REVIEW -- Paul Bishop and R. H. Stephenson, Friedrich Nietzsche and Weimar Classicism, Camden House, 2005, in Modern Language Review, 102 (2007), 893–94. by Nick Martin | Papers by Nick

Friedrich Nietzsche and Weimar Classicism. By P  and . H. . (Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture) Rochester, NY: Camden House. 2005. xi +281 pp. $80; £45. ISBN 978–1–57113–280–2. As the authors are quick to acknowledge, theirs is not the first attempt to connect Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical concerns with those of Weimar Classicism. Paul Bishop and Roger Stephenson’s study of this connection is, however, more ambitious than most. Adopting Nietzsche’s own notion that the meaning of a phenomenon can be uncovered by tracing its genealogy, Bishop and Stephenson claim to identify in the aesthetics of Goethe and Schiller ‘the missing perspective’ in our understanding of Nietzsche’s philosophy. Without it, they assert, ‘the framework, and hence the structure, of Nietzsche’s thinking is distorted to the point of unintelligibility’ (p. 1). To support this bold claim the authors attempt to define Weimar Classicism at the outset and then to furnish proof that Nietzsche’s outlook was decisively shaped by it. Wisely, the authors do not arrive at a single definition of Weimar Classicism. The term is delimited by means of definitions ex negativo (with reference primarily to the philosophies of Friedrich Schlegel, Hegel, and Schelling), notions of ‘Schein’, ‘totality’, aesthetic paganism, and ‘serious play’, as well as passing reference to Wilkinson and Willoughby’s belief that Goethe and Schiller were participating in a ‘perennial aesthetic’. The nearest that Bishop and Stephenson come to a definition of Weimar Classicism is their assertion that ‘the overriding concern in the cultural theorizing of Goethe and Schiller is to make conceptual room for a reasoned account of our aesthetic experience of human life and the universe we live in’ (p. 14). This debatable assumption is followed immediately by the no less controversial claim that this concern also informs Nietzsche’s understanding of the world as an aesthetic phenomenon, which he articulates twice in Die Geburt der Trag• die but later repudiates. o The great strength of this study lies in its erudite and lucid discussionsof Die Geburt der Trag• die and Also sprach Zarathustra in the first three chapters. The authors loo cate and examine aspects of Weimar aesthetics which find expression in Nietzsche’s first published work and in Zarathustra, a text which Bishop and Stephenson choose to call Nietzsche’s ‘aesthetic gospel’. The authors cite innumerable allusions in these texts to Goethean and Schillerian concepts but tend to interpret them as evidence of derivation or direct influence, thereby running the risk of overstating the importance of Weimar Classicism to Nietzsche’s aesthetics. Discussing these allusions to Schiller and Goethe alongside Nietzsche’s selective treatment of many other artists and thinkers, both ancient and modern, would not only place his appropriation of Weimar Classicism in a broader context but also shed light on his criteria for sorting and assimilating a bewildering variety of intellectual impulses. Chapter 4 and the Appendix sit uneasily beside the thesis outlined in the preceding chapters of Nietzsche’s evolving aesthetic theory and its alleged indebtedness to Goethe and Schiller. Chapter 4 traces the reception of the notion of ‘sincere semblance’ since the 1790s, while the Appendix uncovers the history of Zarathustra’s composition. Fascinating and scholarly though both discussions are, they are tangential to the book’s declared purpose. There appear to be at least three perspectives missing from this study. The first is a discussion of Nietzsche’s place in late nineteenth-century debates concerning the aesthetic and political legacy of Weimar. A second is an appreciation of the scale of Nietzsche’s engagement with the history of ideas; Goethe may have been one of his chief ‘interlocutors’, but the significance of Nietzsche’s debt to Weimar Classicism needs to be examined in the context of simultaneous and no less important engagements with figures such as Schopenhauer, Wagner, Socrates, or Napoleon. A third missing perspective is the relative lack of emphasis given to Nietzsche’s post-Zarathustra writings in the authors’ thesis. Goethe is invoked repeatedly, and approvingly, in Nietzsche’s late (c) Modern Humanities Research Assn texts, while Schiller is dismissed as a moralizing poseur. Yet the Dionysian Classicism which Nietzsche advocates in this late period has little to do with the understanding of Weimar Classicism advanced in this study. Reflecting on Zarathustra in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche comments: ‘ein Goethe, ein Shakespeare [wurde] nicht einen Augenblick • in dieser ungeheuren Leidenschaft und H• zu athmen wissen’ (EH, ‘Za’ 6). ohe Bishop and Stephenson’s careful analyses of two Nietzschean texts form part of their case that Weimar Classicism provides the conceptual framework of Nietzsche’s aesthetics. The verdict on the case is ‘not proven’. Weimar Classicism is reduced on occasion to a set of aesthetic doctrines shared by Schiller and Goethe, while Nietzsche’s aesthetics is boiled down to a core of beliefs inherited more or less directly from the giants of Weimar. While it would be unfair to suggest that this study is informed by the spirit of Nietzsche’s own genetic fallacies, it is surprising that the authors are not more sensitive to the slipperiness of the conjunction in the title of their study. U   ⁿ  (c) Modern Humanities Research Assn