I see some things that relate to biblical criticism, not just pre-modern, but modern, including the Jesus Seminar. Hume was halfway questioning what standard there was to judge the excellence of a poet such as Homer. Then, per the author of the piece, Nietzsche then asked what was the standard at his time, in trying to judge whether a fragment of Greek poetry was indeed Homeric or not, and whether there was any standard besides a subjective standard of taste.
And, in fact, he seems to actually support the idea that taste IS the ultimate standard.
To me, this sounds like some things that could relate to biblical criticism, and not just that of Nietzsche's time. I first thought of the Jesus Seminar and its criteria for voting sayings of Jesus as red, pink, gray or black.
Outside of this immediate thought, I am more generally reminded of the "criterion of dissimilarity" in biblical criticism. To me, it should be treated as a one-way valve. If an apparent saying of Jesus IS dissimilar to Judaism of the time, early Christianity or both, then it's likely authentic. But, as Jesus was a Jew, and the church developed from him (allowing for editorial work on the gospels), well, then there's going to be cases of similarity.
That said, Nietzsche was wrong on the bigger picture.
A philosopher trying to claim a science of aesthetics?
As a philologist as well as philosopher, he knew the Roman maxim: "De gustibus non disputandum."
Now, while we can tout some artists for understanding the science of human body proportion (Leonardo) or perspective, and many other things, there was plenty a Renaissance artist that understood both and still painted crap.
Within literary criticism, Hume does hit on one thing. A cross-cultural, anachronistic (in its technical sense) popularity for a poet or author, while not scientific, can surely be used as historic proof of greatness.
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