings together and expands upon work she has published in Philosophical Topics, The Journal of the History of Ideas, International Studies in Philosophy and elsewhere.

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