James I. Porter

Homer: The Very Idea

James I. Porter
2021

The story of our ongoing fascination with Homer, the man and the myth.

Homer, the great poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, is revered as a cultural icon of antiquity and a figure of lasting influence. But his identity is shrouded in questions about who he was, when he lived, and whether he was an actual person, a myth, or merely a shared idea. Rather than attempting to solve the mystery of this character, James I. Porter explores the sources of Homer’s mystique and their impact since the first recorded mentions of Homer in ancient...

Life Cycles beyond the Human: Biomass and Biorhythms in Heraclitus

James I. Porter
2024

All parts of Heraclitus’ cosmos are simultaneously living and dying. Its constituent stuffs (“biomasses”) cycle endlessly through physical changes in sweeping patterns (“biorhythms”) that are reflected in the dynamic rhythms of Heraclitus’ own thought and language. These natural processes are best examined at a more-than-human level that exceeds individuation, stable identity, rational comprehension, and linguistic capture. B62 (“mortals immortals”), one of Heraclitus’ most perplexing fragments, models these processes in a spectacular fashion: it describes the imbrication not only of...

Nietzsche and Literary Studies

James I. Porter
2024

Cambridge University Press, April 2024

Nietzsche and Literary Studies tackles the literary implications of Nietzsche's philosophy and the philosophical implications of his approaches to style and expression. The book offers a complete guide to Nietzsche's writings, which in turn draw on two and a half millennia of literary and philosophical history, reaching back to Heraclitus, Plato, and the Cynics and from there to Diderot, the Schlegels, Stendahl, and Stifter, and have inspired a further century of responses from literary writers and philosophers, from Proust, Gide, and...

Foucault, Kant, and Antiquity

James I. Porter
2024

Michel Foucault’s return to classical antiquity at the end of his career coincides with a turn away from institutional critique and a return to Kant. This is no coincidence. Foucault’s Introduction to Kant’s “Anthropology” (1961) completely anticipates his approach to ancient subject formations, which reflects Kant’s theory of the liberal, self-enterprising, and enlightened subject as this is outlined in Foucault’s “What Is Enlightenment?” (1984) and elsewhere. Foucault’s final studies surface isolated, private, and autonomous subjects who are at once premodern...

Was ist ‘jüdische Philologie’?

James I. Porter
2024

Erich Auerbach (1892-1957) gilt als eine der Gründungsfiguren einer Kulturwissenschaft, der es um die Verbindung von Kultur und sozialer Wirklichkeit geht. Dabei berücksichtigt der Romanist stets das philologische Detail: Statt das Allgemeine im Begrifflichen festzustellen, soll es in seiner unterschiedlichen figurativen Dynamik beschrieben und jeweils im konkreten historischen Einzelnen, Körperlich-Materiellen, Alltäglichen aufgesucht werden. Aus diesem »Leib der Zeit« gewinnt Auerbach seine Konzepte wie Mimesis, Figura, Stil und Weltliteratur. Der Sammelband, der aus einer...