NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

Nietzsche, Aesthetics and Modernity analyzes Nietzsche's response to the aesthetic

tradition, tracing in particular the complex relationship between the work and
thought of Nietzsche, Kant and Hegel. Focusing on the critical role of negation
and sublimity in Nietzsche's account of art, it explores his confrontation with
modernity and his attempt to posit a revitalized artistic practice as the counter-
movement to modern nihilism. Drawing on the full range of his published and
unpublished writings, together with his comments on figures as diverse as Wag-
ner, Zola, Delacroix and Laurence Sterne, it highlights the extent to which
Nietzsche counters the culture of his own time with a dialectical notion of aes-
thetic interpretation and practice. As such, Nietzsche the dialectician articulates
a position that proves to be intimately connected to the negative dialects of
Theodor Adorno.

Matthew Rampley is the MA Programme Co-ordinator at the Surrey Institute

of Art and Design. He has contributed to The Art Bulletin, Oxford Art Journal and
British Journal ofAesthetics.
Nietzsche, Aesthetics
and Modernity

MATTHEW RAMPLEY
Surrey Institute ofArt and Design

CAMBRIDGE
If 0 UNIVERSITY PRESS
 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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First published 2000

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A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Rampley, Matthew.
Nietzsche, aesthetics and modernity / Matthew Rampley.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-521-65155-7 (hb)
1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900 -Aesthetics.
2. Aesthetics, Modern. I. Title.
B3318.A4R36 1999
lll'.85'092-dc21 99-19420
CIP

ISBN 978-0-521-65155-4 hardback

ISBN 978-0-521-03793-8 paperback
 Contents

List ofAbbreviations page ix

Acknowledgements xi
Introduction i
1 Truth, Interpretation and the Dialectic of Nihilism 13
2 Nietzsche's Subject: Retrieving the Repressed go
3 Laughter and Sublimity: Reading The Birth of Tragedy 78
4 Wagner, Modernity and the Problem of Transcendence 11 o
£ Memory, History and Eternal Recurrence: The Aesthetics
of Time 13^
6 Towards a Physiological Aesthetic 166
7 Art, Truth and Woman: The Raging Discordance 19 o
8 Overcoming Nihilism: Art, Modernity and Beyond 21 g
Notes 243
References 263
Index 277

Vll
 Abbreviations

Works by Nietzsche
A The Antichrist
BGE Beyond Good and Evil
BT The Birth of Tragedy
CW The Case of Wagner
D Daybreak
EH Ecce Homo
GS The Gay Science
HAH Human All Too Human
KSA Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe
NCW Nietzsche contra Wagner
OGM On the Genealogy of Morals
TI Twilight of the Idols
UM Untimely Meditations
II 'On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life
IV ' Richard Wagner in Bayreuth'
WP The Will to Power
WS The Wanderer and His Shadow
Z Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Other Frequently Cited Works

AT Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory
ISW Theodor Adorno, In Search of Wagner
VMM Theodor Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music
WWR Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation

IX
 Acknowledgements

This book originated as a Ph.D. dissertation. Content with its comple-

tion, I then left it, highly reluctant to return to the manuscript and re-
work it into a book. It might have remained as such had it not been for
the constant encouragement of Paul Crowther. My first debt of grati-
tude is therefore to him for his advice throughout the intervening years.
In the course of researching and writing this book a whole series of
intellectual debts have been incurred. Most immediately, thanks are due
to Simon Binney, Nicholas Davey, Berys Gaut, Richard Hooker and An-
thony Mellors.This book has benefitted from discussion and correspon-
dence with numerous colleagues, including Babette Babich, David Bate,
Martin Conboy, David Cooper, Andy Darley, Helen Davis and Jill Mc-
Greal.
Part of Chapter 6 has already been published in the British Journal of
Aesthetics, and I am grateful for the permission to include it (in revised
form) here.
Warm thanks are also due to Beatrice Rehl of Cambridge University
Press, who received my manuscript with such enthusiasm, and to the
referees for their incisive and constructive criticisms of an earlier ver-
sion of the text.
Above all, however, I would like to thank Helen Raftopoulos for her
endless patience and support, from beginning to end. It is to her, there-
fore, that I dedicate this book.

XI
 Introduction

"Beauty" is for the artist something outside all orders of rank, because in
beauty opposites are tamed; the highest sign of power, namely power
over opposites.
(WP§8o3)

This book is concerned with the place of art in the thought of Nietzsche
and with the place of Nietzsche's philosophy of art in the aesthetic tra-
dition. It is not the first such study; as early as 1900 Julius Zeitler de-
voted a monograph entirely to Nietzsche's aesthetics, and there have
been several other studies since. However, it differs from those studies
in that it discusses Nietzsche's writing on art within the context of the
problem of modern culture. It therefore draws out the relation be-
tween Nietzsche's own interpretation of art and modernity, and the
aesthetic inflection of the debate concerning the meaning of modernity
both in Nietzsche's predecessors such as Hegel, the Schlegel brothers
or August Schelling and in his successors, in particular, Theodor
Adorno. There is a tension in the work of Nietzsche, one with which he
is constantly occupied and that, it might be argued, is a lasting legacy of
his work. It emerges from his general critique of metaphysics and could
be characterised as the problem of reconciling radical epistemological
scepticism with continued belief in the possibility of normative dis-
course. In short, Nietzsche is concerned with the question of how the
radical sceptic can avoid becoming a nihilist, and how the radical scep-
tic might combine acknowledgement of the contingency of all values
with a continuing commitment to their necessity. Thus a recurring issue
for Nietzsche is that of living with contradiction, and it surfaces in vari-
 INTRODUCTION

ous ways, such as the combining of belief with irony, a sense of history
with amnesia, affirmation with negation, Apollonian order with Diony-
sian chaos.
Nietzsche's work confronts an issue central to the larger question of
modernity itself. As Jiirgen Habermas has stated, modernity 'can and
will not borrow the criteria by which it takes its orientation from the
model supplied by another epoch, it has to create its normativity out of it-
self.'2 For Nietzsche modernity represents a decisive moment in the his-
tory of western culture, when its values are revealed to be hollow illu-
sions and thereby lose all legitimacy. The consequent crisis is constantly
threatened with a lapse into a decadent nihilism, a state of absolute pas-
sive unbelief, in which no values are legitimate, least of all those of the
discredited western tradition. In this respect Nietzsche was only one
amongst a large number of nineteenth-century commentators who be-
lieved they were witnessing a decisive phase in the development of Eu-
ropean culture. Yet whereas writers such as Karl Marx, Georg Simmel,
Max Weber or Charles Baudelaire located this process in changes in the
material conditions of contemporary urban society, Nietzsche consis-
tently held to the view that the crisis of modernity was largely one of
values, one moreover generated by the internal logic of western cultur-
al values, in particular its persistent belief in metaphysical certitude.
Much of his thought is consequently devoted to the question of estab-
lishing a grounding for cultural values in an age in which the notion of
any certitude seems highly problematic. This problem, I argue, is cru-
cial to an understanding of Nietzsche's aesthetic thinking; it is only
through the adoption of a certain aesthetic practice that the problem of
modernity finds some form of resolution.
Before developing this point further it is important to forestall criti-
cisms that might be made of this initial position. It is widely accepted
that alongside Adorno, who was himself profoundly influenced by the
earlier thinker, Nietzsche is the quintessential philosopher of non-
identity. In keeping with this reading it might be argued that the idea of
a resolution of the contradictions of modernity is completely alien to
Nietzsche. This appears doubly so given the numerous criticisms Nietz-
sche made of the system building of Hegel, in which all contradictions
were resolved in the consummation of Absolute Knowledge. Since the
 INTRODUCTION

seminal interpretation of his thought by Gilles Deleuze in 1962 it has

become widely accepted that the work of Nietzsche represents the
supreme moment in counter-Hegelian thought, in which difference,
non-identity and contradiction become central. In the light of such
considerations, it is necessary to introduce a conceptual distinction be-
tween 'contradiction' and 'inconsistency/
The notions of contradiction and difference figure prominently in
Nietzsche's writing and function as axes around which much of his
thought is organised. This last word is crucial, though, for while it es-
chews the relentless system building of Hegel, Nietzsche's thought is
nevertheless organised, and this organisation, for all the variations in its
texture, displays a certain consistency. It is this assumption of consis-
tency that allows the commentator, even Deleuze, to write a coherent
account of Nietzsche's text. In one sense I am partially endorsing the
interpretation of Nietzsche by Karl Jaspers, in which 'contradiction' be-
comes a master concept.4 Thus attention to the question of art enables
Nietzsche to hold to both a radical counter-metaphysics and an insis-
tence on the positing of post-metaphysical normative values, without
lapsing into incoherence. Besides, the construction of even the most
rigorous anti-foundationalism relies on the lack of foundations as a
founding value.
Nietzsche's discourse thereby raises the familiar problem of reflexiv-
ity and, rather than skirting around it, confronts it through examination
of the question of art. While Jaspers offers an elegant solution to a
pressing concern in Nietzsche, his reading also requires a degree of
qualification. Nietzsche is not Adorno, for whom dialectical contradic-
tion most definitely was a master concept. The limited scope of my
study also needs to be recognised; it is intended to explore the range of
Nietzsche's writings on art and to outline the role of Nietzschean aes-
thetics in his wider oeuvre. Hence contradiction becomes an organising
principle in a determinate area of Nietzsche's thought, and I shall be ar-
guing that his formulation of the question of art is linked with his at-
tempt to think through the problem of contradiction consistently.
Most current commentators on Nietzsche, broadly following De-
leuze's reading, see him as the essential thinker of difference. This inter-
pretation explicitly opposes the totalising tendency of the dialectic,
 INTRODUCTION

which will always seek to negate, to reduce the other, and in which the
process oiAujhebung or sublation only preserves the other by simultane-
ously cancelling it out.6 In the hands of Deleuze, even will to power be-
comes a means to the affirmation of difference, of plurality, despite the
many passages where Nietzsche writes of will to power as a process of
overcoming or negation. In addition to Nietzsche's explicit expressions
of mistrust with regard to the system building of Hegel, subsequent
commentators have understood the anti-Hegelianism of Nietzsche's
thought to inhabit his writing at a more fundamental level. Tracy
Strong, for example, sees Nietzsche's use of genealogy as being specifi-
cally shaped to undermine the structure of dialectic. Rather than gath-
ering up, genealogy seeks to take apart, to lay bare the working of signs
and their history, in order to dismantle the cultural constructs of con-
temporary society.7
Notwithstanding the importance of such interpretations, I shall sug-
gest that Nietzsche's relation to Hegel is considerably more complex
than one of mere negation or overcoming. The tension between Hegel
and Nietzsche, and that between contradiction and its opposite, are in-
scribed everywhere within the corpus of Nietzsche's work, and I shall
work through these tensions as they appear with the aim of analysing
the manner in which art becomes the means to release them, to effect a
provisional reconciliation. I add the word 'provisional' to articulate the
difference between what I read as occurring in the text of Nietzsche
and what I perceive to be the specific operation of Hegel's dialectic,
where each successive Aufhebung points towards that final moment of
absolute determination. A central question is the meaning of the term
'dialectics.' For Nietzsche the term was intimately linked with Hegel
and Plato, both of whom stood as exemplars of the supreme moment of
metaphysical thinking, in which systematic dialectical thinking leads to
absolute knowledge. As critical as he was of metaphysics, Nietzsche did
not abandon dialectical thinking tout court. A central part of my argu-
ment is centred around the idea that Nietzsche retains dialectical think-
ing as an essential part of his post-metaphysical project. This strand in
Nietzsche's thinking was taken up by Georges Bataille, who, in the tra-
dition of Alexandre Kojeve, emphasises the elements of disruption and
 INTRODUCTION

violence in the Hegelian dialectic, and then works through those same
elements in Nietzsche himself.
To speak of a Nietzschean dialectic is of course provocative. It is
quite removed from Hegel's notion of an immanent and systematic un-
folding of consciousness. However, Nietzsche shares with Hegel recog-
nition of the mediated and partial nature of cognitive claims and, most
importantly, of the productive function of the negative. Curiously, it is
through a process of historical deferral that the proximity of Nietzsche
and Hegel can be followed, for the mediating point was only provided
subsequently in the form of Adorno. In spite of his difference of tem-
perament, Adorno comes closest to the path Nietzsche begins moving
along. More significantly, while drawing its thrust from Hegel, Adorno's
dialectic refuses the final moment of consummation, remaining instead
entangled within the web of contradiction. Adorno notes that'dialectics
is no longer reconcilable with Hegel. Its motion does not tend to the
identity in the difference between each object and its concept; instead it
is suspicious of all identity. Its logic is one of disintegration/ 9 Like
Nietzsche, Adorno is concerned with articulating and thinking through
the contradiction between the necessity of retaining discursive logic
while denying its metaphysical foundation. In Adorno the moment of
absolute knowledge is infinitely deferred: 'The non-identical is not to
be obtained directly, as something positive on its part, nor is it obtain-
able by a negation of the negative. This negation is not an affirmation it-
self, as it is to Hegel/ 10 The significance of the negative in Adorno's
conception of the dialectic derives from his stress on the constitutive
gap between concept and experience, coupled with the recognition of
the impossibility of overcoming that difference. This is the tragedy of
philosophy, for Adorno: 'in philosophy we literally seek to immerse
ourselves in things that are heterogeneous to it/ x x an immersion that
must be perpetually deferred, since the immanence of the dialectic can
only be overcome by means of the dialectic itself. A crucial distinction
between Nietzsche and Adorno remains, of course, for while Adorno
cannot and will not see beyond the infinitely negative dialectic, Nietz-
sche is always looking for what might come after. This constitutes the
dialectical nature of his own transvaluation of all values, in which
 INTRODUCTION

'knowledge' and the 'human' subject are negated and transformed into
'interpretation' and the 'iibermensch.'
Nietzsche's thought represents in many senses the first deconstruc-
tion of the philosophical tradition. By this I mean that his work contains
both a sceptical de-struction of metaphysics and a post-metaphysical
con-structive moment. The sceptical moment is familiar to his readers,
and it is his polemics against contemporary society, his relentless tirades
against Christianity and Plato, and his ridicule of Kant, the 'great Chi-
naman of Konigsberg,' which constitute his identity in the eyes of most.
I am arguing, however, that this scepticism is itself a strategic moment
of negation that is posited in order to be superseded once more. Nietz-
sche's construction of a post-metaphysical thinking is not executed by a
complete departure from the tradition, but is rather undertaken by
pushing through to their limits the implications in the thought of Kant,
Descartes, Hegel and others. At this point one can see an affinity be-
tween Nietzsche, Hegel and Jacques Derrida, whose term 'deconstruc-
tion' best describes Nietzsche's stance towards metaphysics.The notion
of Aufhebung or 'sublation' possesses a double sense; it denotes process-
es of both preserving and negating. In the Science of Logic Hegel offers
perhaps his most succinct definition of the concept, when he writes that
'what is sublated is at the same time preserved; it has lost only its im-
mediacy but is not on that account annihilated.'12 Dialectical negation is
not simply the cancelling out of a position; it is rather a process of me-
diation in a detour through the other. Derrida has admitted the pro-
found similarity between Hegel and his own deconstructive practice,
and this relation can be triangulated to include Nietzsche. This is
nowhere more apparent than in the reception by Derrida and Nietzsche
of the history of metaphysics. Just as for Derrida, metaphysics cannot
simply be negated, so too Nietzsche displays a profoundly ambivalent
attitude towards Kant, Hegel and, more significantly, Socrates. For all
his censure of Socrates, Nietzsche's project overlaps in many ways with
that of the Athenian 'gadfly.'14
Because of its simultaneous negation and appropriation of meta-
physics Nietzsche's thinking is often characterised as an ironic dis-
course: not in the sense of a wilful playing with forms, though this may
be what he aims to accomplish in many cases, but rather in the sense of
 INTRODUCTION

maintaining a pathos of distance. Distance towards one's own values

and those of one's culture, knowing them to be purely interpretative
stances towards the world, lacking resilience when put under scrutiny,
while simultaneously adhering to them as if they had something more
than a purely contingent worth. I shall examine this pathos of distance
in Nietzsche in my opening chapters.
The concept of an interpretative dialectic forms the basic framework
in my exposition of Nietzsche, and as such it constitutes the main core
of my first two chapters. In Chapter i I offer an articulation of the
above problem as it relates to Nietzsche's critique of 'knowledge' and
'truth,' and to his awareness of the significance of metaphor and inter-
pretation for any process of constructive thinking. In particular I shall
outline the relation between the dialectic and the notion of interpreta-
tion, to which Nietzsche turns in order to resist the metaphysical con-
notations of the concept 'knowledge.' Central to Nietzsche's critique of
metaphysics is its implied assumption of the possibility of transcen-
dence, whether it can be regarded as the Absolute Knowledge of Hegel,
the revelation of the form of the good for Plato, or Descartes's ground-
ing of knowledge in the self-certainty of the cogito. For all three, recur-
rent targets of Nietzsche's deconstruction of metaphysics, immanence
within the system of thought is broken. Thus while in Hegel's dialectic
the unfolding of thought occurs through its own internal dynamic, its
telos still stands at the moment of stasis of the system, in which the di-
alectic has completed its course. In contrast, through the notion of an
interpretative negative dialectic, Nietzsche conceives of a practice that
refuses the lure of transcendence, whose interpretative criteria are im-
manent to its practice. As in Hegel, negation acts as a spur to the refor-
mulation of an existing value, but in contrast there is no final moment
when it is recouped in the positivity of final or absolute knowledge.
Nietzsche thereby attempts to preserve the contradiction between his
critique of the metaphysical search for foundational certitude and the
continuing place of some (non-metaphysical) interpretative grounding.
In the second chapter I discuss the negative dialectic in relation to
Nietzsche's critique of subjectivity. I argue in like manner to Chapter i
that Nietzsche is concerned not with the mere destruction of a key
metaphysical concept, namely the subject, but rather its transformation
 INTRODUCTION

in order to twist it free from the limited metaphysical understanding of

selfhood. Decentering is not dissolution. The claim is crucial inasmuch
as I shall assert that Nietzsche's writings on art are incomprehensible if
we see him as proclaiming the death of the subject tout court, most par-
ticularly because of his emphasis on the artist as the key to overcoming
metaphysical culture and its attendant nihilism.
Having laid out the basic parameters of my discussion of Nietzsche, I
turn to the specific theme of art, and in particular to the manner in
which the dialectical tension in Nietzsche's work between a radical
scepticism and his search for a post-metaphysical normative discourse is
fully worked out and resolved by the model of the artist and the artistic
creation of meaning. Writing a full-length study of Nietzsche's philoso-
phy of art is a highly problematic task. Nietzsche does not have a unified
philosophy of art or aesthetic theory in the way one might take to be
the case for, say, Hegel, Schiller or Schopenhauer. Instead, his oeuvre
presents scattered writings frequently lacking any apparent unifying
theme. Moreover we come up against the fact that his only substantial
treatment of the subject belongs to his early years, after which Nietz-
sche's thought underwent considerable changes as he left the shadow of
Schopenhauer, changes which lend it a frequently fragmentary and dis-
jointed character. I have nevertheless attempted to overcome this prob-
lem by discerning themes in his writing on art which recur, which are
both closely connected and serve to provide some means of releasing
the wider tension which I have outlined above. In Chapter 3 I begin by
exploring his first major text, The Birth of Tragedy. I attempt to under-
stand that work, and most particularly the much analysed function of
the Apollonian and the Dionysian, by analysing its dialectical structure
and its considerable indebtedness to theories of the sublime. Just as the
experience of the sublime both negates the subject and restores it, so
tragedy presents the annihilation of the stable symbolic order and re-
places it with an interpretative schema of radical contingency. As such
the dialectic of Dionysus and Apollo prefigures the key motifs already
discussed. Not merely a therapeutic device to 'hide' the nausea of be-
coming, as one recent commentator has suggested, tragedy becomes,
in my reading, a site in which is dramatised the collapse of metaphysical
certitude and its sublation into an immanentist interpretationalism.
 INTRODUCTION

Nietzsche's philosophy of art has been described as pursuing an

' auto -aesthetic' practice that embodies the same logic of immanence
underpinning his wider epistemological concerns. In Chapters 4—7 I
examine the ways in which this auto-aesthetic is recast in the light of the
developments Nietzsche's thought undergoes from the mid-1870s on-
wards. I am arguing that although one can discern a very real transfor-
mation in Nietzsche's thinking, the idea of a rupture in his writing un-
derplays important continuities. In particular, The Birth of Tragedy,
although labouring under the influence of romanticism and idealism,
presents ideas which persist, albeit in altered form, throughout Nietz-
sche's career. In many respects one could read Nietzsche as engaged in
the uncompleted project of constantly recasting the ideas at work in The
Birth of Tragedy in the light of his more general development.
In Chapter 4 I discuss why Nietzsche comes to reject the Schopen-
hauerian and Wagnerian context that gave rise to The Birth of Tragedy.
More specifically I shall look at his critique of the notion of transcen-
dence, which plays a large part in the thought of Wagner and Schopen-
hauer, a notion which always threatens to govern the argument of The
Birth of Tragedy Having outlined Nietzsche's rejection of the metaphysi-
cal inclinations of his early mentors I shall go on to a wider discussion of
his rejection of the notion of transcendence, a notion bound to the du-
alistic thinking of metaphysics. In keeping with his critique of the meta-
physical yearning for the beyond, I shall argue that Nietzsche employs a
number of themes in order to establish a counter-philosophy of'imma-
nence,' themes which ultimately centre around art.
In Chapter $ I look at the question of time and history in Nietzsche's
thought. Here I shall discuss not only the most obscure aspect of his
thinking, namely the notion of Eternal Recurrence, but also his early
work on the problem of history in the second of the Untimely Medita-
tions. It has been claimed that the second of the Untimely Meditations dif-
fers from Nietzsche's later thought on the question of time inasmuch as
it sees history as a problem to be overcome, in contrast to the later
writings which represent an affirmation of the temporal flux of becom-
ing to the detriment of any stable, and petrified, regime of pure being.17
My own interpretation instead views the two periods as united by a
common concern to think through the problem of the relation of per-
 INTRODUCTION

manence and historicity in a manner parallel to Nietzsche's wider con-

cern with the relation between scepticism and belief. There is also a fur-
ther dimension to the question of time in Nietzsche's work, namely, the
problem of modernity. If, as already noted, one common definition of
modernity attends to the evaporation of inherited values, norms and
social practices, so too the sense of the modern is characterised by a
transformed perception of time and history. In particular, from the
mid—nineteenth century onwards the understanding of time came to be
dominated by the 'new/ which, coupled with the Enlightenment belief
in progress, redefined the present as essentially historical, a point of
constant transition between an obsolete, irretrievable past and an inde-
terminate future full of the promise of perfection.
Nietzsche's concern with time thus registers the larger issue of the
understanding of time in modern culture, and it confronts aesthetic de-
bates about the relation between the present and the past. From the
Querelle des anciens et des modernes of the late seventeenth century on-
wards, the function of history in aesthetic practice has been a recurrent
subject of debate. The rejection of the classical past as a model for artis-
tic imitation mirrors the wider question of the immanent normativity
of modern culture, and modernity's orientation towards the new found
its most forceful expression in aesthetic innovation and the emergence
of the avant-garde. Although the notion of an artistic avant-garde was in
its infancy, and certainly makes no appearance in Nietzsche's writing,
his adoption of 'Dionysian classicism' as an aesthetic norm undoubtedly
counts as a response to the aesthetic inflections of the question of
modernity and history. Dionysian classicism serves for Nietzsche as the
mark of an 'authentic' artistic praxis, in which history is no longer
something either to be transcended or to be mourned for as irretriev-
ably lost. In this regard Nietzsche's stress on the negation of meaning in
the work of art plays an important part, inasmuch as it embodies a spe-
cific temporal structure, namely one of selective repetition, which un-
derpins Nietzsche's general idea of an interpretative dialectic and which
is explored more speculatively in the metaphor of eternal recurrence.
In Chapter 6 I examine the function of his use of physiological
metaphors as a second strategic device in his critique of (metaphysical)
notions of transcendence, and his turn towards immanence. I shall be
 INTRODUCTION

claiming that his use of biological vocabulary does not signify a brief in-
terest in the 'positivist' sciences, but rather constitutes part of this reac-
tion to some of the dangers in his earlier work, a reaction which re-
mains a central part of his thinking into his final work. The body in
Nietzsche serves as a bridge between his critique of metaphysics, for
which embodiment exceeds the confines of rational discourse, and the
aesthetic turn in his own thinking. In this chapter I also discuss Nietz-
sche's application of physiology to the question of art and in particular
shall examine his claim that 'all art is applied physiology.' I examine the
role this vocabulary plays in his mature writing on art, including
analysing the way in which Nietzsche uses the physiology of art as a
means of distancing his later writings on art from the Idealist connota-
tions of The Birth of Tragedy and also as a tool for undertaking a critique
of the formalist aesthetics of Tart pour Yart, a way of thinking which can
be traced back to a partial reading of Kant's Critique of Judgement and in
particular of his remarks concerning disinterestedness.
In Chapter 7 I continue my exploration of Nietzsche's critical stance
towards the aesthetic tradition from Kant onwards by looking at his cri-
tique of two related notions which, like the formalism of Tart pour Fart,
stem from one-sided readings of Kant. The first is the idea, first fully de-
veloped by the romantics and subsequently perpetuated by Hegel and
Schopenhauer, amongst others, that art constitutes a sensuous repre-
sentation of the truth. The second notion is the idea that the key to aes-
thetic theory lies in the analysis of the experience of the spectator. I
shall be showing how Nietzsche strives both to set art apart from truth
and also to stress the importance of the aesthetics of the artist. Both
these themes serve to direct the discussion of art away from the meta-
physical fixation with truth and towards the notion of art as interpreta-
tion, through linking artistic creativity to interpretative will to power.
This last exploration is crucial, since for Nietzsche it is the artistic
transformative interpretative praxis which is to serve as the model for a
more general interpretative practice.
In the final chapter I gather up the arguments of the previous chap-
ters in order to provide a more general articulation of the problems
with which this study has been concerned. The unifying theme is the
claim that Nietzsche uses the discussion of art and artists as the basis for
 INTRODUCTION

a counter-metaphysical, and hence anti-modern, set of normative val-

ues. Using tragedy in particular as an aesthetic model, Nietzsche sees
art and the tragic sublime as the means to the loss of metaphysical cer-
tainty without falling into the abyss of reactive nihilism. Art and artistic
interpretation serve as the model for this post-metaphysical culture
inasmuch as they combine both the negation of meaning and the affir-
mation of meaningfulness. Nietzsche's ideal also relies on the assumption
that only a certain type of praxis deserves the appellation of art. I shall
consequently be examining further the criteria of 'authentic' art, as
Nietzsche understands it, contrasting it with those art forms which the
later Nietzsche held to be unaesthetic, such as popular theatre, Wagner,
realism and so forth. As such, Nietzsche returns constantly to the nas-
cent modernism of his own time as an exemplar of passive nihilism. Its
disruption of meaning, its destruction of aesthetic tradition is a one-
sided reaction to the crisis of modernity. It is in this sense that one can
think of Nietzsche as the secret dialectician. It is his contention that in
the confrontation with the crisis of metaphysics, the culture of moder-
nity was becoming evacuated of its affirmative content. The labour of
the negative is thus always mediated by the affirmative spirit. Nietz-
sche's affirmation of the seminal role of negation and affirmation in the
critique of metaphysics inevitably invites further comparison with
Adorno. Adorno was terrified of pure affirmativity, which he saw as
bound to the tyrannising logic of the culture industry. Nietzsche, in
contrast, was hostile to pure negativity. And yet common to both was
the conviction that the culture of modernity was caught in a dead end.
Nietzsche already foresaw this in the music of Wagner, while even
Adorno admits that the music of Schoenberg, the hero of avant-garde
composition, is likewise caught in a series of aporias. However, Nietz-
sche attempted to imagine how this dead end might be overcome,
whereas for Adorno it was the telos of modern art, whose inevitability
accounted for the sense of modern culture as essentially tragic. To elab-
orate further, however, would at this point pre-empt the argument of
the book, and hence I make way for the main text.

12
 Truth, Interpretation and the
Dialectic of Nihilism

Negation and annihilation are conditions of affirmation

(EH 'Why I Am a Destiny' §4)

Nietzsche's writing consists of a radical scepticism towards all forms of

philosophical thought. However, it differs from that of, say, David
Hume, often seen as an exemplar of philosophical scepticism. This does
not simply imply that they were different writers, focused on differing
issues, united only by a common mistrust of the limitations of human
knowledge and science. I am not concerned with the divergences be-
tween the details of their projects as much as with the fundamentally
different bases from which they launch their sceptical attacks on knowl-
edge. Hume, despite his sceptical regard towards the rational, remains
firmly within the circumscribed boundaries of metaphysical discourse.
His mistrust of the notion of causality, for example, stems from the sus-
picion that it constitutes a misrepresentation of what really is the case.
Bound to the Empirical tradition from Bacon onwards, his contention is
that since our knowledge of the world is derived from the mere succes-
sion of sense stimuli from without, all attempts to organise those stim-
uli into a meaningful whole are synthetic acts, revealing little or noth-
ing about the reality underlying those stimuli, unable even to predict
whether those stimuli will be the same tomorrow. For example, his
claim in A Treatise of Human Nature that 'all our reasonings concerning
causes and effects are deriv'd from nothing but custom'1 draws its force
from the sense of distance between the picture of the world based on
habit, and what might really be true of it. Nietzsche's scepticism is of a
different order, less overturning the discourse of metaphysics than dis-
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

placing it, bringing into question the kind of activity philosophy is. His
critique of metaphysics is not motivated by the conviction of an other
truth. What fuels his critique is the approach to philosophy which views
it as a discursive practice and his conviction that its status as such has
been misrecognised. Although his writings concern themselves with
philosophy, the history of philosophy and the philosophy of science, it is
as a philologist that he interprets the work of philosophers, and as a cul-
tural critic that he judges their worth.
I shall develop this point further, but for the moment it is necessary
to follow through the significance of this claim. If it is assumed that
Nietzsche is 'writing philosophy' when he discusses Kant, Plato,
Schopenhauer and others, disappointment will inevitably follow, judged
against the canonical standards of philosophical argument. His so-called
revaluation of all values will look like a tired repetition of overly famil-
iar Humean and Kantian themes. The suspicion that Nietzsche may well
be doing little else than repeating, or stating more baldly, conclusions
implicit in Kant and Hume is aggravated by the fact that Nietzsche him-
self, most especially in his unpublished notebooks, often displays a
somewhat vulgarised understanding of Kant, and more generally of the
history of metaphysics, giving the frequent impression that he is attack-
ing a straw man.
An example or two will illustrate the point in hand. In a note from
188^—6, Nietzsche formulates the following criticism of Kant: 'A
"thing-in-itself" just as absurd as a "sense-in-itself," a "meaning-in-it-
self." There is no "state-of-affairs-in-itself," but rather a sense must first
be added, so that there can be a state-of-affairs' (KSA 12:2 [14]). Most
revealing and interesting about this fragment, and there are numerous
others which argue in a like fashion, is Nietzsche's implicit assumption
that Kant, the obvious target, unequivocally maintained the existence of
'things'-in-themselves, 'meanings'-in-themselves and so forth. Now, al-
though Kant may well have personally been reluctant to admit as much,
a merely cursory reading of the Critique of Pure Reason will establish that
his critical project must implicitly be in agreement with Nietzsche on
precisely this issue dealt with in the latter's note. 2 The core of Kant's
critical project consists in an overturning of the Empiricist understand-
ing of knowledge, replacing it instead with the model of knowledge as a
 TRUTH, INTERPRETATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF NIHILISM

constructive process. The knowing subject is an active world maker in

Kant, determining a priori what can be considered as an external stim-
ulus, a thing, a meaning and so forth. Although Kant can be criticised
for a reluctance to pursue the problem through to its logical conclu-
sions, his 'Copernican revolution' necessarily problematises talk of pre-
existing 'things' waiting to have qualities predicated of them, or pre-
existent 'meanings' waiting to be determined. Alongside his critique of
Kant, Nietzsche's acquaintance with Hegel seems equally cursory. Even
Georges Bataille recognised that Nietzsche's knowledge of Hegel was
more or less based on a routine popularized version of his thought, and
his criticisms are often targeted at a crude caricatured image of Hegel.3
Furthermore it has been pointed out that there is a remarkable absence
in Nietzsche's personal library of any works by Descartes, Kant, Hegel,
Spinoza or Leibniz, all of whom are central to the metaphysical tradi-
tion he persistently attacks.4
Judged by orthodox philosophical criteria, Nietzsche's critique of
metaphysics is hardly compelling when subjected to careful scrutiny.
However, to interpret him in this manner is to display a lack of sensitivi-
ty to two central factors, one biographical and the other textual. Re-
garding the former it is important to remember that Nietzsche's chosen
profession, albeit short, was as a classical philologist. Although he invei-
gled against the ponderous, myopic practices of the' Altertumswissenschaft'
or classical scholarship of the late nineteenth century, Nietzsche's train-
ing to understand literary texts in a certain way was one which dominat-
ed his understanding of texts in general, and more specifically those of
philosophy. The second factor is that his early work is most often con-
cerned with culture and language, whether it is the problem of language
in his essay of 1873 'OnTruth and Falsehood in their Extra-moral Sense,'
the relation of language and music in tragedy andWagnerian opera in The
Birth ofTragedy or the cultural meanings of historiography in' On the Uses
and Disadvantages of History for Life' in the second volume of the Un-
timely Meditations. As such, Nietzsche's philological training and his con-
cern with culture and language provide the basis for the greater part of
his subsequent working over of the problems of metaphysics. These
points have been made before; his thematisation of philosophical lan-
guage became a pivot organising many Nietzsche interpretations of the
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

1970s, particularly those of Sarah Kofman, Bernard Pautrat and Jacques

Derrida, which, in differing ways, examine the functional role of
metaphor in his 'deconstruction' of metaphysics.5 However, despite the
undoubted importance of such an emphasis in the interpretation of
Nietzsche's work, it can be argued that his concern with language is
strategic; the critique of language constitutes a weapon in the battle to
bring the cultural values of metaphysics into question by undermining its
discourse. It is to this process that I now turn.

Metaphors and Truth

Nietzsche's concern with philosophy can be traced back to his essay 'On
Truth and Lie/ which unravels the intertwining of truth and language,
metaphor and concept. Countering the correspondence theory of
truth, Nietzsche makes three claims, of which the first serves as the ba-
sis for the other two. The first is that truth is a function of language. The
notion that language is a more or less adequate expression of the truth
has a venerable history, whether it be the Platonic notion of rational di-
alogue as a prolegomenon to the revealed truth of the Forms, or the
tradition, from Aristotle to Locke, that sees words as the medium for
the communication of subjective ideas, themselves non-linguistic men-
tal events. Paradoxically, the same idea still pervades the work of the
grandfather of post-structuralism, Ferdinand de Saussure, who in his
Cours de Linguistique Generale speaks of the conversion of pre-linguistic
mental ideas into language.6
Nietzsche turns this relation about, imagining a primal scene where-
by a form of social contract was enacted to enable the survival of the
human species. In this originary social contract there occurred 'some-
thing which looks like the first steps towards the accomplishment of
that enigmatic drive for truth. Namely, the fixing of what is to count as
"truth," i.e. a universally valid and binding designation for things is in-
vented, and this legislation of language produces the first laws of truth,
too: for there arises for the first time the contrast between truth and
lie: the liar uses the valid designations, words, in order to make the un-
real seem real . . . he misuses the firm conventions through the wilful
confusion or even inversion of names' (071 §1).

16
 TRUTH, INTERPRETATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF NIHILISM

Although Nietzsche's description of language as a process of naming

comes close to an Augustinian picture of language which has long been
discredited,7 his argument that truth is a matter of linguistic convention
anticipates a fundamental tenet of twentieth-century philosophy. His
claim is that to judge the truth content of even the most simple propo-
sition requires an understanding of the meaning of the proposition, and
hence truth becomes a function of semantics. The question of the rela-
tion between language and truth presents the fundamental difference
between realist and anti-realist epistemologies, inasmuch as the realist,
and Nietzsche labels the entire history ofWestern 'metaphysical' philos-
ophy as realist in this sense, regards the truth of a statement as depend-
ent on an antecedent state of affairs. In contrast the anti-realist, includ-
ing Nietzsche himself, takes the state of affairs itself to be intelligible
only in language itself. Moreover, as I shall explore later, Nietzsche's
contention is that the state of affairs or object is formed in language. As
Josef Simon has noted, for Nietzsche a sentence 'must first have been
constructed as a meaningful sentence according to the rules of a lan-
guage . . . the sentence which is possibly true is a specific type of mean-
ingful sentence of a specific language of a particular life context.' 8
While this argument is most often associated with Nietzsche, parallel
views can be found across the field of philosophical enquiry.9
Following Nietzsche's argument we can conclude that the true
proposition is merely a particular kind of meaningful sentence: truth is
always already preceded by meaning and by grammar. It is a conviction
which forms a central weapon, some might contend the central
weapon, in Nietzsche's critique of metaphysics, and it is one which he
keeps throughout his thinking. In Beyond Good and Evil, for example, he
poses the rhetorical question 'Might not the philosopher be able to raise
himself above the belief in grammar?' (BGE §34), having already
claimed earlier that 'The miraculous family resemblance of all Indian,
Greek and German philosophising can be explained easily enough. Pre-
cisely where there is a relatedness of language it is unavoidable that. . .
from the beginning everything lies ready for an identical development
and succession of philosophical systems, just the path appears closed off
to certain other possibilities of world-interpretation' (BGE §20). As is
well known, according to Nietzsche one of the consequences of this
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

grammatical determination of truth is the philosophical belief in the hu-

man subject, and it finds a parallel in the grammatically determined be-
lief in God. As Nietzsche exclaims in Twilight of the Idols, 'I fear we shall
never be rid of God, because we still believe in grammar' (TI' "Reason"
in Philosophy' §^).
Nietzsche's claim that language precedes truth, and ultimately that
language precedes thought, is not startlingly original in itself. The lin-
guistic turn in philosophy can be traced back to pre-romantic thinkers
such as Hamann and von Humboldt, together with romantics such as
Schleiermacher. The latter in particular has been recognised as the first
to move away from the notion of the subject as a transcendent thinking
being, supplanting this with the idea of language as the ground of
thought. He notes, for example, that 'There are no thoughts without
speech,' adding that 'one cannot think without words.' However,
Nietzsche differs from these earlier thinkers in his other claims which
follow on from his initial premise about the mediating function of lan-
guage. I am referring, of course, to his claims regarding the radical
metaphoricity of language. If we return to his essay of 1873, Nietzsche
asserts that language is radically metaphorical in two distinct ways. The
first is that language and its referent are fundamentally heterogeneous.
Nietzsche asks, 'What is. a word? The representation of a neural stimu-
lus by sound,' then later adds, 'A neural stimulus first translated into an
image! first metaphor. The image then transformed again into a sound!
Second metaphor. And each time a complete leap from one sphere to
another completely different and new.' Explicitly countering the Aris-
totelian notion of words as an expression of mental events, he writes,
'there is no causality, no correctness, no expression, at most rather an
aesthetic relation, I mean a suggestive carrying over, a stuttering trans-
lation into a completely foreign language' (071 §1).
Nietzsche's reference to stimuli could be construed as an Empiricist
lapse, for he was not necessarily unsympathetic to Hume.11 But this su-
perficial similarity, if given too much weight, misses the nature of his
claim, most especially since Hume, despite his scepticism towards
causality, can still be seen as holding fast to the notion at a different lev-
el; his thought is grounded in the notion that sense impressions are the

18
 TRUTH, INTERPRETATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF NIHILISM

cause of all knowledge, and that'simple ideas' are the effect of'simple'
sense impressions. In contrast, however, Nietzsche is implicitly criti-
cising this Empiricist view in his claim that the relation of sense percep-
tion and its'object' is one of a fundamental difference in kind, in which
Hume's notion of a correspondence between the two has no place.
Nietzsche employs a striking image to give force to the heterogeneity
of the two: 'A painter whose hands are missing and who wanted to ex-
press the image hovering before him by singing, will always betray
more through this exchange of spheres, than the empirical world will
ever betray of the essence of things' (ibid.). In one sense, therefore,
Nietzsche is maintaining the Humean view of the radical alterity of the
world and experience of it, but is following this through to its proper
conclusion, in which even the notion of the world as being the cause of
sense 'effects' has to be put into question.
In one sense Nietzsche's view also seems close to Kant, as I have al-
ready suggested, though there are important differences. Nietzsche has
no time for Kant's 'categories' of understanding, and he has doubled the
sense of alienation from the 'world' not only by including a realm of
empirical experience which enacts an aesthetic mediation of the world,
but also by taking into account the constitutive role of language in in-
forming the empirical world. With this we come to the second process
of mediation, namely, Nietzsche's emphasis on the metaphorical basis of
language and truth. The second process of metaphorization occurs
when language leads to the construction of concepts. Nietzsche writes,
'Let us think of the formation of concepts: every word immediately be-
comes a concept by virtue of the fact that it is to serve as a reminder not
only of the unique, completely individualised primal experience, to
which it owes its origin, but rather simultaneously has to fit for count-
less, more or less similar ones (i.e. strictly speaking never identical),
hence for totally dissimilar ones. Every concept originates in the identi-
fication of the non-identical' (ibid.). Offering a concrete example of
this process, Nietzsche describes the genesis of the concept of the leaf,
which is meant to serve as a denotation for a large variety of leaves, all
of them dissimilar, a dissimilarity which is neglected because of the lev-
elling process of using the same word to refer to all. Generalising from
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

this particular example, he concludes that 'The overlooking of the indi-

vidual and the actual gives us the concept . . . against which nature
knows no forms or concepts, hence no types, but rather just an indefin-
able X, inaccessible to us/ Against the dynamic nature of the world, 'the
great construction of concepts displays the stark regularity of a Roman
columbarium, and in logic exhales the discipline and frigidity which is
proper to mathematics' (ibid.). As Sarah Kofman has pointed out,
Nietzsche uses a wide variety of architectural metaphors to suggest the
very process of petrifaction which occurs when logic appropriates the
world and makes it into a system of reiterated and iterable units.13 As
already noted, he refers to the construction of concepts as similar to the
production of a columbarium, with its associations of death, or uses the
pyramid, that archetypal symbol of death in life, of mummification, to
describe the 'order of castes and ranks' (ibid.) built up by such a regime
of truth. 14
Nietzsche sees language as introducing a false universality into the
world of experience, which, strictly speaking, he regards as utterly con-
tingent. Again, though his Augustinian picture of language is question-
able, a much more serious point is being made, focusing on the repeti-
tive basis of signification, which transforms the contingent world of
pre-conceptual experience into one of regular and consistent discursive
meaning. This view, that iterability is the basis of any system of significa-
tion, has become the bedrock of twentieth-century philosophy of lan-
guage, adopted by the heirs of de Saussure but, curiously enough, also
by Anglo-American philosophy of language, in particular by speech-act
theory. By virtue of its extension from its original situation to other,
non-identical cases, the concept operates metaphorically, and truth it-
self, through its process of identification of the non-identical, becomes
an aesthetic relation between dissimilar experiences and between the
subject and the object, producing a synthetic unity between the dis-
unified. On the basis of this conclusion he makes the now familiar as-
sertion that truth is a 'mobile army of metaphors' (ibid., p. 880).
Following Nietzsche's argument in this early essay, we can identify
language, and more particularly language's mediating function in the
constitution of truth, thought and meaning, as providing a foundation
for his attack on metaphysics. Criticising the notion of truth as a process

20
 TRUTH, INTERPRETATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF NIHILISM

of uncovering, and the belief in concepts as describing something in the

world, he places language at the foundation of truth, as determining
what is permitted to count as true, where the concepts employed by
any particular idea of truth and the world to which they refer are fun-
damentally heterogeneous. Propositions concerning the world are
translations, and moreover translations which cannot but mis-translate,
inasmuch as they always introduce a false universalization into the
world.
The essay on truth and language stands only at the beginning, both
chronologically and thematically, of Nietzsche's critique of meta-
physics. For his concern is not so much with language per se, as with the
wider cultural problems which accompany the misunderstanding of the
constitutive role of signs in understanding. His argument focuses on a
common misunderstanding of the function of language, but the over-
arching concern of his work is with the catastrophic consequences of
that error, in particular, the onset of nihilism, which Nietzsche sees as
threatening to engulf modern culture. Nietzsche repeatedly writes of
modernity as the epoch when the 'highest values devalue themselves,'
in other words, the moment when the necessary illusions of truth and
language are revealed as such, and modern culture is faced with a lapse
into absolute unbelief, or nihilism. Nietzsche's critique of truth and lan-
guage is thus always conducted in the light of their cultural function,
but I shall delay a more specific discussion of nihilism and modernity
until later.16

Amnesia, Metaphysics
In 'On Truth and Falsehood in Their Extra-moral Sense' Nietzsche of-
fers an explanation as to why this metaphorical relation to the world has
been transformed into the realist thinking of metaphysics, in which
words are held to correspond to 'things' in the world. Nietzsche's an-
swer is amnesia. Due to an over-familiarity with the signs of our system
of meaning, we have forgotten that they are mere metaphors, that they
bear a purely arbitrary relation to 'the world,' itself a notion reified
through the process of signification. Nietzsche anticipates his argument
early on in the essay when he notes that 'It is only through forgetfulness

21
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

that a person could ever come to imagine they were in possession of a

truth,' a claim he fleshes out a few pages later, asserting that the indi-
vidual 'thus forgets the original intuitive metaphors as metaphors and
takes them for things themselves' (071 §i). It is a theme one finds ex-
plored in his other unpublished notes from the same period, which con-
front the relation between recollection, cognition and repetition.
In a fragment from 1872 Nietzsche writes, 'The similar recalls the
similar and identifies itself with it: that is cognition, the swift subsump-
tion of the identical. Only the similar perceives the similar: a physiolog-
ical process. The very same thing which is memory is also perception of
the new' (KSA 7:19 [180]). Repeating the argument for the levelling ef-
fect of concepts, Nietzsche introduces the theme of recollection, as that
which mediates between different experiences and facilitates the uni-
versalising effect of language to occur. The process of recollection
transforms the similar into the identical, and then the subsumptive ac-
tivity of'knowing' occurs; memory permits the metaphorising effect of
language to take place, without which we would be subject to a random
succession of meaningless sense impressions. It is an argument Nietz-
sche repeats in The Gay Science, noting that in the process of cognition,
'something unknown is to be led back to something familiar' (GS
§3«)-
In a further note from the same notebook of 18 7 2 Nietzsche sees the
reducing effect of memory as a consequence of a mimetic urge and con-
trasts this with the metaphysical idea of knowledge. He writes, 'Imita-
tion is the opposite of knowledge inasmuch as knowledge does not
grant validity to translation, but will rather keep a firm grip on the im-
pression without metaphor . . . To this end it becomes petrified, the
impression is ensnared and delimited by concepts, then killed off,
skinned and mummified and preserved as a concept. Now there are no
"authentic" expressions, no true knowledge without metaphors. . . .
The most familiar metaphors, the usual ones, now count as truths and
as the measure for the more infrequent ones. . . . Knowledge is merely
a working with the favourite metaphors, thus a process of imitation no
longer felt as imitation' (KSA 7:19 [228]).
This connection between memory, metaphor and knowing persists
throughout Nietzsche's writing. Even in his later works his basic argu-

22
 TRUTH, INTERPRETATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF NIHILISM

ment still stands, namely, that the un-covering of knowledge of the

world or ourselves — and here he becomes especially critical of the nat-
ural sciences — actually consists of little more than a recovery of what
has already been projected into the world. The new is always assimilat-
ed to the old, perception of the new and recollection of the old are the
same. He writes in Beyond Good and Evil that 'when we introduce and
mix the world of signs into things as if it were their "in-itself " we pro-
ceed once more as we have always proceeded, namely mythologically'
(BGE §21). Attacking the delusions of physics, he writes in a note from
1887 that 'They have forgotten to take the power of constructing per-
spectives into their account of true being . . . in the language of the
scholastics, their being-as-subject' (WP §636).
The amnesia at the root of metaphysics subscribes to the view that
the world can be known, and that the knowing subject has no constitu-
tive function in the determination of its character. Against this stands
Nietzsche's contention that 'Philosophising is a kind of atavism of the
highest order' in which philosophers' thinking is 'less a discovering than
a re-cognising, recollecting, a return and home-coming' (BGE §20).Yet
paradoxically, while the forgetfulness of metaphysics is the object of
criticism, Nietzsche also recognises the necessity of forgetfulness and
the dangers of a surfeit of memory. This theme was first formulated in
his essay 'On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,' in which
he argues that 'it is altogether impossible to live at all without forgetting
. . . there is a degree of sleeplessness, of rumination, of the historical
sense, which is harmful and ultimately fatal to the living thing.' The in-
dividual incapable of forgetting would be living in a world of perpetual
becoming, unable to suspend his memory long enough even to 'believe
in his own being' (UM II §1). Furthermore, while modern culture is
profoundly marked by a belief in the illusions of metaphysics, it also suf-
fers from a far greater sense of history than any other culture. Nietzsche
refers to the 'historical sense to which we Europeans lay claim as our
speciality' (BGE §224) and later refers to it as 'a disease, as a typical
symptom of decay' (£H'The Untimely Ones' §1). Modern culture is
thus held in tension between an amnesiac subscription to metaphysics
and a hypertrophic sensitivity to the history. I shall explore this issue in
due course, but it is notable from this that what appears as an account
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

of the origins of an epistemological illusion highlights the role of

Nietzsche's critique of metaphysics as an element in a broader project
of cultural criticism.
From this discussion the nature of the difference between Nietzsche
and Hume is also becoming a little clearer. Hume's scepticism is born
out of a desire for certainty.17 In contrast Nietzsche has no such goal,
given his recognition of the radical metaphoricity of all discursive
knowledge. Scepticism carried out in the name of true knowledge,
which attempts to exclude everything that is extrinsic to the bedrock of
absolute certainty, is a self-defeating project. A particular object of crit-
icism in this regard is Descartes. For Nietzsche, Descartes fails to ad-
here to his own programme of stripping away all possible sources of
doubt in order to reach the bedrock of certainty, not only in his dogged
faith in the certainty of the cogito, but also by virtue of the fact that his
reduction is executed in the name of truth. To be consistent, scepticism
has to be a fully anti-foundational discourse. Thus, for Nietzsche, phi-
losophy is not a matter of verisimilitude, indeed, no discourse can be.
Instead it is primarily a discourse, an interpretative practice which is
shaped by various extrinsic criteria. As I have already suggested, Nietz-
sche does not aim to correct erroneous conceptions, but rather to ex-
plore their motivation, bringing it into question. The primary aim of all
belief systems should consequently be their usefulness rather than their
truth value, and in this sense all philosophical positions can be consid-
ered as pragmatic ideologies: 'Knowledge can allow as motives only
pleasure and pain, utility and injury' (HAH I §34). His interest is thus in
the consequences of certain of those ideological positions, and in par-
ticular with the consequence of the ideology of metaphysics. As a cul-
tural critic, he is concerned with changing the philosophical regime
that has governed Judaeo-Christian culture. To understand this more
fully we must delve further into the discourse of metaphysics.
Nietzsche likens the process of concept formation to that of con-
structing a tomb, an act of petrifaction, inasmuch as the very nature of
the concept as an iterable sign promotes a demand for universality and
identity. In one sense it is inevitable, given that truth is a function of
grammar, that the genesis of concepts, of truth values, will be forgot-
ten, since conceptuality per se excludes thought of becoming, of the
 TRUTH, INTERPRETATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF NIHILISM

non-identical, in short of the contingency of the world. In his later

writing on interpretation, Nietzsche also sees the reduction of differ-
ence and of Becoming as a function of the human form of life, claiming
that' Behind all logic and its apparent sovereignty of movement there
stand evaluations, put more clearly, physiological demands for the
preservation of a certain form of life' (BGE §3). The connection made
here between truth and the human form of life, where the nature of
truth is purely contingent upon the requirements of the human life
form, points towards Nietzsche's perspectivism, a theme I shall deal
with later. For the moment, however, it is necessary to discuss further
the question of language, metaphysics and nihilism.

