The ancient Greek influence on Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy of education

Abstract

From early in his life Friedrich Nietzsche had a deep and abiding concern for the state of educational practices and cultural development because he felt that the educational system lacked the necessary structure and philosophy to facilitate what he called true culture. His studies of the ancient Greeks led him to an understanding of the importance of the agonistic nature of culture and reality. In the development of his larger philosophical project he saw this knowledge of antiquity as the means for developing contemporary culture and education. In this dissertation I will demonstrate the ancient Greek legacy in Nietzsche's philosophy and that his pedagogical thought is both the foundation of and consistent with his mature philosophical position. In order to achieve this I will begin by looking at the work that Nietzsche did during the period of his active service as the chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basle. I will then move on to the philosophical development of the central questions surrounding history and culture as these relate to education in Nietzsche's thought. This will be followed by an analysis of the connection between Protagoras, Gorgias, Heraclitus and Nietzsche with regard to the central concepts of epistemology and becoming! And finally, I will set out what I take to be the composition and structure of Nietzsche's philosophy of education as this relates to the ideas developed throughout this dissertation. I hope to show that Nietzsche's pedagogical philosophy is best understood as the origin of the concerns and ideas that make up his larger philosophical project and that this is in mm best-read in the context of the tradition of which it is a development and extension, the sophistic tradition of practical and subjective thought.