How is this book unique? Font adjustments & biography included Unabridged (100% Original content) Illustrated About Homer and Classical Philology by Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 - August 25, 1900) was a German philosopher. His writing included critiques of religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy, and science, using a distinctive style and displaying a fondness for aphorism. Nietzsche's influence remains substantial within and beyond philosophy, notably in existentialism and postmodernism. Nietzsche's Professur was in classical philology, and in a beautifully written lecture Nietzsche first gives an overview of his field, while indicating problems intrinsic in the field and criticisms of the field made by outsiders. He hastens to deflect these criticisms and tries to illustrate how the inherently disparate tendencies within the field could possibly be transcended by considering a concrete example: the "Homer question". Was Homer a person and the author of "his" works", or are his works the result of a kind of historically contingent collaboration of many? Or are they the result of some mystical Race Soul? He analyzes the various theories and concludes the following: In the preliterate age in which the Homeric epics were conceived, developed and passed down orally, "Homer" entered the ranks of names like Orpheus, Eumolpus, Daedalus, Olympus - mythical inventors of various branches of art. But there was an individual who first conceived the Iliad and the Odyssey whose name was lost, sacrificed to the mythical initiator, Homer.