Nihilism
Although it is an early work, Nietzsche's essay 'OnTruth and Language'
represents his most complete single discussion of the linguistic media-
tions of knowledge. Yet the theme of language and metaphysics, and of
the complicity of the two, remains a constant throughout his writing.
The origins of that complicity lie in Socrates' search for definitions. This
can be regarded as the first philosophical project whose possibility is
founded on forgetting both the origin of concepts and also their
metaphorical nature. Socrates' persistent questioning of definitions,
whether in the field of ethics, epistemology or politics, only appears
purposeful given the assumption that the object of enquiry is self-
identical and unchanging with time, that correctly predicated proper-
ties are valid at all times, and that there is a determinable essence to
such objects. Yet as Nietzsche notes, this basic law of identity 'which is
here termed "originary," has evolved' (HAH I §18). In other words, it is
the product of a particular history. Crucial philosophical terms such as
'a priori,' 'a posteriori,' 'origin,' 'logical,' 'cause,' 'condition' and 'neces-
sary' can function only in this climate of forgetting, on condition of not
revealing their utterly contingent status as regulative ideas that have
come into being. As such, they have to be an object of faith, and Nietz-
sche sees metaphysics and religion as closely related, indicated by his
frequent equation of Christianity and Platonism. He notes, 'Some have
the need for metaphysics; but that impetuous longing for certainty,
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

which is released in large quantities scientifically and positivistically, the

longing to have something stable . . . that too is the longing for securi-
ty, support, in short, that instinct of weakness which admittedly does not
create religions, metaphysics, convictions of all kinds — but conserves
them' (GS §347). One notes here, too, the continuation of the distinc-
tion between the process which constructed these systems of beliefs —
the human ability to create metaphors in the early language essay — and
the process whereby those systems are sustained. In the early essay it is
forgetfulness, now it is regarded as due to the instinct of weakness.
Metaphysics is characterised as a repression of history and of contin-
gency, one sustained by a 'faith in the truth as something found' (HAH I
§11), rather than recognising its truths as governed by discourse inhab-
iting a world of signs (BGE §21). It is an ideology which has provided
the foundations for modern science and mathematics; as Nietzsche
notes, mathematics 'would never have come into being if it had been
known right from the start that there is no perfectly straight line in na-
ture, no real circle, no absolute system of measurement' (HAH I §11).
Instead it is the task of thinking to 'depict the human as a limit' (KSA
II:2
^[393]))to lay bare the construction of truth, for 'It is we alone
who have devised cause, sequence, reciprocity, relativity, constraint,
number, law, freedom, motive and purpose' (BGE §21). It is this 'natu-
ralisation' of knowledge, in which signs are no longer taken as such but
as revealed truths, which lays the ground for the arrival of nihilism. In
this regard Nietzsche's equation of science with nihilism is of crucial
significance, and a concern with the problem can be seen as accompa-
nying some of his earliest writings. A fragment from late 1872 asserts
that 'Our natural science is bent on destruction in the pursuit of knowl-
edge' (KSA 7:i9[i98]), and by 'destruction' Nietzsche means cultural
collapse, a conclusion implicit in a second fragment from the same pe-
riod: 'When I speak of the fearful possibility that knowledge is driving
onto destruction, it is my least intent to complement the current gen-
eration: it has nothing of such tendencies. However when one looks at
the course of science since the 1 gth century this very power and possi-
bility becomes apparent' (KSA 7:19 [206]).18
Nietzsche is not the first to have realised the dangers of the mis-
recognition of the nature of truth, for it is a concern apparent in the

26
 TRUTH, INTERPRETATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF NIHILISM

work of Kant, too. For example, in the preface to the second edition of
the Critique of Pure Reason Kant writes,

A lightflashedin the mind of he who first demonstrated the isosceles triangle

(call himThales or anything else you want); for he found that he mustn't look
into what he saw in thefigureor in the bare concept of it, and then, as it were,
read off its properties from this, but rather bring out what he himself, follow-
ing certain concepts, has a priori put into the figure and represented (by
means of construction), and that in order to know something for certain a pri-
ori, he must ascribe nothing to the item except that which follows necessarily
from what he has introduced into it in accordance with his concept.

The origin of geometry is consequently to be found in the realisation of

the constructed nature of the geometrical figure. The truth of geometry
lies not in its uncovering of an always present objective truth, or in the
correspondence of a judgement with its geometrical object, but instead
in the exposition of figures whose character has already been deter-
mined by the expositor a priori. The key notion at play here is that of
construction; the world of geometry which has always-already been
constructed. The truths of geometry have already been pre-determined
by the human impulse towards schematisation and typification. It is a
model which Kant extends to all the natural sciences and subsequently
to knowing in the most general employment of the term such that phi-
losophy in general becomes an enterprise in semiotics. In the celebrat-
ed passage from the preface outlining the history of physics, Kant con-
cludes that physics must seek to learn from nature 'in accordance with
that which Reason introduces into Nature' (B xiii—xiv) and adds later
that 'we can know a priori of things only what we ourselves put into
them' (B xviii). Foreshadowing Nietzsche's assertion that in natural sci-
ence 'man finds in things nothing but what he himself has imported into
them' (WP §606), Kant claims that 'in a priori knowledge nothing can
be ascribed to objects except what the thinking subject derives from it-
self' (B xxiii).
There is a case for arguing, then, a shared stance towards what Kant
terms 'dogmatic metaphysics' and Nietzsche simply 'metaphysics,' the
character of which I have outlined earlier. Moreover both share a com-
mon awareness of the dangers involved, despite the fact that Nietzsche
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

sees Kant as deeply implicated in metaphysical thinking. For Kant's

Copernican turn is carried out as part of a strategy in response to the
scepticism of Hume,'which many years ago first interrupted my dog-
matic slumber,' while Nietzsche's linguistic critique of metaphysics
forms part of his strategy to overcome nihilism. Kant is aware of the
consequences of taking the forms of representation to be the actual
form of the Real when he notes that 'if we ascribe objective reality to
those forms of representation, we cannot prevent everything from being
changed into mere appearance' (B 70), a scepticism that would refuse
to grant any privilege to acts which synthesise the inchoate mass of sen-
sation. Kant is here alluding to a problem he later develops at greater
length in his discussion of the' Antinomies of Pure Reason,' which show
how such a misunderstanding of the nature of representation can lead
to pure scepticism. If space and time, for example, are regarded as real,
rather than as ideal forms, a series of insoluble paradoxes are created,
most striking of which is the possibility of demonstrating both the fini-
tude and the infinity of space and time. If such aporias are left as such,
their lack of resolution will tempt one to dismiss all forms of represen-
tation as mere illusion, a position which will foster a paralysis of the
mind. This, as least, is Kant's diagnosis of the psychology of such mis-
representation .
Nietzsche's concern is less with the specifically philosophical prob-
lems of such a position as with the wider cultural impact of such an ide-
ology of the given.22 Guided by the structure of its language, meta-
physics, as the philosophical expression of such an ideology, has rejected
as unreal all that does- not display the characteristics of its conceptual
foundations, relegating it to the mere realm of illusion. Once again the
origin can be located in Plato, who is the first to introduce the ontolog-
ical dualism which has sustained metaphysics ever since. In the
metaphors of the cave and the divided line introduced in Republic one
finds the most graphic expressions of dualistic thinking, where the 'un-
reliable' and ldeceiving' impressions of the senses are denigrated, in
contrast with the eternal verities of the super-sensible world of the
conceptual forms. Consequently, Nietzsche notes, 'As long as there are
philosophers on earth . . . there unquestionably exists a peculiar
philosophers' irritation at and rancour against sensuality' (OGM III §7).

28
 TRUTH, INTERPRETATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF NIHILISM

It is a problem he elaborates further in Twilight of the Idols, in an apho-

rism that merits quoting at length:

Everything with which philosophers have worked for thousands of years con-
sisted of conceptual mummies, nothing real left their hands alive. Whenever
they pray, these gentleman servants of conceptual idols kill, they stuff— they
endanger the life of everything when they pray. Death, change, old age just as
much as procreation and growth are objections for them — even refutations.
What is, does not become, what becomes, is not . . . Now they all believe,
with desperation even, in the thing. Yet since they do not possess it, they
search for reasons why they are denied it. "It must be an illusory appearance,
a deception that we cannot perceive the thing: where is the deceiver hiding?"
— "we've got him" they cry out happily, "it's sensoriousness ! These senses . . .
they deceive us over the true world . . . The moral: Say no to everything
which lends credence to the senses."
(TI' "Reason" in Philosophy' § i)

Rather than question the basis of what is taken to be true, such as the
law of identity, or the mutual exclusivity of being and becoming, the
failure of sensory perception to meet the demands placed upon it by
metaphysics leads to its denigration. Nietzsche explains the metaphysi-
cal denial of the sensory world as resulting from a conflict between two
incompatible modes of appropriation of the world. Nietzsche is not
thereby claiming that the 'true' world is that of the senses, since truth is
a function of language. He is merely claiming that the senses do not lie,
which is a different sort of claim. In the following section he notes,
' "Reason" is the cause of our falsification of the testament of the senses.
Insofar as the senses show becoming, decay, change, they do not lie'
(ibid.). Metaphysics refuses to concede such a point, for its system can-
not see truth as a function of something else and cannot admit the pos-
sibility of anything existing outside the limits of truth and falsehood, or
that the criteria of truthfulness and falsehood are historically dynamic.
Condemning change and non-identity as signs of untruth, the path is
clear for the construction of a super-sensuous, supra-linguistic realm of
true being, which in religious practice takes on the character of some
redemptive paradise and in its secularised form becomes the structure
underlying the world, as in the case of the noumenal realm of Kant's
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

system, or, to return to the paradigm of the natural sciences, the sub-
atomic micro-structures of matter and energy posited by physics. All of
these cultural phenomena sustain the same hope for redemption from
the untruth of the apparent, despite the superficial conflict between re-
ligion and science.23 Against this Nietzsche claims that 'The "apparent"
world is the only one: the "true world" has been mendaciously added
on' (ibid.). One notes his refusal to associate the world of appearance
with notions of truth: it is neither true nor false. Modern science and
philosophy have thus provided a secularised Christianity, in Nietzsche's
eyes, where knowledge has taken over the redemptive function of di-
vine forgiveness. In Daybreak he observes the fact that 'it was always pre-
sumed that human salvation must depend on insight into the origin of
things' (D §44), making this internal connection between theology and
metaphysics explicit when he writes that '"Wherever the tree of
knowledge stands is always paradise": so say the oldest and the youngest
serpents' (BGE §1^2). Knowledge promises redemption in a secular
world, and it is this promise made on behalf of knowledge, and such a
demand placed on knowledge, which create the conditions conducive
to nihilism.
The term 'nihilism' was first coined by the romantic philosopher
Friedrich Jacobi, who employed it to denote those who had simply re-
jected the Christian faith. For Nietzsche, however, the term denotes
something rather more complex than simple rejection, a phenomenon
for which the above discussion serves as a genealogy. Going further than
the mere identification of nihilism with atheism, Nietzsche sees the roots
of that rejection in Christianity (and hence in metaphysics too) itself. It is
a reading which is expressed most dramatically in the thesis of the death
of God, as presented in the parable of the madman in the third book of
The Gay Science. In this famous parable, the madman, no doubt consid-
ered mad because his wisdom is excluded as proper 'knowledge' by the
culture of scientific reason, not only proclaims the death of God, that is,
the loss in legitimacy of any transcendent values, but also locates respon-
sibility for this death firmly in the hands of those who believed most
firmly in God: 'We have killed him — you and I. All of us are his murder-
ers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave
us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing
 TRUTH, INTERPRETATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF NIHILISM

when we unchained this earth from its sun? Where is it moving now?
Where are we moving? . . . Are we not straying as through an infinite
nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty nothing?' (GS § 12^).
Nihilism emerges when the false promises held out by metaphysics
reveal themselves to be empty and unsustainable. It is the moment
when, to quote Nietzsche's well-known diagnosis, 'the highest values
devalue themselves' (WP §2). In a further note from early 1888 Nietz-
sche writes that 'Nihilism as a psychological state is reached . . . when
one has posited a totality, a systematisation, even an organisation in and
beneath all events, such that the soul which thirsts after admiration
and reverence wallows in the idea of some highest form of domination
and administration' (WP § 12). And the reason why this positing is an at-
tainment of nihilism is explained some years earlier in the aphorism
from Daybreak quoted above. Nietzsche continues, 'The meaningless -
ness of the origin grows with our insight into the origin: while the near-
est, that which is around us and in us gradually begins to show colours
and beauties and enigmas and riches of meaning' (D §44). The further
we probe into the putative essence of things, the less we actually find.
Metaphysics is thus a self-undermining project, resulting in the conclu-
sion that 'if some single standard is not good for everyone and for all
time, then no standard is good for anyone at any time.'24
Although nihilism has strongly divergent meanings in Nietzsche and
Jacobi, the fact that the term first appeared at the end of the eighteenth
century coincides with Nietzsche's contention that nihilism is a specifi-
cally modern phenomenon, and that its emergence signifies the essential
crisis of modernity. The sense of the contemporaneity of the question of
nihilism is apparent in Nietzsche's bold proclamation that 'The time has
come when we have to pay for having been Christians for two thousand
years: we are losing the centre of gravity by virtue of which we have
lived' (WP §30). Here 'Christians' serves as a shorthand for the cluster of
values associated with Christianity, including the metaphysical values of
Platonism.The particular nature of the crisis stems from the contradic-
tion between the loss of the 'centre of gravity' and the continued hanker-
ing for one, and Nietzsche interprets a number of contemporary phe-
nomena as symptoms of this: 'the vehemence with which our most
intelligent contemporaries lose themselves in wretched nooks and cran-

31
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

nies, for example, into patriotism . . . or into petty aesthetic creeds af-
ter the manner of French naturalisme . . . or into nihilism a la Petersburg
. . . always manifests above all the need for faith, a support, backbone,
something to fall back on' (GS §347).
At the heart of Nietzsche's account of nihilism is also a theory of
modernity. His description of the loss in modernity of a centre of grav-
ity invites obvious comparison with other contemporary writers, most
obviously, perhaps, Karl Marx's observation of nineteenth-century
bourgeois society, in which, famously, 'All fixed fast-frozen relations
. . . are swept away. . . . All that is solid melts into air.'25 Nietzsche's
characterisation of modernity, in which 'restlessness, haste and hustling
grow continually' (WP §33), is strongly reminiscent of Marx's account
of the experience of modern culture. However, there is an important
and crucial difference; Marx views the root of modernity in specific
changes in the economic material conditions of life. For Nietzsche, in
contrast, the crisis of modernity, nihilism, is a crisis of values in which
'The "meaninglessness of all that occurs": the belief therein is the con-
sequence of an insight into the falsity of interpretations hitherto, a gen-
eralisation of despondency and weakness — no necessary belief (WP
§£99). Moreover he specifically rules out the idea of a material cause of
nihilism, noting that 'it is an error to consider "social distress" or "phys-
iological degeneration" or worse, corruption, as the cause of nihilism'
(WP §1). What are often read as causes of the loss of fixity of values are
consequently interpreted by Nietzsche as symptoms. For example, in one
note devoted to the subject of'modernity through the metaphors of
nourishment and digestion' Nietzsche observes that

Sensibility immensely more irritable . . . the abundance of disparate impres-

sions greater than ever: cosmopolitanism in foods, literatures, newspapers,
forms, tastes, even landscapes etc. The tempo of this influx prestissimo; the
impressions erase each other; one instinctively resists taking in anything, tak-
ing anything too deeply, "digesting" anything. . . . A kind of adaptation to this
flood of impressions takes place: men unlearn spontaneous action, they mere-
ly react to stimuli from outside.

This passage can be read in two ways. One interpretation would be

 TRUTH, INTERPRETATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF NIHILISM

that it constitutes a list of the material conditions which have caused

the disorientation of modern culture, including a marked increase in
human passivity. However, given that for Nietzsche it is the crisis in
values that is the cause of nihilism, the passage can also be seen as indi-
cating the symptoms of a nihilistic modernity. Cosmopolitan taste is
therefore the sign of a collapse in values, and it is passivity that toler-
ates cosmoplitanism. Elsewhere he writes of'the modern spirit's lack
of discipline,' which becomes manifest in tolerance and freedom,
which he views as a 'profuse chaos of symbols' (WP §79). In his later
writings Nietzsche comes to use the term 'decadence' to describe the
condition of modernity, a term used partly under the influence of Paul
Bourget's Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine.26 In the foreword to The
Case of Wagner, for example, he notes that 'What occupied me most
profoundly is in fact the problem of decadence,' which he characterises
as 'impoverished life . . . great exhaustion.' He also admits that he is
himself a decadent, but that 'the philosopher in me defended itself
against this' (CWforeword).
For Nietzsche such phenomena in modern culture are marks of
weakness, borne of a resigned pessimism: 'The philosophical nihilist is
of the conviction that everything that occurs is meaningless and in vain;
and that Being ought not be meaningless and in vain. But whence this:
ought not?' (WP §36). Hence plurality of values stems from indifference
towards any values. This form of nihilism, which Nietzsche variously
terms passive or reactive, results from a residual attachment to meta-
physics, as becomes clear, for example, in his interpretation of
Schopenhauer: 'Schopenhauer was still so much under the dominance
of Christian values that once the thing in itself was no longer God for
him, it had to be bad, stupid, absolutely reprehensible. He did not un-
derstand that there are infinite ways of being-other, even of being-God.
Curse of that narrow-minded dualism: good and evil' (WP §100^).
This is the cultural crisis Nietzsche is attempting to overcome; his
project is not primarily a critique of metaphysics through an analysis of
the semiotic nature of truth. Metaphysics will undermine itself and so
save him the job. His project is rather to push through, past the passive
nihilism of engulfing modernity, on to an active nihilism which cuts its
remaining ties to metaphysics and fully absorbs the notion of knowl-

33
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

edge as afiction.The task is to establish how to become an active, or 'ac-

complished/ nihilist.27

Interpretation
Nietzsche's account of nihilism is organised around a dialectical struc-
ture, inasmuch as its meaning is the consequence of a historical dialec-
tic that remains in its infancy. The reactive or passive nihilism of moder-
nity must be negated by its other, namely, active nihilism; the former is
'only a transitional phase' (WP §7). Moreover a dialectical structure or-
ganises the content of Nietzsche's discourse on nihilism. For passive ni-
hilism represents a pure negativity, in terms of a feeling of complete
meaninglessness accompanied by a state of inertia, of inactivity. Al-
though passive nihilism represents a particularly modern crisis, Nietz-
sche regards Buddhism as its first historical expression, and its themes
of asceticism, of contemplative withdrawal from life, are repeated in
Christianity and metaphysics, most notably, of course, in Schopen-
hauer's ideal of the ascetic life. In contrast, however, Nietzsche views
active nihilism as a determinate negativity, one which overcomes knowl-
edge and metaphysics with the right means. He attributes the continued
presence of reactive nihilism to the fact that 'the productive powers are
not yet strong enough or that decadence is still hesitating and has not
yet invented its remedies' (WP §13). Overcoming metaphysical culture
and its belief in knowledge cannot be accomplished by pure negation,
which amounts to mere passivity; active nihilism must also consist in
the positing of new values, not only the negation of the existing ones,
and it is the notion of interpretation that functions as the medium for
the accomplishment of the 're-valuation of values.'
Until now I have deliberately skirted around the question of inter-
pretation, but at this point it is appropriate to explore the notion, for
Nietzsche's idea of interpretation unites the reactive and active compo-
nents of nihilism. I have so far concentrated on Nietzsche's critique of
metaphysics, concentrating in particular on his recognition of the de-
rivative nature of truth. Bound up with this critique is his replacing of
the ideas of knowledge and truth with that of interpretation. In addition
interpretation also serves as a model for the establishment of the anti-

34
 TRUTH, INTERPRETATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF NIHILISM

foundational norms necessary to the completion of the nihilist project.

In other words interpretation provides for the possibility of a non-
metaphysical normativity, for the establishment of an anti-metaphysical
discourse that creates a space for some form of normative framework.
Nietzsche's contention that all cognitive acts are merely interpreta-
tions is well known and has become the subject of a number of stud-
ies.28 The primary interest here is in how interpretation can serve as the
model for some form of post-metaphysical normativity. To understand
more fully how it can do this, two central questions have to be asked.
First, what is being interpreted? In other words, if Nietzsche is going to
abandon the correspondence theory of truth, how will he describe the
relation between the interpreter and their object? What is the status of
this object? Second, we must ask what criteria there might be for judg-
ing any interpretation. With the abandoning of the (metaphysical) idea
of truth, the critical observer may well conclude there is nothing to
prevent a lapse into absolute relativism, granting equal value to all in-
terpretations. Clearly Nietzsche is not a relativist in this sense; his sub-
stitution of questions of value for being is clearly implicated in a hierar-
chy of preferences and explains the vigour with which he prosecutes his
critique of metaphysics. Conversely, assuming Nietzsche's writings pos-
sess some consistency, to regard him as replacing the notion of knowl-
edge with that of interpretation, while still adhering to a belief in a re-
ality waiting to be interpreted, as if the metaphysical relation of subject
and object remained undisturbed, would be highly problematic. Admit-
tedly, it would not be impossible to maintain a realist metaphysics while
also keeping to an anti-realist epistemology, as Michael Dummett has
convincingly argued,29 but although Nietzsche frequently privileges be-
coming and life over being,30 this does not entitle us to conclude that
becoming is the essence of existence, in the foundational sense of ro-
mantic philosophers such as Friedrich Schlegel, for example.31 It is a
feature of his writing which has tempted many interpreters to read his
work in this way. Most notably Heidegger placed Nietzsche at the cul-
mination of metaphysics, understanding both will to power and Eternal
Recurrence as expressions of a commitment to a particular ontology.
More recently Johann Figl, too, has regarded the use of becoming over
being as one of mere substitution.
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

Plainly, such readings clash with the Nietzsche of this study, for
whom 'becoming' is just as much a sign as is 'being/ Nietzsche's recur-
rent use of these terms, plus his use of others including 'falsehood', 'in-
stinct', 'appearance,' to mention a few, should rather be read as signs of
his attempt to establish a normative interpretative framework by using
a certain vocabulary that might facilitate avoiding the descent into reac-
tive nihilism we have already witnessed. Were Nietzsche's writing so
earnest in its efforts to elude the delusions of metaphysics that it
brought about a figural collapse of meaning, as some have thought,33 it
would be difficult to explain his repeated employment of the same
terms.
It has been suggested that it actually makes no sense to ask what is in-
terpreted. As Alan Schrift has argued, the process of interpretation 'is
not grounded in either the subject or the object; it exists in the between,
in the space which separates them.'34 In other words, the interpreting
process is a web of relations, as Nietzsche himself says: 'If I remove all
the relationships, all the properties, all the activities of a thing, the thing
does not remain over; because thingness has only been invented by us'
(WP §£^8). However, this metaphor does not express forcibly enough
the constitutive role of interpretation. Not only does the web of rela-
tionships not exist in the space between subject and object, it also creates
that space, and creates the subject and object between which the space
exists. In Beyond Good and Evil, for example, Nietzsche asks, 'Why might
not the world which concerns us be a fiction? And whoever then asks
"but does an author belong to a fiction?" — might he not be answered
back with: Why? Does not this "belong" belong to the fiction?' (BGE
§34). Hence the interpretative fiction which constitutes the world also
constitutes the subject of interpretation, and it is in this sense that
Nietzsche asserts that 'One cannot ask "who is interpreting then?"' The
interpreter, just as much as the object of interpretation, is produced by
a subjectless process. He continues, 'interpretation itself, as a form of
will to power, has existence (not as a "being," however, but as a process,
a becoming) as an affect' (KSA 12:2 [i£i]). Interpretation is thus a fic-
tive process, and in formulating the problem thus, Nietzsche is pushing
to an extreme the constructivist epistemology of Kant, stripping it of
its residual metaphysical attachments, such as the transcendence of the
 TRUTH, INTERPRETATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF NIHILISM

representing subject and all the accompanying humanist trappings of

Kant's moral theory.
One can see this view apparent in a note written just before that just
quoted, where Nietzsche writes, 'A thing would be described once all
beings had asked "what is that?" and had their questions answered. Sup-
posing one single creature, with its own relationships and perspectives
for all things, were missing, then the thing would not yet be "defined"'
(KSA i 2:2 [149]). I take Nietzsche to be asserting here, too, that the
character of a thing is determined by the character of the beings inter-
preting, that its existence is dependent upon the interpreting beings
and the uses they have for it. Yet this description does not amount to a
'definition' of the thing, and Nietzsche's use of quotation marks indi-
cate the distance he wishes to retain towards this most Socratic of con-
cerns. For the thing will always take on new characteristics according to
the possibility of its being interpreted anew, hence there never can be
some final, exhaustive definition. This is not to suggest merely that the
complexity of the world is such as never to be exhausted by interpreta-
tive theories. Rather, it is that new interpretations can always be pro-
duced.35
Mention of the plurality of interpretations introduces Nietzsche's
perspectivism and with it also touches the second question which I
claimed requires asking. Namely, if interpretation constitutes the ob-
ject, is it possible to speak meaningfully of better or worse interpreta-
tions? What are the criteria for judging competing or conflicting inter-
pretations? In answering this question I shall make my boldest claims as
to the proximity of Hegel to Nietzsche. Above all, Nietzsche's ground-
ing of the interpretative process in will to power imbues it with a
Hegelian character; far from being a thinker of plurality, the affirmative
thinker par excellence, Nietzsche's theory of interpretation affirms a
dialectical image of the process.
Nietzsche's mature theory of interpretation, inasmuch as it can be
considered a full-blown theory, represents a widening and a deepening
of the early, linguistic critique of knowledge carried out in ' On Truth
and Falsehood.' Nietzsche has not abandoned the notion of grammar-
functional truth conditions so much as supplemented it with the notion
of perspectivism.36 Truth is now no longer a function merely of Ian-

37
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

guage so much as of the human perspective in general; in other words,

it is a function of all those aspects, be they linguistic, psychological or
even physiological, which distinguish the human form of life from oth-
er forms. In Daybreak, for example, he writes, 'My eyes, as strong or
weak as they may be, can see only a certain distance, and it is within the
space encompassed by this distance that I live and move, the line of this
horizon constitutes my immediate fate,' adding later, 'we spiders sit in
our web, and whatever we catch in it, we catch nothing at all unless it
allows itself to be caught precisely in our web' (D § 117). This idea had
already been stated much more baldly in Human All Too Human some
years earlier in the claim that 'It is true that there might be a metaphys-
ical world; we can hardly dispute its absolute possibility. We see all
things through the human head and cannot cut this head off; though the
question remains what would there still be of the world, if we did cut it
off (HAH I §9). What initially seems an acceptance of the possible exis-
tence of an autonomous object of knowledge is then contradicted by
the suggestion of the mutual dependence of world and human perspec-
tive. This position is maintained, indeed fortified, throughout his career,
resulting in bold assertions such as the following from 1887 that 'We
belong to the character of the world, there is no doubt' (KSA 12:1
[89]). As noted above, one of the important innovations in Nietzsche's
thought is to deprive the subject of its transcendent role in the process
of interpretation. As a subjectless process, interpretation is also a func-
tion of instinct, of the body. 'Behind your thoughts and feelings stands
. . . an unknown sage — he is called Self. He lives in your body, he is
your body,' proclaims Zarathustra, adding that 'There is more reason in
your body than in your greatest wisdom' (Z I 'Of the Despises of the
Body'). In this Nietzsche is, first, challenging the privilege accorded to
the conscious intellect in the metaphysical tradition from Plato on-
wards. Second, he is allowing for the possibility of intentional activity
taking place in spheres where it has traditionally been denied. We see
this taking place early in Nietzsche's work, in Human All Too Human,
where he writes, 'For the plant all things are usually still, eternal, every
thing is identical to itself. From the period of lower organisms humans
have inherited the belief that there exist identical things.' Later in the
same aphorism he adds that 'the belief in unconditional substances and
 TRUTH, INTERPRETATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF NIHILISM

in identical things is a similarly primary, similarly ancient mistake of all

that is organic' (HAH I § 18), an argument that recalls his later notion of
philosophy as a form of atavism. Elsewhere he even suggests rethinking
the relation between the organic and the inorganic, noting that 'The
connection between the inorganic and the organic must lie in the re-
pelling force exercised by every atom offeree' (WP §642). Rather than
espousing a vitalist philosophy, Nietzsche is grounding intentional activ-
ity in a non-intentional process of the maximising of force, which looks
forward to the notion of will to power. Here he is rethinking the notion
of intentional or purposeful activity, such that it need not necessarily be
guided by a rational intellect: 'We shall be on our guard against explain-
ing purposiveness in terms of intellect: there is no ground whatever for
ascribing to the intellect the properties of organisation and systematisa-
tion' (WP§£26).
Nietzsche's attribution of intentional activity to all forms of organic
life and to inorganic matter also raises the notion of interpretation as
will to power as a coherent thesis explaining the motivation of inter-
pretative activity. His view of interpretation as a subjectless process
parallels his notion of will to power as a goal-driven activity, yet one
which need not be tied to a specific subjective intention. Yet although
will to power is one of Nietzsche's best known ideas, it also remains one
of the most problematic. It has been interpreted in a number of differ-
ent ways, ranging from Heidegger's idea of will to power as an ontolog-
ical doctrine to Kaufmann's idea that it is a doctrine of psychological
motivation.37 The difficulty of interpretation is rendered all the more
acute by the fact that there are only two references to will to power in
Nietzsche's published works, while his unpublished notes that refer to it
seem more speculative in character than anything else. Yet its impor-
tance is indicated by the numerous plans drawn up for a book on will to
power, even though they remained at a very embryonic stage. In his
notebooks from 1887 and 1888 there are numerous 'plans' for the 'Will
to Power,' most of which singularly fail to concur with each other.
Hence it is difficult to treat the will to power as a fully articulated doc-
trine. Rather, it has the character of a large number of often contradic-
tory and uncoordinated ideas and jottings which lurk in the background
to much of his work, both published and unpublished, without being

39
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

fully worked out. A good example of the difficulty in discussing the

'doctrine' of the will to power can be seen in a passage from the spring
of 1888 where Nietzsche writes of'The will to the accumulation of
power as peculiar to the phenomenon of life . . . could we not accept
this will as the motivating force in Chemistry too? and in the cosmic or-
der?' (WP §689). By the end of the passage the reader is quite unsure
how to interpret the will to power. Is it a feature of organic life, as
Nietzsche seems to be at first suggesting, or is it a more basic ontologi-
cal constitutive feature of all matter? Nietzsche leaves the matter unre-
solved, ending instead with a number of unanswered questions. I would
like to suggest that although it often sounds a fundamental, quasi-
metaphysical doctrine, it is in fact a less ambitious theory of the func-
tion of knowledge and interpretation.
An important first step is to recognise that only rarely is will to pow-
er referred to as the will to power.38 Admittedly, he speaks of the will in
the early works written under the influence of Schopenhauer. However,
this precedes by some years the development of his speculative ideas on
will to power. The grounds for the above assertion are several. The first
derives from Nietzsche's own statement that all notions of unity as the
irreducible essence of beings are illusory, in the sense that numbers are
themselves useful fictions. It is important to recall Nietzsche's com-
ment that 'the unity of the word is no guarantee of the unity of the
thing' (HAH I § 14). Significantly, while will to power represents a striv-
ing to increase the quantum of power, Nietzsche tends to prefer quality
to quantity as a determining factor in his interpretative strategy. This in-
clination forms one of the main reasons for his critique of mechanistic
world views. For example, in 1886 he writes, 'mechanistic conception:
desires nothing but quantities: but power lies in quality: mechanism can
only describe processes, not explain them' (WP §660), while later that
year he comments that 'we cannot help experiencing quantitative dif-
ferences as something fundamentally different from quantity, namely as
qualities' (WP§s6s).
The second ground for dismissing ideas of the will to power is that
Nietzsche rarely speaks of it in those terms. He writes of will to power,
wills to power, but seldom of the will to power. From this one con-
cludes that will to power appears to be a motivation directing dynamic

40
 TRUTH, INTERPRETATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF NIHILISM

processes, both organic and inorganic, although this is not to claim that
it is a metaphysical essence, or that it is governed by a specific set of in-
tentions. On a dramatic scale Nietzsche links will to power with a cos-
mic vision of the world as 'a monster of energy, without beginning,
without end/ a 'Dionysian world of eternal self-creation, eternal self-
destruction' ( ^ § 1 0 6 7 ) , in which the force motivating destruction and
creation is will to power. However, it is important to note that Nietz-
sche prefaces this description with the comment that this is how 'the
world' appears reflected in his mirror. It is simply an image, and there-
fore Nietzsche is not putting forward a metaphysical theory but rather
the possibility of thinking of the world in alternative terms to the meta-
physical obsession with being. The purpose of this counter-image is
clear: in conceiving of the world itself as a perpetually shifting series of
force relations, the way is prepared for rethinking the question of
knowledge. For interpretation is now no longer governed by the con-
cern for 'truth' but by the strategic effort to establish a certain position
within a field of dynamic energies, and the means to maintain that posi-
tion is through the attainment of power. As Nietzsche points out, 'In
truth, interpretation is itself a means of becoming master of something'
(WP §643). Interpretation is thus presented as a dynamic process, and
this is reflected in the idea that it is always possible to produce new in-
terpretations: 'The same text permits countless interpretations: there is
no "correct" interpretation' (KSA 12:1 [120]).
For Nietzsche interpretative knowledge is power. The significance of
this equation can be interpreted in various ways. Michel Foucault has
followed through one reading in particular, outlining the implication of
the one in the other to such an extent that the notion of power, or
knowledge-power, itself becomes highly abstracted and almost drained
of meaning. The extreme formulation of this notion is Foucault's claim
that 'there is no power without the correlative constitution of a field of
knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute
at the same time relations of power,' and Foucault privileges the'pop-
ular knowledge' which disturbs institutionalised discourses and their
link with power. Quite clearly, Foucault is drawing on an important el-
ement in Nietzsche's thinking. At the heart of his equation of'knowl-
edge' and power is an instrumental notion of interpretation. This is ap-
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

parent, for example, in Nietzsche's emphasis on the perspectival basis

of interpretation, in which 'knowledge' is constructed according to the
interests and capabilities of a specific being. One example would be the
'knowledge' of physics. Although extrinsic ideological interests have
frequently determined the direction of much research in physics, the
history of physical science can be characterised as an increasing degree
of technical mastery. This feature has been the object of many critiques
of the logic of the physical sciences, and one might cite here Heideg-
ger's dismay at the conflation of science and technological mastery.40
Nietzsche himself acknowledges that science is driven by technological
power; he refers to it as 'the transformation of nature into concepts for
the purpose of mastering nature' (WP §610), while in another note he
derives the construction of concepts from 'a power in us to order, sim-
plify, falsify' (WP §^17). This notion finds numerous parallels through-
out Nietzsche's writing.
There is a further aspect to the equation of will to power and inter-
pretation, and this relates to the question of modernity and decadence.
A recurrent motif in Nietzsche's description of will to power is the no-
tion of simplification, organisation and negation. For example, 'there is
a will to power in the organic process by virtue of which dominant
shaping commanding forces continually extend the sphere of their pow-
er and within this always simplify' (WP §644). Elsewhere he declares,
'one should value more than truth the force that forms, simplifies,
shapes, invents' (WP §602). This notion is supplemented in the claim
that 'The degree of resistance and the degree of superior power — that is
the question in every event' (WP §634). A fuller exposition of these
ideas and their connection is provided in a note from 1887 in which
Nietzsche asserts that 'will to power can manifest itself against resis-
tances, therefore it seeks that which resists it. . . . Appropriation and
assimilation are above all a desire to overwhelm, a forming, shaping and
reshaping. . . . If this incorporation is not successful then the form
probably falls into pieces' (WP §6^6).
Nietzsche's reference to simplification, and to its opposite, disinte-
gration in the case of failure, recalls his characterisation of passive ni-
hilism, which is marked both by 'weariness,' that is, a loss of power, and
 TRUTH, INTERPRETATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF NIHILISM

by a loss of gravity. His interpretation of cosmopolitanism was as a

symptom of a weary indifference. This now needs to be reformulated,
for Nietzsche's critique is aimed specifically at the lack of appropria-
tion, of will to power, that underpins cosmopolitan taste: 'Our Europe
of today, being the arena of an absurdly sudden attempt at a radical mix-
ture of classes and hence races . . . is merely dressed-up scepticism and
paralysis of the will: for this diagnosis of the European sickness I vouch'
(BGE §208).The passive nihilism of modernity, its decadence, is the sign
of an exhausted will, and here the nature of the configuration of will,
modernity, knowledge and interpretation becomes a little more appar-
ent. Nietzsche's original diagnosis of modern nihilism was based on the
notion of the highest values devaluing themselves. In particular, the
promise of truth was seen as hollow. The notion of will to power adds to
this diagnosis the dimension of power, for 'knowledge,' in the sense of
the metaphysical search for certitude, contradicts the motivation of will
to power. Whereas will to power seeks resistance, metaphysics seeks
stability, 'That which comes to a standstill . . . is laziness' (WP §£7£).
This stands in contrast with Nietzsche's declaration 'against peaceable-
ness and the desire for reconciliation' (WP §601).
The obvious question which this reading has to answer is what Nietz-
sche is referring to with the notion of resistance. When he talks about a
protoplasm overcoming its neighbour, for example, it is quite clear, but
less so when will to power is abstracted into a functional explanation of
interpretation. A way in to this issue is provided by returning to the
question of the plurality of interpretations. It was noted earlier that
Nietzsche's critique of metaphysics involves a recognition of the con-
stant possibility of constructing new perspectives, new forms of
'knowledge.' It is this, I would argue, that offers the resistance that will
to power seeks, for the world, in this conception of interpretation, re-
mains an enigma that will always elude the attempt to grasp it concep-
tually. In a planned continuation of Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche ar-
gues that 'There are no facts, everything is in flux, incomprehensible,
elusive' (WP §604).The crucial issue, then, is how to respond to this re-
sistance. A most succinct formulation of the matter is offered in a note
from 1886, where he writes, 'No limit to the ways in which the world

43
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

can be interpreted; every interpretation a symptom of growth or de-

cline . . . plurality of interpretations a sign of strength. Not to desire to
deprive the world of its disturbing and enigmatic character' ( WP §600).
Nietzsche is thus setting up an opposition between a passivity that re-
mains caught within a specific interpretation and an active pursuit of
new perspectives. Significantly, failure to seek new perspectives is not
regarded simply as the preservation of a status quo but as a process of
decay. In contrast, the active nihilist must always seek new interpreta-
tions, which indicates the structural parallelism of interpretation and
will to power. Against this, Nietzsche notes in his essay on asceticism
that much European culture consists of'a grand struggle against the
feeling of displeasure/ a goal which is achieved 'by means that reduce
the feeling of life in general to its lowest point. If possible, will and de-
sire are abolished altogether' (OGM III §17).
The link between will to power and interpretation is thus perhaps
less of a literal theory about the instrumental function of knowledge
than a strategic device for critiquing what Nietzsche perceived to be the
decadence of a culture approaching the crisis of a limited, self-negating
set of values. Asceticism offers the most potent embodiment of this
process, for the ascetic ideal, manifest in the philosophical distrust of
the senses, or in the Christian denigration of mundane transience,
'springs from the protective instinct of a degenerating life . . . a partial
physiological obstruction and exhaustion' (OGM III § 13). And yet while
asceticism denies the search for resistance that is essential to active ni-
hilism and, ultimately, that underlies the logic of will to power, the as-
cetic ideal, like all forms of knowledge, is also driven by will to power,
except that here the negation that drives it is no longer the inadequacy
of individual perspectives, but rather the pessimistic self-denial result-
ing from the failure of the highest metaphysical ideals. As Nietzsche
surmises, 'To renounce belief in one's ego, to deny one's own "reality" —
what a triumph, not merely over the senses, over appearance, but a
much higher kind of triumph, a violation and cruelty against reason . . .
when the ascetic self-contempt and self-mockery of reason declares:
"there is a realm of truth and being, but reason is excluded from it!"'
12).

44
 TRUTH, INTERPRETATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF NIHILISM

Dialectics
Nietzsche's embrace of a plurality of perspectives has to be set against
another central theme in his thought, namely, the possibility of discrim-
ination between better and worse perspectives. As was apparent earlier,
tolerance of plurality per se is a symptom of pessimistic indifference,
specifically through the absence of resistance. Resistance, or negation,
thus figures as a crucial element in Nietzsche's thinking, and it permits
one to speak of a Nietzschean dialectic of interpretation which permits
the application of judgements of value to individual interpretations. It
also prevents pluralism from lapsing into relativism. Specifically, the
equation of power and interpretation offers interpretation-immanent
criteria for judging interpretations. If the notion of will to power (as
will to more power) is translated into the language of interpretation and
perspectivism, the character of interpretation is always one of wanting
to interpret more, in a constant expansion of perspectives. Nietzsche's
model is a hermeneutic practice of overcoming, in which specific inter-
pretations are posited and simultaneously negated, supplemented with
other perspectives. Unlike Hegel, however, the negation of interpreta-
tions is not carried out along the path to absolute knowledge, but in
recognition of the provisional and incomplete nature of interpretations.
Nietzsche's thinking is thus to emphasise the productive function of
negation, but in a dialectic whose completion is infinitely deferred, yet
posited as a regulative ideal. It is this paradoxical model that can address
the scepticism of active nihilism but without lapsing into the crisis of
pessimism of modernity.41
In his essay on asceticism Nietzsche writes, 'Precisely because we
seek knowledge, let us not be ungrateful to such resolute reversals of
customary perspectives and values . . . to see differently . . . to want
to see differently is no small cultivation and preparation of the intellect
for its "objectivity" — the latter not to be understood as disinterested
contemplation . . . but rather as the ability to control and dispose of
one's Pro's and Con's, such that one can employ a variety of perspec-
tives and affective interpretations in the service of knowledge' (OGM III
§12). His aim is thus to establish an 'objective' knowledge, no matter
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

how provisional that objectivity may be, and with the sense that there
can be no clearly defined goal for knowledge. In order to express this
conception Nietzsche uses a number of metaphors which overturn the
traditional images used to describe philosophical activity. For example,
the philosopher is a voyager at sea, uncertain of his or her destination,
in contrast with Kant's notion of the philosopher as the surveyor of the
clearly demarcated territory of human cognition. Similarly, Nietzsche
exhibits a sympathy for Don Quixote, wandering apparently aimlessly
across the Iberian landscape. Such metaphors, however, do not entitle
us to claim that Nietzsche abandons all pretensions to knowing. Instead
they indicate the provisional nature of any such interpreting, inasmuch
as any stage in the activity of interpreting bears within it the imprint of
the negation of previous perspectives. Certainly there are moments
when Nietzsche is aware of the paradoxical status of his own claims
concerning the 'truth' of knowledge. However, these self-mocking re-
marks do not detract from the far more serious project which gives his
work its driving force. Nietzsche's own thought cannot pretend, under
the terms of his own argument, to be the 'truth.'Yet it can pretend to
offer a more complete (pluralistic) and therefore better interpretation of
reality than the 'metaphysical' one. 'The power of knowledge lies not in
its degree of truth, but in . . . its character as a condition of life' (GS
§i 10), and the more resistance a specific interpretation stage seeks and
overcomes, the more life-enhancing it is.
By casting Nietzsche's theory of interpretation in this light I am de-
liberately emphasising the similarities between the expansion of per-
spectives and dialectical thought. This stands in paradoxical contrast to
Nietzsche's many criticisms of Socrates, Plato, Hegel and dialectics in
general. Admittedly, Hegel's dialectic constitutes a logically inevitable
unfolding of consciousness on the path towards Absolute Knowledge,
but it is the parallel in the productive function of negation in Hegel and
in Nietzsche which is of greater importance.43 Negation, in Hegel, is
the means to overcome one-sidedness, just as in Nietzsche the project
of interpretation is to overcome the narrowness of prior perspectives.
Nietzsche ridicules the metaphysical ideal of a perspectiveless knowl-
edge, and likewise Hegel claims that 'Being, pure being, without any
further determination . . . is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less

46
 TRUTH, INTERPRETATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF NIHILISM

than nothing.' For Nietzsche, although the perspective functions as a

negativity, that is, as a limitation which renders obsolete the metaphys-
ical ideal of pure knowledge, it is also that which facilitates interpreta-
tion. With perspectivism there can be no knowledge; without perspec-
tives there can be no interpretations. It is a position fully permeated by
the spirit of Hegel, where negation is that which rescues being from
pure nothingness. 'If,' as Hegel says, 'on the other hand, reality is taken
in its determinateness, then since it essentially contains the moment of
the negative, the sum-total of all realities becomes just as much a sum-
total of all negations, the sum-total of all contradictions/45 The proxim-
ity of their positions can also be seen in Nietzsche's well-known asser-
tion in On the Genealogy ofMorals that 'There is only a perspective seeing,
only a perspective knowing' (KSA g, p. 36^). Taken out of context, the
passage might seem to demonstrate just the contrary, namely, that the
cumulative workings of the dialectic are quite alien to Nietzsche's
thinking. However, the remainder of the passage in question runs:
'There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective knowing, and the
more affects we allow to speak about an object, the more eyes, different
eyes we know to employ for the same thing, the more complete will
our "concept" of this thing, our "objectivity" be.' One sees here an en-
dorsement of some form of objective understanding, some form of
normativity by which judgements can be made. Yet it is not one which
appeals to some order of things antecedent and exterior to the dis-
course of interpretation, but rather grounds the interpretative criteria
in the demands of the particular form of life interpreting. Of course,
while my stress on the dialectical structure of interpretation leads to
obvious connections with Hegel, it is important not to assimilate the
one to the other. Hegel's dialectic constitutes the framework of a sys-
tematic metaphysical structure which is completely alien to the think-
ing of Nietzsche. Instead, the notion of a dialectical interpretative histo-
ry has to be seen in terms of micrological events, which, while always
moving beyond themselves towards a 'more,' lack wider legitimacy.
An instructive parallel can be made withTheodor Adorno, whose
negative dialectics, reworking Hegel, lay an equal stress on the lack of
final closure proper to the concept of the dialectic. Indeed, Adorno's
'negative dialectic' arguably offers the link mediating the thought of

47
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

Nietzsche and Hegel, so often viewed as complete antitheses. Critical

of Hegel's placing of a final positive state as the culmination of the di-
alectical movement, Adorno argues that 'To proceed dialectically means
to think in contradictions,'46 and consequently 'positivity must be de-
nied/ Hegel's error, for Adorno, was to assume that while the dynam-
ic of the movement of thought is the unfolding of contradiction, the ac-
tivity of the whole can be gathered together in a totalising moment. As
such, Hegel, paradoxically, was only a partial dialectician: 'To use iden-
tity as a palliative for dialectical contradiction, for the expression of the
insolubly non-identical, is to ignore what the contradiction means . . .
The thesis that the negation of a negation is something positive can only
be upheld by one who presupposes positivity — as all-conceptuality —
from the beginning.' And yet while Adorno consistently critiques the
notion of a positivity that would bring the movement of the dialectic to
a close, his thinking is profoundly imbued with the sense of its necessi-
ty as a regulative ideal.
By foregrounding the dialectical structure of interpretation, the na-
ture of Nietzsche's critique of metaphysics and the ascetic ideal be-
comes clearer still, for they are devoted to an exclusion of the body and
all sensuous existence. As Nietzsche says in the preface to The Gay Sci-
ence, all philosophy hitherto has been a misunderstanding of the body.
Yet this is not merely an interpretative error, based on a one-sided, per-
spectival view of life. It is an act of self-annihilation. The greater part of
interpretation is guided and motivated by physiological demands, while
asceticism seeks to deny its own origins. Nietzsche writes, 'The uncon-
scious masking of physiological needs under the cloak of the objective,
the ideal, the purely-spiritual extends to shocking proportions' (GS
preface §2). It represents a turning of the forces of life against them-
selves. This is the paradox of asceticism: the ascetic 'priest,' motivated
by his own will to power, his own will to promote his particular form of
existence, turns will to power against itself: 'For an ascetic life is a self-
contradiction: here there rules a ressentiment without equal, that of an
insatiable instinct and will to power, which would like to become mas-
ter not over something in life, but over life itself, over its deepest, most
potent and basic conditions; here the attempt is made to use force in or-
der to block up the well-springs offeree' (OGM III §11). While Nietz-

48
 TRUTH, INTERPRETATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF NIHILISM

sche might, at places, admire the strength and discipline of the ascetic,
and his ambivalent attitude towards both Socrates and Christ as the as-
cetic types par excellence is indicative of this, he regards the ascetic
type as dangerous per se, regardless of his effect on others, merely by
virtue of the fact that all his energies have been turned inward upon
themselves. The drive to impose a stable meaning on the world, deny-
ing its own affective physiological bases, is self-undermining and life-
denying. Life interpreting life against itself. It necessarily leads to ni-
hilism, by devaluing life and offering a transparently mendacious 'ideal'
alternative, whether that alternative is true knowledge or paradisiacal
redemption. When these alternatives are shown to be empty, there is
nothing left to which to turn.

