DE LAERTII DIOGENIS FONTIBUS

Nietzsche is well esteemed as a philosopher, and oftentimes his tremendous psychological insights get an honorable mention. However, his originality and value for classical philology seem to be dismissed, not on his personal account, but as a sign of modern disrespect for such impractical dinosaurs as classical philology itself. No matter. In this entry we shall look at another young Nietzschean exploit in this field, especially since the work in its title comes as number two in our (incomplete) list of Nietzsches Werke. There is also a major extra bonus here: Nietzsche’s philology is inextricably tied up with Nietzsche’s philosophy, and each of his youthful philological works contains a promise of the later philosophical maturity which characterizes the vintage signature Nietzsche.

Unfortunately, I was only able so far to go through the original Nietzschean text in Latin, which these days is not my strongest suit. Whenever I have a chance, if at all, to lay my hands on this work in the English or Russian translation, I will surely be more confident writing an extended commentary on it. So far, I can say that Diogenes Laertius is a fabulous source (do note the slick pun in the epithet, will you?!) for anyone who is interested in classical philology, and Nietzsche obviously could not do without him, either.

There are just three comments about this work which I would like to make at this time. One is to repeat that Nietzsche’s present philological endeavor does indeed belong to the gold reserve in the field. Had he never written anything after 1870, he would still have been highly esteemed by the scholars in this area of study, and quoted by them as an eminent authority to reckon with.

My second comment concerns Nietzsche’s particular interest in the person of Diogenes Laertius in view of his close connection with Epicurus, whose devoted follower he appears to have been. Epicurus means a lot to Nietzsche, and aside from using Laertius as a major source for other ancient Greek philosophers, he finds him particularly interesting in his connection to Epicurus. De Fontibus is a long treatise, consisting of several parts, written and published over a couple of years (appearing in 1868 and 1869 as separate publications). In fact, there was another important publication in the same vein, in 1870, under the title Analecta Laertiana (at #4 in my list of Nietzsches Werke). Nietzsche intended to return to Laertius in the future, but he never delivered on this intention.

My third comment concerns Laertius’ proverbial unreliability, amply evidenced by his generally anecdotal and entertainment-oriented accounts of the great men he writes about, sometimes to the point of scandalous perversion of whatever is otherwise known to be a better approximation of the truth. Yet Nietzsche himself is not averse to “monumental history,” which favors myth over the quasi-verismo and nitpicking criticism of a critical historian. So what, if Diogenes Laertius takes liberties with the truth? How more reliable can our “critical historian” be, himself dealing with anecdotes and questionable interpretations of what he genuinely or disingenuously believes are “facts”? (That was an allusion to Nietzsche’s famous maxim.)

This is now where the present entry ends, bearing in mind that it is manifestly open-ended, and thus, “to be continued” is written all over it…