142 Nietzsche
is immersed in events of the past and acts as though it can undo the
breach of naïveté ushered in by rationalism and the Enlightenment If
we take a candid look at the way things are, they prove to be different
from the way the longing for myths would have them: "Phantasm upon
phantasm. It is strange to take everything so seriously. All of ancient phi-
losophy as a curious stroll through the labyrinth of reason ..." (8,100).
This passage comes from the notes for "We Philologists," an essay
Nietzsche was planning in 1875 as a fifth Untimely Meditation. It was start-
ing to dawn on Nietzsche that his essay "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth,"
pardy complete at the time, would be "unpublishable" (Β 5,114; Sept.
26,1875). "We Philologists" was intended to come to terms with classi-
cal philology. Nietzsche hoped to make clear that the prominent role of
this discipline was based on a false understanding of antiquity, which
classical philology continued to perpetuate even in the face of com-
pelling evidence to the contrary in order to maintain its position of
power in the educational establishment. Johann Joachim Winckelmann's
image of antiquity as noble simplicity and calm grandeur continued to
hold sway and justify the educational mission. Ancient Greece was the
idealized locus of the classical union of the good, beautiful, and true.
Nietzsche's contention that the gende humanity of antiquity was a mere
illusion would have come as no surprise to readers of his Birth of Tragedy.
In that earlier book, Nietzsche had already disputed Winckelmann's
image of antiquity and emphasized the wild, cruel, and pessimistic
aspects of Greek culture. The new direction suggested by the notes for
(^4) "We Philologists" was a shift in interpretation of the meaning of knowl-
edge and its connection to myth and religion. Nietzsche advised readers
not to "be unfair to knowledge" (8,47). Thus, even before his rift with
Wagner, he was already beginning to turn the tables. Would Socrates,
who was portrayed as the embodiment of the will to knowledge in The
Birth of Tragedy and held responsible for the decline of tragedy, now
resurface as the stone guest? Nietzsche jotted down in the summer of
1875: "Socrates, I must confess, is so close to me that I am almost always
fighting a battie with him" (8,97). In order to investigate Nietzsche's