49
 Nietzsche's Subject

Retrieving the Repressed

We think that hardness, forcefulness, slavery, danger in the alley and the
heart, life in hiding, stoicism, the art of experiment and devilry of every
kind, that everything evil, terrible, tyrannical in man, everything in him
that is akin to beasts of prey and serpents, serves the enhancement of
the species "man" as much as its opposite does.
(BGE §44)

In the previous chapter I argued against overplaying the purely sceptical

moment in Nietzsche's critique of metaphysics at the expense of his re-
constructive theory of interpretation. Critics of a variety of persuasions
have tended to dichotomise the issues at stake within his work, as if it
merely revolves around an opposition between rationality and irra-
tionality. Nietzsche's embrace of the other of metaphysical reason, seen
in such terms has made him the object of some considerable censure.
For example, Habermas, using the case of The Birth of Tragedy, sees Nietz-
sche as striving for regression to a mythic primal origin, a goal that
prepares the way both for Nazism and also for the thought of a figure
such as Martin Heidegger. Discussing Heidegger, Habermas writes, 'It
is only after this turn that fascism, like Nietzsche's philosophy, belongs
to the objectively ambiguous phase of the overcoming of metaphysics.'1
Though he stops short of labelling Nietzsche's work as fascist, in the
manner of Lukacs's crude assault, its problematic and ambiguous status
lends easily to association with fascist thinking.2 In contrast, thinkers
such as Bataille, Deleuze, Sarah Kofman and Jacques Derrida have re-
ceived Nietzsche with a sense of exhilaration, as providing a mechanism
 NIETZSCHE S SUBJECT

of release from the tyranny of logic and rationality, opening up language

to the play of metaphor. As I have already indicated, Nietzsche's rejec-
tion of metaphysics, combined with an emphasis on the perspectival na-
ture of cognition and the aesthetic aspects of the human relation to the
world, does not necessarily force the abandoning of normativity. While
Karl-Otto Apel may be right in his assertion that 'the tenets of the radi-
cal critique of reason launched by postmodernism are by and large in-
spired by Nietzsche/3 my own reading of Nietzsche draws back from the
mise en abyme that Nietzsche edges towards in the hands of many bet-
ter known interpreters. That Nietzsche's thought has been productive
in critiques of reason is evident from its prominence in various forms of
anti-rationalist revolt, beginning with the anarchism of Dada. Yet this
should not detract from the conservative strand in his interpretation of
modernity; of note is his criticism of cosmopolitan liberalism, which, as
we have seen, he viewed as a symptom of decadence and weakness.5
A central element in Nietzsche's deconstruction of metaphysics is his
critique of the subject, and it forms the systemic counterpart to his as-
sault on the notion of epistemic objectivity. As I argued earlier, the
process of interpretation constructs the network of relations within
which the subject-object relation is located. In addition to its role in the
critique of metaphysics, Nietzsche's reformulation of the question of
subjectivity forms an integral part of his thinking about art in two ways.
First, the aesthetic tradition from Kant onwards saw as its main issue
the subjective basis of the experience of aesthetic objects and works of
art, in contrast to the Platonic tradition, for which the truth content of
artworks was a far higher concern. In this respect Nietzsche is very
much an heir to the Kantian tradition. Second, Nietzsche's treatment of
the question of art gives equal attention to the artist as a specific mani-
festation of the free spirit or Ubermensch.The Ubermensch, as the suc-
cessor to the metaphysical subject, is often characterised by an aesthet-
ic of the self which is mirrored in an aesthetic attitude towards the
question of knowledge. This parallels the practice of the artist who, for
Nietzsche, maintains a crucial aesthetic relation to the world and to-
wards his own mode of interpretative activity. Indeed, it is this distinc-
tive relation which defines the artist qua artist and art qua art.
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

Critique
Nietzsche's critique of the subject is fuelled by a number of concerns,
the most significant of which is perhaps his emphasis on the primacy of
language. Thought is determined by language, a notion which Nietzsche
often interprets in anthropological terms. As he notes in The Gay
Science, 'the development of language and the development of con-
sciousness . . . go hand in hand' (GS §3^4). 6 Moreover, the belief in
subjectivity per se is, Nietzsche argues, a function of the grammatical
structure and syntax peculiar to the Indo-European languages. He notes
that 'It is highly probable that philosophers within the domain of the
Ural-Altaic languages (where the concept of the subject is least devel-
oped) look otherwise "into the world"' (BGE §20). He also suggests
that there may be physiological determinants of the grammatical struc-
ture of language, though without exploring the possibility in any
depth.
Nietzsche's view of language as a determinant of thought, and of be-
lief in the subject as belief in a grammatical function, has become per-
haps the single most influential aspect of his thinking, but its meaning is
open to interpretation. One specific reading emerging within post-
structuralist thought has been to stress to an extreme the function of
consciousness as a sign. Hence, for Derrida, 'the subject becomes a
speaking subject only in its commerce with the system of linguistic dif-
ferences. . . . But can one not conceive of a presence . . . of the subject
before speech or signs? . . . Such a question supposes that prior to the
sign and outside it . . . something like consciousness is possible.'7 In
Speech and Phenomena, his study of Husserl, Derrida concludes that all
acts of self-consciousness are always-already mediated by the (linguis-
tic) sign, which he sees as constituting subjectivity itself. The subject is
no longer the author of meaning, but rather inserted into the order of
language, to such an extent that the individual has nothing to contribute
to the general play of semiotic difference. Moreover the prejudices be-
queathed by language, the assumptions implicit in metaphysical con-
cepts, cannot be negated tout court. Paralleling Nietzsche's dismissal of
the idea of a meta-language, Derrida claims that 'There is no sense in
doing without the concepts of metaphysics in order to shake meta-

5-2
 NIETZSCHE S SUBJECT

physics. We have no language — no syntax and no lexicon — which is for-

eign to this history; we can pronounce not a single destructive proposi-
tion which has not already had to slip into the form, the logic and the
implicit postulations of precisely what it seeks to contest.'8 The priority
of language means that criticism necessarily occurs from within the
system of metaphysics, as a form of displacement, rather than simple
negation.
Nietzsche's influence on Derrida is paralleled in Michel Foucault,
where the presence of Nietzsche is inscribed in multiple ways. Nietz-
sche's general analysis of the constitutive role of language is mirrored in
Foucault's claim for the need to 'substitute for the enigmatic treasure of
"things" anterior to discourse the regular formation of objects that
emerge only in discourse.' Foucault's 'archaeology' of knowledge is
modelled closely on Nietzsche's genealogical method, and the relation
between the two appears closest in terms of their respective histories of
subjectivity. Just as Nietzsche traces, in The Genealogy of Morals, the
emergence of the moral subject of metaphysical culture, so Foucault
develops a history of the 'subject,' mapping out the various historical in-
terpretations of subjectivity. In this history 'man' is a somewhat recent
phenomenon in European culture, emerging as the product of a specif-
ic constellation of discursive practices.10 Echoing Nietzsche's view of
the 'human' as a transitional phenomenon, he also foresees the time
when 'man' will himself be dissolved. Subjectivity is thus the product of
specific historical discursive formations and, recalling Foucault's inter-
twining of knowledge and power, fulfils certain limiting and controlling
functions.11 His later work on the history of sexuality focuses solely
on the problem of the subject, its constitution through a reflexive self-
relation or 'rapport-a-soi.' 12The history of subjecthood that he traces
from ancient Greece to early Christianity presents a series offictivecre-
ations and recreations. Accordingly, the subject is first defined by its
function within a larger community; this priority of group identity grad-
ually yields ground to the formation of the domain of inward, private ex-
perience. In aesthetic terms this is reflected in the shift from a prefer-
ence in antiquity for epic narrative, to an increasing emphasis on a
literature of introspection. This later paradigm of subjective identity has
become the dominant form in western culture, shaping behavioural
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

habits, such as the urge to confess, which, for Foucault, is characteristic

of modern culture. Crucial to this development of the subject is the na-
ture of the rapport-a-soi, which also forms the axiom of any ethical code.
Ethics are not founded on axiological moral codes per se, for these are
themselves dependent on a particular concept of moral agency. Here the
parallel with Nietzsche is instructive, in particular his assertion in Twi-
light of the Idols that the modern autonomous subject functions as a cor-
relate to Christian morality, with its notions of free will, sin and guilt.
Foucault's and Derrida's critiques of the subject draw on one partic-
ular interpretation of Nietzsche, specifically his contention that the sub-
ject is merely a grammatical function. Yet, while he frequently argues
that the self is a linguistic fiction or is produced by the demands of
Christian morality, he also turns repeatedly to the role of the individ-
ual. His understanding of history, for example, is prosopographic, in
which a recurrent lexicon of figures play key roles on the historical
stage; Socrates, Plato, Euripides, Alcibiades, Buddha, Julius Caesar,
Christ, Napoleon and Goethe, to name but a few, all play a central part
in the unfolding history of metaphysical culture. Quite apart from his
recurrent reference to the 'free spirit' and the 'Ubermensch,' it is no-
table, too, that his thinking on art is marked by the operation of two
personalised metaphors, namely, the Apollonian and the Dionysian.
Hence it seems clear that Nietzsche's critique does not consist in an as-
sault on the concept of the subject per se; rather, it is directed at a spe-
cific, oppressive conception of selfhood, the nature of which I shall ex-
plore shortly. There are clear parallels with his general critique of
metaphysics. In the same way that Nietzsche's scepticism does not lead
to a simple 'negation' of knowledge, but instead a substitution with the
notion of interpretation, so too the demolition of the metaphysical sub-
ject is succeeded by a reinterpretation of the self. In terms of the paral-
lel between the two, it can be argued that Nietzsche's critique in partic-
ular of the mind/body dualism so central to the metaphysical subject
constitutes a specific application of his wider critique of the ontological
dualism characteristic of metaphysics in general.
As a first step it is important to explore what Nietzsche is critiquing.
Strictly speaking, 'the' metaphysical subject has never existed. The
 NIETZSCHE S SUBJECT

metaphysical tradition, from Socrates to Schopenhauer, has never sus-

tained a single notion of the subject. Within metaphysics there has al-
ways been a plurality of subjects according to the function they serve.
The concept of the 'subject' of metaphysics is itself an interpretative fic-
tion; it is based on the synthesis of the various subjects — political, legal,
ethical, cognitive and so forth — all of which have delimited spheres of
applicability. That there is no single metaphysical subject is already evi-
dent at the origins of metaphysics, in the work of Plato. In an early dia-
logue such as Phaedo Plato asserts that 'soul is most similar to what is di-
vine, immortal, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, unvarying and
constant in relation to itself'13 in contrast to the body, which is mortal,
chaotic and multiform. The soul thus corresponds to a notion that
Nietzsche consistently critiques, and Plato spends some considerable
time rebutting the view that the soul might be a form of attunement of
various different bodily impulses and therefore have multiple origins.
However, later works such as Phaedrus or Republic view the self as a com-
posite of elements frequently in conflict. In the latter dialogue a distinc-
tion is made between the rational, appetitive and moral elements of the
soul, all of which have to be controlled in a hierarchy of the self.14 It is
this notion of a multiple self that forms the basis of Plato's notion of a
society of the soul, in which the organisation of the soul is a microcosm
of the wider class politics of the ideal state.15
Against these general considerations it is apparent that the specific
object of Nietzsche's critique is primarily a Cartesian notion of the self,
together with its cousin, the ethical subject of Judaeo-Christian theolo-
gy. Descartes's theory of cognition relies on a minimalist notion of the
self as nothing but a res cogitans; in the second of his Meditations on First
Philosophy he concludes that 'I am, then, in the strict sense only a thing
that thinks; that is, I am a mind or intelligence . . . a thinking thing.'16
In the sixth Meditation, devoted to demonstrating the 'real distinction
between mind and body/ he makes the even bolder assertion that 'there
is a great difference between the mind and the body, inasmuch as the
body is by its nature always divisible, while the mind is utterly indivisi-
ble. . . . I am merely a thinking thing . . . something quite single and
complete.'17 The apotheosis of this idea is to be found later in the moral

55
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

theory of Kant. Specifically, morality stems, for Kant, from the freedom
of the autonomous subject, which, by following the dictates of the inner
moral law, remains unaffected by external constraints.18
This therefore constitutes the object of Nietzsche's critique. There is
an affinity with the Plato of the Phaedo, and it is a notion which has re-
curred in the history of metaphysics, but its lineage can also be linked to
the asceticism of the Church Fathers and Saint Augustine in particular.
Thus alongside his criticism of Descartes (and Kant), Nietzsche high-
lights the intertwining of the moral agent of Christianity and the philo-
sophical subject. Christian morality is predicated on the assumption of
a responsible agent, one whose moral disposition will be purely ration-
al, unclouded by the physiological demands of human embodied exis-
tence. Consequently, the early Church invested sexual abstinence and
the renunciation of the body with great moral significance; in contrast,
contemporary pagan norms restricted sexual activity for what were
perceived to be purely practical reasons only, such as the belief that ex-
penditure of semen was an expenditure of the self.19 The inherent con-
nection between morality and subjectivity can also be seen through
comparison with other cultural value systems. Such sets of moral val-
ues, or 'interpretative modalities,' display, alongside the absence of a
'metaphysical' subject, a striking lack of notions of guilt, free will or re-
sponsibility. For example, in ancient Greece, a recurrent model of cul-
tural practice for Nietzsche, the notion of deviant behaviour is de-
scribed as hamartia, or error, and in place of the sense of guilt there is
the notion of shame. The tragic figure of Oedipus is not cast out of
Thebes as punishment for his sin but in order to restore the social equi-
librium; the fact that the murder of his father and the incest with his
mother were committed in ignorance makes no difference to the pollu-
tion he brings to the city. In contrast, the Christian-metaphysical
modality has made conscious intention central to its moral order, and
Nietzsche attempts to undermine this ethical ideal and its accompany-
ing concept of agency. As he notes, 'Humans were conceived of as "free"
so they could be judged and punished — so they could become guilty:
consequently every action had to be conceived of as intended, the ori-
gin of every action had to be thought of as residing in consciousness' (77
'Four Great Errors' §7). Nietzsche is targeting in particular the au-
 NIETZSCHE S SUBJECT

tonomous subject of Christian morality and its parallel in the pure res
cogitans of Descartes, the concept of which relies on two axiomatic
principles. The first is the axiom that the basis of the self is the rational
intellect, which is distinct from the physiological basis of the human or-
ganism, which, in contrast, is the seat of affectivity and desire. The sec-
ond axiom follows from the first, claiming that the subject is conse-
quently capable of passing cognitive judgements and undertaking moral
actions which are independent of any affective dispositions.
At the root of Nietzsche's critique of this conception of subjectivity
lie two fundamental issues, specifically, the origin of consciousness and
the nature of human agency. This concern can be seen to preoccupy his
thinking as early as The Birth of Tragedy, in which the basis of aesthetic ex-
perience consists of the tension between the Apollonian impulse to pre-
serve subjective autonomy and the Dionysian instinct towards ecstatic
self-negation. This early recognition of the precariousness of the con-
scious, rational, intellect is pursued and deepened throughout his sub-
sequent works. In Daybreak, for example, Nietzsche devotes a long sec-
tion to the problem of the indeterminacy at the heart of the subject:
'The unknown world of the "subject."What is so difficult for people to
grasp is their lack of knowledge of themselves. . . . Is this not precisely
the dreadful truth: that what one can ever know of an action will never
suffice to cross the bridge which leads from a cognition to the action?
. . . Moral actions are always something other' (D § 116). Here one sees
a parallel with the emphasis, in his essay 'On Truth and Lie in Their
Extra-Moral Sense,' on the metaphoric leaps that take place between
physiological perceptions, their registering in consciousness and their
expression in language. Here a further gap is indicated, namely, that
between cognition and moral agency. The phenomenal inner world
turns out to be a manifold of different affects of various orders; the rela-
tion of cognition to volition is highly mediated and obscure. In The Gay
Science Nietzsche mocks those who would see the intellect as the
essence of humanity, commenting that 'Consciousness is the most re-
cent and latest development of organic being and hence also the most
unready and feeble' (GS § 11). Zarathustra puts the case equally force-
fully when he declares to his audience that 'You have taken the path from
the worm to the human being, and much of you is still worm. You

57
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

were once apes, and the human is even now more of an ape than some
apes' (ZI preface §3).
Nietzsche's particular scorn is reserved for the idea of free will, de-
rived from the ascetic ideal. Free will must be an a priori possibility of
the ethical subject, yet as Nietzsche demonstrates, volition is not neces-
sarily primary, but rather a secondary quality which arises from the in-
terpretation of a specific situation: 'so that volition can arise one must
have a representation of desire and repulsion . . . that a powerful stimu-
lus can be felt as a desire or repulsion, that is a matter of the interpreting
intellect, which works for the most part unbeknownst to us' (GS §127).
The intellect, as a secondary function of organic life, is inextricably
linked to those organic functions of the body; in this light, the mind-
body dualism of metaphysics appears to be hopelessly naive. This is not
to reduce the mind to the status of an organ; such a crude reductive ma-
terialism would be just as culpable as the ascetic severing of the intellect
from the various affective impulses shaping it. However, Nietzsche is
concerned with reassess the relationship between mind and body, in a
manner which perhaps suspends the traditional opposition itself. Even in
his earliest notes he stresses the impossibility of neatly delineating be-
tween mental and bodily functions. In an unpublished note from 1871
Nietzsche writes, 'What we call feelings are . . . already permeated and
saturated with conscious and unconscious ideas' (KSA 7:12 [1]). Mental
acts cannot be reduced to mere neuro-physiological activity, to the
cathexis of so much energy; the mind cannot be seen simply as a collec-
tion of neural pathways. For just as mental functions can be seen to orig-
inate in physiological impulses, so too neural stimuli have to be inter-
preted by an intellect in order to be recognised as such. It is only the
interpretative act that can give these stimuli the quality of mental
processes. The stress on 'qualia,' or the specific qualities of experiences,
has most often been used in critiques of a materialist theory of mind.
Thus the fact that a description of the physiology of perception does not
extend to the phenomenological qualities of experience purportedly
demonstrates the heterogeneity of the brain as the material basis of cog-
nition and the mind as the seat of consciousness.21 Nietzsche's point is
rather different; he is pointing toward the difficulty of making any dis-
tinction between the physiological and the phenomenological, as if an
 NIETZSCHE S SUBJECT

autonomous inner self could 'choose' to interpret external stimuli in

a certain way. The falseness of this dichotomy is proclaimed by Zara-
thustra: 'Behind your thoughts and feelings stands . . . an unknown
sage — he is called Self. He lives in your body, he is your body.' He later
adds, 'There is more reason in your body than in your greatest wisdom'
(Zl'On the Despisers of the Body').
The body itself has a form of intentionality, and hence Nietzsche is
reluctant to ascribe all intentional behaviour to a single rational intel-
lect. This can be compared with Nietzsche's more general comments on
intentionality in his discussion of will to power. To recall, Nietzsche had
even suggested that the boundary between chemical and organic
processes might be problematised, in that in both spheres there oc-
curred something that might be interpreted as intentional. It is on this
account that he refers to will to power as a process operative in both an-
imate and inanimate events. Of course, in one sense the description of
physical events in terms of intentional actions is simply a case of
metaphorical transfer, in which terms are borrowed from one sphere to
analyse phenomena in another. At the root of Nietzsche's thinking,
however, is the possibility that this can also open up to scrutiny the
function of the terms in their original context.
In addition to questioning of the autonomy of conscious willing and
cognising, Nietzsche indicates that the ideal of autonomy is further un-
dermined by the facticity of the human condition. No individual has
control over the environment in which they find themselves; indeed,
they find a world which is always-already there, which has shaped the
way they are, to such an extent that the notions of guilt and responsibil-
ity so central to Christian ethics seem irrelevant and misplaced. 'No-
body is responsible for the fact that they are even there,' he states (77
'Four Great Errors' §8), adding that the peculiar characteristics of one's
existence owe more to happenstance than to any necessary order, de-
noting the absence of any external foundation to give purpose to indi-
vidual human existence.2
This brief summary of Nietzsche's writing on human agency and
cognition indicates that the target of his criticism is not belief in the
subject as such, but the transcendent cognitive subject recurring
throughout the metaphysical tradition. The rational, autonomous and,
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

ultimately, guilty subject of metaphysics is replaced by the notion of the

self as an enigma. As Nietzsche asks in Daybreak, 'Is this not the "terri-
ble" truth, that whatever one knows of an action never suffices to per-
form it, that no-one has yet built a bridge from the cognition to the act
in even one single case? Actions are never what they seem' (D §i 16).
Moreover, just as Nietzsche's general attack on epistemology is moti-
vated by anticipation of the impending crisis of nihilism, so too his con-
cern with the subject is driven by the sense that the subject of moderni-
ty is trapped within a self-negating logic.

Origins
Despite Nietzsche's varied criticisms of subjectivity, the self is never-
theless more than simply a discursive fiction.This will seem a somewhat
startling claim, given my previous emphasis on Nietzsche's critique of
the 'ideology' of the given. However, a distinction has to be made be-
tween Nietzsche's emphasis on the historicity of consciousness and his
recognition of the subject as a problematic 'existent' in modernity. Fur-
ther, while Nietzsche's attack on the misconceptions of the Cartesian
notion of the subject is partly aimed at the deluded belief in the gram-
mar of subjective agency, it also sets the metaphysical notion against an
expanded definition of the self in which, for example, the body plays as
important part in informing cognitive and ethical activity. In keeping
with his general interpretative stance, Nietzsche clearly does not regard
conscious subjectivity as an anterior entity that was 'discovered' at
some time in the history of western culture. The key text in this regard
is the second essay of On the Genealogy of Morals on ' "Guilt," "Bad Con-
science" and the Like.' It presents Nietzsche's only extended account of
the genesis of the modern subject. His critique therefore takes issue
with the notion of the subject as an ahistorical entity. In contrast, his
outline of its origins emphasises both that the subject is an emergent
phenomenon and that the subject bears the traces of the various histor-
ical practices that produced it.
At the root of Nietzsche's account is a theory of the economic ori-
gins of the subject. Economic rights are 'older even than the beginnings
of any kind of social forms of organisation and alliances: it was rather

60
 NIETZSCHE S SUBJECT

out of the most rudimentary form of personal legal rights that the bud-
ding sense of exchange, contract, guilt, right, obligation, settlement,
first transferred itself to the coarsest and most elementary social com-
plexes' (OGM II §8). Specifically, the origin of the metaphysical subject
as a self-conscious moral agent lies in the relation of debtor and credi-
tor; transgression of the rights of the individual, of social norms, puts
the transgressor into the position of debtor, for the economic relation
served as the model for moral values, indeed becomes transformed into
a moral relation. In addition, Nietzsche traces the emergence of the
self-conscious subject back to an inhibition of the discharge of outward-
ly directed energies. In a now famous passage, he argues that 'The
whole inner world, originally thin as if stretched between two mem-
branes, extended and expanded, acquired depth, breadth and height in
the same measure as outward discharge was inhibited' (OGM II §22).
This set of external constraints, originally legal and economic in nature,
becomes moralised, giving rise to the taboos constituting, in particular,
Christian ethics. The external order thus becomes internalised, and this
internalisation produces the inner depth characteristic of the metaphys-
ical subject. Moreover, self-consciousness becomes, in this account,
synonymous with the feeling of guilt and indebtedness, even in the ab-
sence of an actual creditor. If one is missing, a creditor is invented, and
Nietzsche interprets the practice of ancestor worship in this context,
most notably, in the fact that ancestors become, in addition to figures of
fear, also objects of gratitude. This logic of indebtedness lies ultimately
at the root of the ideology of metaphysics, for as a constitutive lack of
the subject it gives rise to the need for redemption, of which the search
for certitude is one example. Nietzsche states that 'from now on the
bad conscience is firmly rooted, eating into him, and spreading within
him, polyp-like, until finally the irredeemable debt gives rise to the
conception of irredeemable penance, the idea that it cannot be dis-
charged (eternal punishment).' At the same time as the metaphysical
drive for totality, Nietzsche sees the constitutive lack of the subject as
also leading to nihilism. Not only is life itself deemed as beyond re-
demption, the primal debt is transferred to the creditor, 'whether we
think of the causa prima of the human, of the beginning of the human
race, of its ancestor, who is now burdened with a curse ("Adam,""Orig-

61
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

inal Sin," "Lack of Freedom of the Will") or of nature, from whose

womb humanity came into being and into which the principle of evil is
now projected' (ibid.).
Nietzsche's outline of the constitutive function of indebtedness of-
fers a further perspective on the crisis of nihilism. In particular, the pes-
simism produced by the bankruptcy of inherited values finds its corre-
late in the process of self-denigration of the metaphysical subject.
Where his general account of modernity indicates the way in which
passive nihilism becomes manifest as an 'objective' pessimism about val-
ues, so the guilty subject of modernity becomes prone to a 'subjective'
pessimism in which the highest ideal is self-annihilation. Thus Nietzsche
writes of the 'inexorable, fundamental, and deepest suspicion about
ourselves that is more and more gaining control of us Europeans' (GS
§346), a phenomenon that will see its aesthetic inflections in the operas
of Richard Wagner. Moreover, the founding values of the subject, its
perpetual indebtedness, are self-defeating in the same way as the values
of metaphysics. The path to crisis is in some sense inevitable.
Elsewhere Nietzsche offers an alternative interpretation of the ori-
gins of the subject. In The Gay Science, for example, consciousness is
produced as a consequence of the demands of socialisation, in particu-
lar the need for inter-subjective relations; 'consciousness in general
only developed out of the pressure of the need to communicate — from
the outset it was only necessary, only of any use, between individuals
(especially between those giving orders and those receiving them) and
only developed in proportion to the level of its utility. Consciousness is
actually only a network for connecting individuals to one another' (GS
§3 £4). Here Nietzsche is offering a rather different theory, although it
is important to note that for both consciousness emerges because of the
demands of the process of socialisation. Yet even though these accounts
are not identical, this need not be overly problematic. In keeping with
the notion of the complexity of the subject, Nietzsche is exploring its
various origins and functions. In this regard it is important to take note
of the purpose of his genealogy of the subject. For an essential aspect of
his genealogical method is the exploration of the shifting meanings that
have been attached to a particular concept or cultural praxis. In con-
trast to the Platonic order of unchanging ideal meanings and changing

62
 NIETZSCHE S SUBJECT

mundane phenomena, for Nietzsche it is more often the meanings that

alter while the substance of the praxis remains the same. This is the case
too with the self; its original function and identity have been subjected
to successive demands and transformations. Its multifarious origins
have thus given it a complexity that has subsequently expanded its
range of possibilities. Moreover, while the metaphysical subject has
emerged and adapted to the demands of the social order, the Uber-
mensch, in its struggle for 'heroic individualism,' as one study has
termed it, aims to carve out an individual identity which is non-
relational.24 Nietzsche's conception of the metaphysical subject as a
temporary phenomenon has to be read in the light of his thoughts
on the Ubermensch; the latter consists of the cultivation of a post-
metaphysical self which can only be conceived as possible on the basis of
some a priori capacity for a certain kind of self-relation.
Nietzsche's account is therefore less one of the emergence of con-
sciousness per se than of the birth of modern self-consciousness out of
a more primitive form of consciousness, the latter having already been
constituted by a variety of organic and communicative needs. In this re-
gard one can build on Nietzsche's account of the genealogy of the guilty
conscience to construct three stages in the development of subjectivity.
In the first stage, the subject acts purely on instinct; its energies are di-
rected wholly outwardly towards its engagement with the world. In the
second stage, the imposition of external constraint, in particular the
subject's enmeshing within a legal economy, creates an inner depth in
which, for the first time, the subject becomes self-conscious. In the
third stage, this legal economy is moralised, and the subject internalises
this process, giving rise to the moral subject of modernity.
The sense of a conflict between the subject of modernity and a pre-
modern self is already apparent in the second of the Untimely Medita-
tions, where Nietzsche offers a diagnosis of modern man as alienated in
a realm of reified historical knowledge. Knowledge has become discon-
nected from life, and in this process 'there is betrayed the most charac-
teristic quality of modern man: the remarkable antithesis between an
interior which fails to correspond to any exterior, and an exterior
which fails to correspond to any interior — an antithesis unknown to the
peoples of earlier times' (UM II §4). Nietzsche's comments on the de-
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

velopment of an inner self anticipate his more sustained examination of

the development of the guilty conscience in On the Genealogy of Morals,
and they also look forward to his exposition of the meaning of asceti-
cism. For while one cause of the inhibited modern self is the internali-
sation of social taboo, a further origin is the ascetic ideal. The 'ascetic
priest' who, Nietzsche emphasises, 'appears in almost every age' em-
bodies the same self-denial demanded by the morality of Christianity. In
the case of Christianity, the priest or hermit, as a specific instance of as-
ceticism, is driven by a sense of'life as a wrong road on which one must
finally walk back to the point where it begins, or as a mistake that is put
right by deeds' (OGM III § 11). This ascetic self-denial is of course an au-
gury of the nihilism of modernity. Asceticism underlies the metaphysi-
cal denigration of the senses — the philosopher is a specific instance of
the ascetic priest — and its self-denial results in the same pessimistic
passivity as the onset of nihilism. 'If possible, will and desire are abol-
ished altogether; all that produces affects and "blood" is avoided. . . .
The result, expressed in moral-psychological terms, is "selflessness,"
"sanctification"; in physiological terms: hypnotisation . . . the mini-
mum metabolism at which life will still subsist without really entering
consciousness' (OGM III §17).
A crucial element in Nietzsche's tracing of the imposition of modern
consciousness is therefore recognition of a more primitive self. In the
Gay Science he notes that while the development of consciousness is de-
termined by language, there is also a more primordial layer of mental
activity which precedes linguistic articulation: 'To say it once more:
the human being, like every thinking creature, is always thinking,
but doesn't know it; thinking of which one becomes conscious is only
the slightest part of it, let us say: the most superficial, the worst part: —
for only this conscious thinking occurs in words, that is to say, in com-
municative signs, whereby the origin of consciousness covers itself up'
(GS §3£^). As he notes rather more elusively elsewhere, 'Countless
dark bodies are to be inferred beside the sun' (BGE §196); hence the
modern subject has been achieved through the suppression of numer-
ous invisible and unconscious factors. It is this notion of the other of the
modern subject that underpins Nietzsche's assertion that 'Between us,

64
 NIETZSCHE S SUBJECT

it is not at all necessary to be rid of the "soul" itself and to do without

one the oldest and most respectable hypotheses. . . . However the road
to new concepts and refinements of the hypothesis of the soul remains
open: and notions such as "mortal soul" and "soul as plurality of sub-
jects" and "soul as social structure of drives and affects" want to have
their rights within science' (BGE § 12). The self is thus composed of a va-
riety of drives and affects, a notion which according to Nietzsche's own
criteria of judgement is superior to that of metaphysics both in that it
embraces a wider set of perspectives and in that it promotes the idea of
the self as an enigma.
At this point one might object that Nietzsche is just repeating a the-
ory of the soul which has seen wide currency in earlier thinkers. As I
noted earlier, even in Plato there is an oscillation between a concept of
the soul as a simple unity and one of the soul as a manifold of drives. It
is for this very reason that in Republic Plato recommends a strict educa-
tion and training for the philosopher-kings precisely so that the rational
element of their soul might gain mastery over the others, or to use his
striking metaphor from the Phaedrus, so that it might become the chari-
oteer of the soul.25 Similarly, although Descartes holds to the notion of
an unchanging pure thinking cogito, the unity of consciousness is in Kant
a provisional one, brought about by a synthesising act of cognition.
However, while there are certain similarities, it is important to not
overstate them. For example, while Plato offers a clearly compartmen-
talised and neatly structured subject, the self in Nietzsche is much more
haphazard and chaotic. Nietzsche's self is a collection of cognitive and
physiological elements, to which the notion of unity is alien. Likewise,
in contrast to Plato, Nietzsche rejects the ideal of reason governing the
soul; indeed, the Platonic ideal is one more example of the ascetic
drive, in which the energies of the self are directed against themselves.
In any case, the carefully ordered structure of the Platonic subject is
achieved at the price of denying the fluid and dynamic nature of the self,
whose elements are arranging themselves in ever varying configura-
tions. The self is not a permanent entity, not even a plural substance, but
should be regarded instead as a dynamic system, the elements of which
are brought together into various configurations, which themselves are
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

subject to constant change. In this respect Nietzsche's criticism of the

metaphysical subject focuses on the way in which a particular configu-
ration, centred around the suppression of affectivity, has become con-
gealed, rather like the mummifying effect of philosophical logic.
Suggestive comparisons have been made between Nietzsche's ap-
proach to the question of the self and Wittgenstein's critique of notions
of the 'essential' self or the 'substantial' self in his later writings. 26
Thinking, for Wittgenstein, is not a mental state which can somehow be
separated from one's active relation towards objects and the world in
general. As he notes, 'Of course we cannot separate his thinking from
his activity. For the thinking is not an accompaniment of the work any
more than of thoughtful speech.'27 Consciousness is thus a complex
web of interrelated emotional and cognitive dispositions to habitual
ways of acting in the world. Indeed, Wittgenstein is perhaps more criti-
cal of the subject than even Nietzsche, for he dismisses talk of mental
states as implying an underlying substance that undergoes various
states.28 He adopts a quasi-behaviourist stance in which ascriptions of
conscious intention preceding acts are seen as symptoms of a reliance
on the concept of cause and effect: 'When people talk about grapholo-
gy, physiognomies and such-like they constantly say "clearly character
must be expressed in handwriting somehow . . .""Must": that means we
are going to apply this picture come what may.'29This type of interpre-
tation projected onto actions is reminiscent of Nietzsche's criticisms of
the metaphysical morality of intentions, though Wittgenstein is more
concerned with the grammar of psychological explanations than with
their history. Nietzsche, in contrast, is interested above all in the value
judgements implicit in such ascriptions of intention and in the fact that
they have a history. As he notes, 'During the longest part of human his-
tory — so-called prehistoric times — the value or disvalue of an action
was derived from its consequences. . . . In the last ten thousand years,
however, one has reached the point . . . where it is no longer the con-
sequences but the origin of an action that one allows to decide its value'

For Wittgenstein, therefore, consciousness is not a static, a prior de-

termined substance, but enmeshed in the actions performed, which

66
 NIETZSCHE S SUBJECT

parallels Nietzsche's insistence on the artificial nature of the separation

of agent from act. Naturally one cannot posit a direct link between
Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, but one can see in their philosophies a
shared project of formulating an alternative model of subjectivity to the
Cartesian cogito, without resorting to the denial of any mode of con-
sciousness whatsoever. In contrast, the scepticism that denies subjec-
tivity per se paradoxically reiterates the essentialist position. This is an
acute problem in the anti-humanism of Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari
or Foucault, who end up positing in the place of the Cartesian subject
something which has the same characteristics.31 This is apparent in the
work of Foucault, whose initial anti-humanism turns out to be self-
defeating since it requires what it seeks to deny, namely, a subjective
medium of self-reflection. Similarly, while Derrida rejects any notion of
a spontaneous ego, replacing it with a subject mediated by the writing
of language, the concepts of ecriture and differance, have almost the same
characteristics of spontaneity as the autonomous subject he is cri-
tiquing. While the 'desiring-machine' of Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-
Oedipus does not fall into exactly the same category, since it does not
stress the linguistic mediation of the subject, it still falls prey to a naive
naturalism.32 For Deleuze and Guattari pure, spontaneous positive de-
sire seems to present an authentic primeval state prior to any social or
linguistic determination. Nietzsche's positing of selfhood as a given
does not involve him in an inconsistency. He need not be regarded as
covertly reinstating a metaphysical position. Admittedly, the self is only
a given inasmuch as it has been constituted by the web of contingent re-
lations produced by interpretative will to power. Hence it does not have
any necessary essence which might be said to somehow exist independ-
ent of the interpretative process of which it is the result. Nevertheless
this web of relations is our world, and the self is equally enmeshed
within that web of relations and fulfils specific functions in that web. It
is as real as is the interpretative fabric of the world, and this is the crux
of the issue. Just as the function of'knowledge' has been systematically
misinterpreted, so too the self has been viewed through a distorting
lens which, worst of all, has led to the imposition of an oppressive and
self-negating model of subjectivity.

67
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

Reconstruction
Nietzsche views the subject as a confused multiplicity, lacking any a pri-
ori centre or any single regulating principle.This obviously raises impor-
tant questions with regard to his call for the return to an authentic self.
What does he mean, for example, when he gives Ecce Homo the subtitle
'How One Becomes What One Is'? How can one become oneself, given
that there is no essential self to become, or to which one can return?
Nietzsche's own response to the question hardly clarifies the issue. He
comments that 'To become what one is, one must not have the slightest
inkling of what one is . . . where nosce te ipsum would be the recipe for
disaster, self-forgetting, self-misunderstanding . . . becomes Reason it-
self (EH 'Why I Am So Clever' §9). Evidently becoming oneself cannot
derive its force from the Delphic command to 'know thyself,' which
Nietzsche here quotes in Latin. Becoming what one is consists in rec-
ognising the self as an activity and, ideally, as a process of constant
self-overcoming. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche's answer to the
nineteenth-century Bildungsroman, the goal is not self-knowledge in or-
der to have an understanding of one's limits. The self-knowledge of
Goethe's Willhelm Meister is replaced by the self-overcoming of Nietz-
sche's hero. 'Human being is something that must be overcome' is the
prophetic cry of Zarathustra (Z I 'Of the Joys and Passions'), and with
this we are brought back to the endless dialectic of interpretation.
The dialectic of the interpretative process must of necessity al-
ways be incomplete: it always harbours the possibility of its own self-
overcoming, and hence there can always new interpretations and per-
spectives. The ideal 'objective' interpretation will therefore bring as
many individual perspectives as possible into a configuration. Becoming
what one is means precisely this: an interpretative understanding of
oneself, whose one-sidedness is revealed at the moment of its articula-
tion. Will to power motivating interpretation always desires more, al-
ways desires more complete interpretations, the revelation of greater
possibilities. The interpretation of the self, the recognition of oneself as
always already interpreting and interpreted, is not a discovering of
one's limits; it is an expansion of those limits. Hence we are restored to
the ideal which Nietzsche had already expounded in his genealogical

68
 NIETZSCHE S SUBJECT

study of asceticism: it is the ideal of allowing as many of the affects to

speak out as possible. In the case of the self, it is to give the affects their
proper place in the society of the soul rather than deny their very exis-
tence, as in Descartes, or admit their existence but use oppressive vio-
lence against them, as in Plato or the Church Fathers. Nietzsche states,
4
One is fruitful only at the cost of being rich in contradictions; one re-
mains young only on condition the soul does not relax, does not long
for peace. . . . Nothing has grown more alien to us than that desidera-
tum of former times, "peace of mind," the Christian desideratum' (77
'Morality as Anti-Nature' §3).
Interpretation is also mastery, however, and application of the
process of interpretation to oneself is also self-mastery, though self-
mastery of a quite different order from the self-subjugation of the asce-
tic ideal. Nietzsche envisages a control over the affects which neverthe-
less does not deprive them of their vitality. In the summer of 1888 he
writes, 'Mastery over the passions, not a weakening or a rotting of
them. The greater the will's power of mastery becomes, the more free-
dom can be given to the passions. The great human is great through the
room for play of his desires: however he is strong enough to make these
wild animals into pets' (KSA 13:16 [7]). The Ubermensch, as the ideal
self-interpreting, self-creating being, is an aristocracy of the affects:
there is order without subjugation, a sense of purpose without the im-
position of a restrictive goal. The affects must be orchestrated so as to
maximise their potential, while will to power recognises the necessity
of a permanent readiness to change their configuration. In Ecce Homo
Nietzsche offers an account of his own ideal of self-creation which mir-
rors precisely the reading I have given when he writes, 'For the task of a
revaluation of all values perhaps more capacities were necessary than
have ever been together in one individual, above all contrary capacities
too, without allowing them to disturb and destroy each other. Hierar-
chy among these capacities; distance; the art of separating without cre-
ating enmity; to mix nothing; to reconcile nothing; a monstrous multi-
plicity which is nevertheless the opposite of chaos; this was the
precondition, the long secret work and artistry of my instinct' (EH
'Why I Am So Clever' §9). Once again in this passage one can see a re-
flection of the process of the interpretative dialectic; competing capaci-

69
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

ties must be brought into some kind of order, yet into an order which
does not rob them of their particularity, much as in interpretation indi-
vidual perspectives must be allowed to maximise the general range of
perspectives, without necessarily tyrannising the others.
For all its apparent liberalism, Nietzsche's freeing of the subject from
metaphysics has anything but a liberal ideal of the self in mind. This is
stated most clearly in Beyond Good and Evil, where he maintains that
'Every enhancement of the type "man" has so far been the work of an
aristocratic society. . . . Without that pathos of distance that grows out of
the ingrained difference between strata . . . that other, more mysteri-
ous pathos could not have grown up either — the craving for an ever
new widening of distances within the soul itself, the development of
ever higher, rarer, more remote, further-stretching, more comprehen-
sive states . . . the continual "self-overcoming of man"' (BGE §2^7).
This view is followed later by an exploration of the nature of aristocrat-
ic morality based on hardness — 'every aristocratic morality is intoler-
ant' (BGE §262) — which is formed in antagonism to a hostile and re-
sistant environment. When the latter has been overcome, Nietzsche
argues, the need for hardness disappears, and there emerges mediocrity
and decadence.
Nietzsche's emphasis on the aristocratic nature of self-overcoming
becomes clear, too, in his many objections to 'modern man.' Although
his writings have in the second half of this century been adopted largely
by left-wing thinkers, his thought also displays an embarrassing political
conservatism which is difficult to square with Foucauldian or Deleuzian
politics of liberated desire.33 Twilight of the Idols offers a clear expression
of his contempt for the democratic egalitarian ideal. Liberal institu-
tions, he notes, are a form of decadence as soon as they appear. Free-
dom is not something which should be guaranteed in order to produce
an environment free of tension. The only freedom worth having is that
attained through struggle, and the greater the resistance to be over-
come, the greater the value of the freedom achieved. He writes, 'My
concept of freedom. The value of a thing lies not in what one can
achieve with it, but in what one has paid for it, — what it costs us. I shall
give an example. Liberal institutions . . . undermine the will to power,
they are the levelling of mountain and valley given moral legitimacy

70
 NIETZSCHE S SUBJECT

. . . with them the herd animal always triumphs' (77 'Skirmishes of an

Untimely One' §38). Nietzsche's writing is littered with disparaging
references to the 'herd,' to 'herd instinct.' Modernity, he argues, con-
sists in the 'degeneration and diminution of the human into a perfect
herd animal (or, as they like to say, into the perfect individual of the
"free society")' (BGE §2o 3 ). 34
Nietzsche's aristocratic politics are of cardinal importance to his ac-
count of the Ubermensch. As I have claimed above, allowing the affects
to 'speak' does not imply an abandoning of oneself to the passions.
There must also be an ordering of the passions, to promote the exis-
tence of the Ubermensch, to increase its power. Otherwise a lack of di-
rection results in so much wasted expenditure. This lack of restraint,
this pure affirmativity had been seen early on by Nietzsche as one of the
main weaknesses of modern culture. Already in 'Homer's Competi-
tion,' the fifth of his Five Prefaces to Unwritten Books presented to Cosima
Wagner in 18 7 2, he had compared and contrasted Greek culture with
that of his own time. The central feature distinguishing the two was the
lack of negation in modern culture. One canfleshout in concrete terms
the meaning of this strikingly Hegelian sentiment as follows. The guid-
ing force of all Greek culture, seen most clearly in the Homeric poems,
was the agonistic desire to compete; Greek culture was founded on
strife, competition, the aim to excel. The Greek word for virtue,
'arete,' had the sense of excellence, rather than the humility associated
with Christian ideas of moral virtue. The scorn of Homer is reserved
not for evil doers, but forThersites, for being weak, for lacking the aris-
tocratic status which would signify his supremacy over others, becom-
ing also the object of ridicule. So too the performance of tragedies was
not executed merely for its own sake, but as part of a competition in
honour of Dionysus. Even the Platonic dialogues were written, accord-
ing to Nietzsche, out of this desire to do better than the rest, to show
Socrates arguing with greater eloquence than the Sophists and making
them appear foolish, even if the ostensible aim of the dialectic was to
gain knowledge by mutual consent. As Nietzsche says, 'From childhood
onwards every Greek found in himself a burning desire to be a tool for
the health of his own city in the battles between cities: therein was his
ambition kindled, and therein was it reined in and restrained. Therefore
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

individuals were freer in Antiquity, because their goals were nearer and
more palpable' (KSA i, p. 790).
The Greek affirmation of life was thus possible only on the basis of a
determinate negation. The Greek could not use his energies unless
channelled into a specific purpose, which involved a denial of some pos-
sibilities of action and an affirmation of others. Yet modern culture,
with its democratic and egalitarian ideals, has forgotten this fact and has
engendered a sickly kind of human, one who desires everything indis-
criminately, who is caught up by a debilitating vertigo in the face of the
infinite and lapses into a paralysis of action. As Nietzsche states, 'like
swift-footed Achilles in the similes of Zeno the Eleate, infinity restricts
him, he doesn't even catch up with the tortoise' (ibid.).
This theme is followed through to the last years of his career, specifi-
cally in his ambivalent reading of Socrates. On the one hand, Socrates is
seen as responsible for the inauguration of metaphysics and the disman-
tling of Greek aesthetic culture — 'I recognised Socrates and Plato as
symptoms of decay' (77 'The Problem of Socrates' §2) — and Socrates' es-
pousal of dialectical inquiry was the revenge of a plebeian on an essen-
tially aristocratic culture. On the other, Nietzsche also recognises that
behind Socrates' critical impulse lies the same will to power that drove
the agonistic culture of Greece: 'he discovered a new kind of agon . . . he
was the first fencing-master in it for the aristocratic circles of Athens.
. . . He fascinated because he touched on the agonal instinct of the Hel-
lenes' (77'The Problem of Socrates' §8).Throughout his writings Nietz-
sche emphasises the necessity for resistance, negation and above all suf-
fering in the production of the Ubermensch. Humans suffer in the name
of the production of higher culture and higher forms of life, and it is the
precondition of the achievement of the Ubermensch that the majority of
mankind should suffer. In 'The Greek State,' the third of the Five Prefaces,
Nietzsche justifies slavery in the ancient world as a necessity to ensure
great men: 'The suffering of wretchedly living people must be increased
in order to facilitate the production of an artistic world by a limited
number of Olympian humans' (KSA 1, p. 767).
On the individual level too, the self cannot produce a wider horizon
of self-interpreting and self-creation except by overcoming resistance,
by suffering. In the Twilight of the Idols he remarks that 'Today the indi-
 NIETZSCHE S SUBJECT

vidual can only be made possible by pruning,' adding that the root of
modern decadence lies in the refusal to accept this need for discipline
and restraint (7/'Skirmishes of an Untimely One' §41). This picture is
supplemented in Beyond Good and Evil in Nietzsche's declaration that
'Every morality is, as opposed to laisser aller, a bit of tyranny against na-
ture, but this is in itself no objection' (BGE §188). The objection arises
when, as in the case of asceticism, the tyranny against nature becomes
unproductive. Modern culture is a case of this unproductive tyranny,
since it seeks to deny, in a manner similar to the ascetic ideal of meta-
physics, the dynamic flux of the self. The Cartesian subject is posited as
a substance untainted by the dynamics of the external world. Plato's
soul is immortal, and not only does one lead a just life to be sure of a
healthy soul, but also with an eye to the possible judgement in the af-
terlife which Rhadamanthus might pass on one's actions. In the Phaedo
Plato's Socrates sees the symmetrical harmony of the soul as an indica-
tion of its immortality, of its resistance to change and decay. Likewise
modernity seeks rest from the ceaseless struggle and conflict which
determines the self and which is the source of the energies for self-
overcoming. In contrast, Nietzsche's anti-metaphysical rejection of the
possibility of absolute knowledge, combined with his adoption of the
dialectic of interpretation with its implicit goal of attaining the Ab-
solute, means that there never can be a moment of satiety, of rest. Will
to power will always be confronted by the possibility of more; indeed,
life itself can never be fully exhausted, for it is always possible to pro-
duce more interpretations. In contrast, Nietzsche writes, for the mod-
ern human the 'most fundamental longing is for the war which he is to
finally come to a stop; happiness is to him . . . pre-eminently the hap-
piness of resting, of being undisturbed, of being sated, of unity achieved
at last.' Nietzsche compares him to the higher type of individual, whose
instinct to live is born of precisely the opposite drive, the drive to wage
war, the refusal to be satisfied, the individual who has achieved self-
mastery, but only the mastery of his drives in order to direct them to-
wards dissolving his own being and resurrecting another: 'Thus arise
those magical ungraspable and unfathomable ones, those enigmatic hu-
mans predestined to victory and seduction, whose most beautiful ex-
pression is Alcibiades and Caesar . . . amongst artists perhaps Leonardo

73
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

da Vinci' (BGE § 200). The greatness of mankind is not to be sought in

the noble simplicity which Winckelmann thought he had found in the
Greeks. Neither is it to be sought in the ascetic ideal of self-knowledge
and self-denial. It is rather more to be found in 'his range and multiplic-
ity, in his wholeness in the manifold' (BGE §212).
At the root of this critique of the metaphysical search for certitude is
the constitutive lack I analysed above, and in Nietzsche's reading the de-
sire for a redemptive fulfilment is founded on the need to make good
that lack. Clearly the metaphysical subject of modernity remains caught
up within an economy of lack, while the Ubermensch uses this incom-
pleteness as a source of creativity. The state of the Ubermensch, as rep-
resentative of the post-metaphysical subject, is always provisional and
contingent. It consists of an openness to its constant potentiality for
new interpretations of self and the world, a form of individual being
which always awaits its own dissolution. As Nietzsche says, 'Losing one-
self. Once one has found oneself one must understand how from time to
time to lose oneself. . . . For to the thinker it is disadvantageous to be
tied to one person all the time' (HAH'WS' §306).
In keeping with his aristocratic disdain for modernity, Nietzsche em-
phasises that the Ubermensch is a solitary being. Greatness does not lie
in the herd; democracy and utilitarianism, with their concern for the
common weal, can only bring about a decline of human existence and a
weakening of the instincts. Nietzsche writes, 'He shall be greatest who
can be most solitary, most hidden, most deviant, the human being be-
yond good and evil, the master of his virtues, the one who is overrich in
will' (77'Skirmishes' §4^).The Ubermensch is consequently also seen as
the antithesis of the 'average man,' whom modernity has promoted to
the status of norm. In contrast to this averageness of modern culture,
'Every choice human being strives instinctively for a citadel and a secre-
cy where he is saved from the crowd, the many, the great majority —
where he may forget "men who are the rule"' (BGE §26). One hesitates
to name afigureembodying those values Nietzsche views as paradigmat-
ic, but his comments on Goethe in Twilight of the Idols make clear the kind
of person he envisages. Goethe has the naturalness of the Renaissance
man, whereby he refers to that kind of person for whom existence is a
constant challenge to grow. 'He enlisted the aid of history, natural sci-

74
 NIETZSCHE S SUBJECT

ence, Antiquity, especially Spinoza, and above all practical activity/ notes
Nietzsche. 'He didn't cut himself off from life, he plunged himself into
it; he was not disheartened and took as much as possible on himself, over
himself, into himself. What he wanted was wholeness; he fought against
the separation of reason, sensibility, feeling, w i l l . . . he disciplined him-
self for totality, he created himself (77 'Skirmishes' §49). Goethe is the
ideal future kind of individual, who keeps himself open to as many styles
of understanding and being as possible, yet without lapsing into the
modern hankering for absolute freedom, which as noted earlier leads to
a paralysis of action; his is the 'wholeness in the manifold.' In contrast,
the 'Freedom I don't mean' of modernity with its 'demand for independ-
ence, for free development, for laisser aller,' devoid of any restraint and
self-discipline, 'is a symptom of decadence" (77 'Skirmishes' §41).3S
Nietzsche's notion of the Ubermensch or free spirit is formulated in
opposition to, indeed, is an inversion of, the account of the subject in
Hegel. This is apparent in a number of ways. First, Nietzsche's insistence
on the noble soul as a model of human self-overcoming stands in com-
plete contradiction to Hegel's own model, in which it is the 'bondsman'
that achieves true self-consciousness. Specifically, while in the struggle
for recognition between selves it is the bondsman that loses and submits
to the other, the master, while having ensured victory over the bonds-
man, remains caught within a reified understanding of his own identity,
unaware of its dependence on recognition by the other. Nietzsche's cri-
tique of his model is evident, for example, in his playing off 'slave moral-
ity' against that of the masters. His essay in On the Genealogy of Morals on
the origin of moral evaluations clearly pits one system of values against
another, and his sympathy for the value system of the masters is all too
apparent. Hence he expresses his dismay 'that we no longer have any-
thing left to fear in man; that the maggot "man" is swarming in the fore-
ground; that the "tame man," the hopelessly mediocre and insipid man
has already learned to feel himself as the goal and zenith' (OGMI § 11).
Second, Hegel's tracing of the development of self-consciousness out of
consciousness stresses its relational basis; although the master ultimately
comes to delude himself about the basis of his identity, the achievement of
self-consciousness is only carried out through the other. Against this
Nietzsche returns repeatedly to the non-relationality of the Cher-
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

mensch; the emphasis on solitude thus marks out not only a political po-
sition but also a deeper philosophical theory concerning the self. The
free spirit, noble soul or Ubermensch, to use Nietzsche's lexicon, is not
dependent on others but rather is a self-creating being, bringing into
specific and momentary configuration the chaos of elements.
On the question of the self Nietzsche thus seems at his most distant
from Hegel and dialectical thinking. However, he should not be taken at
face value. As I indicated earlier, the process of self-mastery is itself un-
dertaken through a process of productive negation, in which the 'more'
of will to power is a guiding norm. This can be seen in his talk of'more
comprehensive states' of the self (BGE §2^7). Second, though the thrust
of Nietzsche's thinking is oriented around the idea of subjective auto-
genesis, the Ubermensch is just as dependent on the slave as is Hegel's
master. The Ubermensch is constantly defined in opposition to the herd
and to the average man of modern society, and it consequently gains its
identity through negation of the other. The solitude of the Ubermensch
gains its significance as a contradiction of the social tyranny of modern
culture; it thus bears the negative imprint of modernity. Nietzsche him-
self was aware of this relation in describing himself as modern while at
the same time distancing himself from contemporary culture. Nietz-
sche's ambiguous relation to modernity mirrors his ambivalence to-
wards Hegel and dialectical thought — both its fiercest critic and its se-
cret exponent.
Nietzsche has been criticised for his inability to conceive of a com-
pletely open self, inasmuch as 'letting go of oneself,' allowing for that
reversal of customary perspectives, is always undertaken in the name of
self-interest.36 Admittedly, Nietzsche shows marked scepticism towards
all forms of altruism, and he seems to regard all human activity as
bound to some form of interest. However, the view that Nietzsche's
thought would be more accomplished if he had taken on board the
Christian perspective (as manifest in the slave's comportment in his di-
alectic with the Master), apart from being somewhat bizarre, is also
misplaced. Central to Nietzsche's project, as I have interpreted it, is the
attempt to somehow reconcile radical scepticism with faith in norma-
tivity, contingency and chaos with necessity. If we refuse to do this, if
we refuse to submit knowledge and self-knowledge to scrutiny, there is
 NIETZSCHE S SUBJECT

a potential for catastrophe. However, the way to avoid descent into re-
active nihilism is not an easy one, since it involves a substantial risk. It
involves putting all 'customary' perspectives in question, rendering
everything familiar unfamiliar. As Nietzsche says in the preface to Ecce
Homo, 'Philosophy, as I have hitherto understood it is living freely in ice
and high mountains — seeking everything strange and questionable in
existence,' to which he adds, 'Every achievement, every step forward in
knowledge follows from courage, from hardness towards oneself (EH
preface §3). It is a risky venture inasmuch as the human form of life is
one that thrives on stability, on the ossification of perspectives. Yet if we
try to imagine a self, or an interpretative practice in general, which is
not motivated by interpretative will to power, the significance of self-
overcoming, as an act which places everything on which we depend in
jeopardy, is lost. For if nothing is at stake, if there are no vested interests
at work, there is also no sense in which self-overcoming is an achieve-
ment. Letting oneself go in the name of will to power is not a form of
egoism, but rather is all the more significant an action when set against
the background of one's being as a finite, self-asserting, desiring being.
The free spirits are precisely those beings that can live by overcoming
the selfsame perspectives on which they depend.
Nietzsche is of course aware of the possibility of an absolute open-
ness, and he saw it in Buddhism. Yet this type of openness cannot ever
figure in his thought, for it is a consequence of passive or reactive ni-
hilism. All forms of appearance are felt to be mere illusion, and hence
their constitution becomes indifferent, since nothing is at stake. It is a
way of thinking that can only lead to pure inactivity, something which
Nietzsche abhors, not in the name of selfishness, but rather because that
is an easy or weak response. After all, as Georges Bataille pointed out, 7
the bondsman in Hegel's dialectic is 'open' with a view to saving his
own skin; he willingly submits to the rule of the master because it is an
easier choice than risking all in a life or death struggle. For Nietzsche
there can be no such easy option, since without accepting risk nothing
is achieved. As Zarathustra says, 'Free to die, and free in death, a sacred
sayer of no, when it is no longer time for saying yes: thus he is an expert
at life and death' (ZI 'Of the Free Death').

