Homer's Contest (1872)*

"(Man) is wholly nature and embodies its uncanny dual character. Those of his abilities which are terrifying and considered inhuman may even be the fertile soil out of which alone all humanity can grow in impulse, deed, and work."

"...modern man fears nothing in an artist more than the emotion of any personal fight, the Greek knows the artist only as engaged in a personal fight."

Portable Nietzsche, pg. 32-39


These are only parts of "Homer's Contest" which was another piece of writing that he never chose to publish. It and the essay as a whole offer a lot to talk about - I am going to choose to discuss the role of competition that it touches on. How I interpret what Nietzsche as getting at in this passage is some sort of competitive drive within each of us - a fighting instinct that is undeniably a part of what it means to be human. To think that we could somehow subdue or eliminate this instinct is unpractical and attempts to do so could be psychologically damaging or just push the drive into other areas of our lives we just aren't as aware of. As Nietzsche goes on to argue later in this essay, the Greeks had an understanding of their competitive nature and it was widely embraced and encouraged - in fact they would ostracize (literally vote to kick out) someone if they were too superior and therefore the competitive drives of that person and others were no longer engaged. Basically in every aspect of life the Greeks would compete with each other. The artists of the day would even produce their work in the competitive atmosphere of winning certain prizes. Instead of fighting with each other by going to war, they were able to channel this fighting instinct into productivity in the sphere of culture.

One can easily see how this could and does translate into today's world. I definitely feel like i have a fighting, competitive side and throughout the first twenty years of my life I channeled this into different sports. Sports I feel then, especially in the physical aspect of them, play an important role in our culture or it is atleast isn't as pointless or as much of a waste of time as is sometimes thought by those living outside of it's constructions of meaning and importance. Instead of attacking one other with swords and bullets we have channeled these urges into attacking one other in "games." This is a reversal in trend for me on my thoughts on sports and competition. As someone who was indoctrinated with the idea of doing what was best for everyone in the world, I had come to reject sports because no matter what someone always loses (as well as viewing it as overall a waste of our energies and time). The joy of a winner is never without the pain of loss being felt by one (or in my sport, golf, many). I had also been noticing all of the ugly aspects of competition - especially how it had overtaken all aspects of my life it had seem. A noticeable area where this took destructive form was with my relationships with other people. I wanted to be everyone's best friend, or be my girlfriend's top choice in every aspect of her life. My conclusion from this though is that these "destructive aspects" of competition were really a result of me just competing for the wrong things. I had been competing for a place in that person's mind, trying to make them "THINK" I was great. The healthy approach would have been to have been striving simply to "BE" great in a more objective sense - or at least one that I had defined myself and was in my realm of control. You become what you think is great, the greatest you, and then let the people in your world fall into their appropriate places - enemies, nonpersons, friends or lovers.

Nietzsche of course is talking about competing against other people and so the above, I acknowledge, is not relevant to his point but is, for me, an important trap to be aware of and avoid.** What Nietzsche describes is more like the basic competition principle behind our economics - people striving to make more money by creating better product that will get them more of the market share and bigger profits than their competitors - the profit motive continually "progressing" things. Whereas this is limited many times in our society to economics, Nietzsche says that with the Athenians (which we are to take as an ideal or atleast better society) the idea permeated every aspect of society. For the same reasons monopolies are bad for our free-market, so is the "successful artist" bad for a culture. I would go further and say that just as there are destructive or inferior ways to compete in the free-market like officious and deceitful marketing there are also destructive or inferior ways to compete in art like competing to be "thought" of as great, or by donig things like plagerize or destroy other's works.

It is also important to note that in ancient greece as in today's free market the people competing aren't trying to strike a competitive balance and make sure that they don't oversucceed and become a monopoly - they want to win to dominate, but let us hope for their good and our own they never do.


*It is interesting to note how this might be able to mesh with my thoughts in the previous point. At first glance they might appear in conflict, but I don't think they have to be or are.

**The great Greek artists Nietzsche discusses do when they compete against each other want to be "thought" of as great, but in I think in a more objective and sometimes personally-defined way...maybe?? Nietzsche gives us an enlightening quote about this by Pericles describing his wrestling opponent "Even when I throw him down, he denies that he fell and attains his purpose, persuading even those who saw him fall."