On Nietzsche's Judgment of Style and Hume's Quixotic Taste: On the Science of Aesthetics and “Playing” the Satyr

Abstract

Abstract I read Nietzsche's discussion of scholarly judgments of style beginning with his own inaugural lecture at Basel together with David Hume's stylistic reflections in his “On the Standard of Taste.” This casts light both on the context and the substance of Nietzsche's own scholarly concern with the question of style and taste in terms of what Nietzsche called the “science of aesthetics” and consequently of scholarly judgment in both classics (or classical philology, here including archaeology and historiography) and philosophy. I also include a brief discussion of Nietzsche's phenomenological performance practice of dance or playing the “satyr.”