77
 Laughter and Sublimity

Reading The Birth of Tragedy

Nietzsche's critiques of metaphysics and of the metaphysical subject are

intimately linked with the question of modernity and the concomitant
emergence of nihilism. As I suggested earlier, Nietzsche's philosophical
critique is undertaken with a view to what he predicted would be its
catastrophic cultural consequences. However, his assault on meta-
physics, together with the substitution of the notion of interpretation,
constitutes only one aspect of the overcoming of modern culture. The
second is the restitution of an aesthetic culture; it is art that constitutes
interpretative activity above all, and it is the artist that embodies the
characteristics Nietzsche projects onto the Ubermensch. In this respect
Nietzsche's emphasis on the necessity for aesthetic revolution throws
up important parallels with Friedrich Schiller, towards whom he dis-
played some considerable ambivalence.1 In On the Aesthetic Education of
Man in a Series of Letters Schiller sees art as both reconstructing the di-
vided and alienated subject of modernity and functioning as the medi-
um through which modern man can express his freedom: 'it is only
through beauty that man makes his way to freedom.'2 Moreover
Schiller also shares Nietzsche's disdain for the common mass: aesthetic
revolution is the privilege of the few.
While the importance of art in Nietzsche's work is universally
recognised, attention tends to focus solely on The Birth of Tragedy. Being
the only full-length treatment of art in Nietzsche's oeuvre, the text
tends to dominate interpretations of the subject. It is a perfectly com-
prehensible state of affairs, inasmuch as his later writing on art remains
in many respects quite scattered and unfocused. Admittedly, the first
volume of Human All Too Human contains a section of some seventy-eight
 LAUGHTER AND SUBLIMITY

aphorisms devoted to art and artists. This concentration, however,

tends to be exceptional and is matched only by Nietzsche's later tracts
against Wagner. Consequently, my aim will be to sift through his entire
corpus in order to produce a picture of his later ideas on art and artists.
The Birth of Tragedy represents an immature expression of a philosophy
of art which is subsequently reformulated in many ways, yet which is
guided by his recurrent concern with preserving both scepticism and a
belief in normativity, 'the doctrine of lawfulness in becoming and of
play in necessity' (KSA i, p. 833). As such one might argue that Nietz-
sche's attempt to come to grips with the question of art is what gives
shape to his wider criticism of metaphysics, for 'Only the aesthetic per-
son sees the world thus, who has learnt from the artist and the work of
art how the struggle of multiplicity can nevertheless carry within itself
lawfulness and right . . . how necessity and play, conflict and harmony
have to come together in the production of the work of art' (ibid., p.
831). Despite its immaturity, The Birth of Tragedy remains central to
Nietzsche's oeuvre, alluding to and introducing themes recurrent
throughout his thinking. In addition, despite the claims on behalf of his
own originality, Nietzsche's philosophy of art has to be understood as
emerging from the aesthetic tradition. Nietzsche's philosophy of art has
often been seen as heavily informed by Schopenhauerian Kulturpessimis-
mus.4This is difficult to square either with Nietzsche's emphatic rejec-
tion of cultural pessimism, or with Nietzsche's critique of metaphysics,
of which Schopenhauer's doctrine of the absolute reality of the will of-
fers a good example; in The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche already speaks of
'will' as a sign, a linguistic fiction, rather than a metaphysical reality. I
have indicated parallels between the work of Nietzsche and Schiller, and
I shall return to Schiller later. However, of equal importance in under-
standing the context of Nietzsche's aesthetics is Kant. Nietzsche's writ-
ing constitutes a perpetual impulse to elude the thought of Kant, whose
presence repeatedly reinscribes itself within the Nietzschean corpus.
Thus The Birth of Tragedy is informed profoundly by both Hegel and
Kant. It is Hegelian in the dialectic of Apollo-Dionysus (and in Nietz-
sche's notion of the redundancy of art in modern culture), and it is
Kantian in his use of the discourse of the sublime to narrate the function
of the tragic. This claim is in itself not particularly original — Nietzsche

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himself recognised this — but it is frequently overlooked, supplanted by

considerations of the abstraction of the Apollonian and the Dionysian,
without taking into account the genealogy of the ideas at work in The
Birth of Tragedy and his later writings on art.
In his essay 'Genesis and Genealogy' Paul de Man subjects Nietz-
sche's book to an exemplary deconstructive interpretation.6 At its heart
is the contradiction between the Apollo-Dionysus opposition and the
rhetoric of The Birth of Tragedy; Nietzsche brings a * negative valorisa-
tion' to the (Apollonian) category of representation, but at the same
time claims to make present in Apollonian rhetoric the Dionysian wis-
dom that purportedly exceeds representation. The authority with which
Nietzsche speaks about tragedy doesn't square with the thematics of the
text in which textual representation is a form of illusion. It is a problem
familiar from Plato; Plato attacks the arts for their inability to represent
the truth as such, then relies on aesthetic devices such as dramatic dia-
logue and myth to present the 'truth' of his discourse.
De Man's reading has been subject of a number of criticisms, to the
effect that Nietzsche does not rely on a simple opposition of the real
and the representation, or truth and illusion. The Apollonian and the
Dionysian are equi-primordial, neither derived from nor secondary to
the other. Both are to be seen as forms of representation (Nietzsche
uses the term 'Erscheinungform' or 'form of appearance'), a term which
even de Man recognises Nietzsche had used in his unpublished writing
of the same period. In a long fragment from spring 1871, Nietzsche re-
peatedly subverts the Schopenhauerian vocabulary of the Will in The
Birth of Tragedy by stressing that the Will is itself an ' Erscheinungsform,' or
'form of appearance,' and he regards it as 'the primordial form of ap-
pearance whereby all becoming is to be understood' (KSA 7:12 [1]).
Although such criticisms are timely and perceptive, the argument
tends to get bogged down in the discussion of the Apollonian and the
Dionysian in abstracto, rather than cashing out in concrete terms the
precise significance of these two ill-defined terms. While they are cen-
tral to The Birth of Tragedy, it is perhaps useful to sideline them tem-
porarily in order to examine the function of the tragic in The Birth of
Tragedy. The key issue would then be what Nietzsche means with his idea
that tragedy provides metaphysical consolation through the mimesis of

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human destruction. One can then examine the relation of the lofty ab-
stractions of the Dionysian and the Apollonian with the concrete praxis
of tragic drama. Consequently, it is necessary first to locate Nietzsche's
book within the history of nineteenth-century philosophies of tragedy,
in particular, those texts that map out the relation of the tragic to the
sublime. In this respect it is significant that Nietzsche praises Schiller's
understanding of the meaning of the tragic chorus, for Schiller plays a
seminal role in making explicit the connection between the sublime, in
particular the dynamic sublime of Kant's Critique of Judgement, and the
affirmative pleasure derived from tragedy. This connection was later ex-
ploited by the romantics and Schopenhauer, and it also organises the
conceptual framework of Nietzsche's treatise.

Sublimity
The concept of the sublime has a long history, beginning with Longi-
nus's On the Sublime, the rediscovery of which led to a proliferation of
works on the subject in eighteenth-century Britain. I do not intend to
embark on a history of the sublime. That would require a separate study
and in any case has been exhaustively discussed elsewhere. However,
its salient aspects are worth recalling briefly. In Longinus the sublime
denotes that moment when the individual's affective and cognitive dis-
position towards the world are subjected to a sense of displacement. He
writes, 'amazement and wonder exert invincible power and force and
get the better of every hearer. . . . Sublimity . . . produced at the right
moment, tears everything up like a whirlwind.'10 I refer to this process
as a 'displacement' because the terms which Longinus uses to describe
the effect of the sublime, ekstasis (literally, 'standing outside oneself),
and the action of the 'whirlwind,' diaphoreo (lit. 'carry off), both con-
tain a sense of being physically displaced, a notion that was taken up by
the eighteenth-century motif of sublime 'transport.' *x
This description accords well with the eighteenth-century penchant
for psychologising accounts of aesthetic taste and finds itself echoed in
the work of, say, Edmund Burke, who writes that in the sublime 'the
mind is so entirely filled with its object that it cannot entertain any oth-
er, nor by consequence reason on that o b j e c t . . . it anticipates our rea-

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sonings and hurries us on by an irresistible force.'12 The sublime is not

merely an irresistible power, it also presents an occasion when the sub-
ject has an overwhelming experience of its own nullity, when the mind
is literally robbed of its own powers. Yet at the same time, this annihila-
tion of the subject is accompanied by the paradoxical expansion of the
mind. Burke writes that the mind will always assimilate 'some part of
the dignity and importance of the things which it contemplates' (pp.
£o— i), a process which leads to 'that glorifying and sense of inward
greatness that always fills the reader of such passages in poets and ora-
tors as are sublime' (p. £ i). Hence the concept of the sublime has a di-
alectical structure, whereby the subject is robbed of its autonomy yet
finds itself expanded by the same experience. It is a simultaneous nega-
tion and affirmation of the subject, a feature incorporated into the Ger-
man tradition from Kant onwards.
In Kant's account a crucial passage can be found in the 'Analytic of
the Sublime' in the Critique of Judgement, in which he describes the feel-
ings of pleasure and displeasure aroused by the sublime in nature. In
particular, a key point is his discussion of the dynamic sublime. The ex-
perience of the dynamic sublime occurs when the individual is con-
fronted by a natural object whose overwhelming power has the capaci-
ty for annihilating them: 'Hence the aesthetic judgement can only deem
nature a might, and so dynamically sublime, in so far as it is looked upon
as an object of fear.'l This is not to imply, however, that the individual is
actually threatened by the object, for then they would be more con-
cerned with self-preservation than with judging the sublimity of the ob-
ject. Above all one must be able to 'look upon an object as fearful, and
yet not be afraid of it' (§28). In other words, one must be able to imag-
ine oneself in a state of fear, without actually being in fear of the natural
object; that is, the sublime experience is connected with the representa-
tion of a fearful object rather than with the direct encounter with it.
Strictly speaking, the sublime object could never be experienced as
such, most especially since a crucial aspect to the logic of the sublime is
the contradiction between the inability to apprehend it directly and the
ability to form a concept of it.
Accompanying the individual's affective response to the sublime,
their experience of physical helplessness, is the capacity to transcend

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the sublime object, to lay aside existential concerns. Kant notes that 'we
also found in our rational faculty another non-sensuous standard . . . in
comparison with which everything in nature is small' (ibid.). It is a par-
allel to the mathematical sublime where a feeling of displeasure at the
inability of the imagination to form an adequate intuition of a colossal
object, for example the Milky Way, is accompanied by one of pleasure
due to our capacity to form a 'logical estimation' of its overwhelming
magnitude. This disclosure of a capacity to transcend the concerns of
physical being and exercise free will in the face of necessity points to-
wards morality, and within the architectonic of Kant's system this is
precisely the function that aesthetic judgement fulfils, namely, that of a
bridge between cognition and moral action. Indeed, Kant himself is
anxious to stress this connection in order to defend himself against the
charge that since the danger is only imaginary the sublime is a matter of
'little seriousness,' and hence the relation between the sublime and
morality needs a little more explanation. In the introduction to the Cri-
tique of Judgement Kant stresses that judgement mediates between the
two otherwise heterogeneous spheres of morality and cognition, or
practical and theoretical reason. In the latter, Kant notes, 'Concepts of
nature contain the ground of all theoretical cognition a priori and rest
. . . upon the legislative authority of understanding, whereas in the for-
mer the concept of freedom . . . rests upon that of reason' (p. i^). In
the 'Analytic of the Sublime' he notes too that the Imagination, which in
the aesthetic judgement engenders a pleasurable and harmonious inter-
play between the faculties of reason and understanding, achieves its ef-
fect partly through dependence on the physical conditions of the judg-
ing subject, but also partly in accordance with the ideas of reason,
which exercises free will in the act of judgement. Hence although the
aesthetic judgement is universal, demanding assent from others, it is at
the same time subjectively universal. As an instrument of reason, aesthet-
ic judgement cannot be reduced to an objectively determined set of
rules. Now, while the beautiful may maintain this delicately maintained
balance between the understanding and reason, with neither gaining
the upper hand, in the judgement of the sublime, the balance tips firm-
ly towards pure reason. No longer governed by the conceptually bound
interests of sensuous existence, we can turn to the super-sensuous stan-
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

dards of pure reason. This standard is nothing other than the moral law,
and judging sublimity discloses the subject as a moral being that can
obey, moreover is obliged to obey, the moral law in the exercise of free
will; Kant acknowledges that 'the intellectual and intrinsically final
(moral) good, estimated aesthetically, instead of being represented as
beautiful must rather be represented as sublime' (§29). Thus wag-
ing war, provided it is undertaken out of moral duty rather than self-
interest, is also sublime; it reveals the capacity to disregard one's physi-
cal welfare in fulfilment of higher moral obligations. One notes that
here Kant is explicitly drawing out the tension between the infinitude
of humans as natural beings and the infinitude of the demands of the
moral law.
Kant's account of aesthetic experience is highly ambiguous, despite
the apparent clarity which the above exposition might suggest. Occu-
pying a mediating position between the psychologising theories of taste
of Hutcheson, Shaftesbury and Burke on the one hand, and the fully-
blown philosophies of art of the German Romantics and Hegel on the
other, it remains unclear whether Kant is describing subjective or ob-
jective phenomena. What initially seems to be a subjective psychology
of aesthetic experience becomes compromised by his analysis of the
properties of the object relevant to judgements of taste, an ambiguity
which provokes the critical response of, amongst others, Schiller. Dis-
satisfied with the ambiguous status of the notion of subjective universal-
ity in the Kantian sublime, Schiller attempts to establish an objective
ground for the experience of the sublime such that it can be reproduced
at will. Indeed, it is tragic drama which in his eyes can engender a feel-
ing of the sublime unmatched by nature itself, and the sublime changes,
in the hands of Schiller, from a merely subjective experience to an ob-
jectively determinable feature of tragedy. The disinterested self, that
from a safe spectatorial distance passes an aesthetic judgement on the
sublime, becomes, in Schiller, quite literally the spectator in a theatre.
I shall not discuss Schiller's better known works, such as the letters
On the Aesthetic Education of Man, but rather examine his shorter essays
on the sublime and tragedy, including'On the Sublime,' 'On the Basis of
the Enjoyment of Tragic Objects' and 'On Tragic Art.' In many re-
spects Schiller offers little in these essays that deviates substantially

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from Kant's position, but he does discuss the dynamic sublime more ex-
tensively than Kant and in terms which, although dressed up in the
moral language of the Enlightenment, look forward to Nietzsche's Birth
of Tragedy. In Schiller's essays the sublime has become less an epistemo-
logical and moral problem than an existential challenge. At the begin-
ning of 'On the Sublime' he outlines the human existential condition
thus: 'This is the case of Man. Surrounded by innumerable powers
which are all superior to him and which play a game of mastery over
him, he demands, through his nature [i.e. as the one being that can ex-
ercise free will] to suffer at the hands of no force.'17 Continuing further,
Schiller notes that culture, whose goal should be to enable the exercise
of free will, has devised two ways to escape this predicament. The first,
which he terms 'physical culture,' is to achieve mastery over nature
through science and learning. In the supreme act of will to power
mankind seeks to redress the imbalance of forces by turning the forces
of nature into 'tools of his own will.'18 Yet as he notes, this strategy is a
limited one, for there are limits to what science can achieve. Inevitably
the forces of nature will 'evade human power, and subject him to their
own.'19 The alternative strategy which culture has devised, so-called
moral culture, is to transcend altogether the natural world, to abrogate
the physical aspect of human existence. This moral education, which
discloses the moral, rational and super-sensuous self, can be enhanced
by appeal to the aesthetic tendency within us whereby our true nature
can be 'aroused by certain sensuous objects, and cultivated towards this
Idealist change in disposition by purification of one's feelings.'20
Having established the pivotal role of sensuous objects, and Schiller
later sees art as a supplement to nature in the task of moral education,
he goes on rigorously to distinguish between 'merely' beautiful and
sublime objects. Above all Schiller warns against becoming too attached
to the sensuous form of the beautiful object. The feeling of freedom of-
fered by the beautiful object is illusory; it provides pleasure because it
harmonises nature with reason and hence tempts us to make the same
mistake as the scientists in 'wanting to bring this arbitrary chaos of phe-
nomena into the unity of cognition.'21 Thus works of art are deceptive
through luring us into too great an attachment to the world of sensuous
form, where we become enslaved again by the overwhelming forces of
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

nature. Thus the task of moral education can be carried out only by the
sublime work of art — what Schiller terms 'emotive' art — which, al-
though a sensuous object, must efface itself as such, a work where 'rea-
son and sensuousness are not in accord'22 and which, as in Kant, dis-
closes our super-sensuous nature by sensuous means. Schiller adds;
'The sublime therefore creates for us a way out of the sensuous world,
a world where the beautiful would like to keep us forever prisoner . . .
often a single sublime emotion suffices to tear apart this web of decep-
tion/ 23 Far from seeking to shelter us from the overwhelming power of
the contingent, natural world, it confronts us with them; it is a mimesis
of the destructive forces at large in the realm of the sensuous:

Our salvation does not lie in ignorance of the dangers beleaguering us, for this
ignorance must eventually cease, but only through acquaintance with them.
We are helped to this acquaintance by the terrible, magnificent spectacle of
change, which destroys everything, then creates it again, then destroys it all
again . . . which history displays in adequate measure, and which tragic art
mimetically brings before our eyes.

This affirmative catharsis accompanying destruction also explains the

peculiar attraction of fear and pain. Schiller notes in On Tragic Art that
the degree of pleasure obtained from an affect seems to be in inverse
proportion to the agreeableness of its content: 'Everyone presses
around the narrator of a murder tale; we devour the most fantastic
ghost story with ever greater enthusiasm the more our hair stands on
end/ Following Kant, Schiller sees this encounter with the sublime as
a shattering event. The nullity of the subject's sensuous existence is re-
vealed, causing a feeling of depression, together with the revelation of
the subject's super-sensuous, literally super-natural self, a realisation
which is the cause of elation, and hence we see preserved the dialectical
structure of the sublime as inherited from, amongst others, Burke. Nat-
urally that art form which elicits these two responses simultaneously
par excellence is tragedy, for on the tragic stage is performed the anni-
hilation of one or more human beings, only to bring us to a higher
awareness of our nature. It is the poetic genre which, as Schiller writes
in 'On the Basis of the Enjoyment of Tragic Objects,' manages to 'de-
light us through pain/ As if to capitalise on this insight Schiller lists a

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number of examples from tragedy where dramatic heroines and heroes

achieve a moral sublimity in the face of overwhelming adversity in the
physical, indeed, figures who in the most extreme cases display an ac-
tive will to self-destruct in their refusal to submit to sensuous contin-
gency.
In tracing the transition from Kant to Schiller there is a noticeable
shift in emphasis. Although the basic structure of the sublime remains
constant, there are certain differences which leave Schiller closer to
Nietzsche, as will be apparent later. The most important difference be-
tween Schiller and Kant is that the former places the sublime firmly
within the sphere of culture; the response to the tension between, on
the one hand, the finitude of subjective sensibility, and the demand to
be able to exercise free will, on the other, is now a cultural task. As such
it falls to art to articulate and resolve this problem, but since art in gen-
eral appeals to the aesthetic 'tendency' within humans, tempting the
spectator to linger in the realm of the sensuous, only a specific art
form, sublime tragedy, can fully accomplish this.
If Kant and Schiller were central in raising the discourse of the sub-
lime above that of a mere doctrine of affectivity, Schopenhauer was
equally important in emptying it of the Enlightenment moralising
which still underpins those two earlier thinkers. Schopenhauer is dou-
bly important in the interpretation of The Birth of Tragedy, for he occu-
pies a pivotal position as mediator between Idealism and the Romantics
on the one hand, and the young Nietzsche on the other. As I have indi-
cated, the relation of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer is, to say the least,
problematic, for even at the time of writing his book Nietzsche, for all
his rhetoric, was moving away from the metaphysical realism of
Schopenhauer's doctrine of the Will. It is indisputable that Schopen-
hauer informed Nietzsche's thinking on the question of art, but at the
same time their two positions, even in The Birth of Tragedy, are diverg-
ing, as will become clear later.
For Schopenhauer aesthetic experience, and the sublime in particu-
lar, produces a state in which one achieves insight into the illusory na-
ture of the phenomenal world dominated by the principle of sufficient
reason or principium individuationis and the will-to-live. Aesthetic expe-
rience reveals the autonomous self for what it is: a self-objectification of
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

the Will and nothing besides, a mere nullity. As Schopenhauer says, 'the
individual is only phenomenon, exists only for knowledge involved in
the principle of sufficient reason.' The dissolution of individuality that
occurs in aesthetic contemplation, where one savours the prospect of
one's own extinction, shows the fear of suffering and death too to be il-
lusory, bound as they are to the notions of selfhood and self-interest.
Fear of death is entirely irrational for Schopenhauer, since death is
merely a reversion to one's true, subjectless, state.
The sublime in particular renders the turn to aesthetic, will-less,
contemplation all the more shattering since one is literally forced to
wrench oneself free of considerations of self-preservation and desire.
Contrary to the sublime object in Kant, sublimity for Schopenhauer
presents the beholder with a spectacle whose threat to his continued
phenomenal, bodily existence is actual. Schopenhauer writes, 'with the
sublime, that state of pure knowing is obtained first of all by a conscious
and violent tearing away from the relations of the same object to the
will which are recognised as unfavourable, by a free exaltation.'28 This
state of pure knowing can be obtained either by being confronted by a
hostile spectacle as in Kant's dynamic sublime — and Schopenhauer
gives the example of being marooned in a desert — or by an encounter
with the absolutely great, or the mathematical sublime. As an illustra-
tion of this latter type of experience Schopenhauer offers the following:
'If we lose ourselves in contemplation of the infinite greatness of the
universe in space and time . . . we feel ourselves reduced to nothing.
. . . But against such a ghost of our own nothingness . . . there arises
the immediate consciousness that all these worlds exist in our represen-
tation . . . our dependence on it is now annulled by its dependence on
us.'29
In the same tradition as Schiller, Schopenhauer sees tragedy as the art
form which best facilitates experience of the sublime and, like Schiller
before him, characterises the essence of tragedy as the mimesis of hu-
man catastrophe, which in Schopenhauer's thought is an epiphenome-
non of the Will itself in its blind, purposeless striving. In particular,
Schopenhauer devotes one section of the first volume of TheWorld asWill
and Representation to an extensive account of the function of poetry and

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its place within his metaphysical system. Tragedy is 'the description of

the terrible side of life. The unspeakable pain, the wretchedness and
misery of mankind. . . . It is the antagonism of the Will with itself/30 At
the same time the depth of suffering, the insidious wickedness which is
the object of tragic mimesis, serves to tear away the veil of the Maya, to
expose the deceptive truth of the principium individuationis. As Schopen-
hauer says, 'The motives that were previously so powerful now lose
their force, and instead of them, the complete knowledge of the real na-
ture of the world, acting as a quieter of the will, produces resignation,
the giving up not merely of life, but of the will-to-live itself/31 For this
reason too it is wrong, Schopenhauer notes, to demand poetic justice.
To demand this would be to restrict oneself to the concerns of the phe-
nomenal world, to assume that the individual soul of the tragic hero de-
serves justice. The wisdom of tragedy is to render such demands obso-
lete and absurd.32
In the first volume of The World as Will and Representation Schopen-
hauer is keen to ridicule any notion of a self as substance; and hence the
ultimate paradox of tragedy is that it should provide a consolation for us
by offering the disintegration of our own egos in the form of a dramat-
ic spectacle. In the second volume, there are indications that he tends
towards a more idealist position, albeit without the moral imperative
accompanying both Kant's and Schiller's notions of the self. For in the
section on poetry in the later volume he remarks that 'precisely in this
way we become aware that there is still left in us something different
that we cannot possibly know positively, but only negatively, as that
which does not will life'33 (WWRII, p. 433).This is one isolated remark
though, and one should beware of laying too much emphasis on it, for
the general outline of Schopenhauer's position shifts further away from
the original formulation of the sublime. Schopenhauer has now reject-
ed the dialectical structure of the concept; whereas it had hitherto in-
volved moments of negation and affirmation, sublimity in his thought
no longer contains any affirmation of the subject. The Birth of Tragedy is
an attempt to answer both the naive metaphysics of the tradition from
Burke, Kant and Schiller as well as the nihilism of Schopenhauer, whose
employment of the sublime in many respects turns it on its head.

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The World as Aesthetic Phenomenon

In the previous section I mapped out the discourse of the sublime, lay-
ing special emphasis on the tragic as a privileged locus of understand-
ing, where the usual categories of knowing are pushed to their limits
then revealed for what they are, namely, schematic forms of representa-
tion. In Kant, Schiller and Schopenhauer this knowledge can be dis-
closed only when the sensory aspects of human existence are stretched
to the limit, whether it be through mortal threat to our sensuous selves,
or the inability of the imagination to provide an intuition adequate to a
particular concept.34 In all cases there is revealed an aspect to human
being exceeding sensuous finitude, one transcending the boundaries of
the phenomenal world. Simultaneously, this knowledge is seen by
Schiller and Schopenhauer to offer a solution to certain existential
dilemmas. For Schiller it is the problem of reconciling the free will with
the limitations of human embodiment. For Schopenhauer it is the mat-
ter of coming to terms with the meaningless suffering at the root of all
phenomenal existence. Assiduously avoiding the Christian impulse to
give suffering a meaning, namely, as the atonement for original sin, he
prefers the deeper insight that fear of suffering and pain is misplaced.
Unlike the theodicy of Greek tragedy, Schopenhauer's sublime is what
Peter Sloterdijk has referred to as an algodicj;35 it is an attempt to come
to terms with suffering after the death of God. The key to all these
thinkers lies in the category of the sublime, a category which combines
beautiful sensuous form with the recognition that this form is itself only
a phenomenal representation, or objectification, of another underly-
ing metaphysical reality. Having dealt with these earlier thinkers it is
now time to turn to Nietzsche and set him in relation to these other
theories.
If one follows even the most conservative account of Nietzsche's
epistemological critique, of necessity the function of the sublime as de-
scribed above will be somewhat modified. Talk of revealing the real
essence of the world, of tearing asunder the veil of the Maya or of the
disclosure of the immortal super-sensuous self can have no place within
The Birth of Tragedy. Although this work is still permeated, as Nietzsche
later admits, with the vocabulary of Schopenhauer and 'reeks offensive-

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ly Hegelian' (EH 'BT' § i), it has to be discussed against the background

of the approximately contemporary essay ' On Truth and Lie in their
Extra-moral Sense,' with which I began my analysis of Nietzsche's cri-
tique of metaphysics. Additionally it has to be related to those writings
of the early 1870s that indicate the extent to which Nietzsche has al-
ready distanced himself from the metaphysics of Schopenhauer.
As I have argued before, even in Nietzsche's earliest work there is a
refusal to accept any metaphysical notions of essence or any distinctions
between essence and appearance, essentia and existenia. Individuals in-
habit a world of representations, ensnared in a semiotic universe, and
herein lies the paradox of trying to understand a universe that is recog-
nised as having no intrinsic meaningfulness. The closest one can come
to understanding the 'indecipherable' reality is to see it as a goalless, in-
satiable, self-consuming Will along the lines of Schopenhauer. Yet even
to declare that the world and its suffering are meaningless is in itself to
make a meaningful statement. Notions of meaninglessness are already
tied to a particular set of meanings, to a specific conceptual history, en-
meshed within a certain configuration of values. In Schopenhauer's case
it is as the negation of the Christian and Hegelian notions of a purpose-
ful universe. This realisation is apparent in The Birth of Tragedy too when
the 'truth' of existence cannot be conveyed directly but has to be medi-
ated in the form of a myth, that of King Midas's encounter with Silenus.
Indeed, the most powerful way of expressing this lack of meaning in the
world which Nietzsche uses is not to attempt to name it at all but in-
stead to describe the feeling of nausea which results once one has seen
the absence of metaphysical meaning. He writes, 'In this sense the
Dionysian person is similar to Hamlet: both have once cast a true glance
into the nature of things, they have gained knowledge, and it nauseates
them to undertake any action, for their action can change nothing in the
eternal nature of things, they find it laughable or ignominious' (BT §7).
It is clear that within the framework already apparent in the early
Nietzsche's thought, the sublime is no longer simply a means of over-
coming the limitation of human embodiment through the disclosure of
the metaphysical super-sensuous truth underlying all phenomenal exis-
tence. As I shall demonstrate shortly, the function of the sublime in
Nietzsche is to dispel the aura of representation. However, it provides
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

metaphysical consolation not so much by revealing some metaphysical

'truth' but by exhorting the spectator to active nihilism. I have already
suggested that Nietzsche does not criticise the conceptual apparatus of
metaphysical thinking merely to score philosophical points, but out of a
desire to go beyond the reactive nihilism he sees as a necessary conse-
quence of metaphysics. It is a concern with cultural and spiritual health,
and hence too his paradoxical use of Christian and medical imagery to
describe both societies and moral codes. Consequently, in The Birth of
Tragedy it is not merely a matter of types of representation, but rather of
choosing the appropriate response to the challenge tragedy presents to
its spectators. First of all, therefore, one must consider Nietzsche's
statement that 'only as an aesthetic phenomenon can existence and the
world eternally be justified' (BT §^).
There are two, by no means necessarily mutually exclusive, ways of
interpreting this phrase. The first, looking forward to Nietzsche's later
insistence on the fictional status of logic and scientific knowledge, as-
sumes that for Nietzsche individual and societal existence can be ren-
dered endurable only if we remember that the world we inhabit is a fic-
tion. Hence, according to this interpretation, the point of Nietzsche's
assertion would be to indicate that one need not feel oppressed by the
straitjacket of Christian and bourgeois morality; they are manufactured
values, to be replaced by other, more self-critical and hence healthier
ones. This reading thus looks forward to Nietzsche's account of ni-
hilism; the crisis of nihilism, where the world is devoid of intrinsic
meaning and hence in need of justification, is averted by affirmation of
the possibility of inventing a better world.
Alternatively there is the more usual interpretation, namely, that it is
only through aesthetic representations that the world and human life
can be redeemed. In this reading Nietzsche is close to Schiller. The pas-
sage immediately preceding the one under discussion supports such a
reading, for Nietzsche writes, 'we may well assume of ourselves that
. . . we have our highest worth in works of art — for only as an aesthet-
ic phenomenon can existence and the world eternally be justified'
(ibid.). Nietzsche's inclusion of the words 'higher worth' in this passage
points towards that dialectic of negation and affirmation characteristic
of earlier accounts of the sublime we have seen. For thus the work of art
 LAUGHTER AND SUBLIMITY

would be thought of as offering a perspective on the world and the hu-

man existential condition which discloses a capacity within individuals
to relate to their representations in a manner free of the ideology of
metaphysics. According to this interpretation — and Nietzsche's men-
tion of works of art in the plural might not be insignificant — it is a more
low-level aesthetic concern. As in the cases of Schiller and Schopen-
hauer, Nietzsche seems to be awarding a special status to tragic works
of art, as aesthetic objects that provide an insight inaccessible to the sci-
entific worldview and a temporary release from the nausea of quotidian
life.
So far I have only tentatively suggested that one move in this direc-
tion, yet a further examination reveals passages which are much more
explicit and allow us to feel quite entitled to link Nietzsche's book with
the theory of the sublime. In particular, section seven, which deals with
the function of the tragic chorus, quite openly speaks of the sublime in
Greek tragedy, the relevant section being worth quoting in its entirety:
'Here, in this highest danger of the will, there approaches, as a redeem-
ing, healing enchantress, art; it alone can turn those nauseous thoughts
about the horror and the absurdity of existence into representations
with which one can live: these are the sublime, as the artistic harnessing
of the horrific, and the comic, as the artistic breaking of the nausea of
the absurd'. As if this were insufficient evidence Nietzsche notes earlier
in the same section that tragedy provides the one true 'metaphysical
consolation . . . that at the bottom of things life, despite all apparent
change, is indestructibly powerful and joyful' (BT§7).These motifs will
reappear in due course. However, having dealt with preliminary aspects
of this interpretation, it is appropriate to go into greater detail.
Contrary to de Man, one can argue that the basic assumption under-
pinning The Birth of Tragedy and the logic of the Apollonian and Dio-
nysian opposition is the acceptance that the world, being, existence, re-
ality, truth, whichever term one chooses, can never appear as such.
Since truth is a function of grammar, knowledge is of a world always al-
ready made intelligible. At the heart of this position are a number of
concerns which preoccupied the young Nietzsche in response to
Schopenhauer. Chief amongst these is the problem of finding value in a
world regarded as denuded of intrinsic meaning, as a site of unmitigat-

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ed suffering. The Schopenhauerian response to these questions is char-

acterised by an attitude of resignation. That of Nietzsche is quite the op-
posite, for his rejection of Schopenhauer's reactive nihilism is undertak-
en in the name of a will to live (which will later be superseded by will
to power), and in The Birth of Tragedy he is exploring forms of represen-
tation that pass beyond the Schopenhauerian passivity he will later con-
demn so definitively.
The first way to further the will to live is to create a world of beauty,
from which the nausea of life, the fear of meaninglessness, is banished. I
am speaking of course of the Apollonian artistic impulse, which echoes
Schiller's remarks noted above concerning 'physical culture.'This is the
world of forms which seduce with their beauty, becoming themselves
objects of desire, such as to elicit the response 'It is a dream! I want to
dream further!' (BT §i). In a later portion of the text which, ironically,
borrows heavily from Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory Nietzsche sums
up the aim of the Apollonian thus: 'here Apollo conquers the suffering
of the individual through the illuminating glorification of eternal ap-
pearance, here beauty gains victory over the suffering which permeates
life' (BT § 16). Drawing on Schopenhauer's equation of beauty with
knowledge of the timeless Platonic Idea, Nietzsche observes how
Apollonian representation, manifest primarily in myth, strives towards
a denial of the temporal, a denial which, he claims, facilitates political
life. For once a people has failed to understand itself in terms of time-
less myth, it undergoes a crisis of self-estimation, a condition which
prepares the ground for the advent of nihilism. He writes, 'A people is
only worthy, as is also a person, for as long as it can impress upon its ex-
periences the mark of the eternal. . . and displays its unconscious con-
viction of the relativity of time' (BT §23). As Nietzsche notes, the beau-
tiful finds itself symbolised by Apollo, the etymology of whose name
can be traced back to notions of appearing and shining. This is the world
of forms which supplement the contingent, fragmentary and arbitrary
processes which rule everyday life. As Nietzsche says, 'The higher truth,
the perfection of these states of affairs in contrast to the sketchy intelli-
gibility of daily reality . . . is the analogue both of the capacity for affir-
mation and of the arts in general, whereby life is made possible and
worth living' (BT §1). Hence the Apollonian form (and the beautiful

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work of art is a mimesis of this natural impulse) supplements the essen-

tial lack or negativity at the base of existence, a lack which Schopen-
hauer had defined as the blind desire of the Will but which Nietzsche re-
fuses to name as such. In addition, one can see foreshadowed Nietzsche's
comments in On the Genealogy of Morals on the constitutive lack of sub-
jectivity itself. The Apollonian makes good both the objective lack of
determinacy of'reality' and also the lack constituting modern subjec-
tivity.
Having established these basic elements of the Apollonian drive,
Nietzsche then goes on to flesh out in concrete terms how this mani-
fests itself in the world of the Greeks. Both in its poetic form and in its
mythological content Greek culture succeeded in banishing the nau-
seous from its cultural consciousness, instead hiding it under the mask
of the Olympian pantheon and the Homeric epic. Indeed, one can con-
duct an archaeology of Greek mythology and see the sedimentation of
different layers of Greek consciousness. For Nietzsche claims that the
mythic victory of the 'light' Olympian gods over the Titans mirrors the
actual historical censorship exercised by the Greeks on themselves: 'In
order to live, the Greeks had to create these gods, out of the direst need
. . . the joyful Olympian divine order was developed gradually from
the original, titanic divine order of terror by that Apollonian impulse to
beauty' (BT §3). One can also see a reflection of this same drive to
transfiguration in the Homeric poems. What Rousseau had seen as a
'natural' and authentic harmony of humans with their environment, the
nostalgia for which Schiller had termed 'naive,' turns out to be the final
victory of Apollonian illusion.38 Consciously echoing Schiller, Nietz-
sche writes, 'When we encounter the "naive" in art we have to recog-
nise in it the highest effect of Apollonian culture' (ibid.). The apparent
artlessness of the Homeric poems is produced by the ability of the epic
to hide its own illusory nature. The simulacrum of the epic poem has
displaced the 'Real,' and in its transfigurative function has become the
desired object, desired because of its ability to make good the primor-
dial lack. Nietzsche says of the Greeks that 'in order to idealise them-
selves, they had to see their reflection in a higher sphere. . . .This is the
sphere of beauty, where they saw their reflected images, the
Olympians. With this reflection of beauty the Hellenic "Will" fought
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

against the artistically correlative talent for suffering' (ibid.). Hence the
world of the Greeks is lifted up, in Homer, out of its condition of every-
day anxiety and suffering into the timeless, eternally laughing world of
the Olympians. This self-effacement of the art work, which naturalises
what is an illusory product of art, is to be found repeated in the ideolo-
gy of the pastoral, which Nietzsche notes to be an essential element in
modern culture. It is an image of nature which refuses to acknowledge
its own imaginary status, but rather claims to disclose the 'natural/ un-
affected by the trappings of civilisation. Nietzsche notes, That idyllic
shepherd of modern man is merely a portrait of the sum of educational
illusions which count for him as nature' (ibid.).
In all his remarks concerning the beautiful and the Apollonian, and in
his critique of the pastoral ideology of modernity, Nietzsche is con-
sciously echoing the ideas of Schiller. While it is misleading to equate
Nietzsche's duality of Apollo and Dionysus with Schiller's distinction be-
tween the naive and the sentimental, it is undoubtedly the case that
Schiller's opposition informs Nietzsche's thinking. Schiller had noted
the danger of lingering too long on beautiful representations, since they
encourage an excessive dependence on sensuous form. The goal of aes-
thetic education was to employ representations in order to go beyond
them, in order that a higher truth about human existence might be dis-
closed. In Nietzsche too, although notions of the super-sensuous have no
place in the narrative of The Birth ofTragedy, the rule of the Apollonian, al-
though a necessary fiction, is a dangerous one when given free reign.The
result is the potentially dangerous exclamation, 'It is a dream, I want to
dream more.' It represents only one side of the dialectic. Its attempts to
censor the ineffable, no matter how rigorous, will eventually fail, and
hence the other, Dionysian, drive will demand to be represented.
Within The Birth of Tragedy there is a double negation of the Diony-
sian as part of the dialectic that creates Greek culture. The first nega-
tion, both logically and historically, is what Sloterdijk has referred to as
'Doric precensorship.'40This throws up again the problem of articulat-
ing the inarticulable. Prior to the entry of the Dionysian into Greek cul-
ture, it is already engaged in a dialectic with the Apollonian, a process
that takes place before the second sublation of the Dionysian and the
Apollonian in tragedy itself.

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The Dionysian, as preserved in the myths of the arrival of Dionysus

in Greece from the East, originates from beyond the sphere of Greek
culture, though Nietzsche is not interested in the facts concerning the
historical origins of the cult of Dionysus. For Greek culture in The Birth
of Tragedy stands as a cipher for human culture in general, just as the
Orient serves to symbolise the pre-cultural, by which is to be under-
stood that stage of human existence prior to the capacity for the pro-
duction of discursive meaning in the world, and hence prior to the es-
tablishment of any specific regime of truth. This polarity of culture and
the pre-cultural becomes clear through the terms Nietzsche uses to de-
scribe the Dionysian rites of Babylon, which represent a 'regression of
human to tiger or ape.' So too when he first introduces the Dionysian,
Nietzsche stresses the fact that it transgresses the boundaries between
human and animal. He notes that 'The chariot of Dionysus is covered in
flowers and garlands: the panther and the tiger stride under his yoke
. . . all the stiff . . . distinctions fall apart' (BT §2). This condition
which Nietzsche is attempting to symbolise thus obtains prior to the
birth of culture.
In its dissolution of all the barriers set up by culture, this pre-
Hellenic Dionysian state is what Nietzsche will later describe as 'be-
coming' or 'life.' Strictly speaking one should not even call it the
Dionysian, for the metaphor of the 'Dionysian' which Nietzsche uses in-
dicates that it has already been inserted into the symbolic order. In order
to speak of the Dionysian, Doric pre-censorship has already taken
place. There is always already representation, humans are always cap-
tives in a symbolic universe, and further, the Dionysian, as a metaphor
for 'reality,' is always secondary. In mythological terms, the father of
Dionysus is none other than Zeus, the head of the Olympian pantheon,
and hence of the whole Apollonian order. The sense of nausea the exis-
tential predicament produces, and which the slick world of Apollonian
forms and values endeavours to hide, is the result of a particular way of
imagining the human condition. As Nietzsche develops his thoughts
about art, knowledge and morality, we see that this nausea need never
have existed — not because it can be hidden by some reassuring illusion,
but because it is itself a response to a prior illusory representation,
namely, that an absence of stability in the world should make it an ob-

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ject of anxiety. Leaving behind the heritage of Schopenhauerian Kul-

turpessimismus, art will later become a much more affirmative activity.
The arrival of the 'Dionysian,' with its concomitant Doric pre-
censorship, is important for another reason too. To understand why and
how we must look at the passage where Nietzsche describes this Dori-
an response to the Oriental intruder. He writes,

For a while they were completely secure and protected from the feverish stir-
rings of those (i.e. Dionysian) festivals . . . by . . . thefigureof Apollo, who
could hold out Medusa's head towards no more dangerous power than this
grotesque and barbaric Dionysian force. It is in Doric art that the Apollonian
majestic posture of refusal has immortalised itself. Yet this resistance became
questionable, even impossible once similar impulses grew out of the deepest
roots of Hellenic culture: now the power of the Delphic god was restricted to
depriving this mighty opponent of his destructive weapons by an act of recon-
ciliation, concluded at the right time. This reconciliation is the most impor-
tant moment in the history of this Greek cult. (BT §2)

The crucial event in this semi-mythic, semi-historical narrative is the

failure of the Apollonian impulse of Doric art to suppress the Dionysian
drive completely. The relation between the two alters from one where
the Dionysian is excluded, to a new relation of compromise; Dionysus
has been awarded his place on Olympus.
Underneath this mythology Nietzsche is making claims regarding the
limitations of the Apollonian analogous to those of Schiller concerning
the beautiful. We recall that for Schiller the danger was of becoming too
absorbed in the beautiful, and hence too dependent on the sensuous,
material world. If this occurs, one remains trapped in the world of the
contingent, the demand to be able to exercise free will remains unful-
filled. Thus when confronted with the fact of human sensuous finitude,
even the beautiful form or work of art will eventually fail to provide
metaphysical consolation. So too the purely Apollonian representation,
although it endeavours to create a world of illusory forms which banish
any existential anxiety, will always fail in its task. As makers of meaning,
humans will always come up against that limit, where the fragility of
meaning is revealed, where its shaky foundations will finally give way.
At this point the Apollonian must effect a compromise with the

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Dionysian recognition of the meaninglessness of the universe. Nietz-

sche writes of the Apollonian Greek, 'his whole existence full of beauty
and proportion rested on a hidden underground of suffering and the
knowledge which was uncovered by the Dionysian. And look! Apollo
could not survive without Dionysus!' (BT §4).
At this stage of the argument the weaknesses of Nietzsche's own
prose also become evident, in particular with regard to the sheer bur-
den of meaning that Nietzsche imposes on his text. It attempts to be
both mythological and historical, both philological and philosophical.
Above all there is an extraordinary seepage of meaning from the terms
Apollonian and Dionysian. We have now concluded that the Apollonian,
despite its seductive illusions, will be revealed for what it is, mere rep-
resentation. Thereupon it must enter into a compromise with the deep-
er wisdom of the Dionysian. Yet as I have suggested, the Dionysian can
become an object of consciousness only as an Apollonian representation.
This too is narrated by the story of the Doric pre-censorship. In spite of
the difficulties Nietzsche creates for the interpreter it is still possible to
accommodate these two apparently contradictory statements.
The term 'Apollonian' has two meanings. The first refers to the im-
pulse to construct meaning. The Apollonian is the possibility of forming
representations of the world. (I leave the nature of these representa-
tions deliberately indistinct, for although Nietzsche is most obviously
implying works of art, the term could also include mental representa-
tions.) The second meaning of Apollonian implies a specific kind of rep-
resentation, namely, one which attempts a false naturalisation of the hu-
man representing activity. It is a representation that refuses to
acknowledge its status as such, instead masquerading as reality. Hence it
can be seen as a mis-representation, and the Apollonian could be seen as
a metaphor for ideological practice.
If we turn to the Dionysian, then under the first meaning of the
Apollonian, it too is an Apollonian representation. As I noted earlier,
one would have to conclude that the Apollonian must in some sense be
considered to be prior to the Dionysian. However, the Dionysian also
refers to a type of representation, and it is in considering how this type
of representation differs from the Apollonian that it can be related to
theories of the sublime. To understand how Dionysian representation

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differs from Apollonian, one must examine its function within Greek
lyric and the dithyramb.
Within the history of Greek literature, the birth of lyric poetry in
the figure of Archilochus is always regarded as an extraordinary event.
For the first time there is an authorial voice that proclaims itself as such.
Additionally, in the surviving fragments of Archilochus there appear to
be elements of his own biography. One need only compare him with
Homer, whose poems begin with an invocation to the muse or the god-
dess to tell or sing the story to realise the difference. In the Homeric
poems the poet enacts a self-effacement by relegating himself to the sta-
tus of a mouthpiece of the narrating divinity, and the authorial voice re-
treats into the background of the narrative, in a second self-effacing
gesture. Nietzsche, however, influenced by Schopenhauer, whom he
quotes at length, imagines something more complex to be at work. Far
from presenting the fortified ego, the principium individuationis, for the
first time in literary history through the strident subjectivity of the au-
thor, Archilochus is doing precisely the opposite. In portraying the lyric
voice as full of contradictions, paradoxes and conflicting desires, in
short as a collection of heterogeneous elements, Archilochus is under-
cutting the individuated authorial voice. As Nietzsche says, 'The "I" of
the lyric poet thus resounds from the abyss of being: his "subjectivity," in
the sense of the more recent aestheticians, is a delusion' (BT §^). In oth-
er words Archilochus is using a representation of a strong authorial in-
dividual voice, at the same time undermining the authority of that rep-
resentation. One need not go as far as assuming that he is denying any
notion of subjectivity per se, but rather, as I have suggested in my sec-
ond chapter, of the strong, neatly individuated rational subject. Nietz-
sche adds, 'In truth Archilochus, the man who is passionately fired by
love and hate is merely a vision of genius, who is no longer Archilochus,
but world genius, who expresses his primordial pain symbolically
through the allegory of Archilochus the person' (ibid.).
In examining subjectivity in lyric, I am not interested in subjectivity
per se, but rather in the importance it has for defining the Dionysian
representation. Following Nietzsche's account we can see that the lyric
poet sets up a representation vested with authority (after all, who could
be more authoritative about Archilochus's desires than Archilochus the
 LAUGHTER AND SUBLIMITY

poet?), only then to reveal this representation to be just a representa-

tion, full of flaws and weaknesses. Thus the Dionysian representation
seems to be performing a reflexive act, undermining its own status. We
can see, too, with regard to subjectivity how it is that Homer's poems
are firmly entrenched within the realm of the Apollonian. For although
the authorial voice effaces itself in the act of narrating, this is a decep-
tive, and superficial, difference. More importantly within the poems,
no representation is ever shown to be inadequate to its object. In par-
ticular the poems are dominated by unified, fortified egos, which sur-
vive unchanged after death. In the Odyssey Odysseus visits the under-
world and encounters a number of figures who were living in the Iliad,
and who are exactly the same, bar their lamentable circumstance. The
souls of Agamemnon and Achilles are perfectly lucid and rational, and it
is this which provides their pathos.
Following this interpretation one can see clearly the difference be-
tween Apollonian and Dionysian representation: the Apollonian refuses
to renounce its claim to be a surrogate reality, whereas the Dionysian
representation performs the reverse operation, foregrounding its own
status as representation. The sublime origin of the Dionysian is clear.
For Kant and Schiller, though not Schopenhauer, the sublime is the ex-
perience engendered by an aesthetic object that reveals the inadequacy
of sensuous representation, but also discloses a higher, super-sensuous
truth of the self. For Nietzsche, such humanist talk of the moral higher
super-sensuous self is anomalous, yet the function of the Dionysian is
similarly aimed at revealing the limitations of representation. Given
Nietzsche's critique of Schopenhauer's metaphysics, there can be no di-
rect comparison of the representation and the true metaphysical
'essence' of the world. At best it can be done purely negatively, as in the
lyric of Archilochus, by disclosing the paradoxes and self-contradictions
at work within the object.
Having thus suggested a way of differentiating the Apollonian and the
Dionysian, one must go further and examine how these two forms of
representing occur in tragedy, and how it is that tragedy can become an
affirmative art, given the stress hitherto on the purely negative aspects
of Nietzsche's sublime. Nietzsche begins his discussion of tragedy prop-
er with an analysis of its historic origin, in the main following Aristo-

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 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

tie's genealogy, which traces it back to the dithyramb, a primitive narra-

tive verse form. This retrieval of the satyric chorus represents a return
to the strictly Dionysian origins of drama, where the satyr acts as the
counterpart of the Apollonian pastoral shepherd. I note 'Dionysian,' be-
cause the satyr shows all the illusions of culture for what they are; his is
a primitive critique of ideology. As Nietzsche says, The satyr was some-
thing sublime and divine . . . here the illusion of culture was wiped
away from the archetypal idea of humanity.' Inasmuch as the satyr
caused the ideologically permeated image of humanity to ' shrink into a
mendacious caricature' (BT §8), the Dionysian satyr was more truthful,
because less deceiving and self-deluding. Yet this alone did not consti-
tute tragic drama, for this would place tragedy on the same level as
lyric, as a product of the first entry of Dionysus into Apollonian repre-
sentation. What occurs in tragedy is a second sublation of Apollo and
Dionysus, but this time not Apollo in the sense of the capacity to render
the world meaningful through representations per se, but in its second
sense, namely, as the drive to wilfully hide the world through beautiful
forms.
Formally, the synthesis occurs with the introduction of action into
the dithyramb, whereupon it becomes drama for the first time. Nietz-
sche envisages that the drama occurred when Dionysus appeared on
stage rather than being the absent referent of the dithyrambic narrative.
This moment represents the first element of the dialectic, for Dionysus
now speaks in the language of Apollo: Nietzsche notes 'as an epic hero,
almost in the language of Homer' (ibid.). Keeping in line with the
philological tradition, Nietzsche observes that originally tragedy was
exclusively concerned with the sufferings of Dionysus — hence its re-
striction to the celebrations and festivals in his honour — but adds that
while in the extant tragedies the concerns seem to be with other myth-
ical figures such as Heracles, the house of the Atreids, Medea and oth-
ers, it is certain 'that all the famous figures of the Greek stage,
Prometheus, Oedipus etc., are merely masks of that original hero
Dionysus' (BT § i o). In other words they are all expressions of the same
wisdom, namely, that beneath Apollonian illusion there is another wis-
dom that recognises the displeasure engendered by acknowledgement
of the lack of intrinsic value and meaning in the world.

