Excellence and Exile: Ostracism and Self-Ostracism as Regulatory Forces in Nietzsche
Introduction In the Fünf Vorreden zu fünf ungeschriebenen Büchern , an early and programmatic text, Friedrich Nietzsche pauses over a practice from ancient Greece that, at first glance, appears paradoxical: the expulsion of the most excellent. The episode of Hermodorus of Ephesus , who was expelled by his fellow citizens for surpassing them in excellence, condenses this logic into a striking formula: “Let no one among us be the best; but if someone is, let him be so elsewhere and among others.” Nietzsche does not interpret this gesture as envy or moral punishment. The issue is not the suppression of talent but the preservation of the agon —that structured field of rivalry which, in his view, gave Greek culture its generative force. When a single figure accumulates such superiority that the shared space becomes disproportionate, competition loses its meaning. The city intervenes not to level differences but to restore tension. Ostracism thus functions as a cultural tec...