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 LAUGHTER AND SUBLIMITY

This conclusion raises again the problematics I noted earlier, namely,

the problem of reconciling both belief in meaning and also a radical
scepticism. This is dramatically presented in Oedipus Tyrannos and
Antigone, as well as in Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, where the epony-
mous hero's gift of fire to humans is met with harsh punishment for
transgressing a law that is repeatedly condemned for its arbitrariness. In
such a case the conclusion is reached that' Everything present at hand is
just and unjust and in both cases equally justified' (ibid.). However, al-
though the deceptive and self-satisfied Apollonian wisdom of Oedipus
has been shown to be flawed, indeed with disastrous consequences, this
is not a sufficient response. To remain with the purely sceptical moment
of tragedy leads to the risk of descent into passive nihilism, a prospect
which Nietzsche viewed with horror. The negation that is central to
tragedy is thus combined with an affirmative aspect. Nietzsche intro-
duces this idea in his discussion of Oedipus,

who is destined to error and misery in spite of his wisdom, but who through
his monstrous sufferingfinallyexercises a magical beneficent force, which re-
mains potent after his departure. The noble person does not sin, the profound
poet intends to say: through his action every law, every natural order, indeed
the moral world may well go to ground, yet precisely by virtue of this action
a higher magical circle of effects is drawn, which found a new world on the
ruins of the old one which has been toppled.

Later in the same section, when discussing Sophocles' play Oedipus at

Colonus, which depicts the old Oedipus shortly before his death, Nietz-
sche informs us that 'the hero performed his highest activity in his pure-
ly passive behaviour' (ibid.). Here, if anywhere, Nietzsche comes clos-
est to the language of more traditional theories of the sublime in
tragedy. Although Oedipus is annihilated by forces beyond human com-
prehension, his fate is nevertheless not an ignoble one. Through his pas-
sivity, through his willing acceptance of his fate he exudes an aura and
provides the impetus for others to reconstruct the world which has
been torn apart by the events on stage. Like the Schillerian tragic hero,
Oedipus refuses to be daunted by the coming calamity, but instead con-
tinues questioning about his own past, in an attempt to save the city he

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rules. In Antigone one notes an actual will to self-destruction; Antigone

refuses all the opportunities to save her life, and instead defiantly steers
the same course into oblivion. So too Prometheus steals the gift of fire
fully aware that he will be punished by the gods, thanks to his capacity
for foreknowledge.
Although his thought emerges against the background of Idealist the-
ories of the sublime, Nietzsche qualifies them in that he sees in all these
examples instances of a capacity to affirm existence, rather than, say, dis-
closure of an immortal soul that will survive physical negation. Although
Nietzsche had not yet arrived at this vocabulary, the tragic hero is an ac-
tive, or'accomplished,' nihilist, who actively confronts a world evacuat-
ed of metaphysical meaning. Echoing Schiller, there is in Nietzsche the
notion that life can only be rendered bearable, indeed affirmed, when
confronting its most nauseating aspects. Schiller had emphasised the re-
sponsibility of moral culture to present a mimesis of nature at its worst
in order to achieve genuine moral enlightenment. So too in The Birth of
Tragedy the annihilation of the tragic hero is a necessary process. By actu-
ally willing his or her downfall, the tragic hero can make light of the hu-
man existential predicament, in an act of sublime mockery of all that
threatens to disrupt human life. For this reason too, though it remains
undeclared, Nietzsche associates the sublime with the comic.
Unlike Schopenhauer, who discourages laughter as a foolish affirma-
tion of the will to live, Nietzsche sees the comic as a companion of the
sublime, in its refusal to submit to the nausea of existence. Later in the
text Nietzsche concludes on the same note that 'Dionysian art too in-
tends to convince us of the eternal joy of existence: only we are to seek it
not in appearances, but behind them' (BT § 17), also repeating Schiller's
reservations about attaching too much significance to the beautiful
form. Hence we should express no surprise that Nietzsche should
choose the absurdly comic figure of the satyr as the archetypal Dionysian
symbol, nor that historically during the festival of Dionysus the tragic
poet was always required to submit, in addition to three tragedies, a
comic satyr play — not as light relief after the draining effect of watching
a trilogy of tragic dramas, but rather as an indication of the double aspect
of the Dionysian. As Nietzsche says, The Olympian gods grew out of the
smile of Dionysus, and humans out of his tears' (BT § 1 o).

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 LAUGHTER AND SUBLIMITY

Nietzsche's assertion of the internal unity of the tragic and the com-
ic looks forward to the theme of laughter that recurs throughout his
oeuvre. The theme is announced in the very title of Die FrohlicheWis-
senschaft, variously translated as The Gay or Joyful Science, and one finds it
repeated within the text of that work, where Nietzsche speaks of the
'eternal comedy of existence,' commenting that the moralist 'does not
at all want us to laugh at existence, neither at ourselves nor at him' (GS
§ i).The role of laughter plays an important part in Nietzsche's critique
of metaphysics here, since he contends that laughter serves as an anti-
dote to those who teach of the purpose of existence. In contrast, the
moralist, claims Nietzsche, discourages any move towards treating exis-
tence as a comedy. Hence, too, his criticism of the educational estab-
lishment, where he notes that 'In Germany, higher men lack one great
means of education: the laughter of higher men, for in Germany these
do not laugh' (GS §177). The theme is prominent, too, in Thus Spoke
Zarathustra,^ for the parable of the metamorphosis from camel to lion
to child, with which Nietzsche opens the first book, is supplemented
with Zarathustra's declaration later that 'higher, stronger, more victori-
ous, more joyful men, such as are square-built in body and soul: laugh-
ing lions must come' (ZIV 'The Greeting') as a prelude to the advent of
the childlike Ubermensch. Zarathustra asks, for example, 'Who of you
can both laugh and be elevated at the same time? Whoever climbs onto
the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies' (Z I 'On Reading and
Writing').The theme is paralleled in other texts. Openly contradicting
Hobbes's denigration of laughter, Nietzsche suggests valuing philoso-
phers according to their humour: 'I would actually risk an order of rank
among philosophers depending on the rank of their laughter — all the
way up to those capable of golden laughter' (BGE §284). This also un-
derlies Nietzsche's ambivalence towards Socrates, perhaps, for the lat-
ter was motivated not only by a plebeian desire for revenge, but also by
a sense of ironic mischief, most evident in the comedy of his marriage
to Xanthippe. Elsewhere in Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche notes,

we are the first age that has truly studied costumes . . . prepared like no pre-
vious age for a carnival in the grand style, for the laughter and high spirits of
the most spiritual revelry, for the transcendental heights of the highest non-
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

sense and Aristophanic derision of the world. . . . perhaps, even if nothing

else today has a future, our laughter may yet have a future.
(BG£§2

Indeed, not only might laughter still have a future, but according to
Nietzsche's view of the means for overcoming nihilism, it will be essen-
tial to the future.
Nietzsche's allusion to the theme of the comic in The Birth of Tragedy,
a theme which will have so much significance for his later thinking,
once again reminds us of the debt his thinking owes to the theory of the
sublime. There is an echo of Hegel's theory of comedy; just as for Nietz-
sche the comic arises out of the sense of the insubstantiality of appear-
ances, so too for Hegel comedy is linked to the subject's recognition
that appearances are projections devoid of objective existence. As Hegel
notes, 'every independence of an objective content . . . is annihilated
in itself and the presentation is only a sporting with the topics;'44 com-
edy is thus the expression of'a world whose aims are therefore self-
destructive because they are unsubstantial.' This notion of a connec-
tion between tragedy, comedy and the sublime, in their sense of the
world as a play of appearances, was also proposed by figures ranging
from the romantic poet and philosopher Heinrich Novalis to the
philosopher Friedrich Vischer.46 It also informed the dramatic practice
of Sturm und Drang in the eighteenth century, as Walter Benjamin has
suggested.47 So too in Nietzsche, the theme of laughter stems from the
problematics of sublimity thrown up by the tragic worldview and is
paradoxically invested with special significance. For Nietzsche comedy
is a matter of great seriousness. In many respects he inverts Schopen-
hauer's comments on comedy. Schopenhauer writes, 'The life of every
individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most
significant features are emphasised, is really a tragedy; but gone through
in detail it has the character of a comedy.'48 In contrast Nietzsche views
it as absolutely necessary to regard the whole as a comedy, as an integral
part of becoming an accomplished nihilist.
If we chose to rest with the above account, however, we would be
entitled to regard Nietzsche as in some sense merely continuing the
project bequeathed by Kant, idealism, romanticism and Vischer, albeit

106
 LAUGHTER AND SUBLIMITY

denuded of their Christian moral sentiment. However, this would sole-

ly heed the Dionysian side of the equation. The Apollonian side, which
has been both negated and preserved, remains under-represented, and
it is this which distinguishes Nietzsche's tragic theory from that of those
others. It additionally provides a connection between this early work on
tragedy and his later critique of metaphysics in the name of language
and interpretation. Commenting on the consequence of the tragic
treatment of the Oedipus myth, Nietzsche notes that in addition to the
aura which Oedipus's behaviour and destruction projects, which might
be termed the feeling of the sublime elicited in the spectators, there is
also awareness of the necessity of building on the foundations of the ru-
ined world to which Oedipus belongs. With this architectural metaphor
Nietzsche is articulating the position of those who are left over after the
calamitous events have run their course. In other words, in the knowl-
edge that the semiotic web of the universe is one which has limits, and
given that we will inevitably come up against those limits, what is to be
done? Are we to follow the example of Oedipus who, on finding out
that he is, unwittingly, the murderer of his father he has been trying to
find, blinds himself in a symbolic act of self-negation? As my account of
Nietzsche's concerns in the first two chapters suggests, the answer
would be no, and for two principal reasons.
First, in The Birth of Tragedy, as well as in his more explicitly anti-
metaphysical writings, Nietzsche repeatedly stresses the impossibility
of renouncing all forms of normativity. What enhances life is not the ab-
sence of norms, perspectives and so forth, but rather the self-conscious
adoption of certain perspectives over others, and as we have seen, what
is so problematic about metaphysics is not the fact that it is a perspec-
tive, but that it is a narrow one, allowed to become ossified. This is why
the l death of god,' to borrow Nietzsche's metonym, is greeted by many
not as so much liberation, but rather with a distinct sense of horror
evolving into passive nihilism. Thus after the dramatic catastrophe there
must take place an act of reconstruction and rebuilding. The loss of one
perspective anticipates only the establishment of another, more life-
enhancing one. As I have argued in the last chapter, the free spirit is not
one that gives itself up entirely to non-sense, but rather one that lives
perpetually on the edge between meaning and non-meaning, and it is

107
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

this ability to conduct life as an experiment which is to be seen as a

mark of strength. In this regard, therefore, Oedipus, for all his heroic
self-sacrifice, is a passive nihilist. He willingly accepts his guilt, but at
the same time plunges himself into a world that is now perceived as de-
void of meaning. This diminution of self-worth at the end of Oedipus
Tyrannos anticipates what Nietzsche later refers to as the self-hatred of
the ascetic priest, whose hatred of the world for lacking any higher
meaning is turned in on himself.
Second, there occurs in tragedy the highly symbolic act of expulsion
which excludes the tragic hero from the sphere of the social. Sublime
ridicule of the human condition may be possible for the tragic hero,
such as Prometheus or Oedipus, but it is not a viable programme for
cultural renewal. Here, despite the tempting parallels between the
tragic hero and the Ubermensch, the extent of their dissimilarity
should be made quite clear. Upon the revelation that Oedipus has ful-
filled his own fate, he is cast out from the community, so that the city,
cleansed of the miasma of his crimes, can continue to exist. In other
words, the continued presence of Oedipus within Thebes threatens to
disrupt the entire social order. As Jean-Pierre Vernant notes, Oedipus
'is from then on "apolis"; he incarnates the figure of the excluded. In his
solitude, he appears at once not yet human, a wild beast, a savage mon-
ster, and beyond the human, bearer of a formidable religious qualifica-
tion, like a "daimon"'. Similarly, at the end of Antigone, Creon, though
admittedly the anti-hero, demands to be expelled from the city, to save
it from the desolation afflicting it. Finally, in Prometheus Bound Aeschylus
uses abundant spatial metaphors to emphasise the isolation of
Prometheus from society, and indeed beyond the bounds of the entire
known world. The Ubermensch, in contrast, though apart from the
mass of modernity, is not always solitary. An important element of
Nietzsche's thinking about the Ubermensch is the idea of communal ge-
nius. This is indicated by his references to free spirits as 'we' or his
comment that 'There must be many Ubermenschen: everything good
develops only among its own kind. One god would be a devil. A ruling
race' (KSA 11:3^). Similarly, Nietzsche also admires models of commu-
nal excellence, such as the Greek polis, the Venetian Republic or even
the Jesuit order.

108
 LAUGHTER AND SUBLIMITY

Consequently, while the illusions of Apollo cannot completely censor

the irruptions of Dionysian wisdom, there is a simultaneous recogni-
tion of their necessity. As the fable of Oedipus indicates, they cannot be
discarded, and this is true also for the Ubermensch. Rather than becom-
ing 'apolis' through the complete denial of Apollo's ideological illusions,
the Ubermensch, as an active nihilist, accepts them together with their
utter contingency, accustomed to those multifarious 'reversals of per-
spective' that Nietzsche will recommend some years later. The catastro-
phe on the tragic stage presents the fragility of values: it alerts the spec-
tators to a constant reassessment of the truth regime under which they
live. As in the never-ending dialectic of interpretation I outlined earlier,
tragedy presents a constant challenge to self-criticism and appraisal.

109
 Wagner, Modernity and the Problem
of Transcendence

It may perhaps be recalled, at least among my friends, that initially I

approached the modern world with a few crude errors and over-
estimations and, in any case, hopefully . . . what I failed to recognise at
that time both in philosophical pessimism and in German music was
what is really their distinctive character — their romanticism.
(GS§ 37 o)

In the years following the publication of The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche

came either to reject much of its content, or at least to express reserva-
tions about the manner of its presentation. He recognised that so many
of the important insights of his first book, most especially his 'discov-
ery' of the Dionysian and Apollonian artistic drives, were hindered by
the vocabulary used to formulate them. In both the 'Attempt at a Self-
criticism' with which he prefaced the second edition of the work in
1886, and his later account of it in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche is all too aware
that at the time of composition he was still responding to the influence
of idealist and Schopenhauerian metaphysics. This is not to imply that
the early Nietzsche was an idealist; as I have suggested in previous chap-
ters, his fragmentary writings from the same period as The Birth of
Tragedy indicate the existence already of a considerable distance from
Schopenhauer. However, while there are significant differences be-
tween them, Nietzsche still made use of much of the metaphysical vo-
cabulary inherited from his predecessors. As he comments in the 'At-
tempt at a Self-criticism,' 'How very much I now regret that I did not
have the courage (or immodesty?) at that time to permit myself in every
respect a personal language for such personal views and ventures — that
 WAGNER, MODERNITY AND THE PROBLEM OF TRANSCENDENCE

with Schopenhauerian and Kantian formulae I laboriously sought to ex-

press alien and novel evaluations, which were fundamentally opposed
to the spirit, and equally the taste, of Kant and Schopenhauer!' (BT* At-
tempt at a Self-criticism* §6). As I have suggested previously, although
Nietzsche's reading of tragedy diverges significantly from that of
Schopenhauer, much of its conceptual shape is informed by the aesthet-
ics of both Kant and Schopenhauer, with particular regard to their the-
ories of the sublime. At the same time, however, his reading of the sub-
lime was distinctly Nietzschean; he comments on Schopenhauer's
doctrine of tragic resignation, 'How differently Dionysus spoke to me!
How far removed from me was just this whole resignationism at the
time!' (ibid.). In addition, he acknowledges, in Ecce Homo, the Hegelian
organisation of much of the argument of the Birth of Tragedy, resulting in
a seeming untimeliness: 'I thought these problems through while serv-
ing as an orderly during cold September nights in front of the walls of
Metz: one could well believe rather that the tract was go years older
. . . it reeks offensively Hegelian. . . . An "Idea" — the opposition
Dionysian and Apollonian — translated into metaphysical terms; history
itself as the development of this "Idea"; the opposition sublated into a
synthesis by tragedy' (EH' Birth ofTragedy' § i). As I have suggested ear-
lier, while the opposition of Apollo and Dionysus encourages such a
reading, the logic of Nietzsche's argument actually precludes any final
synthesis; the resolution of the contradiction of the two is always pre-
sented as provisional.
In reflection, what preoccupied Nietzsche more with The Birth of
Tragedy than this matter of'mere' style, however, was the readiness he
displayed in assimilating his hope for a cultural renewal to the artistic
project of Wagner. Although the ostensible subject of the book is Greek
tragedy, the second half largely consists of an analysis of European cul-
ture after the decline of tragedy through the agency of Euripides and
Socrates. Modernity is largely read in terms of its epigonal status, and
Nietzsche's attention to Wagner, in particular Tristan and Isolde, derives
from the sense that his operas constituted a rebirth of Greek tragedy.
Thus far worse than corrupting the Dionysian by forcing it into the
straitjacket of Schopenhauer and Hegel was the fact 'that I ruined the
grandiose Greek problem, as it unfolded in font of me, by mixing in the
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

most modern things. That I had pinned my hopes where there was noth-
ing to hope for, where everything pointed all too clearly towards an
ending' (BT'Attempt at a Self-criticism' §6). And yet this 'mixing in the
most modern things' is of crucial significance, for it is Nietzsche's sub-
sequent disillusionment with Wagner that compels him to reassess his
general views of art, which he first articulated in the first volume of Hu-
man All Too Human, published in 1878. In this text Nietzsche's earlier
ideas are qualified by a number of considerations.
First, Nietzsche recognises the importance of distinguishing between
'good' and 'bad' art. In The Birth of Tragedy tragic drama is seen as hav-
ing been extinguished by the non-aesthetic drive for philosophical un-
derstanding by Socrates. As the culmination of that process the culture
of modernity is seen as simply hostile to art: 'A glance at the evolution
of the German spirit will leave us in no doubt. . . .The inartistic para-
sitical spirit of Socratic optimism is revealed in opera as well as in the
abstract character of our own mythless existence, in an art that has sunk
to the level of pure entertainment' (BT§24). Consequently, the operas
of Wagner consist in an overcoming of modern culture. Later Nietzsche
comes to revise this view; the opposition between art and non-art (en-
tertainment) is supplanted by one between good and bad art, the latter
of which finds Wagner among its foremost exponents. Second, the op-
position between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, while remaining an
important element in his thought, is supplemented by the distinction
between the 'classical' and the 'romantic'Tacitly acknowledging the
limited value of the opposition between Apollo and Dionysus, Nietz-
sche embraces concepts in contemporary aesthetic theory and inter-
prets them in terms of his wider anti-metaphysical critique. Third, the
notion that art presents a form of illusion, most specifically in its Apol-
lonian manifestation, is increasingly emphasised, and interpreted as its
cardinal virtue. Although the Dionysian returns again in Nietzsche's lat-
er writings, in the middle period it is far less prominent, no doubt part-
ly because of the metaphysical and Schopenhauerian connotations of the
term, as he discusses it in The Birth of Tragedy. Fourth, Nietzsche be-
comes increasingly preoccupied with the idea of the 'grand style,' which
in many respects prefigures his notion of art as the expression of will to
power. Underlying all of these shifts is the attempt to formulate a new

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 WAGNER, MODERNITY AND THE PROBLEM OF TRANSCENDENCE

aesthetic vocabulary and set of concerns, which will function as a

counter-weight to the yearning for transcendence in both the aesthetic
theory to which Nietzsche is heir and the greater part of contemporary
artistic practice. Indeed, Nietzsche's gravest charge against Wagner was
that ultimately he was motivated by the same desire for redemption
that underpinned Christianity and that threatened to engulf modern
culture in general. I shall discuss each of these issues in turn, beginning
with the difficult case of Wagner.

Wagner
In the last third of The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche equates the Wagnerian
' Gesamtkunstwerk' and its putative dialectical synthesis of music and text
with the Greek tragic drama, whose unity of Apollonian and Dionysian
performs an analogous function. Against this Nietzsche contrasts the
wholly 'unaesthetic,' 'Socratic' tradition of opera since Monteverdi,
which in its demand for textual intelligibility fully subordinates the mu-
sic to the libretto. Since Greek tragedy had performed a function of
personal and cultural redemption, so Nietzsche reasons, the operas of
Wagner can accomplish a similar task for modern culture and save it
from the encroachment of nihilism. Wagner's compositional practice is
also of central importance in this regard. Nietzsche's emphasis on the
role of conflict and negation in the experience of the sublime parallels
Wagner's own promotion of musical dissonance through his practice of
' endless melody,' in which harmonic resolution through cadence is con-
stantly deferred by the modulation of the same melodic motif. For
Nietzsche this perpetual deferral of satisfaction is a close equivalent to
the Dionysian joy in dissolution and negation. Nietzsche notes, 'even
the ugly and the disharmonious is an artistic game that the will, in its
eternal and inexhaustible desire, plays with itself . . . the desire pro-
duced by tragic myth has the same home as the erotic experience of dis-
sonance in music' Later he adds that dissonance is a Dionysian phe-
nomenon 'that reveals to us again and again the playful building up and
destruction of the individual world as the discharge of a primal desire'
(BT §24). One might even speculate that quite apart from Schopen-
hauer's privileging of music amongst the arts, it is Wagner's use of dis-
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

sonance that drew Nietzsche to music rather than to any of the other
arts, as a source for cultural renewal, yet while one of the grounds for
Nietzsche's initial enthusiasm for Wagner lay in their shared interest in
Schopenhauer, it was not necessarily the only one, even though it was
the eventual cause of their parting. One can also explain Nietzsche's
early attraction to Wagner in terms of the political role which the com-
poser gives to art. In his essays on Art and Revolution and German Art and
German Politics, Wagner stresses the crucial role which art should play in
culture, arguing that it made possible an ennobling of * public spiritual
life.' An emphasis on the political aspects of Wagner's understanding of
the arts makes sense of many aspects of The Birth ofTragedy, in particular
Nietzsche's concern with not only the renewal of the individual specta-
tor of the drama, but also the central role occupied by tragic drama in
sustaining the edifice of Greek culture as a whole. Additionally Nietz-
sche's extravagant claims made on behalf of Wagner are justified on the
grounds of the cultural renewal and redemption which he sees as immi-
nent. What has to be redeemed is not just the Socratic individual, but
Socratic society as a whole. Modern society, modernity, theoretical cul-
ture is the problem, and it is a phenomenon that can be redeemed by
the communal aesthetic form of Wagnerian opera.
However, the significance of Wagner goes further than this political
appeal. For the relation between Nietzsche and Wagner is largely deter-
mined by their individual responses to the metaphysics of music inher-
ited from Schopenhauer. Nietzsche's enthusiasm for Wagner stems
largely from his disillusionment with modernity's self-imposed goal of
scientific knowledge. In his account of the development of tragedy he
sees the birth of Western theoretical culture at the moment when
Socrates, as the archetypal 'theoretical' spectator, demands that the
work be intelligible. Born less out of a hypertrophy of the Apollonian
than out of a fundamentally extra-aesthetic impulse, this theoretical
drive, or as Nietzsche terms it,'Socratic optimism' appears on stage in
the form of Euripidean drama, which subordinates all the symbolic ele-
ments of tragedy to the overarching demand for logical, intelligible dis-
course, hence the large number of set-piece debates in the plays of Eu-
ripides.
To stress still further the distinction between tragic and modern,

114
 WAGNER, MODERNITY AND THE PROBLEM OF TRANSCENDENCE

theoretical culture, he describes the goals of their artistic expression

with different terminology. Nietzsche characterises tragic culture as
4
the culture whose important mark is that of putting wisdom as its
highest goal instead of knowledge' (BT § 18). In other words, tragic cul-
ture aims at an indeterminate aesthetic expression of its understanding
of the world, since such an understanding can only be an aesthetic one.
In contrast, Socratic culture deludes itself in believing it can actually
'know' the world in intelligible concepts. Hence the subordination of
tragic symbol to discursive logic, a process which, translated into the
artistic production of Nietzsche's own time, becomes the subordination
of operatic music to text. Nietzsche writes, 'Answering the wish of the
listener to understand the words being sung, the singer speaks rather
than sings, and increases the expressive pathos of the words with this
half-singing: through this increase in the pathos he facilitates compre-
hension of the words and overcomes that remaining half, the music' (BT
§19)-
In his unpublished essay 'On Music and Words,' written at the same
time as The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche claims that music, or as he calls it,
the tonal basis of all speech, constitutes the condition of linguistic
meaning per se: 'As our whole corporeality is related to that primordial
manifestation, the "will," the word that consists of consonants and vow-
els is related to its tone foundation.'3 Hence while language consists of
gesture symbolism and tonal background, it is clear that the latter at-
tains primacy, and this motivates Nietzsche's critique of any attempt to
render music secondary: 'To place music in the service of a series of im-
ages and concepts, to use it as a means to an end . . . this strange pre-
sumption, which is found in the concept of "opera" reminds me of the
ridiculous person who tries to raise himself into the air by his own
bootstraps.'4
Although Nietzsche differs from Schopenhauer inasmuch as the Will
is a 'form of appearance,' and thus an interpretation of the world's primal
ground, his notes of 1871, together with the later sections of The Birth
of Tragedy, giving priority to music over text, nevertheless bring him
close to Schopenhauer and to Wagner. He moreover professes to see in
Wagner's work the rebirth of those very aesthetic impulses that were
stifled with the advent of theoretical culture. For, as he notes later in the
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

fourth of the Untimely Meditations, ' Richard Wagner in Bayreuth/Wagn-

er not only reverses the traditional hierarchy pertaining to the relation
of words and music. In his use of myth he mobilises textual structures
and content which resist the Socratic demand for conceptual clarity.
Nietzsche writes, 'Myth is not based on one thought . . . but is itself a
process of thinking; it communicates its ideas of the world, but as a suc-
cession of events, deeds and afflictions. The Ring of the Nibelungen is a
huge system of thoughts without the conceptual form of thinking' (UM
IV §9), a statement which complements his remarks from the notes of
1871 on programme music, so popular in the nineteenth century:
'Imagine . . . what an undertaking it must be to write music for a
poem, i.e. to wish to illustrate a poem with music in order to secure for
music a conceptual language in this way. What an inverted world! ' 5
While Wagner's musical praxis embodies for the young Nietzsche
the rebirth of an authentically aesthetic art form, the surface similari-
ties hide significant differences, as was the case too with Nietzsche's re-
lation to earlier aesthetic philosophies. Wagner's commitment to
Schopenhauer, the authenticity of his mid-life conversion, cannot be
doubted. From the mid-i8^os a number of letters to friends and ac-
quaintances testify to his enthusiasm for the philosopher's works. In
December 18^4 he wrote to Liszt that 'I have been concerning myself
with a person who has come to me in my solitude . . . like a gift from
heaven. It is Arthur Schopenhauer, the greatest philosopher since
Kant,'6 and he writes on Schopenhauer again to Liszt in the following
year (7 June), noting that 'This act of denial of the Will is the genuine
act of the saint: he reaches perfection only in the complete negation of
his personal consciousness.' Wagner's commitment to Schopenhauer-
ian metaphysics is most evident in his operas, which represent a potent
symbolic expression of the metaphysics of the Will. But it is important
to note that Wagner was concerned with the problem of redemption
and transcendence throughout his career, both before and after his en-
counter with Schopenhauer.8 Thus Schopenhauer's work offered Wag-
ner a set of ideas which he found fruitful for his operatic oeuvre and
which confirmed his existing ideas. From Tristan and Isolde, with its no-
tion of the lovers' redemption through death and negation, to Parsifal,
where the eponymous hero redeems everything and everyone through

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 WAGNER, MODERNITY AND THE PROBLEM OF TRANSCENDENCE

his ignorant bumbling, Wagner's ideal is of redemption through com-

plete dissolution of self-consciousness.9 This may manifest itself in
death, sheer idiocy or amnesia as in the case of Siegfried, the redemp-
tive hero of the Ring, whose inability to recall his own past signifies the
selfsame dissolution of subjectivity. The origin of such ideas is clear, for
they repeat Schopenhauer's understanding of the redemptive function
of asceticism and all forms of negation of the will to live, and it is clear,
too, that as Nietzsche became more and more aware of the extent of his
differences with Schopenhauer, so his disenchantment with Wagner was
perhaps inevitable.
In' Richard Wagner in Bayreuth,' Nietzsche returns to the question of
Wagner, though with a rather different emphasis. It is undoubtedly the
weakest of the Meditations, for even more so than in The Birth of Tragedy
written six years previously, much of it consists of embarrassingly fawn-
ing praise of Wagner. Yet though consisting largely of hagiography, it al-
ready betrays a certain ambivalence towards him. The praise seems
partly intended to remind Wagner of the true calling of his work, thus
warning him not to fall victim to the temptations of popular appeal.
Nietzsche notes, for example, that' After he realised the connection be-
tween contemporary theatre, theatrical success and the character of
contemporary man, his soul no longer had anything to do with this the-
atre: he was no longer interested in aesthetic fanaticism and the rejoic-
ing of the excited masses. It must have incensed him to see his art swal-
lowed up so indiscriminately in the jaws of insatiable boredom and the
craving for diversion' (UMIV §8). Given that Wagner was already wel-
coming the adulation afforded him late in life, this reads far more like
an appeal to him than an account of his musical career.
For all its weaknesses, however, 'Richard Wagner in Bayreuth' is sig-
nificant in that Nietzsche widens the scope of his critique of modern,
'debased' opera. Whereas in The Birth of Tragedy the particular signifi-
cance of Wagner lay in his resurrection of music in the face of the So-
cratic demand for verbal intelligibility, Nietzsche now offers a much
more wide-ranging account of the difference between the Wagnerian
music drama and opera. In particular, Wagner now represents a counter
to the dangers of popular art, in particular, the theatre. Early in 'Wagner
in Bayreuth' Nietzsche complains that 'All the modern arts have until

117
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

now been gradually debased, either as narrow and atrophied or as luxu-

ry items. Even the uncertain disconnected memories we moderns have
inherited from the Greeks of true art may come to rest' (UM IV §i).
Accompanying this debasement of aesthetic sensibility are, on the one
hand, a calculating exploitation of art as a cultural 'good' or a height-
ened neurotic demand for emotional stimulation.
The first is a consequence of the dominance of economic values.
Nietzsche notes that 'In former times one looked down with honest no-
bility on people who dealt in money as a business . . . one admitted to
oneself that every society had to have intestines. Now, as the most cov-
etous of its religions, they are the ruling power in the soul of modern
humanity' (UM IV §6). Paradoxically allying himself with the 'enemy of
art,' Nietzsche criticises the 'squandering of money on the construction
of [the art lover's] theatres and public monuments,' for 'There is no
hunger, no satisfaction, but always a tired playing with the appearance of
both, for the purposes of the most vain kind of display' (UM IV §^). Al-
though he stops short of formulating a critique of a commodity aesthet-
ic, Nietzsche nevertheless draws links between the appetitive consump-
tion of art as a form of vain cultural display and the rise of economic
values.
Regarding the role of emotional stimulation in contemporary art he
observes that 'Whenever I look at the thousands of people in the popu-
lous cities as they go by with an expression of stupidity or in haste, I al-
ways say to myself they must be in poor spirits. And yet for all of them
art is merely there to put them in worse spirits . . . they are mounted
and drilled remorselessly by improperfeelings, and they are not allowed
to confess their own sorrow to themselves; if they want to speak, con-
vention whispers something in their ear such that they forget what they
originally wanted to say' (ibid.). Modern art thus provides the mass
public with an artificially heightened, but completely false set of emo-
tional responses which verge on a kind of induced mass hysteria. At the
root of this is the problem of the 'guilty conscience' of the modern soul,
and modern art has taken up the task of inducing either 'stupefaction or
delirium! To put to sleep or to intoxicate! To silence the conscience by
one means or the other' (UM IV §6).
Despite the immaturity of the text, Nietzsche is introducing themes

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that figure prominently in his later writings, in particular the problem

of the constitutive lack of modern subjectivity that he outlines in The
Genealogy of Morals and its accompanying need for redemption. In this
respect contemporary popular art fulfils the same function as Christian-
ity or metaphysics, namely, the offering of some form of refuge. Nietz-
sche's mistake, as he was later to admit, was to see a counter-movement
to this degraded art in the work of Wagner. An indication of his recog-
nition that he had misread the significance ofWagner first appears in the
second volume of Human All Too Human, in which he warns of the dan-
gers ofWagner's music, and in particular the dangers of its lack of mea-
sure and structure: 'His famous artistic means . . . the "endless melody"
— strives to break all mathematical regularities . . . it is overly rich in its
invention of effects that sound to the older ear like rhythmical paradox-
es and blasphemies/ and yet in contrast to the earlier works, where
such dissonant paradoxes were seen as Dionysian expression, Nietzsche
now warns that 'Considerable danger can emerge from the comfortable
imitation of such art; alongside an overripe rhythmic feeling there has
always lurked a wildness and the decline of rhythm/ Such music dis-
plays a loss of proportion, and comes all too close to the'femaleessence
ofmusic'(Hv4f/II, §134).
Nietzsche's comments are taken up and expounded at much greater
length in his two late polemics, The Case of Wagner and Nietzsche contra
Wagner, and in numerous unpublished notes from the late 1880s. He
writes in The Case ofWagner, 'Victor Hugo and Richard Wagner — they
signify one and the same thing, that in cultures of decline wherever the
choice falls into the laps of the masses, authenticity always becomes su-
perfluous, disadvantageous, retrogressive' (CW §11), thus equating the
mass appeal of Wagner ian theatre with a bogus popular culture still
bound to the demands of slave morality. The 'endless melody' of Wag-
ner is now linked with decadence. Paraphrasing Paul Bourget, he notes,
'What is the mark of every literary decadence? That life no longer re-
sides in the whole. The word becomes sovereign and leaps out of the
sentence, the sentence reaches out and obscures the meaning of
the page, and the page comes to life at the expense of the whole — the
whole is no longer a whole. This, however, is the simile of every style of
decadence: every time there is an anarchy of atoms' (CW§j). In literary

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terms one could imagine this critique of the fetishism of the fragment
as directed towards the work of a contemporary poet such as Mallar-
me, but Nietzsche's interest in decadence is particularly oriented to-
wards its expression in music. Here there is a clear analogy between the
atomisation of poetic style and Wagner's reduction of melodic structure
to the single tonal unit. The organisation of melody around periodic
punctuations, cadences and repetitive motifs is replaced by a system in
which every individual note is of equal significance, and it is this which
explains the 'wandering tonality' of Wagner, for in the western musical
tradition a hierarchy exists amongst the tones, some are essential, oth-
ers are inessential or do not belong in the musical key of the composi-
tion. In Wagner such distinctions are eroded; as Nietzsche notes, Wag-
ner is 'our greatest miniaturist . . . who crowds into the smallest space
an infinity of meaning' (ibid.). As I shall explore later, this shrinking of
the musical period can be linked with Nietzsche's comments on will to
power, in which 'endless melody' can be read as a weakness of will, a
collapse in the organising power of will to power.
Quite apart from his attention to the question of Wagner's musical
technique, Nietzsche takes issue with the values underpinning Wagner-
ian music drama. He asserts, 'Everything that has ever grown up on the
soil of impoverished life, this entire false coinage of transcendence and
the Beyond, has found its sublimest advocate in the art of Wagner. . . .
My friends, drink just the philtres of this art! Nowhere will you find a
more pleasant way of unnerving your spirit, and of forgetting your mas-
culinity under a rose bush' (CWFirst Postscript'). It is also notable that
while Nietzsche rejects Wagner's concern with redemption, he still ac-
knowledges the extraordinary power the composer's music exerts over
the listener. Hence Nietzsche's repeated insistence on his differences
with the composer almost seems calculated to convince himself as
much as his readers. In the section of Nietzsche contraWagner entitled 'We
Antipodeans' he writes, 'The revenge on life itself— the most wilful
kind of intoxication for such impoverished people! . . . Both Wagner
and Schopenhauer answer the two-fold need of these last people — they
deny life, they defame it, for this reason they are my antipodeans.' In his
search for transcendence Wagner enacts the same denial of life
sustaining metaphysics, and his music dramas produce in the audience a

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 WAGNER, MODERNITY AND THE PROBLEM OF TRANSCENDENCE

similar yearning. It is Wagner's popularity which makes him so dan-

gerous.
Nietzsche brings to bear a further charge against Wagner, namely, that
of having destroyed music. In order to distance his own conception of
the artist from Wagner, Nietzsche uses almost any word available for
Wagner except that of artist. Wagner is accused of being a charlatan (a
term also reserved, strangely, for Victor Hugo), a decadent, a seducer, a
womaniser, an actor, and his music is a kind of'underhand' Christianity,
but it is not 'authentic art,' since 'music has lost its world-transfigurative,
affirmative character — it is music of decadence, and no longer the flute
of Dionysus' (£H'The Case ofWagner' §i). Although Nietzsche's rejec-
tion of Wagner is given great prominence in the light of their close per-
sonal relations, in terms of his thought, the disaffection with his former
mentor is part of a wider recognition that much contemporary art em-
bodies the very values that Nietzsche believed were part of metaphysi-
cal, Socratic, culture. In The Case ofWagner he even sees Wagner's weak-
nesses as being shared by Brahms, who is usually thought of as the
former's antithesis. This supposed contrast is, he argues, illusory. De-
spite its classicism, the music of Brahms is motivated by the same meta-
physical yearning as that ofWagner: 'He has the melancholy borne of im-
potence; he does not create out of fullness, but thirsts after fullness. If one
discounts what he imitates, what he borrows from the stylistic forms of
either the great past or the exotically modern — he is a master of copying
— what is most particular to him is longing* (CWCSecond Postscript').

Towards a New Evaluation

Nietzsche's rejection of much contemporary art reaches its climax in his
late polemics against Wagner. However, as I noted earlier, a general
awareness that 'art' is an ambiguous phenomenon can already be seen in
Human All Too Human. While in The Birth ofTragedy Nietzsche had seen the
aesthetic impulse as fundamentally unlike the Socratism of modernity, in
the later text he sees a frequent continuity between religious sentiment
and artistic practice. He observes, for example, that 'If it is believed that
we have rid ourselves of the habit of religion, this has not happened to
the extent that we do not find joy in encountering religious experiences

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and moods devoid of conceptual content, as in the example of music'

(HAH I §131).This view is reiterated in a later aphorism which asserts
that 'Art raises its head where religion recedes. It takes over a host of
feelings and moods produced by religion' (HAH I§ i go). Even for the free
spirit, argues Nietzsche, who has overcome all metaphysical impulses,
'the highest effects of art produce a resonance of the long silent, indeed
broken chord of metaphysics' (HAH I § i ^3). Art, alongside religion, can
act like a narcotic; rather than confronting the cause of suffering, for ex-
ample, it reinterprets the experience, 'through awakening a pleasure in
pain, in emotion in general (which is the starting point for tragic art).' In
contrast, 'The more the dominance of religions and all narcotic art re-
cedes, the more sternly men confront the elimination of evil, which ad-
mittedly turns out badly for tragic poets — for there is less and less mate-
rial for tragedy' (HAH I § 1 o 8). Art thus functions as a kind of anaesthetic,
and in contrast to The Birth of Tragedy, in which this anaesthetic function
is celebrated as a product of Greek wisdom, Nietzsche seems to harbour
a more ambivalent attitude towards it.
The metaphysical foundation of art is evident in the repeated pres-
ence of a concern with the transcendent in many art works. In an apho-
rism entitled 'The Beyond in Art/ Nietzsche admits that 'It is admitted
with deep pain that in their most elevating moments artists of all times
have lifted up their ideas to the state of heavenly transfiguration, which
we now recognise to be false: they glorify the religious and philosophi-
cal errors of mankind' (HAH I §220). Nietzsche seems to view this
practice, which 'assumes a metaphysical significance for art,' as belong-
ing increasingly to the past; the examples he cites include Raphael,
Michelangelo, Dante's Divine Comedy and Gothic architecture. Howev-
er, in an earlier aphorism on 'The Desensualising of Higher Art,' he
comments on a tendency in contemporary music for the material tex-
ture to be made secondary to the conceptual content: 'For this reason
we tolerate much greater tonal forces, much more "noise," because we
are better accustomed than our forebears to listen for reason in it.' Con-
sequently the attention to the material texture of music is supplanted
by the incessant search for meaning, such that the 'sense organs become
blunt and weak' (HAH I §217). This process, which Nietzsche sees oc-
curring also in the visual arts, implies a return of the metaphysical dual-

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ism more commonly associated with the explicitly religious art of the
past.
There is a curious contradiction in this position. For while Nietzsche
is critical of this 'metaphysical' underplaying of the substance of music,
he is also hostile to the fetishism of musical material apparent in Wag-
ner, as I noted earlier. This can perhaps be resolved by recalling that the
particular object of censure is the tendency to atomisation which can
follow a material fetish — at all times his criticism focuses on the loss of
structure that follows an over-attention to the musical fragment. Nietz-
sche is far from endorsing a formalist practice or art criticism. Indeed,
explicitly singling out Kantian aesthetics for censure, he appears to re-
gard the process whereby 'the symbolic takes the place more and more
of the existent' (ibid.) as retrograde. If this is not spelled out in such
terms in this particular aphorism, a later fragment from 188^ makes
the point more forcefully, in which Nietzsche writes that 'To strive for
desensualisation, that seems to me to be a misunderstanding, or an ill-
ness or a cure, where it is not mere hypocrisy and self-deception/
adding that 'it is a sign that one has turned out well when, like Goethe,
one clings with ever greater pleasure and warmth to the "things of this
world"' (KSA 11:37 [12]).
In Human All Too Human, therefore, one can detect the emergence of
a more differentiated understanding of art in Nietzsche, in which it is
recognised that art can be just as ensnared within the trap of meta-
physics as any other cultural activity. Art is not simply the counter to
metaphysics, or the basis of a fundamental renewal of culture, even if a
specific type of aesthetic practice has the potential for precisely this cul-
tural renewal. More often than not, art is just as much a symptom of
the problem of modernity than it is a a solution. This is made explicit
later in the 'Attempt at a Self-criticism,' in which he expresses his sus-
picion that his own formulation had given his work a romantic accent,
in that art appears to offer a 'metaphysical comfort.' In contrast, he ar-
gues, 'You should learn first of all an art of this-worldly comfort' (BT
'Attempt at a Self-criticism' §7). Again we see an attempt to apply the
general critique of metaphysical dualism to the sphere of art, in which
art functions, or rather should function, according to a monistic logic,
in which it is stripped of any intimation of transcendence. Quite clearly

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Nietzsche is therefore suggesting a set of criteria for judging the worth

of works of art, one of which is also the notion of the 'grand style/
which I shall discuss later.
Although he does not specifically refer to modern art in these apho-
risms, it is clear that it is the specific condition of art in modernity
which Nietzsche is describing rather than art in general. This is indicat-
ed by the many other references to contemporary art which put for-
ward a similar argument. One central problem for Nietzsche is that art
is potentially coming to its end in the culture of modernity. In the sec-
ond volume of Human All Too Human he notes that art has become re-
dundant 'in the age of work/ a comment which parallels his critique of
the commodification of art. It has been reduced to 'a matter of amuse-
ment, of relaxation: we dedicate to it what is left over of our time, our
energies' (HAH II §170). The consequence is that there has developed
what Nietzsche terms 'petty art/ more adapted to the desire for an art
of relaxation. There remains 'great art/ Nietzsche argues, which strug-
gles to survive in the air more suited to the petty art of'enchanting di-
version/ and he expresses his gratitude that such great art still persists
when it would be easier to flee. However, he also recognises that in the
future, even if more time were available for aesthetic enjoyment, 'our
great art will be unusable' (ibid.). The aesthetically motivated critique
of modernity also occurs in Daybreak, in which Nietzsche attacks the
capitalist reduction of art to a matter of mere commerce, thus debasing
the worth of the artist. In an aphorism bearing the motto 'To know
nothing about trade is noble' (D §308) Nietzsche argues, 'To sell one's
virtue only for the highest price, let alone carry on usury with it, as
teacher, official, artist — makes of genius and talent a shopkeeper's af-
fair' (ibid.). The pessimistic summation of this and the earlier aphorism
discussed is prefigured in the first volume of Human All Too Human in an
aphorism on the 'Sunset of Art.' Here Nietzsche notes that 'In the same
way that one recalls youth in old age, and celebrates memorial events,
so soon humanity will relate to art as if it were a moving memory of the
joys of youth.'To be sure, artists will still be highly regarded, but this is
because the artistic type will soon be seen as a relic from a previous era,
and honoured as a reminder of the 'happiness of earlier times.' Nietz-
sche concludes, 'The sun has already set but the sky of life still glows

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and is still lit up by it, even though we can no longer see it' (HAH I
§223). Paradoxically, therefore, art, by virtue of its very redundancy
sets in motion a hankering for the resurrection of the past.
In order to interpret the function of such hankering in the present,
Nietzsche draws on the notions of the classical and the romantic to de-
scribe alternative aesthetic practices. This constitutes an important de-
parture, for although in his later writings the Dionysian and the classi-
cal/romantic dichotomy are brought together as critical terms in his
diagnosis of the contemporary cultural crisis, in works such as Human
All Too Human, Daybreak and The Gay Science the Apollonian-Dionysian
opposition virtually disappears. In 'The Wanderer and his Shadow'
Nietzsche offers his first formulation of the opposition between the
two: 'Classical and romantic — both those spirits of a classical and those
of a romantic bent — these two species exist at all times — entertain a vi-
sion of the future: but the former do so out of a strength of their age, the
latter out of its weakness' (WS §217). In Daybreak the romantics are seen
as 'resurrectors of the dead,' whose impulse to repeat the past is driven
by vanity (D § 1 ^9). The distinction between the two aesthetic impulses
is spelled out more forcefully in The Gay Science, which in many respects
represents Nietzsche's most articulate statement of his mature aesthet-
ic evaluation. Having equated romanticism with philosophical pes-
simism, of which the most prominent exponent is Schopenhauer, he
goes on to ask,

What is romanticism? Every art, every philosophy may be viewed as a remedy

and an aid in the service of growing and struggling life: they always presup-
pose suffering and sufferers. But there are two kinds of sufferers, on the one
hand, those who suffer from an overfullness of life . . . and then those who suf-
fer from the impoverishment of life, and seek rest, stillness, calm seas, redemp-
tion from themselves through art and knowledge, or intoxication, convul-
sions, anaesthesia and madness. All romanticism in art and knowledge
corresponds to the dual needs of the latter type, and that included (and in-
cludes) Schopenhauer as well as Richard Wagner.
(G5§37o)

This conception of romanticism becomes central in Nietzsche's later

writings, particularly in the Nachlass fragments on art. In one fragment
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

from 1887, for example, he wonders 'whether the antithesis of active

and reactive doesn't lie behind the antithesis of classical and romantic'
(W>§8 47 ).
Romanticism is thus driven by lack, or hunger, and in contrast classi-
cism is driven by an excess of force, energy and life. Nietzsche's cri-
tique can be read in literal terms, in which he can be seen as attending
to the romantic concern with the infinite, a concern that can be found
inTieck or the Schlegel brothers.10 The constitutive function of lack in
romantic philosophy can also be seen in Schopenhauer's positing of will
as a metaphysical foundation. However, Nietzsche's target is more
broadly defined, for although he identifies specific artists and writers,
including Wagner, Schopenhauer, Delacroix, Brahms and others, as 'ro-
mantic,' the term refers to the general persistence, indeed increase, of
the demand for redemption in modernity, whether it is through the
self-negating Wagnerian subject or the metaphysical search for absolute
certainty. In this regard Nietzsche sees modern art as corrupted by the
dominance of metaphysics, such that the present is faced with a paradox
of both a hegemonic drive to scientific rationality and an ever increasing
craving for heightened emotional expression. He notes, 'Dissoluteness
and indifference, burning desires, cooling of the heart — this repulsive
juxtaposition is to be found in the higher society of Europe of the pres-
ent day. The artist believes he has done a great deal if, through his art, he
has for once set the heart aflame beside these burning desires: and like-
wise the philosopher if, given the coolness of his heart he has in com-
mon with his age, he succeeds through his world-denying judgement in
cooling the heat of the desires in himself and in this society' (HAH II
§182). As I indicated earlier, Nietzsche criticises the metaphysical sup-
pression of the body and here he notes that in the place of giving human
affectivity its proper place within the hierarchy of the soul there
emerges the artificial sentimentality of romanticism, which stands for
the hysteria of modernity per se.This recalls Nietzsche's criticisms of
Wagner for creating mass hysteria in the audience, itself a microcosm of
the more general condition of cultural modernism. Underlying Nietz-
sche's judgement is a distinction between 'false' and 'authentic' art, in
which the latter works as a counter-movement to metaphysics and the
former functions as one of its more visible symbols. In an aphorism en-

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titled 'Degenerate Varieties of Art' Nietzsche notes that for all 'genuine
species' of art there also exist 'degenerate' types, 'art in search of re-
pose and excited and agitated art' (HAH II §i i^). Again paradoxically,
the craving for repose and the fascination with agitation and excitement
belong together; the one is the consequence of the failure of the latter.
They are contrasted with Nietzsche's conception of a classical aesthetic
in which the affectivity of artistic practice is reigned in.
Romanticism, driven by the hunger for 'calm seas,' thus degenerates
into an overexcited, uncontrolled hyperaffective state. No doubt think-
ing of contemporary bourgeois taste in this context, Nietzsche writes,
'The florid style in art is the consequence of a poverty of organising
power in the face of a superabundance of means and ends' (HAH II
§ 117). In a slightly later aphorism Nietzsche discusses the origins of the
baroque in the light of these more general considerations; 'the feeling of
a lack of dialectics or inadequacy in expressive or formal ability, com-
bined with an over-abundant, pressing formal impulsion, gives rise to
that stylistic genre called the baroque.' He later adds, 'The baroque style
originates whenever any great art starts to fade, whenever the demands
in the art of classic expression grow too great. . . . It is precisely now,
when music is entering this last epoch, that we can get to know the phe-
nomenon of the baroque style in a particularly splendid form' (HAH II
§144). The use of the example of music is important here, because
Nietzsche again has Wagner in mind, as the exemplar of musical mod-
ernism. It is significant, too, that he warns against simply dismissing
baroque as rhetorical excess, admitting that it has nevertheless occu-
pied the attentions of the high-minded (and not just the plebeian mass),
even if'he whose receptivity for the purer and greater style is not blunt-
ed by [baroque] may count himself lucky' (ibid.).
In contrast to the excess of romanticism, Nietzsche recommends the
employment of'biting coldness,' in order to create the 'grand style' that
will supersede modernity: 'All modern writing is characterised by ex-
aggeratedness; and even when it is written simply the words it contains
arejeit too eccentrically. Rigorous reflection, terseness, coldness, sim-
plicity, deliberately pursued even to their limit, self-containment of the
feelings and silence in general — that alone can help us' (HAH I § 19^). In
the second volume of Human All Too Human Nietzsche returns to this

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 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

theme, noting that 'All great a r t . . . likes to arrest the feelings on their
course and not allow them to run quite to their conclusion' (HAH II
§ 136). In contrast to the 'bombastic' and 'inflated style' of modernity
(D §33 2), Nietzsche recommends, therefore, the same form of dialecti-
cal rigour which, as I argued in the first chapter, he brings to bear to the
question of interpretation. Great artistic representations, Nietzsche re-
minds us, consist of a selective image of the world, displaying an ability
to constrain creative impulses that the baroque and the romantic were
unable to do; 'the good poet of the future will depict only reality and
completely ignore all those fantastic, superstitious, half-mendacious,
faded subjects upon which earlier poets demonstrated their powers.
Only reality, but by no means every reality! — he will depict a select re-
ality' (HAH II §114). Although Nietzsche does not overtly describe this
practice as classicism, it clearly prefigures what he will later come to
term 'Dionysian classicism,' and the inclusion of'Dionysian' in the term
also alerts us to the nuances of what he is implying. For while his opposi-
tion to romanticism and preference for a certain aesthetic austeri-
ty could easily lead one into reading Nietzsche as a late-nineteenth-
century conservative, his critique of romantic modernity is not in the
name of a timeless classicism, even if he still sees in the Greeks an exem-
plary culture. This can be gleaned from his comments on Lawrence
Sterne in Human All Too Human. Praising Sterne as a truly free spirit in
comparison with whom all his contemporaries seem stiff and crude,
Nietzsche writes, 'What is to be praised in him is not the closed and
transparent but the "endless melody": if with this expression we may des-
ignate an artistic style in which the fixed form is constantly being broken
up, displaced, transposed back into indefiniteness so that it signifies one
thing and at the same time another' (HAH II § 113). Hence Nietzsche's
classicism has a significantly modernist tone, for despite the central im-
portance of a controlling structure, that structure is always subject to
displacement and dissolution. Again the parallel with the larger notion of
a dialectic in perpetual flux is suggested here. Undoubtedly there is a
parallel with Wagner and romanticism, but the important difference is
that, as in the case of Sterne, the artistic free spirit is able to manipulate
the negation of meaning consciously, whereas the modern artist seems
to be victim of a nihilistic loss of meaning. This distinction prefigures that

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later drawn between the passive reactive nihilist and the active, accom-
plished nihilist, of which Sterne would be an example.
The notion that the 'free spirit' consciously manipulates meaning de-
velops the theme expounded in Human All Too Human that art is a matter
of simple falsity. This modifies the position stated in The Birth of Tragedy.
In that work art is a complex process of deception and truth; the artis-
tic impulse to Apollonian fiction is matched by the Dionysian vision of
the abyss. Although both are 'forms of appearing/ in the case of the
Dionysian this stems from the essential contradictions of the via nega-
tiva; the contingent and arbitrary nature of meaning can be symbolised
only through its negation in Dionysian ecstasy. In contrast to this
twofold relation of truth and fiction, wisdom and deception, Human All
Too Human regards art as a matter of straight falsity. In this regard the
comic, which in the earlier work is mentioned only secondarily to the
central question of tragedy, becomes more prominent. In the first vol-
ume of Human All Too Human, in an aphorism entitled 'Playing with Life,'
Nietzsche notes the importance of frivolity in Greek culture, beginning
with Homer. He writes, 'Simonides advised his compatriots to take life
as a game; they were only too familiar with its painful seriousness . . .
and they knew that even misery could become a source of enjoyment
solely through art' (HAH I §1^4). This idea is generalised in a slightly
later aphorism in which the artist is seen as retarded 'inasmuch as he has
halted at games that pertain to youth and childhood' (HAH I § 1 £9). It is
important not to read into these comments an affirmation of the idea
that art offers a metaphysical consolation for suffering by regression to
a form of subjective self-annihilation. This would consist of a reversion
to Wagnerian romanticism, from which Nietzsche was at this time at-
tempting to break free. The artistic lying of the Greeks is not connected
with a metaphysical hunger; it does not aim at afinalredemptive stasis.
Rather, it stems from insight into the levity of existence.
The notion of play can be compared with Kant, for whom aesthetic
play consisted of a purposive activity but one without teleological final-
ity. For all his repudiation of Kant, there remain important similarities
between Nietzsche and the older philosopher — for both, the aesthetic
drive has an intrinsic connection with play. The nature of the difference
between the self-conscious deception of the Greeks and the hunger-

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driven myths of modernity is made clear in an aphorism from the sec-

ond volume of Human All Too Human, in which Nietzsche writes that
'The man of the world of antiquity knew better how to rejoice: we how
to suffer less; the former employed all their abundance of ingenuity and
capacity to reflect for the continual creation of new occasions for happi-
ness and celebration: whereas we employ our minds towards the ame-
lioration of suffering and the removal of sources of pain' (HAH II § 187).
The deception of the Greeks functions as a prophylactic in contrast to
that of modernity, in which it serves as a palliative. Again, as in his more
general thought, Nietzsche is less concerned with the opposition of
falsehood and truth and more interested in the different uses to which
falsehood is put; his critique of metaphysics is aimed not at the fact that
it is in some manner 'false,' but that its productive fictions have become
exhausted and self-defeating. Nietzsche's comments on the different
kinds of deception can thus be compared with his well-known assertion
that 'the strength of knowledge does not depend on its degree of truth
but on its age . . . on its character as a condition of life' (GS §110).
Deception and lying will become central to Nietzsche's general proj-
ect for a post-metaphysical culture. In Human AUToo Human it is the pre-
serve of the Greeks and of art: '"We are capable of telling many lies" —
thus the muses once sang when they revealed themselves to Hesiod. —
Many vital discoveries can be made if we for once apprehend the artist
as a deceiver' (HAH II §188). Nietzsche's endorsement of the essential
falsity of art is also a strategic move, for it celebrates the one aspect of
art that had led Plato to call for its exclusion from the ideal state.11
Hence in the specific question of art Nietzsche is adding to his general
project of overturning the cultural legacy of Platonism and, according-
ly, metaphysics. Consequently, he is not merely reworking his own un-
derstanding of art but also placing it at the core of his wider critique of
the metaphysical tradition. This is clear from the way in which Nietz-
sche repeatedly places artistic lying at the service of a more general
overcoming of metaphysical seriousness:

In Greece the profound, thorough, serious spirits were the exceptions: the in-
stinct of the people was inclined, rather, to regard seriousness as a kind of dis-
tortion. Not to create forms, but to borrow them from abroad and transform

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 WAGNER, MODERNITY AND THE PROBLEM OF TRANSCENDENCE

them into the fairest appearance of beauty — that is Greek: imitation, not for
use but for the end of artistic deception, the repeated defeating of an imposed
seriousness, ordering, beautifying, making shallow and superficial.
(HAHII §221)

The emphasis on the mendacity of art is stressed further in an apho-

rism in which Nietzsche discusses the origin of cultic representations.
Taking issue with the idea that the representation of gods underwent an
evolution, from the animistic worship of stones and wood to the an-
thropomorphic statues of more developed cultures, Nietzsche argues
that the humanisation of the gods in fact constituted a departure from
religious belief, in which the representation of the gods in human form
was an aesthetic act driven by 'godlessness.' In addition, he notes that
the art of the Greeks preserved the simultaneous logic of showing and
concealing that had underpinned the more primitive cultic figures: 'The
oldest image of the god is supposed to harbour and at the same time conceal
the god — to intimate his presence but not expose it to view. No Greek
ever beheld his Apollo as a wooden obelisk, his Eros as a lump of stone;
they were symbols whose purpose was precisely to excite fear of be-
holding him' (HAH II §2 2 2). One can see in this passage an echo of the
dual artistic functions of concealing and revealing that had been argued
in The Birth of Tragedy, although on the whole the account of art in Hu-
man All Too Human tends to espouse the more univocal view of falsity I
noted earlier. This passage bears a further echo of The Birth ofTragedj, for
while not mentioning it by name, Nietzsche is drawing on the sublime.
It is not used in order to suggest that art is a locus of transcendence, but
rather to see it as a site of ambiguity and the frustration of meaning. It is
possible to compare Nietzsche's assertion with Hegel in this regard; in
his Lectures on Aesthetics Hegel argues that the Symbolic, the first stage of
art, is enmeshed in this same lack of clarity, inasmuch as the Absolute is
conceptually underdetermined, and the work of art, its sensuous ex-
pression, cannot find an adequate form. Significantly, Hegel links this
contradiction between the Absolute and its sensuous manifestation with
the sublime, for as I have noted earlier Hegel's notion of the sublime fo-
cuses on the gap between the endeavour to represent infinity and the im-
possibility of doing so.
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

In the aphorism of Human All Too Human the general argument is that
the simple 'comes neither first nor last in time/ and that Apollonian
clarity is a secondary phenomenon: 'As the cella contains the holy of
holies, the actual numen of the divinity, and conceals it in mysterious
semi-darkness, but does not wholly conceal it; as the peripteral temple in
turn contains the cella and as though with a canopy and veil shelters it
from prying eyes, but does not wholly shelter it: so the image is the divini-
ty and at the same time the divinity's place of concealment' (ibid.).
Again the function of the image as both revealing and concealing recalls
the wider dialectic of immanence and transcendence central to Niet-
zsche's engagement with modern culture and its projected superses-
sion; as Nietzsche says, 'In regard to knowledge of truths the artist pos-
sesses a weaker morality than the thinker' (HAH I §146), and the
morality of truthfulness is one of the central problems of the moderni-
ty he wishes to overcome.
Regarding the question of art, Nietzsche raises one further theme in
Human All Too Human, in his attempt to wrest art away from the meta-
physical connotations of Wagner and romanticism, namely, the concept
of genius. Although 'genius' is a key concept in Nietzsche's thought, he
gives it a completely different meaning from that given it by his con-
temporaries. In particular, he critiques the myth of spontaneous artistic
creativity. For example, in the sphere of religion he dismisses the cult of
saints and oracular priests as the misinterpretation of a pathological
condition, and adds, somewhat facetiously, that Socrates' daimon may
have been only an ear infection (HAH I §126). More specifically, he as-
serts elsewhere that the cult of genius stems from vanity, a way of ex-
plaining away the ability of others to produce works of art we ourselves
feel incapable of. In contrast, Nietzsche compares the genius with the
'inventor of machines, the scholar of astronomy or history' (HAH I
§162). Alongside these activities, genius is better explained as the prod-
uct of a certain single-mindedness, and he describes the genius as a su-
perior type of bricklayer. Apart from the obvious provocation of these
comments a serious point is also being made, for the cult of artistic ge-
nius relies largely on a metaphysical notion of subjectivity, in which the
artist, having little to do with the hard labour of actuality, is imagined as
producing a work as a perfect totality, suspending mundane temporali-

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 WAGNER, MODERNITY AND THE PROBLEM OF TRANSCENDENCE

ty. Nietzsche's stress on the genius as a type of workman is intended to

shift the orientation of thinking about art and its production away from
romantic ideas of transcendence, and as such it prefigures his later
thought of the Ubermensch as immersed in the constant temporality of
self-overcoming. There is, Nietzsche admits, a particular temptation to
think of artistic production in terms of the romantic myth of genius,
since 'no-one can see in the work of the artist how it has become; that is
its advantage, for wherever one can see the act of becoming one grows
somewhat cool. The finished and perfect art of representation repulses
all thinking as to how it has become/ At the same time, however, he re-
gards the crediting of the artist as a genius, while the scientist is seen
merely as a workman with a superior intellect, as 'a piece of childish-
ness in the realm of reason' (ibid.). In contrast even in the case of a sup-
posed genius such as Beethoven, 'the most glorious melodies were put
together gradually and, as it were, culled out of many beginnings' (HAH
Hiss)-
Yet although the belief in genius and inspiration stems from the mis-
recognition that 'all the great artists have been great workers' (ibid.),
the myth of genius is also encouraged by modern art. While Nietzsche
does not name it as such, it is clear that contemporary art, and more
specifically the music of Wagner, is implied in his assertion that

The artist knows that his work produces its full effect when it excites a belief
in an improvisation, a belief that it came into being with a miraculous sudden-
ness; and so he may assist this illusion and introduce those elements of raptur-
ous restlessness, of blindly groping disorder, of attentive reverie that attend
the beginning of creation into his art as a means of deceiving the soul of the
spectator or auditor into a mood in which he believes that the complete and
perfect has suddenly emerged instantaneously.
(HAHl^g)

Here Nietzsche's critique of the emotional hyperbole ofWagnerianism

takes on another facet; not only does the artificially heightened rapture
satisfy the longing of the debased audience of an inartistic modernity, it
also enhances the narcissism of the artist who wishes to gain the label
'genius.' At bottom, however, the only difference between the genius
and the merely talented artist, argues Nietzsche, is that the former is
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

better at hiding the 'barrel-organ,' since 'they too can do no more than
repeat their same old tunes' (HAH II §i££), a comment which again
seems aimed at Wagner's repetitious use of the leitmotif. Nietzsche is
therefore suspicious of improvisation for the values it may connote,
but is also critical of a reliance on repetition which has subsequently
been seen as an essential element of the popular culture for which
Nietzsche reserved so much scorn. At the same time, however, he is not
urging a reactivation of the purely classical, in spite of his fondness for
Mozart. 14 As I indicated, the classical comes to be mediated by a
Dionysian disruption of rigid aesthetic hierarchies, and this is also ap-
parent in Nietzsche's comments on the importance of incompleteness,
where 'the complete produces a diminishing effect' (HAH I §199).
Again the model of a constant deferral of dialectical closure, which gov-
erns his conception of interpretation, has a part to play here and an-
chors the question of art in Nietzsche's critique of'knowledge .'The is-
sue of what Nietzsche means by the classical will be explored later, but
the reference to repetition and improvisation introduces a theme of
more immediate relevance, namely, the relation of modernity, art and
time, and it is to this theme I now turn.
 Memory, History and
Eternal Recurrence

The Aesthetics of Time

Only if history can endure to be transformed into a work of art will it

perhaps be able to preserve instincts or even evoke them.
§7)

The question of time and history constitute central elements in Nietz-

sche's thinking. It is well known, for example, that one of his more sub-
stantial charges against metaphysics is that the philosophical faith in log-
ical categories leads to a petrifaction of life. The vital flux of becoming
is devalued, and, instead, notions of being, stability, in short, timeless-
ness, are valued more highly. Such a desire for stability and unity results
from a 'need for inertia' (WP §600), whereas the ability to accept ambi-
guity, constant change and the 'reversal of customary perspectives'
(OGM III §12) constitutes a 'sign of strength' (WP §600). One of the
principal causes of this process is a mis-recognition of what and how the
vocabulary of logic, and language in general, signifies. The crucial error
of metaphysics is to have assumed that language refers to a pre-existing
real, awaiting the correct term to be applied to it, a critique I outlined
in the first chapter. This reification and hypostatisation of language nec-
essarily bequeaths a certain conception of time in its wake. The faith in
the certainties of grammar necessarily restricts a priori what can be
considered to be an existent, and even what it means to exist. For
Nietzsche the problem can be traced back to Socrates, whose apparent-
ly innocuous search for definitions, originally a problem of semantics, is
transformed by Plato into one of ontology. The inability of mundane ex-
istence to offer anything that could fulfil Plato's desire for an adequate
definition of such notions as 'good,' 'true' or 'just' compels him to posit
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

the truth as consisting in atemporal ideas, and to denigrate the empiri-

cal world as an untruth. For all his substantial differences with his
teacher, Aristotle did little to challenge such a conception of existence
and time; indeed, in many respects he can be considered to have con-
solidated it. For this reason Nietzsche speaks highly of Heraclitus,
whose pronouncement that 'everything is in flux' embodies Nietzsche's
own suspicions of being.2 In order to counter the metaphysical petrifac-
tion of'life,' Nietzsche frequently employs the notion of'becoming/ It
functions as a counterweight to the metaphysical fetish of being, and its
denial of time.
Nietzsche's concern with the problem of time thus forms part of his
general critique of metaphysics, but it has a further dimension, too, in
that time had become a particularly pressing issue in relation to the
meaning of modernity. In particular, as Koselleck has argued, the
modernity which Nietzsche analyses was not only perceived to be dif-
ferent from what had gone before, it was also marked by a transformed
consciousness of time and history. Specifically, the 'new,' the 'modern'
become the dominant values in the understanding of history, establish-
ing the self-understanding of modernity as not simply succeeding the
past, but as a radical break with it. Moreover this understanding of
modernity as a culture of permanent renewal contradicts the metaphys-
ical denial of transience, and this tension informs the cultural neurosis
that Nietzsche saw as emerging in his own time. From a Nietzschean
perspective the historical consciousness of modernity indicates one
more reason why the search for normative values without foundations is
so pressing. Accordingly I shall discuss the problem of modernity and
time, relating it, first, to Nietzsche's early consideration of the meaning
and function of history and, second, to his theme of Eternal Recur-
rence, before going on to discuss the specifically aesthetic inflections of
this problematic.

Modernity and History

It is commonly recognised that the first self-conscious manifestation of
the modern understanding of history and time is Kant's essay 'An An-
swer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?' in which the temporali-

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 MEMORY, HISTORY AND ETERNAL RECURRENCE

ty of human being is marked by progress towards the ideal of rational

autonomy.4 History is thus no longer a simple sequence of events but is
governed by an underlying logic. This logic is set within a temporal ma-
trix in which the present is always a negation of the past, the future is in-
finitely open (one can speak of a historical sublime in this conception)
and the present is always historical. At the moment of its appearance
the present has already become obsolete, and hence it functions as a
point of constant transition between the past and the future, having no
real duration itself. This conception of history and time is also central to
the thought of Hegel, though with an important modification. Whereas
the Kantian subject progresses to autonomy in history, it is the unfold-
ing of the Hegelian 'Geist' that provides history with its shape and mo-
mentum. As Hegel states, 'The aim of world history, therefore, is that
Geist should attain knowledge of its own true nature, that it should ob-
jectivise this knowledge and transform it into a real world, and give it-
self an objective existence/
Kant and Hegel represent the best known philosophical articulations
of this concept of time and history, but it was not until the middle of the
nineteenth century that it became widespread, in the form of a general
optimism about the possibility of technical and scientific progress, and
also an emerging literary and artistic avant-garde. Here one can see a
further dimension to Nietzsche's critique of the optimism of Socratic
culture, for his criticism is directed towards the notion of univocal indi-
vidual and cultural development. With regard to the artistic avant-
garde, Nietzsche saw in Wagner, Flaubert, Baudelaire or Delacroix a ni-
hilistic intensification of the general problem of the relation of present
and past. While the relation of the present to the historical past was al-
ready problematised in the Querelle desAnciens et des Modernes, the desub-
stantialisation of the present, its historicisation in modernity, also prob-
lematised its own relation to itself. Hence the particular neurosis
Nietzsche observes in romanticism, or the reliance on the repetitive
and minimal leitmotif in the music of Wagner, which reflects the min-
imisation of the content of the historical present in modernity. In this
context the intimate relation between nineteenth-century historicism
and the emerging avant-garde is made clear, for both are fuelled by the
temporal logic of modernity. In the former the historical present is sat-
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

urated by the past, whereas in the latter the contemporary is consumed

by its efforts to evade its own obsolescence.7
Nihilism, the self-devaluation of values, thus receives a temporal in-
flection. Just as the metaphysical ideology of knowledge was bound to
bring about its own undoing, so the optimistic faith in progress and in-
finite futural development would inevitably problematise the present.
There thus emerges an obsession with loss; the orientation towards a
self-renewing future implies that temporality is not mere succession,
but is marked by loss, obsolescence and decay. In this respect it is no co-
incidence that the rise of modernity is accompanied by the culture of
the museum. Nietzsche notes that 'We of the present day are only just
beginning to form the chain of a very powerful future feeling' (GS
§337), and this orientation towards the future is accompanied by an ex-
cessive historical sense. It is a sense, 'to which we Europeans lay claim
as our speciality . . . only the nineteenth century knows this sense, as
its sixth sense . . . our instincts now run back everywhere; we our-
selves are a kind of chaos' (BGE §2 24). Though the ostensible object
of Nietzsche's observation in this aphorism is the eclectic taste of
nineteenth-century Europe, one can read into this a deeper sense of the
historicisation of all culture, the disappearance of the present. As Nietz-
sche argues, 'The over saturation of an age with history . . . implants
the belief, harmful at any time, in the old age of mankind, the belief that
one is a latecomer and epigone; it leads an age into a dangerous mood of
irony in regard to itself and subsequently into the even more dangerous
mood of cynicism' (UM II §^).This is confirmed by a passage from Thus
Spoke Zarathustra where Nietzsche writes, 'now cloud upon cloud rolled
over the spirit, until eventually madness preached "Everything passes
away, therefore everything is worth passing away"' (Z II 'Of Redemp-
tion'). For Nietzsche an essential part of the crisis of modernity is the
unravelling and an intensification of metaphysics; the metaphysical
denigration of mundane existence for its impermanence is intensified
by the temporal consciousness of modernity.8
Although Nietzsche's interest in time and history is best known from
the enigmatic theme of Eternal Recurrence of his later writings, it is al-
ready apparent in his earlier work. His notebooks from early 1873, for
example, contain a number of fragments on the question of time, a re-

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 MEMORY, HISTORY AND ETERNAL RECURRENCE

suit of his reading pre-Socratic thinkers such as Parmenides and Hera-

clitus. Most significant amongst these jottings is a critique of the linear
idea of time: 'We measure time against a spatial constant and thereby
assume that time is constant between moment A and moment B. Yet
time is not a continuum; there is no line, just completely different mo-
ments in time. Actio in distans' (KSA 7:26 [12]). Nietzsche's early inter-
est in the question of time and history crystallises in the second of the
Untimely Meditations, 'On the Uses and Disadvantage of History for Life'
(UMII §i).The essay begins with a parable, drawing out a fundamental
distinction between animal and human existence: 'Look at the herd that
grazes by you: it does not know what yesterday, what today is, it jumps
around, eats, rests, digests, jumps around again, and so on from morn-
ing to night, from day to day, closely tied to its pleasure and displeas-
ure/ Faced with this spectacle, the human asks the animal why it does
not tell him of its happiness, and consequently 'The animal wishes to
answer him and say "that's because I always forget what I was going to
say" — but then it forgot even this answer and so remained silent.' In
contrast, human being is weighed down with memory of the past, its
essential historicity being defined as a fundamental determinant of its
character. As Nietzsche says, 'He [i.e., the human] is surprised by his
own inability to learn how to forget, and the fact that he constantly
hangs on to the past: no matter how far and fast he might run, the chain
runs with him.' Continuing further Nietzsche writes, 'In contrast, the
human stands up to the great and ever greater burden of the past: this
presses down on him or makes him bend over, it hinders his path like a
dark and invisible weight.'
Memory is thus a primal determinant of human being, and Nietzsche
even offers an elementary psychology on the basis of his understanding
of the function of memory, according to which humans are caught in a
form of schizophrenia. For while humans are marked by memory and
history, the precondition to any thought or deed is the ability to forget.
To recall, Nietzsche's analysis of metaphysics in his essay 'OnTruth and
Lie in Their Extra-moral Sense' pointed towards the constitutive func-
tion of forgetting in the construction of concepts. In the essay on histo-
ry he notes, 'Imagine the most extreme example, a human who did not
have any ability to forget, who would be condemned to seeing becom-
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

ing everywhere: such a person no longer believes in his own being, no

longer believes in himself, sees everything flowing apart as animated
points and loses himself in this stream of becoming: like the true pupil
of Heraclitus he will no longer dare to lift his finger/ Formulating an
embryonic perspectivism, Nietzsche insists on the necessity of a tem-
poral horizon, in order to bring this overwhelming flux of time and his-
tory temporarily to a standstill:'every living thing can only be healthy,
strong and fruitful within a certain horizon: if it is incapable of drawing
a horizon about itself . . . it will succumb, weakly or overhastily to a
timely decay' (ibid.).
According to this preliminary account, human existence is struc-
tured by a dialectic of memory and amnesia, temporality and atempo-
rality, being and becoming. And yet while Nietzsche seems to be mak-
ing very general claims about human being, his comments are
formulated in response to the specific problem of time and history in
modern culture. Consequently one particular concern in this essay is
modernity's excess of memory. Writing of the 'soul of modern man,'
Nietzsche notes that' Historical knowledge streams in unceasingly from
inexhaustible wells . . . memory opens all its gates' (UM II §4). More-
over, the larger part of the essay is devoted to the discussion of specific
types of historiography prevalent in his own time, namely, critical histo-
ry, antiquarian history and monumental history. Yet, paradoxically, 'the
unhistorical and the historical are necessary in equal measure' (UM II
§1), and hence the discussion of the various modes of historiography
that can be appropriated productively.
In critical history the historian uses his art 'once again in the service
of life. He must have and occasionally employ the capacity to break
apart and dissolve the past, in order to be able to live: he achieves this
by putting it on trial, painfully cross-examining it, andfinallycondemn-
ing it' (UM II §3). In one sense one might detect here an anticipation of
Nietzsche's genealogical interrogation of history, but there is an impor-
tant difference. Although Nietzsche does not use the term yet, critical
history is a product of nihilism; in its questioning of the past, and its
recognition that 'human violence and weakness have always played a
major part' in history, it is led to conclude that '"Everything which
comes to be deserves to wither away. Thus it would be better if nothing

140
 MEMORY, HISTORY AND ETERNAL RECURRENCE

ever came into being"' (ibid.). History is thus condemned, a position

which approximates the nihilistic denial of temporal existence that
Nietzsche later regards as central to the metaphysical tradition.
Antiquarian history, in contrast, lovingly preserves everything be-
longing to the past, offering the exemplary form of the hypertrophic
historical sense of modernity. It consists of the 'repulsive spectacle of a
blind rage for collecting, a restless raking together of everything that
has ever existed' (ibid.). Nietzsche's criticism of this type of history is
twofold. First, the reverence towards the past is indiscriminate and thus
pays no attention to questions of evaluation. Second, since it is con-
cerned only with preserving the past, it mummifies history: 'antiquari-
an history itself degenerates from the moment it is no longer animated
and inspired by the fresh life of the present' (ibid.). As Walter Benjamin
later remarked, 'historicism presents an eternal image of the past/ 10
The concern for the preservation of the past constitutes one more
symptom of the particularly modern temporal sense. It is notable, too,
that for Benjamin it finds an analogue in the figure of the collector.11
Hence antiquarian history devalues the present, and critical history the
past, both of which have the same consequence, namely, a denial of
temporality.
Monumental history exercises a selective appropriation of the past,
not in order merely to retain it for antiquarian interest, but in order to
reuse those past moments for the present. It is based on a logic of
analogies. Nietzsche notes, 'History belongs above all to the active and
the mighty one, who leads a great struggle, who requires models,
teachers, consolers and cannot find them in the present' (ibid.). This is
made all the more explicit when he expounds the aims and principles of
the monumental historian:
whatever was once able to stretch out the concept 'human' and replenish it
morefinely,that must be ready to hand for eternity, in order to facilitate this
for eternity. That the great moments in the struggle of individuals form a
chain, that in them is constituted a range of mountains through millennia, that
for me the most elevated aspect of such a moment long past remain alive,
bright and great — that is the fundamental thought in the belief in humanity
which expresses itself in the demand for monumental history.
(ibid.)

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 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

Much of the language Nietzsche uses to describe monumental history

might indicate that this is closest to his own view of history. At the
opening of the essay he quotes a letter from Goethe to Schiller: 'In any
case I find everything detestable which merely instructs, without in-
creasing my activity, or at least animating it' (UM II foreword). Encour-
aging an ethic of mimesis, that is, the mimesis of past great events and
their continued execution, monumental history departs from a linear
view of history and moves towards a cyclical understanding.12 Great ac-
tion is facilitated by the repetition of selected past events, a repetition
which establishes a momentary permanence, freeing the agent from
historical paralysis. And yet, as Nietzsche points out, 'with seductive
similarities' monumental history 'inspires the courageous to foolhardi-
ness and the inspired to fanaticism; and when we go on to think of this
kind of history in the heads and hands of gifted egoists and visionary
scoundrels, then we see empires destroyed, princes murdered, wars
and revolutions launched' (UM II §2).The inspiration that the analogies
of monumental history provide function on the basis of a falsification of
history, an overlooking of any of the past that interferes with the con-
struction of analogies. Nietzsche's monumental history is thus a de-
scription of the ideological appropriation of history.
A central part of Nietzsche's essay is the concern with the conse-
quences when one mode of historiography becomes the only one; for
all his criticism of each in turn there is a recognition that each also has a
positive use, but only if mediated by the others. Thus, for example, crit-
ical history provides the antiquarian with a mechanism for interrogating
history, while monumental history prevents antiquarian history from
degenerating into an exercise in the gathering of dead historical infor-
mation. However, a further part of his essay focuses on the institutions
of knowledge in contemporary Germany. Specifically, Nietzsche criti-
cises the role of education and the reduction of history to science (' Wis-
senschaft'). The treatment of history as a dry science, to a vast quantity
of'indigestible stones of knowledge' (UM II §4), has had the effect of
reifying historical knowledge. Nietzsche writes of the schism between
inner and outer man, in which the exterior world of public, cultural
knowledge has become split from the inner needs and uses of knowl-
edge. What Nietzsche regards as 'true' culture is consequently cultivat-

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 MEMORY, HISTORY AND ETERNAL RECURRENCE

ed inwardly, in contrast to the desiccated but officially sanctioned cul-

ture of contemporary Germany. Hence modern Germany 'is not a real
culture at all but only a kind of knowledge of culture; it has an idea of
and feeling for culture but no true cultural achievement' (ibid.). The
criterion of real culture remains unspecified, but it is not difficult to
conjecture that the object of Nietzsche's criticism is something like an-
tiquarian history, which, when undertaken alone, robs the past of any
meaningful and constructive relation to the present. Regarding the
question of historical knowledge, Nietzsche's critique is motivated by
the distinction between history as a scientific and as an aesthetic prac-
tice. As we have seen, history as a science fuels the decadence of moder-
nity, while it becomes increasingly apparent that for Nietzsche it is only
through an aesthetic practice that critical, monumental and antiquarian
historiographies can be brought together 'in the service of life.' Thus
'the significance of history will not be thought to lie in its general
propositions . . . b u t . . . in its taking a familiar, perhaps commonplace
theme, an everyday melody and composing inspired variations on it
. . . disclosing in the original theme a whole world of profundity, pow-
er and beauty' (UM §6). Behind this musical metaphor is a notion that
bears some similarities to monumental history, but which stresses its
aesthetic basis. In addition, Nietzsche emphasises the importance of a
kind of aesthetic objectivity. He continues, 'For this, however, there is
required above all great artistic facility, creative vision, loving absorp-
tion in the empirical data, the capacity to imagine the further develop-
ment of a given type.' Nietzsche distinguishes between aesthetic objec-
tivity — 'the outwardly tranquil but inwardlyflashingeye of the artist' —
and scientific or scholarly objectivity, which is possible precisely be-
cause the subject has no meaning for the scholar: 'This is the relation-
ship between the classicists and the Greeks they study: they mean noth-
ing to one another' (ibid.).
It is important to recall that Nietzsche's attack on the culture of his-
torical learning in late-nineteenth-century Germany is grounded on a
more general philosophical concern, namely, the role of time in gener-
al, from which two conclusions are reached. The first is a sense that
modern culture has a corrupted relationship to history, and this paral-
lels my earlier comments about the specific temporal logic of moderni-
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

ty. Second, Nietzsche indicates the artistic basis of a counter-modern

temporality, in which the past, the present and the future are brought
together into an aesthetic relation, underpinned by a form of aesthetic
objectivity. In the latter, scholarly detachment is combined with affec-
tive investment. This model informs Nietzsche's espousal of Dionysian
classicism, as well as his positive attitude towards the Renaissance. It
also forms the problematic into which is inscribed the doctrine of Eter-
nal Recurrence.

Eternal Recurrence
Eternal Recurrence is notorious as the most elusive aspect of Nietz-
sche's thought, and one cannot hope to give an exhaustive account of its
full range of meanings and uses within the space of a single chapter.
Hence my treatment of the Eternal Recurrence will of necessity be
highly selective, leaving to book-length studies on the subject a more
complete understanding of the 'thought of thoughts.'13 Undoubtedly a
large part of the problem of interpretation stems from Nietzsche's re-
fusal to present it in a unified and coherent manner. Adopting a strategy
of resistance to conceptualisation, Nietzsche presents the doctrine as so
many speculative thoughts and unanswered questions. When first pre-
sented in published form, in The Gay Science, it is communicated as fol-
lows: 'What if a demon crept up on you in your lonely solitude during
the day or at night and said to you: "You will have to live this life, which
you are now living and have lived, once more and countless times
again"' (GS §341). Elsewhere, and especially in the Nachlass, it is pre-
sented as a cosmological theory, with scientific 'proofs.'There is the ad-
ditional problem that Nietzsche is keen to express how inarticulable is
the 'thought of thoughts.' In one fragment from the period of the com-
position of The Gay Science he introduces the idea that everything might
recur, adding, 'Beginning of August 1881 in Sils-Maria, 6,000 feet above
sea level and much higher above all human things' (KSA 9:11 [14] 1). In
the section on Thus Spoke Zarathustra in Ecce Homo he refers to this note
when he describes the genesis of the thought. He writes, 'The founding
conception of this work [i.e., Thus Spoke Zarathustra], the thought of
Eternal Return, this highest formula of affirmation that can ever be at-

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 MEMORY, HISTORY AND ETERNAL RECURRENCE

tained, belongs to August 1881: it is cast onto a sheet with the subtitle:
"6,000 feet beyond humanity and time"' (EH Z § 1).
Its various formulations permit it to be interpreted as an ontological
doctrine, as a scientific theory (fully furnished with scientific proofs), a
speculative cosmology, or as a moral imperative. In Martin Heidegger's
interpretation, for example, Eternal Recurrence is central to Nietz-
sche's thought, more fundamental even than will to power. In the very
first section of Heidegger's discussion of Eternal Recurrence he writes,
1
the doctrine of the eternal return of the same is the fundamental doc-
trine in Nietzsche's philosophy. Bereft of this teaching as its ground,
Nietzsche's philosophy is like a tree without roots.'14 In addition, he re-
garded the idea as a fundamental metaphysical' assertion concerning
beings as a whole,'15 equal to Plato's doctrine of the Ideas. In one sense
it is a scientific theory, a cosmological doctrine and a moral imperative,
and at the same time it is none of these. I would argue rather that it is a
strategic gambit, which continues Nietzsche's critique of the metaphys-
ical obsession with transcendence. As I have argued earlier, the logic of
time pays an essential role in this process.
In the scientific version of the doctrine, the argument runs as follows:

If the world may be thought of as a certain definite quantity of force and as a

certain definite number of centres of force . . . it follows that in the great dice
game of existence, it must pass through a calculable number of combinations.
In infinite time every possible combination would at some time or other be
reached; more, it would have been reached an infinite number of times. And
since between every combination and its next recurrence all other possible
combinations would have to take place, and each of these combinations condi-
tions the entire sequence of combinations in the same series, a circular move-
ment of absolutely identical series is thus demonstrated: the world as a circu-
lar movement that has already repeated itself infinitely often and plays its
game in infinitum.
(WP§io66)

This passage is rather awkward, most particularly because the manner

of argumentation and the premisses of the argument run counter to the
nature of his work of this period, with its ever increasing hostility to the
sciences and scientific thinking.
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

One solution to this difficulty is to suggest that one need not inter-
pret Nietzsche as treating this as a real argument in which he believes.
Instead Nietzsche is employing the language of contemporary sciences
merely to demonstrate that his theory can just as easily be argued for in
scientific terms as the contemporary conception of time as a linear
process. Nietzsche is thus not trying to prove the doctrine of Eternal
Recurrence with a 'scientific' proof, but rather demonstrating that a no-
tion of cyclical time might be no less valid than one of linear time. For
Nietzsche the doctrine requires a level of comprehension far above that
of everyday human thinking, yet given that this is not possible for all, he
is obliged to present it in different terms. In one sense, therefore, one
could compare this passage with the 'Antinomies of Pure Reason' in
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. In the four Antinomies Kant puts forward
arguments both to assert and to contradict a variety of cosmological
and metaphysical beliefs such as the infinity of space and time, the indi-
visibility of matter, the universality of causality, the existence of an 'ab-
solutely necessary' being. 17The purpose is not to argue for one particu-
lar position against another; rather, it is to demonstrate the possibility of
arguing for either, even though both, for Kant, lead to an insoluble par-
adox. The only solution is to recognise the limitations of reason; the
contradictions arise only when rational argument aspires to account for
what lies beyond the limits of experience. Nietzsche's rehearsal of a
'scientific' argument parallels the Antinomies, indeed, could even be
conceived of as a parody of them. A similar point can be said of Nietz-
sche's cosmological 'proof of cyclical time, which mimics the language
of Aristotelian thinking. A fragment from 188^ addresses the under-
standing of time as linear in a manner analogous to the scientific 'proof,'
in other words by countering the teleological assumptions of Aris-
totelianism on its own terms: 'If the world had a goal, it must have been
reached. If there were an unintended final state for it, this too must have
been reached. If it were at all capable of tarrying, of becoming fixed, of
"being," if, amongst all its becoming, it were capable just for one instant
of "being," then all becoming would long since have come to an end,
similarly with all thinking, with all "spirit." The fact of "spirit" as a be-
coming proves that the world has no goal, nofinalstate and is incapable
of being' (WP §1062). Again Nietzsche is not trying to prove his doc-

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 MEMORY, HISTORY AND ETERNAL RECURRENCE

trine; rather, he is bringing under scrutiny the implications of the Aris-

totelian assumption of linear time, leading towards a moment of apoca-
lypse and subsequent redemption. He is cashing out in these terms
what it would mean to maintain both a recognition of the dynamics of
world history and belief in a telos which would amount to a transcen-
dence above and beyond the world of becoming. Implicit in this
polemic is also an assault on Hegel's philosophy of history. For, Nietz-
sche is arguing, if the movement of spirit, or 'Geist,' towards Absolute
Knowledge constitutes the unfolding of world history, the question is
raised as to the course of history once spirit has reached its goal. And
yet while Nietzsche is critical of Hegel, his own considerations of time
and history highlight the role of thinking both becoming and being,
time and eternity, as was evident already in Untimely Mediations. On this
view, then, the more scientific or cosmological elaborations of Eternal
Recurrence form part of a polemic informed by an ad hominem ap-
proach to its targets, and it is this approach which most graphically il-
lustrates Nietzsche's treatment of metaphysics as a textual practice,
where the manner to undermine such practices is not to critique them
in the name of some other, higher truth, but rather to assimilate oneself
to the peculiarities of their discourse in order to dismantle them from
within.
Eternal Recurrence is anticipated in many ways in Nietzsche's earli-
er account of the function of history and the past in informing human
agency. However, there are differences, and we must examine the man-
ner in which he explores the possible meanings of Eternal Recurrence.
I shall begin with its two most accessible appearances, in The Gay Sci-
ence and Beyond Good and Evil. In the former it is introduced as a ques-
tion. Nietzsche asks, 'how would it be if . . .?' In response to the ques-
tion he asks how one might respond: 'Would you not cast yourself
down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon that spoke in this
manner? Or have you ever experienced a monstrous moment when
you would answer him "you are a god, and I have never heard anything
more divine!" If that thought gained power over you, it would change
you as you are, and perhaps crush you; the question with everything
and anything "do you want this once more, and then countless times
again?" would lie in your hands like the greatest of burdens' (GS §341).
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

Here Nietzsche is not putting forward a statement concerning the 'ob-

jective' nature of cosmological time. Rather, his interest is in how hu-
man behaviour would be affected if one accepted the thought of Re-
turn. Does one resign oneself to this Vicious circle' of time, cursing
the very demon that suggested the idea, or does one fully affirm and
embrace the idea, the response Nietzsche terms amorfati? This is the
crucial aspect of the thought of Eternal Return, inasmuch as it has
bearing upon the thought of redemption and transcendence, and it is
this aspect which Nietzsche discusses more explicitly in the aphorism
from Beyond Good and Evil For here, Nietzsche notes that whoever at-
tempts to fully explore pessimism in all its world-denying manifesta-
tions will also be open to 'the ideal of the most high-spirited, animat-
ed and world-affirming human, who has not only come to terms with
what was and is, and learned to endure it, but also desires to have it
again, just as it was and is, for eternity, crying out insatiably "da capo"'
(BGE §^6). In both aphorisms Nietzsche is concerned with a sense of
time that would contradict the temporal logic of modernity, for which
time and history are problems to be overcome.
I mentioned earlier Heidegger's view that Eternal Recurrence repre-
sents Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical position as regards the ques-
tion of beings and their constitution. Given Nietzsche's extensive criti-
cisms of the delusions of logic, metaphysics and science, it is difficult to
imagine him claiming Eternal Recurrence to be the objective 'how' of
things. Instead Nietzsche is interested in the implications of re-thinking
temporality, regardless of its 'truthfulness.' He is suggesting that by
viewing time cyclically, one might conceive of human agency and social
activity differently so as to avoid the onset of nihilism. More recently it
has been suggested that Eternal Recurrence is a statement about human
identity.1S In particular, it is possible to highlight the role of repetition in
forming identity, ranging from the iterative nature of linguistic signs
through to the use of imitation in acquired learning and the central role
of memory in the construction of identity. Unfortunately, this reading
simply re-inscribes Heidegger's ontological interpretation at the level of
the social. Eternal Recurrence is now a theory concerning the nature of
human historical existence and as such recalls Freud's use of the notion
in his speculations on the function of repetition in human psychology.

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 MEMORY, HISTORY AND ETERNAL RECURRENCE

The mimetic theory of human behaviour, the understanding of lan-

guage as a system of iterable signs and the acceptance of the fact that ex-
periences are structured by a common horizon naturally draw us to-
wards the idea of seeing Eternal Recurrence as a descriptive analysis of
the temporality of human being. Yet such an interpretation fails to take
into account the fact that Nietzsche's interest is in how 'incorporation'
of the idea of Eternal Recurrence would change and alter human think-
ing and practices, not in whether it constitutes an adequate description.
The thought is described as a burden which threatens to crush those to
whom it is communicated. One is therefore compelled to ask why a de-
scription of the mimetic aspects of human activity should be seen as a
crushing burden, and moreover what room this leaves for the dramatic
term amorfati? To understand this still further we must turn to Nietz-
sche's most difficult presentation of the doctrine.
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche identifies the impossibility of re-
cuperating the past, the recognition that the past cannot be changed or
restored to the present, as one of the principal causes for the human
rage against time. All volitional acts have to accept the past as the ab-
solute other of the present, as absolutely irrecoverable. He notes that
' "It was": this is the name of the will's gnashing of teeth and most soli-
tary affliction. Impotent towards what has been done — it is a malevo-
lent spectator of everything past,' and he adds further on, 'The fact that
time does not flow backwards is the cause of its anger: "Whatever was"
— this is the name of the stone that it cannot budge' (ZII 'On Redemp-
tion'). It is this very fact which is the origin of the will's desire for re-
venge against the past, its condemnation of the object beyond its power,
and consequently, because of the historicity of human being, its con-
demnation of life itself.
Earlier in the same section we find Zarathustra coming into contact
with the 'inverse cripples' of modernity, those representatives of mod-
ern theoretical culture who suffer from hypertrophy of one particular
organ, the most striking example being the strange creatures consisting
of an ear on a stalk. The significance of this episode is all too clear: their
hypertrophic mutation symbolises the incomplete and one-sided un-
derstanding of modern humanity, with its rigid and narrow interpreta-
tive perspective on the world. As Zarathustra says, 'I am wandering

149
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

amongst humans as if amongst the fragments and limbs of humans/ and

it is this notion of fragmentariness which Nietzsche then returns to
when describing the posture of the volitional agent towards time past:
'All "it was" is a fragment, a puzzle, a fearful chance event — until the
creative will says to it: "but that is how I wanted it! that is how I shall
want it!"' (ibid.). Nietzsche is thus addressing the specific problem of
time in modern culture; as I have suggested, the temporality of moder-
nity renders the present always already obsolete. The obsession of
modernity with the 'now' as a transcendence of the past is transformed
into an obsession with the 'it was/ The absolute heterogeneity of pres-
ent and past portrays the past as irrecoverable and develops various
kinds of'madness': 'the will takes revenge on everything capable of suf-
fering for the fact that it cannot go back.' It can be the nostalgia for
everything past, which results in the indiscriminate preservation of all
history, as exemplified in antiquarian historiography. It can lead to the
desire to transcend time altogether: ' "Where is the redemption from
the flux of things and the punishment of existence?"' or to the nihilistic
conclusion: '"And this is itself justice, that law of time, whereby it is
destined to devour its children": thus madness preached' (ibid.).
The function of Eternal Recurrence is apparent in a later section in
Zarathustra, where the eponymous hero approaches a gate called 'Mo-
ment,' a gate lying at the point of convergence of the two paths of eter-
nal past and eternal future. How should this placing of the gate between
these two paths, those of the eternally past and the eternally futural, be
understood? I would like to suggest that the way in which Nietzsche de-
scribes this experience mirrors the temporal logic of modernity. The
present has no substance; it is a mere point of transition between the
past and the future. The future and the past are envisaged as infinite
paths — a parallel with the historical sublime, in which the future in par-
ticular is conceived as perpetually open. The scene is thus a dramatisa-
tion of the modernist model of time, but Nietzsche is also interested in
interrogating that model. He writes, 'Are not all things so tightly knot-
ted together that this moment carries all things in its wake? —Thus itself
in addition?' (Z III 'Of the Vision and the Riddle'). All moments of time
bear the trace or the imprint of all others, in a scheme which stresses
the intertwining of past, present and future. What is introduced here,
 MEMORY, HISTORY AND ETERNAL RECURRENCE

and what is implicit in all of Nietzsche's discussions of Eternal Recur-

rence, is a questioning of the separation of time into heterogeneous 'as-
pects/ Nietzsche is proposing a temporality in which each moment of
the present belongs to the past and to the future, robbing it of any par-
ticular privilege in epistemological and ontological terms. The signifi-
cance of this stems from the fact that the axiomatic role of the 'now' in
modern culture lies at the root of its neuroses about history and its ni-
hilistic denial of time.
In one sense Eternal Recurrence is also fundamental to modernity, as
Walter Benjamin would later suggest; the appearance of the ever new
degenerates into a repetition of the ever same. However, Benjamin is
focusing on the question as a purely formal problem, in which the pres-
ent becomes abstracted and evacuated of any content. Nietzsche's treat-
ment of Eternal Recurrence, in contrast, regards the present as over-
rich in content, inasmuch as it has the future and the past inscribed
within it. No longer the occasion for the transcendence of the past, the
present functions as the site where the past is multiply interpreted and
appropriated. Here the lesson of Untimely Meditations reappears, since
Nietzsche had focused on the necessity of plural historiographies,
which are combined as an artistic act. Presentness is thus always an aes-
thetic achievement, and thus Nietzsche is divorcing the present from
the new. Stripping the present of its privilege as the place of the appear-
ance of the absolutely new nullifies the sense of the past as something
that is no longer, that is lost. It is also important that Nietzsche's em-
phasis on history as an aesthetic appropriation absolves him of the charge
of resorting to a conservative anti-modernism, where the present is al-
ways in the shadow of tradition.
The question remains, however, as to why this should prove a crush-
ing burden. There are two possibilities, of which the first is indicated by
Benjamin's reading of Eternal Recurrence. Benjamin's attention to the
formal structure of Eternal Recurrence reveals the extent to which
Nietzsche's so-called thought of thoughts entails less the application of
a completely new model of time, and more an inversion of the meaning
of an already existing one. In this it parallels the transformation of reac-
tive into active nihilism and calls for a sheer effort of will. In both cases
the present is the point of collision between past and future, but now it
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

is no longer a simple empty vanishing point, but rather a point from

which the meaning of the past (and the future) is constantly being
rethought. The repetitive nature of the present now stems from the fact
that in purely formal terms, the past is always being refigured, but its
content never remains the same. Amorfati logically follows from this.
Far from being a fatalistic acceptance of everything that has been, it is an
affirmation of everything that has been in light of the recognition that
the meaning of history can always change depending on the content of
the present. It is a counterpoint to the nihilist rage that the transience of
existence deprives it of the right to be. The love of all existence max-
imises the possibility of interpretations, and thus the range of possibili-
ties of the present. It forms a parallel to Nietzsche's emphasis on retain-
ing the maximum number of perspectives. This leads on to the second
way in which Eternal Recurrence presents a crushing burden. Just as
Nietzsche seems to regard only the Ubermensch as capable of living in
the uncertainty of the plurality of perspectives, so the addition of a his-
torical dimension multiplies the challenge it presents. One can see a
distant echo here of Hegel's dialectic, in which the repetitive structure
of affirmation, negation and sublation contrasts with a differential pro-
gression of content. So too the perpetual recurrence of all existence
does not imply an identity of meaning. Eternal Recurrence thus pre-
sents the totality of past inscriptions as a set of potentialities. This can
become a crushing burden if we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by
the sheer range of potentialities, becoming, like Achilles in 'Homer's
Competition,' paralysed by the infinity of choices. Alternatively it can
be an opportunity to exercise a certain selectivity, in choosing which
marks we should allow to inscribe themselves on the future, which it-
self will eventually be our own past. We can choose which patterns
should become recurrent, and change who we are, as individuals.

Time and the Question of Art

A fundamental aspect of Nietzsche's understanding of history is the
sense that the past should always be appropriated aesthetically, in con-
trast to the mummifying practices of academic historical discourse. In
addition, Nietzsche was also deeply concerned with the impact of the
 MEMORY, HISTORY AND ETERNAL RECURRENCE

question of history on an understanding of artistic production. In this

context it is important to recall that the idea of modernity was most
potently experienced as a problem in the realm of aesthetic discourse,
when the dominance of classical artistic models was questioned in late-
seventeenth-century France, a questioning that gained ever greater mo-
mentum and urgency during the course of the century, culminating
perhaps in German romantic literary theory and its antecedent, the
Sturm und Drang of the young Schiller and Goethe. From The Birth of
Tragedy onwards, the relation to the ancients frames much of Nietz-
sche's discourse on art. However, now the ancients are no longer a
problem; indeed, Nietzsche appropriates Greece as a counter to the im-
poverishment of modernity. For Nietzsche the question of aesthetic
time is no longer focused on the legitimacy of the external cultural in-
heritance, but on the temporality within the work of art and within aes-
thetic experience. In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche had drawn much of
his account of beauty from Schopenhauer, where the beautiful was
characterised as invoking a suspension of time, hence the exclamation
of the Apollonian dreamer,'It is a dream, I want to continue dreaming,'
or rather, a suspension of the linear time of modernity and its replace-
ment by the circular time of artistic ecstasy. This is the basis of the drive
for stability and ahistoricity that characterises beauty, to which end
metaphysical will to power devotes all its interpretative energies. As
Zarathustra famously sings, 'Pain speaks: Pass into decline! /Yet all de-
sire wants eternity — / — wants deep, deep eternity!' (ZIV 'The Sign').
The significance of the beautiful, and especially of the work of art, is
not to be derived solely from its tendency to produce permanence
within the temporal flow of life or 'becoming,' however. This, in its
most general form, would be common to art and to all human inter-
pretative activity in general. The will to form, this will to permanence
at all time must not be confused with the task of antiquarian history,
which, in its desperate attempt to transcend history, halts time by the
indiscriminate preservation of everything past. Rather, as will to power,
as becoming, in a manner analogous to Eternal Recurrence, it too rep-
resents a selective production of permanence, engendered by the rapture
of the aesthetic state. Here, then, in a different context there recurs
Nietzsche's Dionysian classicism. Whereas in the previous chapter I
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

explored Nietzsche's interest in classicism in relation to his hostility to

the excess of romanticism, now the classicist reappropriation of the
past is read in the light of the problem of history. In this regard the tem-
poral significance of the sublime also comes into its own. As Karl-Heinz
Bohrer has pointed out, a central motif in The Birth of Tragedy is 'the sud-
den/ which Nietzsche adopts from the tradition of the sublime.22 The
4
sudden' appearance of the Dionysian represents a concentrated 'punc-
tuation' of the present that momentarily suspends time. Bohrer's analy-
sis of the role of the sudden in Nietzsche and in the subsequent history
of modernism is highly suggestive, but his emphasis on the Dionysian
moment in Nietzsche misrepresents the extent to which the sublime is
a dialectical process in which the Dionysian suspension of time is sub-
lated by the Apollonian reaffirmation of historical presence. Artistic
praxis, as Nietzsche imagines it should be, is characterised by the mo-
mentary breaking down of a temporal horizon at the same time that the
horizon is re-affirmed. History is negated, then re-instated, in mediated
form, a notion which is obviously suggestive both in terms of how
Nietzsche viewed the function of artistic tradition and in terms of
how he viewed the role of time within the work.
In Twilight of the Idols there are a number of aphorisms that indicate
the parallels between Nietzsche's conception of art and his ideas of his-
torical appropriation. He writes that 'The essential thing about rapture
is the feeling of increased power and plenitude. From these powers one
bestows upon things, one compels them to take from us, one violates
them — this process is called Idealising . . . A sweeping emphasis on the
main features, so that the others disappear beyond them' (TI 'Skirmish-
es' §8). In the following aphorism he asserts, 'In this state [i.e. the state
of rapture or intoxication] one enriches everything out of one's own
plenitude: one sees what one wants to see, one sees it swollen, pressed,
strong, overladen with power' (TI 'Skirmishes' §9). Art, for Nietzsche,
does not affirm through some symbolic representation of transcen-
dence, or through the transcendent redemption of the aesthetic state.
Rather it transfigures through re-production of the monumental. In the
same way that he imagines the thought of Eternal Recurrence capable of
countering the sickliness of modernity, so selective aesthetic repetition
and idealisation produce an affirmative transfiguration of the world.
 MEMORY, HISTORY AND ETERNAL RECURRENCE

The horizon of ahistoricity required for human agency is brought

about in art through its selective permanentising of a temporal world.
In a note from 1888 Nietzsche writes that 'artists are not to see any-
thing as it is, but more fully, but more simply, but more strongly: for
this they must have a manner of eternal youth and spring, a type of per-
manent rapture in their body' (WP §800). Quite clearly Nietzsche is
laying down the outline of a classical aesthetic. The emphasis on perma-
nence, simplification and idealisation seems a virtual repetition of no-
tions current one hundred and fifty years previously. However, one has
to be wary of assimilating his project to eighteenth-century classicism.
His evident sympathies for monumental history have to be set against
his recognition of its dangers, and so likewise the specificities of his
classicism have to be acknowledged. Admittedly, his persistent resur-
rection of the Greeks indicates his preference for a certain tradition,
but I would suggest that this be thought of as following the model of
Eternal Recurrence. In other words, the return to the Greeks is more
of a selective reappropriation, a theme to which I shall return later.
It is also important to explore the function of permanence within the
work of art, in particular, through the contrast between Wagner and
tragedy. As I have noted, a central element in Wagner's 'endless melody'
is the reduction of melody to minimal leitmotifs — Nietzsche referred to
Wagner as 'our greatest musical miniaturist' (CW §7) — which are then
endlessly repeated. As Nietzsche comments, 'Wagner was unable to
create on the basis of the whole, he had no choice, he was compelled to
make fragmentary pieces, "motifs," gestures, formulae, doubling and
hundred-fold repetition' (CW § 1 o).Yet this repetition of minimal motifs
was regarded by Nietzsche as the sign of Wagner's decadence; it dis-
rupted the temporal punctuation of the melodic form and thus consti-
tuted a collapse of musical structure. That Nietzsche viewed Wagner's
music in this way is evident from an aphorism in Human All Too Human
entitled 'How modern music is supposed to make the soul move,'
where Nietzsche compares the rhythm of pre- Wagnerian music in
terms of dancing, in contrast to Wagner, who invites the listener to
swim: 'The artistic objective pursued by modern music . . . can be
made clear by imagining one is going into the sea, gradually relinquish-
ing a firm tread on the bottom and finally surrendering unconditionally
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

to the watery element/With this metaphor Nietzsche is expressing the

notion that Wagner's music 'endeavours to break up all mathematical
symmetry of tempo and force, and sometimes even to mock it . . . the
brutalisation and decay of rhythm itself (HAH II § 134). It was Wagner's
use of repetition that later led Adorno to see it as music for amnesiacs;
for Adorno, the absolutism of the repetitive motif paralleled commodi-
ty fetishism and advertising, a view that echoes Nietzsche's criticism
that Wagner's music drama represents a debasement of art into popular
entertainment. Furthermore, the link between Wagnerian endless
melody, repetition and commodification recalls Walter Benjamin's em-
ployment of Eternal Recurrence as a description of capitalist moderni-
ty that I noted earlier. For Nietzsche, and subsequently for Adorno, the
music of Wagner is organised around an empty repetition that disrupts
all sense of time. As Adorno notes, in Wagner 'time seems to be a kind
of abstract framework.' This mirrors the reduction of time in moder-
nity to a succession of empty abstract 'nows' and contrasts with the
temporality that Nietzsche is trying to think through in his presentation
of Eternal Recurrence.
Nietzsche's criticism of time and rhythm in Wagner can thus be ex-
tended to qualify his own classicism, which is not based around a repe-
tition but appropriation, and this difference is fortified by reconsidering
his reading of tragedy. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche employs the dis-
course of the sublime as the basis of his interpretation of tragedy and art
in general. Tragic drama performs a twofold function: through its
mimesis of destruction and negation it draws out the limits of human
knowing, overthrowing all attempts at making meaning. As such it
achieves in dramatic terms what Nietzsche's critique of metaphysics
performs in philosophical discourse, namely, an undermining of belief
in the fixity of signs. The second function — what might be termed the
affirmative moment of the dialectic — is to transform the negation of
meaning into active nihilism. It opens up a space in which judgements
are asserted and the contingent nature of their interpretative horizon
revealed. Hence tragedy is the artistic representation of the dynamic
system of interpretative will to power.
While in other respects he is explicitly opposed to the tradition of
post-Kantian aesthetics, Nietzsche has here, perhaps unconsciously, ap-
 MEMORY, HISTORY AND ETERNAL RECURRENCE

propriated a central element of the Idealist and Romantic philosophies

of art in order to translate his most radical thoughts concerning truth,
knowledge and time into the sphere of aesthetics. His reading of
tragedy implies a certain understanding of truth and temporality, none
of which is articulated fully at the time of The Birth of Tragedy, but which
is developed in his later work. As I indicated earlier, immediately after
the publication of The Birth of Tragedy the duality of the Dionysian and
the Apollonian becomes much less significant in Nietzsche's considera-
tions of art. Yet while the Apollonian remains of lesser significance, the
Dionysian returns in his later writing. In both his preface to the second
edition of 1886 and in his commentary on the work in Ecce Homo Nietz-
sche claims his major innovation to be the introduction of the notion of
the Dionysian — and here I read the words 'Dionysian' and 'Dionysus' as
they appear in his later work — to be rhetorical figures, metonyms for
the whole dialectic of tragic wisdom I have outlined. In his later writ-
ings the dialectic of Dionysian and Apollonian becomes supplanted by
the oppositional pairs Dionysus and Christ (or the Crucified) and
Dionysus and Socrates. Both function to symbolise the conflict between
metaphysics and its antithesis, and the disappearance of Apollo from
Nietzsche's language again indicates that 'Dionysian' denotes the entire
dialectic.25
The work of art, as an expression of will to power, as the construc-
tion of a world, thematises the temporality of becoming and Eternal
Recurrence through the production of a non-permanent order of
meaning, and in the tragic artwork by depicting a succession of worlds
whose basis is negated then reaffirmed. In each of these aspects of art
we find an implicit affirmation of immanence, a refusal to present a
world that might transcend its own temporality, where human being is
immersed in time. Inasmuch as the temporality of the work of art rep-
resents an important weapon in Nietzsche's critique of metaphysics, the
temporality of art requires further exploration in two key areas, name-
ly, art's lack of interpretative finality and its mimetic engagement with
its own history. I shall deal with each in turn.
In terms of the first area, the interpretative finality of art, Nietz-
sche's thinking works through an idea discussed by Kant. A crucial as-
pect of Kant's aesthetic theory is the notion that the aesthetic object is
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

inhabited by an essential semantic ambiguity, and indeed it is this inde-

terminacy which in Kant makes aesthetic judgement into such an im-
portant vehicle for the free play of the imagination. Both in judgements
of the beautiful and in judgements of the sublime the significant factor is
the conceptual indeterminacy of the representation such that no objec-
tive finality can be imputed to it, for 'in order to represent an objective
finality in a thing we must first have a concept of what sort of thing it is
to be/ This lack of a specific concept of what sort of thing the repre-
sentation is meant to be, while usually seen as the distinguishing mark
of free beauty (as opposed to dependent beauty), is extended in the
'Analytic of the Sublime' to include both the sublime and the beautiful.
Kant writes, 'the beautiful seems to be regarded as a presentation of an
indeterminate concept of understanding, the sublime as a presentation
of an indeterminate concept of reason' (§23).
In other words, the conceptual indeterminacy of the representation
means that while the representation does seem to possess a certain in-
ternal finality, hence purposiveness, its end can never truly be estab-
lished. The imagination can supply possible final ends to the representa-
tion but will never be able to rest on a final purpose. For Kant this
process enhances life; he notes that 'the beautiful is directly attended
with a feeling of the furtherance of life, and is compatible with charms
and a playful imagination,' adding that 'the sublime is a pleasure . . .
brought about by the feeling of a momentary check to the vital forces
followed at once by a discharge all the more powerful' (§23).
In the case of the sublime, what defeats the possibility of any concep-
tual finality is the magnitude of the representation, which so threatens
to overwhelm the senses that we pay no attention to trying to form a
concept of what sort of thing it is. Crowther writes, for example, that
'an animal of a definite species could be sublime. It would have to be of
so monstrous a size that, psychologically speaking, we are so engrossed
in the act of trying perceptually to apprehend its enormity that we pay
no attention to (indeed are wholly distracted from) the kind of animal it
is. In this case the animal's very size is "contra-final."' As I noted earli-
er, it is significant that Kant discusses art in the 'Analytic of the Sub-
lime,' rather than the 'Analytic of the Beautiful,' since art, like the sub-
lime, instead of merely producing a free play of the faculties, actually
 MEMORY, HISTORY AND ETERNAL RECURRENCE

induces a tension between the imagination and understanding by the

sensuous presentation of aesthetic ideas. Aesthetic ideas, that is, those
ideas of reason 'which language . . . can never get quite on level terms
with or render completely intelligible' (§49) thus present an image in
art which' surpasses nature/ able t o ' re -model imagination/
For all his putative opposition to Kantian aesthetics, Nietzsche has in
fact absorbed a crucial element of Kant's aesthetic thought in two ways.
First, Kant's central claim concerning the purposiveness without pur-
pose of the beautiful, or the conceptual indeterminacy of the sublime
and art, leads to the notion that the process of comprehending and ap-
prehending the representation is never completed. In cases of the math-
ematical sublime, in which the object is so vast that it exceeds the pow-
ers of intuition, time would have to stand still, an impossible demand,
since time is itself a form of intuition, and hence as a constituent of ex-
perience cannot be overcome. Consequently the subject is caught in a
temporal loop, robbed of any finality in its attempt to come to terms
with the object of judgement. Second, Kant considers this to be an in-
vigorating process, one which constantly remodels experience. Even in
the case of the sublime, which one might consider to be an entirely neg-
ative, because overwhelming, experience, Kant regards it as indirectly
enhancing the cognitive faculties, causing an ever greater discharge of
cognitive energies. This restructuring of experience by art is echoed by
Nietzsche's claim, in Human All Too Human, that 'religion and art (meta-
physical philosophy too) take pains to transform sensibility, partly
through transformation of our judgements about our experiences . . .
partly through the awakening of pleasure in pain, in emotion per se
(whence the art of the tragic serves as their starting point' (HAH I
§108).
These two particular aspects of Kant translate easily into Nietzsche's
thinking about art. Specifically, the notion of indeterminacy, which be-
came a key element both in the art theories of the romantics and in
Hegel's analysis of romantic art, prefigures the paradigm of knowledge-
as-interpretation in Nietzsche's thought, which I have emphasised
throughout.28 Ambiguity as a theme runs throughout Nietzsche's writ-
ings, and specifically his writings on the romantic and the classical, as
cultural and artistic typological classifications. In the first volume of
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

Human Ail-Too Human he had ascribed the effect of art to its lack of fi-
nality. He opens aphorism 178 with the title 'Incompleteness as that
which is effective/ and then elaborates how 'relief figures work so
strongly on the imagination that they are, as it were, on the point of
stepping off from the wall and suddenly, hindered somehow, come to a
halt: similarly the relief- like representation of a thought, of a whole
philosophy, is more effective than an exhaustive excursus' (HAH I
§ 178). It is an argument he repeats later, describing 'Incompleteness as
an artistic stimulant/ and claiming that 'Incompleteness is frequently
more effective than completeness' (HAH I §199).
The entire section entitled 'From the soul of artists and writers' is
littered with aphorisms which assert the importance of ambiguity and
non-sense as an artistic stimulant. He discusses the 'Joy in nonsense/
claiming that the 'overthrowing of experience into its opposite, of pur-
posiveness into purposelessness . . . causes pleasure' (HAH I §213). Al-
though he may claim to be deliberately challenging Kant's celebrated
maxim of'purposiveness without purpose/ Nietzsche can here be seen
rather to be merely pursuing to an extreme what is implicit in Kant's
Critique of Judgement. It is a way of thinking that points towards the later
view, expressed in 1888, that 'the aesthetic state has a superabundance
of means of communication . . . it is the high point of communicabili-
ty' (WP §809). Here I take Nietzsche to be referring to the excess of
meaning in any particular work of art, for the aesthetic state 'is the
source of languages . . . languages of tone as well as the languages of
gesturing and looking' (ibid.). This claim supports the idea of the aes-
thetic state (and hence the work of art) as the site of the creation, de-
struction and re-creation of meaning, in contrast to philosophic or sci-
entific discourses, which simply replicate predetermined patterns of
signification.
The notion of the fragmentary, whose importance to German ro-
manticism is well attested, also remains a prime concern for Nietz-
sche.29 In The Gay Science, for example, he writes of'The stimulus of in-
completeness/ noting that 'I see here a poet who, like many a person,
achieves a higher stimulus with his imperfections than with everything
which is well-rounded and perfectly formed in his hands.' Continuing
in this vein he writes that the artist's work 'never completely expresses

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what he would like to express, what he would like to have seen: it ap-
pears as if he has had the foretaste of a vision, not the vision itself (GS
§79). It is this adoption of a Kantian thematic which lies at the root of
Nietzsche's celebration of plurality and ambiguity, the 'joy in uncertain-
ty and polysemy,' where 'the spirit thereby enjoys its plurality of masks
and its artfulness . . . it feels best protected and concealed precisely
through its Protean art' (BGE § 2 3 o). It is a conviction retained by Nietz-
sche up until hisfinalwritings, claiming in Twilight of the Idols that one is
inevitably compromising oneself'whenever one is consistent. Whenev-
er one goes in a straight line. Whenever one is less than quinquesemic
[funfdeutig]' (7/'SkirmishesJ§i8).
Nietzsche is not making a claim concerning all artistic forms of ex-
pression, for as I suggested earlier, he makes a typological distinction
between romantic and classical which can be read as a metaphor for his
own complex clash with modernity. A note from 1887 entitled 'Aes-
thetica' makes quite clear the manner in which the notion of ambiguity
becomes translated in Nietzsche's thinking into a specific problem for
the modern. He argues, for example, that 'the preference for question-
able and terrible things is a symptom of strength,' repeating his claim
later when he writes, 'It is a sign of the feeling of power and well-being
how much one can ascribe to things their terrifying, their questionable
character; and whether one at all needs "resolutions" at the end' (WP
§8^2). Hence we conclude the 'strong' work of art refuses to produce
anyfinalityof meaning, instead affirming its own ambiguities, the ambi-
guities of the world it has created, but without lapsing into the com-
plete collapse of meaning and structure that Nietzsche detects in ro-
manticism. As such it is bound up both to will to power, which seeks
resistance, and to the temporal structure of Eternal Return. The work
of art, and here Nietzsche is still thinking primarily of tragedy, refuses
to offer a moment offinalresolution. It thematises the lack of interpre-
tative finality of the world in general, and hence we see all the more the
connection between the world and the text, viewing the world as a
text, art as the world, an understanding which I have drawn on in the
first chapter.30
Nietzsche's emphasis on the incomplete, the fragmentary and the
ambiguous in his aesthetic writing raises a potentially awkward issue,

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for at first sight it appears to contradict his predilection for classicism

and his dislike of romanticism, with which the fragmentary is more usu-
ally associated. In addition, a further problem arises upon reading the
remainder of the 1887 fragment I just quoted. Nietzsche writes, 'the
artists of decadence, who at bottom stand nihilistically towards life,
take refuge in the beauty of form . . . in the select things where nature
became perfect . . . the "love of beauty" can thus be something other
than the faculty of seeing the beautiful, of creating the beautiful: it can
also be the expression of inability' (ibid.). With these remarks Nietz-
sche seems to have overturned his prior schematic opposition of ro-
mantic and classic, or modernity and his own anti-modernist position.
Previously the modern, or the decadent, bore the mark of disorganisa-
tion, lack of form and so forth, whereas in contrast the classical is ad-
mired precisely because it represents a putting-to-work of will to pow-
er, an ability to control and master, a phenomenon I shall discuss in
greater depth in the next chapter. Now the characteristics seem to be
reversed. Additionally Nietzsche sees strength manifest not only in the
beautiful but also in the ugly. In a fragment from 188 8 he argues, 'There
is no pessimistic art . . . art affirms. Job affirms. But Zola? de
Goncourt? The things they show are ugly, but that they show them
comes from joy in the ugly . . . it's no good! you are fooling yourselves
if you claim otherwise. How liberating Dostoyevsky is!' (WP §821).
Nor is this a momentary aberration. Already in Human All Too Human
Nietzsche argues that 'One imposes far too narrow limitations on art
when one demands that only well-ordered morally balanced souls may
express themselves in it. As in the plastic arts, so in music and poetry
too there is an art of the ugly soul . . . and the mightiest effects of art
. . . have perhaps been mostly achieved by precisely that art' (HAH I
§1*2).
This apparent contradiction is not insoluble however. It can perhaps
be resolved by turning to the ambiguous character of a wide variety of
Nietzschean themes such as nihilism, art, truth and so forth. As I have
previously argued, nihilism is a bi-valent notion, implying both a reac-
tive and an active response towards the death of God, and the legitima-
cy crisis of modernity. So too, if we extend his argument we can see this
bi-valency operating in Nietzsche's critical aesthetics. The love of de-

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 MEMORY, HISTORY AND ETERNAL RECURRENCE

struction, or of the terrible, for example, can equally be the product of

two very different impulses. In The Gay Science Nietzsche observes, 'The
longing for destruction, change, becoming can be the expression of a
superabundant power pregnant with the future (my term for that, as is
known, is "Dionysian"); but it can also be the hate of the ill-constituted,
the disinherited, the underprivileged, who destroys, has to destroy, be-
cause that which is permanent, indeed all permanence, all being itself,
provokes it and arouses indignation' (GS §370). Likewise, in the same
aphorism, Nietzsche claims that the will to eternalisation can be both a
sign of strength — and here he gives the examples of Rubens, Goethe,
Hafiz and Homer — and also of weakness, of ressentiment, symptomatic
of which hefindsWagner and Schopenhauer.
In order to understand the meaning of Dionysian classicism, the ac-
tive will to eternalisation and also to destruction, it is necessary to re-
turn to the original schema of tragedy and the dialectic of affirmation
and negation. To recall, in The Birth ofTragedy the artistic process is con-
stituted by a double movement of negation and affirmation. The Apol-
lonian will to eternity is disrupted by the negation of the Dionysian,
which in turn is countered by a configuration offering some form of
permanence, no matter how contingent. In other words, it is a matter
of recognising the necessity of some interpretative horizon, which must
be affirmed, but whose contingency and hence impermanence, must also
be affirmed.
I have already argued earlier in this chapter that Nietzsche employs
the term'Dionysian' in his later work as a metonym for the dialectic of
Dionysian and Apollonian, of the simultaneous affirmation and negation
of mundane semiosis. Given this reading, his Dionysian classicism is not
merely a re-working of the Apollonian will to form, recast in the the-
matics of will to power. Rather, it is a will to form which is also a will to
the dissolution of that particular formal configuration just achieved, as a
necessary moment of tragic wisdom. What distinguishes Dionysian
classicism from the antiquarian is that the weak reactive spirit seeks
refuge in the form thus achieved, lapsing into an ideological fetishism of
permanence. In contrast, for Dionysian classicism, that sense of organi-
sation, of harmony achieved, does not function as some kind of therapy,
or a redemptive turning away from becoming. For it is permanence

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always-already waiting to be dissolved and re-figured, and in this way

art can be said to be both creating perfection yet also functioning
through its essential imperfection and incompleteness. Here too Nietz-
sche falls back on a position first articulated by Kant.31
In his elucidation of the concept of genius in the Critique of Judgement,
Kant is very specific that while art is the product of a spontaneous and
original genius, this spontaneity, to avoid degenerating into 'original
nonsense' (§46), is tempered by the necessity of its products being ex-
emplary models. The production of art is not reducible to a set of for-
mulae, and yet it still draws on models from the past. It is because of
this dual nature that Kant rules out the notion that aesthetic an-
tecedents can serve as models to be imitated: 'Rather, the rule must be
gathered from the performance . . . so as to let it serve as a model not
for imitation, but for following* (§47). The conservatism of Kant's ac-
count is therefore lessened by his insistence that instead of allowing the
artistic tradition to crystallise into an objectively imposed set of de-
mands, the true product of genius constitutes a productive engagement
with that tradition. Nietzsche's own classicism, which is deeply im-
mersed in his general considerations of time and history, also draws on
this type of formulation, and no better example can be thought of than
the role of the Greeks. While in The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche seems in-
tent on resurrecting tragedy in all its details, in his later writings it is
the Greek attention to art as surface, as dialectical play to which he re-
peatedly returns, indicating that he regards the Greeks as examples to
be followed and not imitated. Yet admiration for the Greeks need not be
equated with simple nostalgia for Greece. Although tragedy remains a
prominent element in his thinking, the Dionysian (and the Apollonian)
becomes detached from the specific historical example of Attic tragedy.
Nietzsche is therefore attempting to apply the notion of a monumental
history to aesthetic practice, which therefore opposes the attempt ei-
ther to completely negate the historical or to become so immersed in
history that 'too much energy is thrown away on all possible resurrec-
tions from the dead' (D §1^9).The problem of exemplariness and imi-
tation first appears explicitly in the second Untimely Meditation, where
Nietzsche specifically criticises the Germans for an excessive historical
sense, in which the past functions as a source for imitation rather than

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active re-figuring. Already, in terms of the problem of the past, the dis-
tinction between active and passive, which later becomes central to the
concept of nihilism, is playing a significant role in Nietzsche's cultural
criticism. In contrast to the imitation of past models, Nietzsche sees
them as constant challenges to be overcome. The excess of history is a
sickness that 'has attacked life's creative power/ and 'the antidote to the
historical is called — the unhistorical and suprahistorical' (UM II §10).
Thus the monumental aesthetic consists of the combination of a
' suprahistorical' forgetting and an 'unhistorical' remembrance that
again reveals the dialectic at the heart of Nietzsche's thinking. One
aphorism from The Gay Science celebrates this dialectic of remembrance
and forgetting quite explicitly and indicates the character of Nietzsche's
classicism:
The degree of the historical sense of any age may be inferred from the manner
in which this age makes translations and tries to absorb former ages and
books. In the age of Corneille and even of the Revolution, the French took
possession of Roman antiquity in a way for which we would no longer have
courage enough — thanks to our more highly developed historical sense. And
Roman antiquity itself: how forcibly and at the same time how naively it took
hold of everything good and lofty of Greek antiquity, which was more an-
cient! How they translated things into the Roman present! . . . Thus Horace
now and then translated Alcaeus or Archilochus; and Propertius did the same
with Callimachus and Philetas. . . . As poets they had no sympathy for the an-
tiquarian inquisitiveness that precedes the historical sense.
(GS §83)
The French appropriation of Rome, and the Roman appropriation of
Greece, is permeated with the sense of the present, in an interlinking of
the past with the present and, inasmuch as the work is to be an exem-
plary model for artists to come, the future. In this regard, therefore,
Nietzsche is looking forward to what might succeed the modernist
problematics of time, history and tradition, in an aesthetic practice that
embodies Eternal Recurrence.33
 Towards a Physiological Aesthetic

All art works tonically, increases strength, inflames desire (i.e. the feel-
ing of strength) excites all the more subtle recollections of intoxication.

Nietzsche's preoccupation with the question of time forms a central

part of his critique of metaphysics and modernity, in which the mod-
ernist obsession with time and history is countered with the idea of
Eternal Recurrence. The denial of time could be seen as standing at the
origin of metaphysics, in Plato's valorisation of timeless Ideas, but
Nietzsche's argument is that as in so many other respects, modernity
constitutes both the climax of metaphysics and the moment of its un-
ravelling. Hence the denial of temporality is joined by its dialectical
negation, a morbid fascination with decay and decline, which is pro-
duced by the sense of time as a problem, and of temporality as a succes-
sion of mutually transcending 'nows.'The path to overcoming the tem-
poral logic of modernity lies both in an aestheticisation of historical
knowledge (though not at the expense of 'objectivity') and in the mod-
el offered by certain forms of artistic praxis, which embody a certain
temporality both in terms of their external relation to the artistic tradi-
tion and in their internal semantic structure.
In his attention to the question of time and modernity, Nietzsche is
undercutting the idea of transcendence sustaining metaphysics. The
notion of transcendence, however, has both a temporal and a spatial
dimension, and the concept consequently depends on extensive use
of spatial and temporal metaphors for its exposition. It is apparent
from the discourse of the sublime in which, as I have indicated before,

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 TOWARDS A PHYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETIC

Longinus's use of the metaphor of'transport' becomes prominent in

eighteenth-century writings on the sublime. It also persists after Nietz-
sche; Heidegger's analysis of 'ekstasis* attends to the manner in which
Dasein not only projects itself into its own future horizon, but also
moves beyond itself— as if it could physically leave its current embodied
location and survey its own possibilities from some non-locatable other
point.1 It is this aspect of transcendence, as a spatial remove from mun-
dane existence, and Nietzsche's attempt to subvert it, that forms the fo-
cus of this chapter. Again, art is granted particular significance in this,
for it is the relation between art and the body, the notion of art as ap-
plied physiology, that underpins Nietzsche's writing on the subject.
In his magisterial book on Nietzsche and the body, Eric Blondel has
exhaustively analysed the linguistic structure of Nietzsche's texts, point-
ing out not only the metaphors of the body that Nietzsche uses exten-
sively, but also his purposeful lack of a uniform style, his frequent refusal
to present logical philosophical propositions, his reliance on rhetorical
and unresolved questions (GS §i 2^), his use of active substantive verbs
instead of nominal abstract terms and,finally,his refusal to present clear,
unambiguous 'concepts,' as in the case of Eternal Recurrence or the
Dionysian. Underpinning these rhetorical traits is an attempt, for
Blondel, to give expression to the body, whose lack of conceptual rigour
or ascetic self-discipline Nietzsche deliberately exaggerates. It is in this
context too that one should read, for example, Nietzsche's frequent
metaphor of the process of interpretation as a gastric or digestive
process.3 Of course, one has to be cautious in ascribing such ruses to a
covert materialism, as if to imply that the hidden referent of all of Nietz-
sche's rhetorical strategies is the body tout court. Setting the body out-
side the economy of signification in this manner runs the danger of re-
affirming what Nietzsche is trying to undercut, namely, the notion of a
transcendent signified, which in this case would be human embodiment.
I am thus interpreting Nietzsche's emphasis on the body as a strategy in
his project of countering metaphysics and its ideal of transcendence. The
body is important to Nietzsche not merely as an end in itself, but also as
a means to ground human thinking thoroughly in the world of the 'here,'
the 'Diesseits,' both temporally and spatially, in opposition to the meta-
physical orientation toward the 'beyond,' the 'Jenseits.'

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 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

The Discourse of Physiology

I have already indicated the ways in which Nietzsche critiques the meta-
physical concept of subjecthood, by first pulling apart the atomic Carte-
sian subject and then substituting an alternative, less constricted model
of selfhood. In the process a key role is given to the recognition of the
body as a determinant of thinking. It is generally acknowledged that this
emphasis was informed to some extent by Nietzsche's reading of
Friedrich Lange's History of Materialism in 1866 as well as some of
Schopenhauer's pronouncements on the body.5 In The World as Will and
Representation Schopenhauer frequently expounds a physiologism so
crass that it appears as if he is satirising contemporary biological and
medical science. To give just one example, he argues that those engaged
in intellectual argument are frequently incapable of movement, since
4
as soon as their brain has to link a few ideas together, it no longer has as
much force left over as is required to keep the legs in motion through
the motor nerves.'6
At a more fundamental level, it is the body that serves as the basis for
Schopenhauer's attempt to equate the Kantian thing-in-itself with the
Will. In particular, he distinguishes between the body as a perceptual
object and the body as the locus of agency. In the case of the former, the
body is as much an illusion as the rest of the phenomenal world, where-
as in the latter it is an objectification of the Will. As Schopenhauer
notes, 'The act of will and the action of the body are not two different
states objectively known, connected by the bond of causality . . . but
are one and the same thing, though given in two entirely different
ways, first quite directly and then in perception for the understanding'
(WWR I § 18). It is this possibility of experiencing the body in a non-
phenomenal manner that leads Schopenhauer to conclude that willing
must be intimately related to the metaphysical essence of things. Hence
the body and its actions are 'nothing but the phenomenal appearance of
the will, its becoming visible, the objectivity of the will' (WWR I §20). Ul-
timately, for Schopenhauer, the body, as a phenomenal representation,
is a problem to be overcome, as part of the general process of unravel-
ling the principium individuationis. Nevertheless, his comments endow it
with a significance that Nietzsche later comes to incorporate. He ex-

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 TOWARDS A PHYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETIC

horts the reader in Ecce Homo to 'Sit as little as possible; give no cre-
dence to any thought that was not born outdoors while one moved
about freely — in which the muscles are not celebrating a feast, too. All
prejudices come from the intestines' (£H'Why I Am So Clever' §i).
Shortly afterwards Nietzsche adds that 'genius is determined by dry air,
by clear skies — that is by a rapid metabolism, by the possibility of draw-
ing again and again on great, even tremendous quantities of strength'
(EH, 'Why I Am So Clever' §2), a sentiment that is prefigured in the
more pithy claim, in Beyond Good and Evil, that 'The abdomen is the rea-
son why a person does not take himself too easily for a god' (BGE

For fairly obvious reasons, the comparison between Nietzsche's in-

terest in physiology and Schopenhauer's thinking on the body should
not overlook the far more significant differences between the two.
While Schopenhauer acknowledges the body's potency, he is still con-
cerned to free the mind from its effects, regarding it as a hindrance to
true thought. In contrast Nietzsche sees the body as one of the principal
determinants of thinking; the two are inseparable, and as such the body
gives thought its form, indeed, facilitates it. Although his discussions of
the body are frequently flippant and mischievous, designed, perhaps, to
deflate the solemnity of philosophical discourse, the significance of the
body is evident in the frequency of his references to it.
Nietzsche's emphasis on the body, though motivated by larger strate-
gic reasons, is partly informed by an interest in contemporary medical
and psychological discourses. In his unpublished notes there are refer-
ences toWillhelmWundt, commonly regarded as the founder of exper-
imental psychology,7 Charles Fere, the neurologist student of Charcot,
together with other figures in the medical and physiological sciences
such as Ernst Weber, Willhelm Roux and Claude Bernard.8 Medical and
scientific imagery pervades Nietzsche's writing;9 as early as the first
volume of Human All Too Human Nietzsche claims that historical philos-
ophy 'can no longer be separated from natural science,' adding that 'All
we require . . . is a chemistry of the moral, religious and aesthetic con-
ceptions and sensations' (HAH I §1). Here one can see already an antic-
ipation of his deliberate conflation of biology, chemistry and psycholo-
gy in his exploration of will to power. A central aspect of Nietzsche's

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 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

cultural criticism is to describe cultural phenomena in physiological or

neurological terms; there are some twenty different applications of the
term 'physiology' and 'physiological' in his analysis of contemporary
culture and thought.10 These include his view ofWagnerian theatre as a
product of'physiological degeneration' (CW §7), his definition of
modernity as a 'physiological contradiction' (77 'Skirmishes' §41) and
his claim that ascetic priests are 'physiologically inhibited' (OGM III
§18). More provocatively and, one assumes, with a certain degree of
levity, Nietzsche claims that 'the spread of Buddhism (not its origin) de-
pends heavily on the excessive and almost exclusive reliance of the Indi-
ans on rice' (GS §134), producing a general state of slackness.11 Nietz-
sche concludes the aphorism with the speculation that the nihilism of
the present day may originate in excessive alcoholism in the Middle
Ages.
In addition to these examples one should also mention Nietzsche's
description of nihilism as a symptom and as a medical condition. Earli-
er I outlined one of Nietzsche's explanations for the onset of nihilism,
namely, the misreading of the nature of signs. However, the genealogy
of nihilism has to go back further beyond this phenomenon of misinter-
pretation and analyse the physiology of the organism that has so easily
taken the semiotic universe for something more. Nietzsche's genealog-
ical analysis of Christian morality and of the ascetic ideal is well known
for uncovering that decadent form of life which bestowed a particular
meaning on the terms 'good' and 'bad.' However, the notion of morali-
ty as a symptom, or 'sign language' of a specific physiological condition,
predates the Genealogy of Morals. In Daybreak Nietzsche claims moral
judgements to be derived from feelings of pleasure and displeasure
when he writes, 'Is not the origin of all moral judgement to be found in
heinous little conclusions: "whatever harms me is something evil
(harmful in itself); whatever aids me is something good (beneficial and
useful in itself)"' (D §102). In The Gay Science he makes the clear con-
nection between morality and physiology all the more explicit saying
that 'Whoever now intends to conduct a study of moral affairs is open-
ing up for themselves an immense field of work. All kinds of passion
will have to be individually considered. . . . Are we acquainted with the
moral effects of means of nourishment? is there a philosophy of nutri-

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tion?' (GS §7). This presents an understanding of the origins of value,

which pervades Nietzsche's thought until his last, unpublished, notes,
from his claim in Beyond Good and Evil that 'in short morals are merely a
sign language of the affects' (BGE § 187), to the list from the summer of
1888 which includes 'Inartistic conditions: consumption, impoverish-
ment, evacuation — will to nothing. Christian, Buddhist, nihilist. Impov-
erished body' (KSA 13:17(9]). Hence Nietzsche's note from 1886
which sums up 'My attempt to understand moral judgements as symp-
toms and sign languages, where the processes of physiological success
or decline . . . betray themselves' (WP §2^8). Ultimately, too, it is pos-
sible to trace this path of thought back to its origins in The Birth of
Tragedy, where Nietzsche pointedly explains Socrates' behaviour as the
product of a certain instinct, paradoxically contradicting the goal of Pla-
to to eliminate instinct and the passions from cognition and judgement.
Given his analysis of values and morality in physiological terms,
Nietzsche's interpretation of nihilism in exactly the same way repeats a
general strategy. Passive nihilism is born when the metaphysical longing
for truth and certainty encounters the recognition that such values no
longer have the legitimacy formerly invested in them. The recognition
of the latter clashes with the desire for the former, and hence the feel-
ing of disarray and conflict that follows, which Nietzsche sees as the
'logic of our great values and ideals when thought through to their end'
(WP preface §4). This crisis is one which we are all part of, in Nietz-
sche's reading, and following his physiological interpretation of value, it
implies that human being is somehow physiologically defective. Re-
garding contemporary cynicism and pessimism he notes, for example,
that 'the name [pessimism] should be replaced by "nihilism," that the
question whether non-being is better than being, is itself a disease, a
sign of decline, an idiosyncrasy. The nihilistic movement is merely the
expression of physiological decadence' (WP §38). Nihilism is the func-
tion of a 'weakness of the will' (WP §46) and, consequently, 'what is in-
herited is not the sickness but sickliness: the lack of strength to resist
the danger of infections' (WP §47). Nietzsche interprets the cultural
products of decadent modernity from this perspective, and in his later
work treats Wagner the romantic as a case study of the wider physiolog-
ical and psychological disorder of the modern age. In The Case of Wagner

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he observes that 'Unknowingly, against our will, we all have values,

words, formulae, morals of contradictory bodily origins — considered
physiologically, we are false. . . . A diagnosis of the modern soul —
where would it begin? . . . with a vivisection conducted on its most in-
structive case' (CW epilogue). This 'instructive case' of modern neuro-
sis is Richard Wagner. As Nietzsche says, 'The art of Wagner is sick. The
problems he brings on stage — problems of pure hysterics — his convul-
sive affectivity, his hyperstimulated sensibility . . . not least his choice
of heroes and heroines, looked at as physiological types (a gallery of in-
valids! — ): all this together presents an image of sickness which leaves
no room for doubt. Wagner est une nevrose' (CW§g).The formal qual-
ities of Wagner's work are also now interpreted in physiological terms.
Where in Human AH Too Human Nietzsche had referred to Wagnerian
excess as baroque, in a fragment from 1888 he draws on the French
physiologist Claude Bernard noting that 'Health and sickness are not es-
sentially different . . . there are only differences of degree between
these two kinds of existence: the exaggeration, the disproportion, the
non-harmony of normal phenomena constitute the pathological state'
(WP§2SO).
Following this brief account it is clear that Nietzsche's use of medical
and physiological imagery forms a central component of his cultural
critique. I suggested earlier that his use of such language does not indi-
cate an espousal of the sciences per se, but rather is linked to a wider
concern move to undercut the yearning for transcendence so central to
the metaphysical tradition. His emphasis on physiology thus provides
his critique with an orientation towards this-worldly immanence.
Moreover, in addition to its general role in his critical project, the dis-
course of physiology also becomes central to Nietzsche's re-orientation
of aesthetics, specifically, in his assault on the aesthetic tradition from
Kant onwards. Of this perhaps the most graphic example might be
found in his claim that 'a Raphael is unthinkable without a certain over-
heating of the sexual system' (WP §800). The choice of Raphael is of
course deliberate and provocative; most frequently associated with the
Catholic Church of the Renaissance, Nietzsche is trying to prise apart
Raphael's art from the spiritual values of Catholicism in order to ex-
plore the affective, erotic motivation of art.

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The Physiology of Art

Although Nietzsche's 'physiology of art' is usually associated with his
later writing, an attempt to rethink aesthetic experience and produc-
tion as a physiological, affective state can be traced back to The Birth of
Tragedy. Indeed, an emphasis on the dependence of the aesthetic drive
on instinct is central to the way in which Nietzsche distances himself
from Schopenhauer. The most basic example is the way in which he
refers to the Dionysian and Apollonian as 'drives/ where the effect of
the Dionysian is a state of'intoxication' similar to the 'influence of a
narcotic drink' (BT §i).Thus aesthetic experience is a physiological
state, and this explains why both the Dionysian and Apollonian are seen
as expressions of overwhelming instincts of the human organism. This
image is continued in Nietzsche's subsequent work, such as the first
volume of Human All Too Human. Art, he argues, teaches us 'to take
pleasure in life and to regard the human life as a piece of nature' (HAH I
§222). In The Gay Science Nietzsche begins to construct a more devel-
oped physiological aesthetics. Describing his response to music, he
notes that 'my foot feels the need for rhythm, dance, march; it demands
of music first of all those delights that are found in good walking, strid-
ing, leaping, and dancing. . . . What is it that my whole body really ex-
pects of music? I believe its own ease: as if all animal functions should be
quickened by easy, bold, exuberant, self-assured rhythms' (GS §368).
Elsewhere he draws a parallel between art and love (GS §^9). The con-
nection between art and the body finds its boldest expression in his
writings from the late 1880s. Art is now the 'great stimulant to life' (WP
§8^3), and 'Aesthetics is irredeemably bound to . . . biological presup-
positions' (CWepilogue). As Nietzsche notes, 'Aesthetics is nothing but
applied physiology' (NCW 'Where I Raise Objections'). One note from
1887 entitled 'Aesthetica' lists the sexual drive and intoxication as
'states in which we infuse a transfiguration and fullness into things and
poetise about them,' arguing that the sexual drive, intoxication and vio-
lence were 'all predominant in the original artist' (WP §801). Later in
the same note he adds that 'Art reminds [us] of states of animal vigour:
it is on the one hand an excess and overflow of blooming physicality
into the world of images and desires: on the other, an excitation of the

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animal functions through the images and desires of intensified life' (WP
§8o2).13
This last passage indicates the extent to which Nietzsche conceives
the physiology of art in terms of both reception and production; animal
excitation is produced by and produces representations of' intensified
life/ At the same time, however, an important thread in Nietzsche's aes-
thetic thought is to attempt to shift the orientation of aesthetics towards
the consideration of the producer, rather than the passive and 'femi-
nine' position of the spectator. The urgency of this re-orientation has to
be understood within the broader context of Nietzsche's physiology of
art, and in particular its strategic role in critiquing the aesthetic tradi-
tion. Much of Nietzsche's mature writing on art, artists and aesthetics
gains its identity from this tradition of thought which it sets out to op-
pose, and this is particularly the case for his physiology of art in partic-
ular. He mobilises the metaphor of the body and the vocabulary of med-
icine in an attempt to critique both the formalist aesthetics of Kant and
the 'decadent' modernism of Richard Wagner, together with the ever-
growing contemporary belief in art for art's sake, Fart pour Fart, which
in Nietzsche's 'system' is subsumed under the notion of'romanticism.'
The physiology of art also functions as a link between Nietzsche's con-
cern with contemporary artistic practice and theory, on the one hand,
and his increasing reliance on will to power as a diagnostic concept on
the other.
I have noted that in The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche is already forming
an aesthetic theory which, for all its reliance on Schopenhauerian vo-
cabulary and ideas, differs significantly from Schopenhauer. The key is-
sue over which they differ is the question of the relation between art
and human affectivity. For Schopenhauer the experience of art is one of
the few opportunities for the affective desires of the Will to be sus-
pended, and for a higher level of cognition to occur. For Nietzsche, on
the other hand, any notion of artistic detachment from desire is com-
pletely alien. Although it is only later that he develops an erotics of art,
The Birth of Tragedy already indicates the extent to which art is intimate-
ly connected with human affective existential concerns. Yet while one
would assume that Nietzsche is primarily contradicting Schopenhauer,
the ultimate object of Nietzsche's critique is the aesthetic tradition to
 TOWARDS A PHYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETIC

which Schopenhauer belongs, and of which Kant was the founder. Thus,
in addition to the cultural pessimism of Schopenhauer, Kant frequently
serves as a polemical target in Nietzsche's discussions of art and aes-
thetics. For Nietzsche, Kant embodies some of the worst aspects in the
history of philosophical aesthetics. In On the Genealogy of Morals Kant is
accused of possessing the 'naivete of a country parson' (OGM III §6) re-
garding aesthetic experience. In The Antichrist Nietzsche observes that
'Kant became an idiot,' adding that Kant represents a 'mistaken instinct
in everything and anything, the counter-natural as instinct, German de-
cadence as philosophy' (/I §11). Elsewhere Kant is an exemplar of
'clumsy pedantry and petty bourgeois manners,' guilty of a 'a lack of
taste' (KSA 11:26 [96]). In his diagnosis of'depressive habits' he lists
'staying home a la Kant; overwork; insufficient nourishment of the
brain' ( ^ § 4 4 4 ) .
Nietzsche's hostility towards Kant forms one of the many paradoxes
in his thought on art. For as I have already shown previously, his writing
on art is heavily dependent on Kant himself, including Kant's notions of
artistic exemplariness or aesthetic ambiguity. As with Hegel, so with
Kant; Nietzsche displays considerable ambivalence towards the 'good
German of the old stamp' (D preface), for despite his considerable in-
tellectual debt to Kant, Nietzsche presents a series of virulent denunci-
ations of Kant, and specifically of the latter's aesthetic theory. Kant has
not been without his defenders against the polemic of Nietzsche; as
Heidegger has pointed out, for example, Nietzsche's interpretation,
and hence criticism, of Kant is largely based on an image of Kant
formed by Schopenhauer, which is itself a highly partial reading of
Kantian aesthetics.14 Others have put forward similar arguments, that
the majority of Nietzsche's criticisms are more relevant to the aesthet-
ics of Schopenhauer than to those of Kant himself. It is not my inten-
tion to discuss those precise areas where Nietzsche misreads Kant's Cri-
tique of Judgement, for such a detailed and in-depth analysis
misunderstands the nature of Nietzsche's critique; although the ostensi-
ble target is Kant, the name 'Kant' in many ways performs a metonymic
function, standing as an abbreviated sign for what Nietzsche perceives
as the tradition of aesthetics from Kant onwards. One can find a paral-
lel in Nietzsche's criticism of Wagner; although it is motivated by disaf-
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

fection with the meaning of Wagner's oeuvre, Wagner stands as a symp-

tom of the decadence of modernity. So too 'Kant' is for Nietzsche the
exemplar of modern aesthetic thought, symptomatic of everything that
is in need of overcoming.
Kant transformed the tradition of aesthetics from Wolff and Baum-
garten; prior to his Critique of Judgement aesthetics as a discipline was
subordinate to the more 'masculine' rigour of logic; aesthetic ideas
were regarded simply as unclear logical ideas. In contrast Kant raised it
to the core element within the architectonic of his critical project, giv-
ing aesthetic experience a cognitive significance previously denied it.
Rightly considered the founder of modern aesthetics, Kant re-located
the discipline at the heart of philosophical thinking and in many re-
spects shaped the course of all subsequent enquiry into the subject up
to the present day. By naming Kant as the target of his polemic, Nietz-
sche is in effect conducting a genealogy of aesthetics, bringing to
prominence those elements within Kant which were to be central to
subsequent thinking in the realm of the aesthetic. Hence by reading
Kant through Schopenhauer, Nietzsche need not be seen as simply mis-
reading him. Rather, he can be seen as focusing on precisely those as-
pects of Kant which were important to Schopenhauer, and hence to
Wagner, as well as to the aesthetic of Yart pour Fart. Implicit in this, too,
is an attempt to distance himself from his own earlier writing, which, as
I demonstrated in the previous chapter, he recognised as still labouring
under the burden of Kantian and idealist vocabulary.
If we wish to analyse the specific areas where Nietzsche chooses to
take issue with Kant, a significant focus of debate is the notion of disin-
terestedness. Nietzsche forms a critique of the notion of disinterested
aesthetic experience (and its concomitant notion of a disinterested aes-
thetic subject) in the name of physiology. Deriving aesthetic judgement
from the physiology of the human organism, Nietzsche's position is
hostile to any theory that separates questions of beauty from those of
desire.16 In the place of'disinterestedness' Nietzsche posits aesthetic
rapture, a specific case of the more general experience of pleasure oc-
casioned by the discharge of will to power. Before I explore Nietzsche's
position in greater detail, however, I shall first outline the idea he is at-
tacking.

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With regard to the notion of disinterestedness, it is necessary to dis-

tinguish between its initial formulation in Kant and subsequent recep-
tion by Schopenhauer or early romantics such as the Schlegel brothers
or Schelling. The locus classicus where Kant links aesthetic experience
and disinterestedness states simply, 'Taste is the faculty of estimating an
object or a mode of representation by means of a delight or aversion
apart from any interest/ The argument that it is a delight 'apart from
any interest' is slightly misleading, for Kant is concerned with a specific
type of interest; at the core of his argument is the notion that the expe-
rience of the aesthetic object is not based on an interest in whether or
not it actually exists. In other words, he is not claiming that we do have
any interest per se in the beautiful object, for in a later section of the
Critique of Judgement he indicates the presence of a kind of interest in the
object, which he terms 'intellectual interest' (§42). This interest, how-
ever, does not focus on the existence of the object, which would be the
province of desire, but rather on its purely formal properties. This as-
pect of the judgement of taste is central to Kant's project, since it is
linked to his contentions, first, that the beauty of an object is not relat-
ed to an end (the third moment of the Analytic of the Beautiful) and,
second, that the beautiful object pleases apart from any concept of what
it is or should be (the fourth moment). Both of these latter claims, to-
gether with the notion of disinterestedness, serve to dissociate the aes-
thetic object from considerations of its identity and possible functions.
As a symbol of morality, beauty does engage the spectator's interest on
one level, yet this 'intellectual' interest is to be distinguished from the
interest in the object as a means to self-preservation or advancement.
This distinction between 'practical' and 'intellectual' interest functions
as the basis of the experience of the sublime experience in Kant; if the
experience were genuinely threatening to the subject, its sublime quali-
ty would be displaced by the concern with self-preservation.
For all its nuances, however, Kant's distinction between the aesthetic
object (and this is increasingly equated with the work of art in writers
after Kant) on the one hand and the realm of the practical (i.e., of de-
sire) on the other is susceptible to a variety of forms of simplification
and it is precisely such a simplifying that Schopenhauer undertakes
when appropriating Kantian notions and fitting them into his own

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philosophical schema in which desire, or the Will, has been transformed

into a metaphysical principle.The subtle distinction between intellectu-
al interest and desire is ignored in favour of a much more simple oppo-
sition in Schopenhauer between willing and non-willing. In Schopen-
hauer aesthetic experience is devoid of all volition or interest.
Moreover it is given a metaphysical significance in his system that it
does not possess in Kant. The aesthetic experience produces a suspen-
sion of desire, with two consequences. First, it facilitates a knowledge
of the Idea, a curious Platonic importation. What Schopenhauer seems
to be asserting here is that when caught within the dictates of the Will,
the subject is so concerned with satisfying desires, impulses and needs
that it attends only to immediate particulars. The higher cognition of a
particular as the exemplar of a genus, consideration of its Idea, is en-
gendered by the will-less aesthetic experience. Schopenhauer notes,
'we no longer consider the where, the when, the why, and the whither
in things, but simply and solely the what... we . . . let our whole con-
sciousness be filled by the calm contemplation of the natural object ac-
tually present' (WWR I §34). Second, it produces a state of resignation,
since the principle of individuation to which willing is so intimately
bound loses its force: 'The motives that were previously so powerful
now lose their force, and instead of them, the complete knowledge of
the real nature of the world, acting as quieter of the will, produces res-
ignation, the giving up not merely of life, but of the whole will-to-live
itself/19 The experience thus reveals a truth of both the subject and the
objective nature of reality, and this is nowhere more the case than in
music, which, Schopenhauer argues, is an objectification of the Will it-
self: 'in the melody, in the high, singing principal voice . . . I recognise
the highest grade of the will's objectification/20 Such notions are alien
to the rather more limited role for art and aesthetic experience envis-
aged by Kant, but they represent a logical development and simplifica-
tion of his position.
A similar emphasis on the non-utilitarian in art underpins the aes-
thetic writings of the early German romantics.21 For example, August
Schlegel's Lectures on Fine Literature and Art pour scorn on the equation of
beauty and utility by the English philosopher Lord Henry Home with
the acerbic remark that 'The beautiful should also perform economic

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services, and God is already supposed to have worried about the blos-
soming of English manufacturing at the time of the creation/22 This op-
position between beauty and utility functions as the basis of a critique of
the growing monetary economy in early-nineteenth-century Germany,
and of the increasing commodification of art in, for example, the book
market. By virtue of the fact that it belongs to a sphere independent
of the realm of utility and economics, the aesthetic object, in other
words, the work of art, appeals to the romantics as a site of resistance to
the encroachment of (conceptually bound) utilitarian values, an aes-
thetic theory which stands at the origin of the modernist resistance to
the abstracting processes of modernity, and which finds its culmination,
perhaps, in the stress on the formal autonomy of the work of art in the
writings of, for example, Clive Bell, Roger Fry or Clement Green-
berg.24
If we restrict our analysis of this development to the nineteenth cen-
tury, that is, to the tradition known to Nietzsche, the idea of the auton-
omy of art is pursued to its most extreme conclusion in the formalist
writings of the German musicologist Eduard Hanslick, in particular his
study On the Beautiful in Music,25 or the French criticTheophile Gautier,
who, in order to empty art of its stifling Victorian moral content (and
even the romantics had accorded art a moral purpose), transform it
into an autonomous, self-referential sphere of activity. Attempting to
free art from morality, such writers have, for Nietzsche, trivialised art,
and it is Kant he criticises for essentially proposing the idea of aesthetic
experience without interest. In On the Genealogy of Morals he mocks the
contemporary belief in disinterestedness, asserting that 'If our aestheti-
cians never tire of claiming, in Kant's favour, that spellbound by beauty
one can even view of undraped female statues "without interest," then
one can laugh a little at their expense . . . in any case Pygmalion was
not an "unaesthetic human,"' having already placed in opposition to
Kant Stendhal's famous dictum that art contains 'une promesse de bon-
heur' (OGM III §6). Although the names of Kant and Schopenhauer fig-
ure most prominently, an early note from 1873 includes Hanslick in a
list of those 'to be attacked' (KSA 7:19 [2^9]), a list which also includes
neo-Kantian philosophers such as Kuno Fischer and Hermann Lotze. A
later fragment lists Hanslick amongst 'the small,' in contrast to Wagner

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(KSA S:g [134]). 2 7 In the section of On the Genealogy of Morals cited

above, Nietzsche notes Schopenhauer's indebtedness to the same Kant-
ian idea, challenging the notion of will-less aesthetic experience with
the observation that far from displaying no interest in the aesthetic ex-
perience, Schopenhauer was greatly interested in it, indeed, positively
craved it as a release from the blind mechanism of the Will. In Nietz-
sche's eyes Schopenhauer's subscription to the idea of a will-less aes-
thetic experience is self-defeating; the aesthetic is invested with a par-
ticular function or use value which enmeshes it within the system of
means and ends, in short, the economy of desire, and thus brings it
close to Stendhal's idea of'arousal of will ("of interest") by beauty'
(OGM III §6). Ultimately the ideal of the formalist aesthetic is one more
manifestation of asceticism, and as Nietzsche points out in the same es-
say, asceticism is driven by will to power, albeit will to power that has
been misdirected. Hence, although Nietzsche does not state it in such
terms, the achievement of will-less aesthetic experience would be the
result of an exercise of the will, rather than its suspension. The funda-
mental weakness in the entire notion of disinterested aesthetic experi-
ence leads Nietzsche to demand that 'the aesthetics of "contemplation
devoid of all interest" which is used today as a seductive guise for the
emasculation of art,' an aesthetics he equates with the Christian ethic of
self-sacrifice, 'be questioned mercilessly and put on trial' (BGE §33).
In Twilight of the Idols he devotes a substantial passage to a critique of
the modernism of Yart pour Fart, countering the desire of those to free
art from morality and hence render it 'purposeless, goalless, senseless'
with the following series of rhetorical questions: 'what does all art do?
does it not praise? does it not glorify? does it not select out? does it not
bring to prominence? With all this it strengthens or weakens certain
judgements of value . . . is this incidental? a coincidence?' As he notes
later in the same passage, 'The feeling of courage and freedom in the
face of a mighty foe, in the face of sublime adversity, in the face of a
problem that awakens terror, it is this victorious situation that the trag-
ic artist chooses and glorifies' (TI 'Skirmishes' §24). And for Nietzsche
tragedy remains the exemplary artistic model until the end of his ca-
reer. Elsewhere in Twilight of the Idols Nietzsche mounts a notable attack
on Sainte-Beuve, the champion of Gautier, noting, 'Sainte-Beuve. —

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Nothing manly, full of petty wrath against all manly spirits . . . at bot-
tom a womanly person, with a woman's desire for revenge and a wo-
man's sensuality' (77'Skirmishes' §3).
Far from occupying a completely autonomous sphere, art, in Nietz-
sche's thought, constitutes the material expression of a certain relation
towards the world. This might at first seem reminiscent of Hegel's no-
tion of art as a sensual expression of the Idea, except that for Nietzsche
art is a particular way of engaging with the world. In other words, it
does not symbolise a particular conceptual engagement with the world,
it is that engagement. Nietzsche says, 'Art is the great stimulant to life:
how could one conceive of it as without purpose, as goalless, as Fart
pour Fart?' (ibid.). Yet although the specific opposition to Fart pour Fart
is a product of Nietzsche's mature thought, brought about by his linking
of art and will to power, the development of his theory after The Birth of
Tragedy can be traced without difficulty. Already in the first volume of
Human All Too Human the notion of art as a means of coming to terms
with the world, of rendering it bearable, is being transformed into that
of art as an affirmation of the world. In the section entitled 'From the
Soul of the Artists and Writers' he writes that art has 'taught us for
thousands of years to look upon life in every shape with interest and de-
sire and to bring our feelings to the point where we finally shout: "how-
ever it is, life is good'" (HAH I §2 2 2). In the second book of The Gay Sci-
ence Nietzsche offers a lengthy discussion of the origin of poetic metre
and rhythm, which, though indebted to a notion first put forward by
Wagner in Opera and Drama, belongs clearly within his general project
of critiquing formalist aesthetics. Nietzsche claims that the use of
rhythm in poetry originates in the ancient conviction that its use could
enable humans to exercise some power over the gods. For it had long
been recognised that music has 'the power to unload the affects, to pu-
rify the soul, to mollify the ferocia animi — and especially through the
rhythmical in music,' and it was assumed that it would affect the gods in
the same fashion. Hence poetry finds its origin in invocations to the
gods, attempting 'to compel them through rhythm and exercise a pow-
er over them' (GS §84). One can compare Nietzsche's view of language
here with the claim of his contemporary Stephane Mallarme that 'The
pure work implies the elocutionary disappearance of the poet, who

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cedes the initiative to the words, which are mobilised by the shock of
their inequality; they are lit up by reflecting off each other like a virtual
trail of sparkling gems.'28 The idea of the linguistic autonomy of the
poem expressed here is the antithesis of all that Nietzsche regarded as
fundamental about language and art, and the fact that it became a dom-
inant notion in Nietzsche's own lifetime supports his belief in his own
untimeliness.
The significance of Nietzsche's own view does not lie simply in his
observation that rhythm has a certain power over the human affects, for
he freely admits that Pythagoras (not to mention Plato) had already un-
derstood this, and he would not be saying anything very interesting. In-
stead, what deserves our attention is his claim, no matter how incorrect
from an anthropological and historical point of view, that early humans
used this awareness in order to try to control the gods, and hence by
implication the natural environment. In other words, rhythm was
utilised as a means of controlling the world, getting a purchase on it,
and hence is intimately bound up to questions of means and ends, utili-
ty and desire. Although the idea of will to power has not yet been artic-
ulated in Nietzsche's work at this stage, art in the form of poetic
rhythm is clearly motivated by will to power.29 It is a claim supported in
the next aphorism following his discussion of poetry, which discusses
beauty. Here Nietzsche asserts that 'Artists are always elevating — they
do not do anything else — and moreover all those situations and things
which are reputed to make a person feel good or great or drunk or
merry or well and wise. These select things . . . are the objects of the
artist' (HAH I §223). The states of being which the artist promotes are
states engendered by will to power, and the emphasis Nietzsche lays on
the selectivity of the artist has important consequences later when he
comes to articulate the relation between will to power and the aesthet-
ic norm of Dionysian classicism.

Art as Will to Power

The notion of Fart pour Fart, stemming from the Kantian idea of disin-
terestedness, functions as the corollary to 'that dangerous old concep-
tual fable, which has posited a "pure will-less, painless, atemporal sub-

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ject of cognition"' {OGM III §12). Here we see Nietzsche confirming

the genealogy of Tart pour Yart, seeing it as a descendant of the Kantian
conception of the disinterested aesthetic subject. Naturally, Nietzsche's
understanding of selfhood rules out accepting either the Kantian aes-
thetic subject or the derivative notion of artistic autonomy. His ground-
ing of all acts of cognition or interpretation in will to power and the
perspectivism of human physiology cannot permit the formulation of
aesthetic experience on Kantian lines. The physiology of art plays a cru-
cial function in this regard, for it serves to bind the notion of art, artis-
tic creativity and aesthetic experience firmly to desire and willing. In
other words, the relation between art and will to power, which in the
middle works is left for the reader to construct, is made explicit in his
mature thinking through their common grounding in the physiological.
As I have indicated earlier, the notebooks of 1887 and 1888, togeth-
er with late works such as Twilight of the Idols and the essays on Wagner,
are abundant with references to beauty as a purely physiological phe-
nomenon: the pleasure in beautiful objects is a sexual pleasure, artistic
creativity is a process of procreation, 'all art . . . inflames desire' {WP
§809), 'Art reminds us of states of animal vigour; on the one hand it is
an excess and outflow of blooming corporeality into the world of pic-
tures and desires; on the other a stimulation of animal functions
through pictures of and desire for heightened life' {WP §802). Although
sexuality is more commonly associated with Dionysus, Nietzsche is
keen to emphasise that it is just as central to Apollo. As he notes, 'In the
Dionysian intoxication there is sexuality and voluptuousness: they are
not lacking in the Apollonian.' The main distinction between the two
impulses is a 'difference of tempo,' where 'the extreme calm in certain
sensations of intoxication . . . likes to be reflected in a vision of the
calmest gestures' {WP §799). It is notable, too, that while Nietzsche fre-
quently restricts himself to the traditional framework of aesthetics in
discussing merely the role of beauty, he also explores the aesthetic func-
tion of ugliness in relation to sexuality and power. He continues, 'To
what extent can even ugliness also have this power? Inasmuch as it still
communicates something of the victorious energy of the artist who has
become master over the ugly and the frightful; or inasmuch as it gently
excites in us the pleasure of cruelty' (ibid.). On the one hand, 'ugliness

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signifies the decadence of a type' (WP §800), but on the other, the con-
frontation with it can become a source of excitement, and hence one
can see here an aesthetic counterpart to Nietzsche's emphasis on the
necessity of resistance for will to power.
The link to will to power becomes clearer by recalling that the no-
tion of interpretative will to power is not limited in Nietzsche to the ac-
tivity of just human subjects attempting to construct a horizon of mean-
ing. A crucial element of Nietzsche's thinking is the project of outlining
the extent to which cognitive functions are shaped by the organic
processes of the body. As Nietzsche says, 'It seems to me that what is
generally attributed to the mind characterises the being of the organic:
and in the highest functions of the mind I find merely a sublime type of
organic function' (KSA n:2£ [3^6]). Additionally, however, interpreta-
tive will to power can be seen, for Nietzsche, to be functioning at even
the lowest level of organic life. As early as the first volume of Human All
Too Human Nietzsche discusses the manner in which the plant interprets
its environment in order to enhance its own life (HAH I § 18). As I have
demonstrated before, Nietzsche views conscious interpretation as a
merely a sophisticated variety of this basic organic interpretative will to
power. Organisms, no matter how primitive, organise themselves and
their environment, such that Nietzsche can claim that l propagation
amongst amoebae seems to be throwing off ballast, a pure advantage.
The excretion of useless material' (WP §6^3).
On the basis of such an understanding of the organic as always
already interpreting, organising in order to further will to power, it is
clear that art, as a physiological activity, is motivated not only by desire,
but also by interpretative desire for power. The beautiful is, quite sim-
ply, that which enhances the feeling of power, as that which best inter-
prets and organises the world. In a note from early 1887, Nietzsche
writes, '"Beauty" is for the artist something outside all orders of rank,
because in beauty opposites are tamed; the highest sign of power, name-
ly power over opposites; moreover, without tension: — that violence is
no longer needed; that everything follows, obeys, so easily and so pleas-
antly — that is what delights the artist's will to power' (WP §803). Here
we find cashed out in concrete terms how it is that the beautiful pro-
motes, or delights will to power. It is because the beautiful represents a

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supreme act of organisation and control over its elements, an act of

mastery driven by will to mastery. Hence, too, Nietzsche's remarks on
'The artwork, where it appears without artist, e.g., as body, as organi-
sation (Prussian officer corps, Jesuit order)' (WP §796). The organisa-
tional perfection of both of these bodies inspires the goal of the inter-
pretative process to gain ever increasing control and organisation. One
notes that in keeping with his general idea of will to power as subject-
less process, so too here the mastery characteristic of beauty is not that
of the artist but of the aesthetic process: 'art appears in man like a force
of nature and disposes of him whether he will or no' (WP §798). Again
the role of the ugly comes into consideration in this context, for the
confrontation with ugliness is a supreme example of aesthetic will to
power. Nietzsche notes, 'The ugly suggests ugly things; one can use
one's states of health to test how variously an indisposition increases the
capacity for imaging ugly things' (WP §809).
Nietzsche's emphasis on physiology and art might tempt one to in-
terpret him as implying that artistic production is derived from a natu-
ral spontaneous expressivity. This impression is fortified by his repeated
reference to the role of instinct in aesthetic judgement. A note from
1887 declares that 'Judgements concerning beauty and ugliness are
short-sighted ( — they are always opposed by the understanding — ) but
persuasive in the highest degree; they appeal to your instincts where
they decide most quickly and pronounce their Yes and No before the
understanding can speak' (WP §804). In particular, the opposition be-
tween understanding and aesthetic instinct seems to employ a familiar
philosopheme, which fits easily into his stress on the physiological basis
of art. However, this has to be contrasted with his assertion that 'Every
mature art has a host of conventions as its basis — in so far as it is a lan-
guage. Convention is the condition of great art, not an obstacle' (WP
§809). This brief comment repeats an argument Nietzsche puts forward
at greater length in The Gay Science on the necessity of unnaturalness.
Beginning with recognition of the importance of artifice in Greek
tragedy, Nietzsche asserts that

deviation from nature is perhaps the most agreeable repast for human pride:
for its sake man loves art as the expression of a lofty, heroic unnaturalness and
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

convention. We rightly reproach a dramatic poet if he does not transmute

everything into reason and words . . . just as we are dissatisfied with the op-
eratic composer who cannotfindmelodies for the highest sentiments but only
a sentimental 'natural' stammering and screaming. At this point nature is sup-
posed to be contradicted.
(GS §80)

At the root of this is the idea that art should consist in transfiguration
rather than mimesis, and this motivates a criticism of Aristotle's inter-
pretation of tragedy as the catharsis of fear and pity. In contrast, Nietz-
sche argues that tragedy's unnaturalness, the reduction of the actor to a
'solemn, stiff, masked bogey/ implies quite the opposite. The Greeks
'deprived passion itself of any deep background and dictated to it a law
of beautiful speeches. Indeed, they did everything to counteract the el-
ementary effect of images that might arouse fear and pity' (ibid.).
This reading of tragedy anticipates Nietzsche's later view of art as an
achievement of will to power rather than a simple mimesis of suffering,
and it also points towards his classicism, in which the essence of art is a
kind of ordering and idealisation, albeit motivated by physiological im-
pulses. This understanding of art as an exemplification of interpretative
will to power is encapsulated in Nietzsche's preference for classicism
and antipathy towards romanticism. The latter, a lack of organisation
and discipline, is a product of feeble spirits unable to exercise control
over either themselves or their material, whereas the classical (and by
this he frequently means the neo- classicism of Poussin or of the eigh-
teenth century rather than just classical antiquity) is the product of a
strong organisational drive.30
In the second volume of Human All Too Human Nietzsche makes a dis-
tinction between classicism and romanticism with the idea of strength
as a distinguishing criterion when he writes that 'Both classically and
romantically minded spirits . . . contemplate a vision of the future: but
the former do it on the basis of the strengths of their time, and the lat-
ter on the basis of its weakness' (WS §217). In the fifth book of The Gay
Science Nietzsche offers a fuller distinction between an active and a re-
active creative principle, once again on the basis of whether an enfee-
bled reactive desire for absolution motivates the artistic drive, or

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whether it is instead animated by an active superabundant power.

Nietzsche claims that 'Every art, every philosophy can be seen as a
means to healing and help in the service of growing, struggling, life:
they always presuppose suffering and sufferers. Yet there are two kinds
of sufferers, on the one hand those who suffer from super-abundance of
life . . . and on the other those who suffer from an impoverishment of
life . . . who seek peace, calm . . . redemption from themselves
through art' (GS §370). Art can serve as a means to revenge against life,
and hence the mimesis of suffering goes only towards strengthening ro-
mantic pessimism, but it can also represent suffering in order to over-
come it, subsequently to affirm suffering and the world in general, as is
the case with Greek tragedy. Hence the artistic representation of suffer-
ing is an ambivalent praxis, which, like nihilism, can be employed in
both an active and reactive sense. As active it can be the work of'the
forward striving spirit' (WP §848), where will to power interprets and
gathers up ever more, where 'opposites are tamed,' and yet where the
contingent nature of that interpretation is recognised and in addition
celebrated. As reactive, it can be the product of the 'disinherited' spirit,
whose faith in the 'tree of knowledge' (BGE §1^2) has been shattered,
yet refuses to face up to the task of accepting responsibility for the cre-
ation of new values, either clinging to a residual faith in the notion of an
autonomous, objective truth to the world, or seeking to annihilate all
values. In these responses art is used either to confirm the belief in an
objective 'order of things' or as a means to transcend the real.
Nietzsche's comment on 'False intensification: 1. In romanticism: this
constant Espressivo is no sign of strength but of a feeling of deficiency'
(WP §826) both exemplifies his equation of romanticism and weakness
and indicates the link between his classicism and his critique of natural-
ness. Against the emphasis on expression and the 'cult of orgies of feel-
ing,' he counterposes the argument that 'One has to tyrannise in order
to produce any effect' (ibid.), and with this notion of tyrannising he is
referring to the process of aesthetic ordering and control. In his later
notes from 1887, Nietzsche explicitly equates the difference between
active and reactive with the difference between the classical and roman-
tic styles, with, once again, the function of will to power as organisation
acting as the criterion for distinguishing the two. In a note from autumn

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1887 he asks whether 'the opposition between active and reactive does
not lie hidden behind the opposition of classical and romantic' (WP
§847), and in a later note entitled 'Aesthetica' from the same notebook
he writes, 'In order to be classical one must possess all the strong, ap-
parently contradictory gifts and desires: but such that they go together
beneath the one yoke' (WP §848). In contrast, one of Nietzsche's main
criticisms of romanticism in his symptomatological analysis of moder-
nity is its lack of organising power. In romanticism he observes 'the will
to unity . . . but the inability to let it exercise tyranny in the most im-
portant thing, namely with regard to the work itself (WP §849). It is a
criticism which Nietzsche repeats in his attacks on Wagner in The Case of
Wagner, diagnosing the latter's music as an 'anarchy of atoms . . . hostil-
ity and chaos' (CW§y)> adding later that Wagner displays 'the decline of
organisational power' (CW'Second Postscript'). In other words, ro-
manticism is a sign of enfeebled will to power, and this becomes mani-
fest in other ways, too. For example, the romantic fascination with the
exotic, including 'Victor Hugo's orientals, Wagner's Edda characters,
Walter Scott's Englishmen of the thirteenth century' (WP §830), is the
symptom of a 'weariness of will,' resulting in 'all the greater excesses in
the desire to feel, imagine, and dream new things' (WP §829). This
weakness of will has become endemic in contemporary art; for Nietz-
sche, in contrast, 'the highest feeling of power is concentrated in the
classical type' (WP ^99). In addition to his critique of the disintegra-
tion of style in the work specifically of Wagner, Nietzsche makes the
more general point that 'We lack in music an aesthetic that would im-
pose laws on musicians and give them a conscience; we lack, as a conse-
quence, a genuine conflict over "principles." . . . [W]e no longer know
on what basis to found the concepts "model,""mastery,""perfection,"'
(WP §838). And yet Nietzsche's classicism is not to be regarded simply
as a conservative call to order; his repeated emphases on ambiguity,
polysemy and negation as signs of strength, together with his valorisa-
tion of Dionysus, are all evidence of this. To this extent his 'Dionysian
classicism' displays an ambivalence towards the disintegration of style
characteristic of modernity. His critique is focused less on the disrup-
tion of form than on its uncontrolled disruption, its degeneration into an-

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archy, which he interprets as the expression of modern neurosis. It is

the product of the 'bad freedom' of modernity:

We have left the land and have embarked. We have burned our bridges behind
us — indeed we have gone farther and destroyed the land behind us. Now little
ship, look out! Beside you is the ocean: to be sure, it does not always roar, and
at times it lies spread out like silk and gold and reveries of graciousness. But
hours will come when you will realise that it is infinite and that there is noth-
ing more awesome than infinity. Oh the poor bird that felt free and now
strikes the walls of this cage! Woe, when you fell homesick for the land as if it
had offered more freedom — and there is no longer any 'land.'
(GS§i2 4 )

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 Art, Truth and Woman

The Raging Discordance

Compared with the artist the appearance of the scientific man is actual-
ly a sign of a certain damming up and lowering of the level of life (— but
also of strengthening, severity, hardness, will to power).
(WP§8i6)

Despite his recurrent emphasis on affirmativity and his numerous criti-

cisms of cultural pessimism, Nietzsche's aesthetic theory can, in many
respects, be regarded as an aesthetics of negation. As such it exemplifies
his emphasis on the productive function of the negative. His formulations
frequently take on the character of reverse images of the inherited tra-
dition of the philosophy of art. Hence, Nietzsche's physiological aes-
thetic emerges in opposition to the formalist notion of the autonomy of
art. Similarly, Dionysian classicism is shaped in opposition to what
Nietzsche perceived to be a disintegration of style characteristic of
modernity. Lastly, he conceives of art in opposition to the scientific-
metaphysical concern with truth. The object of Nietzsche's criticisms is
a constellation of aesthetic notions which find their origins in Kant and
Hegel. This is hardly surprising, for it has been suggested that the entire
discourse of aesthetic theory up to the present is largely framed by Kant
and Hegel, who constitute the two dominant poles of aesthetic
thought. On the one hand, Hegel sees art as inextricably linked to the
historical evolution of consciousness, functioning as a material symbol-
ic expression of that evolution. Art functions as vehicle of truth, the
'configuration as a concrete reality' of the Idea.2 On the other hand,
Kant explicitly dissociates the aesthetic experience from the contingen-
cies of historical consciousness, arguing for an ahistorical aesthetic ex-

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perience irreducible to conceptual cognition. Aesthetic experience

functions as a site of resistance to logic and truth. Nietzsche diverges
from both tendencies; he attacks Kant and the formalist tradition for
holding a naive and unrealistic view of aesthetic production and recep-
tion, while Hegel's linear idea of time rules out the productive appro-
priation of the past central to the transformed relation to time Nietz-
sche regards as central to the overcoming of modernity. Nietzsche
himself does not make the point, but Hegel's assertion that art, as the
highest cultural activity, belongs to the past is one more example of the
aesthetic impoverishment of modernity, in which art is relegated to
the margins of social life.
Undoubtedly the most important aspect of the legacy of Hegel, for
Nietzsche's aesthetic thought, is his notion of art as the sensuous em-
bodiment of truth. Of course, this claim has to be qualified. Hegel ar-
gues that only in Greek and Roman culture was art the perfect vehicle
of truth, whereas in the succeeding 'romantic' epoch its place is
usurped by philosophy. The question of transcendence is significant too,
for Hegel and, even more, romantic philosophers such as Schelling be-
stow on art the status of a transcendent revelation of truth. For Hegel this
conception of art is at least restricted, since the congruence of the two
is, in his system, historically limited. In the System of Transcendental Ideal-
ism, however, Schelling makes a much bolder claim, since art is at all
times a moment of revelation. Schelling argues that 'Art is paramount
to the philosopher, precisely because it opens to him, as it were, the
holy of holies, where burns in eternal and original unity, as if in a single
flame, that which in nature and history is rent asunder, and in life and
action, no less than in thought, must forever fly apart.'3
Such a notion appears to be the complete antithesis of Nietzsche's
own writing on art, but a slightly more careful reading indicates a more
complex and nuanced relation between Nietzsche and romanticism.
For Schelling it is the semantic indeterminacy of the aesthetic object, a
notion derived from Kant, which leads him to posit art as a revelation
of the absolute. Philosophy itself, reliant on the limitations of conceptu-
al logic, cannot articulate this. This position is paralleled in Friedrich
Schlegel's concept of'Transcendental Poetry,' in which poetic irony,
through a perpetual process of self-reflection, tends towards the infinite.

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It does not manage to reach the infinite, but the reflexivity of the ironic
work of art nevertheless symbolises the absolute.4 Beginning with the
same recognition of the insufficiency of conceptual logic, Nietzsche
also contrasts artistic with conceptual logic. He writes of the 'free or-
dering, placing, disposing, giving form in the moment of "inspiration"'
according to laws that 'defy all formulation through concepts' (BGE
§i88). However, he is leading towards a completely different conclu-
sion, namely, that the reason discursive concepts cannot convey the real
is because it does not exist. Nietzsche is thus forced into taking a via
negativa; the dominant tropes on which his critique of metaphysics re-
lies are often those of lack, non-being. Dionysian wisdom consists in the
confrontation with the abyss of meaning. Thus Nietzsche also valorises
art's semantic indeterminacy, but for different reasons. Although art
counters what Novalis had referred to as 'petrifying and petrified rea-
son,' it is not promoted in the name of a higher transcendent truth, but
in the name of the project of preventing cultural ossification. In drawing
on romantic notions of indeterminacy, Nietzsche's philosophy of art
can thus be seen as an aesthetic of negation in a further way, in addition
to those already indicated. Art consists of the negation of meaning — an
idea I outlined previously, and Nietzsche thus represents a position
which would subsequently culminate in the negative aesthetics of
Adorno and the linguistic deconstruction of Jacques Derrida.
Art presents an exemplary case of self-overcoming, which Nietzsche
sees as central to the 'accomplished nihilism' that will counter the indi-
vidual and social formations of modernity. In this chapter, therefore, I
shall explore the question of truth and untruth in Nietzsche's aesthetic
theory. In particular, I shall explore the ways in which 'truth' figures in
Nietzsche's critique of both romanticism and realism. Intimately con-
nected with this theme is the gendering both of art and of the question
of truth in Nietzsche's thinking in general. Since the publication of Der-
rida's Spurs it has been almost impossible to think of the problem of
truth in Nietzsche without also bringing into consideration the ques-
tion of woman. In particular, Derrida was the first to bring to promi-
nence the ways in which the figure of woman shapes the notion of truth
in Nietzsche. In terms of the philosophy of art, the question of woman
is of particular significance, given that Nietzsche repeatedly asserts that

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his revisiting of aesthetic theory involves a masculinisation of aesthetics,

putting aside the 'feminine' aesthetics of the spectator. The gendering of
art can be traced back to Nietzsche's earliest criticisms of Wagner,
which take to task the composer's reliance on hysteria, leading to a
1
feminising' of the audience. Inasmuch as woman functions as afigureof
truth, this also impinges on the relation between art and truth. In this
chapter, therefore, I shall discuss the two central themes I introduced
above: first, the relation of art and truth and, second, the effect of Nietz-
sche's reorientation of aesthetics towards an aesthetics of production.

The Truth of Art

In a fragment from 1886, Nietzsche makes the following comment con-
cerning patterns of thinking in aesthetics hitherto:

NB
1) Attempt to bring Aesthetics closer to unegoistic Ethics (as a preparation for
it) through the elimination of the "I."
2) Attempt to bring it closer to knowledge (pure subject, "pure reflection of
the object")
— against this: the object, when viewed aesthetically, falsified through and
through
"pure, will-less, painless timeless subject of knowing"
— by no means "knowledge"!
(KSAn:5[99])

The object of Nietzsche's criticism in this note is Schopenhauer's inter-

pretation of Kant. As I have already argued, the notion of disinterested-
ness, which in Kant, though a prerequisite of any aesthetic judgement,
laid no claim to a truth content, becomes in Schopenhauer a means to
overcome the limitations of the principle of sufficient reason. In other
words, Will-less aesthetic contemplation offers a disclosure of the
noumenal reality of the world beyond the reach of everyday, rational
cognition. Schopenhauer has thus overturned the Platonic notion of
art, in which art, as the mere imitation of the material world, itself a
poor copy of the true world of the forms, stands at two removes from
reality. Art is accused by Plato of being illusory and deceptive and hence

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at one point banished from the ideal state. In this overturning of Pla-
tonism, Schopenhauer goes much further than either Kant or the early
romantics were prepared to in their delineation of the capacities and
limits of aesthetic judgement. To be sure, for Friedrich Schlegel or
Schelling the beautiful can symbolise the absolute, and even for Kant, the
beautiful is a symbol of the good, in which the semantic indeterminacy
of the aesthetic object allows the imagination unrestricted freedom.
Additionally, Kant insists that the judgement of taste, though subjec-
tive, is also universal, thereby creating a parallelism between knowing
and judging. However, such assertions are far less ambitious than the
claims made on behalf of the aesthetic state and the aesthetic object by
Schopenhauer. Music counts as a direct reflection of the Will. As
Schopenhauer notes,'music is by no means like the other arts, namely a
copy of the Ideas, but a copy oftheWill itself; the objectivity of which are
the Ideas. For this reason the effect of music is so very much more pow-
erful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others
speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence' (WWR I §^2). This
stands in opposition to the romantic notion that art symbolises the ab-
solute only indirectly through its temporal self-reflective unfolding.8 For
according to this latter idea, the revelation of the absolute is never di-
rect but is mediated by time. In contrast, Schopenhauer's theory gives
no room to ideas of a mediated presentation oftheWill.
This particular development of Kant's aesthetics is not, however,
merely limited to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Heidegger too, though critical of Schopenhauer, interprets Kant's theo-
ry of beauty as in some sense world-disclosive. In the first volume of
Nietzsche he writes, 'in order to find something beautiful, we must let
what encounters us, purely as it is itself, come before us in its own
stature and worth. . . . Comportment toward the beautiful as such,
says Kant, is unconstrained favouring. We must release what encounters us
as such to its way to be; we must allow and grant it what belongs to it
and what it brings to us.' 9 This reading of Kant harmonises with the
alethic function Heidegger himself allots to art, but is just as much an
appropriation as that undertaken by Schopenhauer. In an important
sense Nietzsche stands in this tradition; the relation of art and truth are
central concerns in the evaluation of art. As the'counter-movement' to

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metaphysics, art is accorded a higher worth than the obsession with

conceptual'truth' of metaphysical culture. Yet this similarity has to be
qualified by the completely different motivation underpinning Niet-
zsche's valorisation of art.
According to Heidegger's analysis of'the raging discord between art
and truth/ the difference between art and truth consists in their rela-
tion to the problem of becoming and being. Returning repeatedly to
Nietzsche's comment that 'to stamp becoming with the mark of being —
that is the supreme will to power' (WP §617), Heidegger characterises
Nietzsche's understanding of truth as a function of the desire for per-
manence. As such, Heidegger notes, 'truth is any given fixed apparition
that allows life to rest firmly on a particular perspective and to preserve
itself, as such fixation, "truth" is an immobilising of life, and hence its in-
hibition and dissolution.'10 In contrast, art allows reality (in other
words, becoming) to reveal itself as becoming, without being fixed in
one perspective: 'in order for the real to remain real, it must on the oth-
er hand simultaneously transfigure itself by going out beyond itself, sur-
passing itself in the scintillation of what is created in art.' 11 Conse-
quently, art consists of a dynamic process of perpetual self-overcoming
which thereby reveals the 'reality' of the world as becoming.
Heidegger's interpretation, though persuasive, runs the risk of as-
similating Nietzsche to the early romantic project, in which the self-
overcoming of the Nietzschean artwork parallels the perpetual self-
reflective irony of romantic transcendental poetry. I have already
suggested reasons why the superficial resemblance of the two remains
merely a superficial resemblance masking other, far more important dif-
ferences. In his analysis of the notion of'truth' in Nietzsche, Heidegger
seems to be imputing to Nietzsche two notions of truth. The first, which
we might term 'truth,' is the idea of truth as the construct of a particu-
lar perspective. In Nietzsche's terms it is the kind of'falsehood' without
which (human) life would not be possible. The second, undeclared no-
tion, which I shall capitalise as 'Truth,' assumes there to be a higher, ob-
jective reality, transcending the limitations of any particular perspec-
tive. In Heidegger's reading, Nietzsche regards art as worth more than
'truth' because it reveals the higher 'Truth' of reality, namely, becoming
as the foundation of the world.
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

According to Heidegger's reading, Nietzsche views art as world-

disclosive in a manner similar to Schopenhauer and the romantics, for it
is not limited to the fixed representation of beings from a particular
perspective. Its fluidity is the mirror of fundamental becoming. Howev-
er, sensitivity to Nietzsche's anti-foundationalism makes such a reading
problematic. 'Truth' cannot have any place in Nietzsche's project as I
have outlined it, except as a target for polemic. As we have seen, Nietz-
sche's polemic has two kinds of misunderstanding as its target. The first
misunderstanding is when 'truth' is taken to be identical to 'Truth,' and,
broadly speaking, it is the realist assumptions of the sciences together
with that brand of'dogmatic' metaphysics that even Kant had criticised
which make this mistake. The second misconception arises when 'truth'
is accepted to be a peculiarly human construct but yet is seen as never-
theless concealing the higher 'Truth,' and Nietzsche's target in this re-
gard is the dualism of Kant and the Idealists. Heidegger is attempting to
assimilate Nietzsche's thinking to this view, despite Nietzsche's objec-
tion to any such form of dualist thinking.
At first sight it might seem plausible to read an early work such as The
Birth of Tragedy as supporting such dualist tendencies, with its appro-
priation of Kantian and Schopenhauerian vocabulary. However, as I have
pointed out, there are also strong reasons for emphasising the thematic
continuity between Nietzsche's early and later work, rather than neatly
dividing his work into distinct 'periods.' Already in The Birth of Tragedy
and the various jottings from the same period, Nietzsche distances him-
self from the Schopenhauerian idea that Dionysian music is an unmedi-
ated presentation of the primal chaos. Indeed, as I have noted before,
the idea of'reality' as a Dionysian abyss of meaning is for Nietzsche only
a 'form of appearing' and thus always already enmeshed within the web
of discursive meaning. In Nietzsche's other writings concerning art, the
lingering ambiguities of The Birth of Tragedy have all been erased. The
pages of both volumes of Human All Too Human, for example, are strewn
with aphorisms that strive to dissociate art from truth. Moreover Nietz-
sche is not attempting to pit art against metaphysical 'truth' in the
name of some higher, transcendent 'Truth.' Rather, he seeks to avoid
any and every suggestion that art discloses some prior state of affairs,
whether that is imagined as the merely empirical world or as a noume-

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nal realm normally concealed from the limited categories of conceptu-

al thinking. Nietzsche argues that we should recognise the importance
of play, fantasy and simple deception in understanding art. In one apho-
rism entitled 'The artist's sense of truth,' Nietzsche writes, 'The artist
has, with regard to the cognition of truths, a weaker ethic than the
thinker . . . he . . . considers the continuation of his style of creation
more important than scientific devotion to the true, in any form' (HAH
I § 146). This idea of the 'weak ethic'of the artist is confirmed at the end
of Nietzsche's career when he notes that 'falsity, indifference to truth
and utility may be signs of youth, of "childishness" in an artist,' which
becomes manifest in their 'lack of dignity; buffoon and god side by side;
saint and scoundrel' ( WP §816). Consequently, writers such as 'Byron,
Musset, Poe, Leopardi, Kleist, Gogol. . . are and perhaps must be men
of fleeting moments, enthusiastic, sensual, childish, frivolous' (BGE
§269). Art is thus an antidote to scientific sobriety.
'Art renders the sight of life bearable by laying over it the veil of im-
pure thinking' (HAH I §146), a conclusion which not only repeats the
understanding of tragedy in The Birth of Tragedy but modifies it by ex-
plicitly equating such 'rendering bearable'with 'falsifying.' Far from dis-
closing any form of truth, art functions precisely through its capacity to
deceive, such that we learn 'to look upon life in every shape and form
with interest and desire, to carry our feelings so far that we finally ex-
claim "however it is, life is good"' (HAH I §2 2 2). In one fragment from
early 1884, 'On the origin of art,' Nietzsche argues that art arises
where 'the capacity to lie and to dissimulate has been developed the
longest,' in the 'Inability to distinguish between "true" and "appear-
ance"' (KSA 11:2£ [386]). It is this awareness of the deceptive nature of
art which led the Greeks, the last truly aesthetic culture, to admire
Odysseus' 'ability to tell lies.' As Nietzsche concludes, 'The most re-
markable thing about it is that the antithesis of appearance and being is
not felt at all and is thus of no significance morally. Have there ever
been such consummate actors!' (GS §306). The erasure of the opposi-
tion between being and appearance is of crucial importance here, for it
goes to the heart of Nietzsche's critique of metaphysical dualism; the
Greeks, and art in general, make no such distinction, and thus the work
of art does not seek higher truths behind mere surface appearing. To be

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sure, as Nietzsche recognises in Human All Too Human, certain works of

art displayed a concern with the truth of the 'beyond.' However, these
are interpreted as a specific product of contemporary nihilism, and as
such they constitute a corruption of art. In contrast, 'The poet sees in
the liar his foster brother, whom he did out of milk' (GS §222). Again
the Greeks serve as the model. At the conclusion of the preface to The
Gay Science Nietzsche writes, 'Oh those Greeks.They knew how to live.
What is required for that is to stop courageously at the surface, the fold,
the skin, to adore appearance, to believe in forms, tones, words, in the
whole Olympus of appearance. Those Greeks were superficial — out of
profundity! . . . Are we not in this respect Greeks? Adorers of forms, of
tones, of words? And for this very reason — artists?' (GS preface §4). A
similar point is made later on when Nietzsche refers to art as 'the good
will to appearance,' which consequently functions as 'a counterforce
against our honesty' (GS §107).
The grounds for Nietzsche's positive attitude towards the artistic
lack of truth lie in art's role in cultural reform. In this aphorism he re-
peats the assertion he had first made in The Birth of Tragedy, that 'as an
aesthetic phenomenon existence is still bearable for us' (ibid.), but now
it is for a slightly different reason. Whereas in The Birth of Tragedy art
renders life bearable through the transfiguration of suffering, in The Gay
Science it does so because it cures the craving for truthfulness. And in
Nietzsche's thinking it is the desire for truth that inevitably leads to ni-
hilism. As Nietzsche writes, 'If we had not welcomed the arts and in-
vented this kind of cult of the untrue, then the realisation of general un-
truth and mendaciousness that now comes to us through science — the
realisation that delusion and error are conditions of human knowledge
and sensation — would be utterly unbearable.' Part of the ability of art
to overcome truthfulness is its creation of an 'artistic distance,' which
enables us not to take ourselves too seriously. As Nietzsche says, 'Pre-
cisely because we are at bottom grave and serious human beings . . . we
need all exuberant, floating, dancing, mocking, childish and blissful art,
lest we lose the freedom above things' (GS §107).
In drawing on this motif of distance Nietzsche is mobilising the idea
of reflection, which, as I have outlined, becomes central to the early ro-
mantic concept of poetic irony. More importantly, the motif of distance

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also brings into play the question of woman and art. In an earlier apho-
rism from the same book of The Gay Science Nietzsche writes his cele-
brated account of'Women and their action at a distance' (GS §60), in
which he concludes that 'the magic and the most powerful effect of wo-
men is, in philosophical language, action at a distance, actio in distans'
(ibid.). Art and woman, therefore, are intimately linked through their
reliance on distance; art through its wilful playing above things, woman
through her veiling dissimulation.13 In addition, like the artist and the
sceptic, women have no sympathies with the metaphysical search for
truth: 'they consider the superficiality of existence to be its essence, and
all virtue and profundity is for them merely a veiling of this "truth"' (GS
§64). As Nietzsche later states in Beyond Good and Evil, 'nothing has been
more alien, repugnant and hostile to woman than truth — her great art
is the lie, her highest concern is mere appearance and beauty' (BGE
§232). Hence, too, the antithesis of woman and science. Nietzsche ar-
gues that 'When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is usually
something wrong with her sexually' (BGE §144), a claim which com-
plements his exhortation: 'Reflect on the whole history of women: do
they not have to be first of all and above all else actresses? . . .Woman is
so artistic' (GS §361).
Despite such motivic similarities, Nietzsche's use of the configura-
tion of woman, art and truth is problematic. On numerous occasions
he explicitly dissociates woman from 'proper' artistic creativity. One
note from 1887 poses the rhetorical question 'Would any link at all be
missing in the chain of art and science if woman, if the works of wo-
men, were missing?' (WP §817). Woman is always spoken for from the
perspective of man; she is an enigma for Nietzsche because she is not
permitted to speak for herself. Moreover, Nietzsche's attitude is itself
contradictory. If, on the one hand, he draws a parallel between art and
woman, on the other he also talks of romanticism as feminine and en-
feebled, the effects of Wagnerian theatre as feminising the audience,
and, most strikingly, the consummately artistic culture of the Greeks as
essentially masculine. In Human All Too Human he notes that in classical
Greece 'the women had no other task than to bring forth handsome
powerful bodies in which the character of the father lived on as unin-
terruptedly as possible' (HAH §2^9). The historical accuracy of Nietz-

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sche's observation is not in question; its consistency in terms of his

comments on the shared suspicion between the Greeks and woman of
anything but surface most definitely is, however. Furthermore, this is
not an individual aberration. Elsewhere he speaks of the sickly 'femi-
nine dissatisfaction and romanticism' that are lsuperabundant' in Eu-
rope (GS §24), while the romantic composer Robert Schumann is dis-
missed as 'a noble tender-heart who wallowed in all sorts of anonymous
bliss and woe, a kind of girl' (BGE §24^). A contrast is made in Daybreak
between the masculine virtues of Greek tragedy and the implicitly fem-
inine qualities of contemporary music, when he speculates

For music, too, there may perhaps again come a better time . . . when artists
have to make it appeal to men strong in themselves, severe, dominated by the
dark seriousness of their own passion: but of what use is music to the little
souls of this vanishing age, souls too easily moved, undeveloped, half-selves,
inquisitive, lusting after everything.
(D§I72)

Wagner, especially, is responsible for the feminising of modernity.

Nietzsche notes that 'he appealed to "beautiful things" and "heaving bos-
oms" like all artists of the theatre — and with all this he won over the
women and even those in need of culture: but what is music to women
and those in need of culture!' (WP §838). Amongst the spectators of
Wagnerian theatre 'one is common people, audience, herd, woman,
Pharisee, voting cattle, democrat, neighbour, fellow man' (GS §368), a
complaint Nietzsche repeats when he observes amongst the Wagnerian
audience 'the eternal feminine . . . in short the common people' (CW
§6). Nietzsche is of course making use of a widespread equation be-
tween the hysterical mass audience and woman, but within his thought
it is doubly problematic. In addition to his troubling use of a misogy-
nistic notion of woman, Nietzsche is caught in the contradiction that art
is feminine in its disregard for truth, but at the same time the debased
metaphysical art of modernity is also feminine on account of its neurot-
ic hysteria and lack of severity. In mitigation, it is also the case that
Nietzsche is critical of misogyny. In Daybreak, for example, he notes that
' "Woman is our enemy" — out of the man who says that to other men
there speaks an immoderate drive which hates not only itself but its

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means of satisfaction as well' (D §346). Consequently misogyny is read

as a specific example of the self-hatred of modernity. The difficulties in
Nietzsche's account of woman, truth and art may thus constitute one
more case of his general reliance on contradiction, paradox and irony.
In emphasising the untruth of artistic practice, Nietzsche is paradox-
ically employing a philosopheme which originates in Plato. He is not,
however, criticising the romantic belief in art as a vehicle of truth in or-
der to reinstate a Platonic distinction between the true and its copy.
Rather, his use of the Platonic equation of art and falsity is intended not
to serve to discredit art, but to add weight to his general argument that
brings into question the belief in truthfulness per se. Art is not menda-
cious because of some deficiency in art, but because there is no truth of
which it could be the mimesis. It is against the background of his fre-
quent assertions that art is a form of falsehood, a rhetorical strategy to
aggravate the discord between art and truth, that one should also read
Nietzsche's criticism of realism and its positivist assumptions. It is sig-
nificant that in his middle works, supposedly more sympathetic to the
sciences, Nietzsche is critical of the realist movement in the arts, which
would function as an artistic analogue to the scientific positivism of the
nineteenth century. Amongst the verses of'Jest, Cunning and Revenge'
preceding the main text of The Gay Science he writes the following:

The realistic painter

"Nature is true and complete!" — How does he begin:
When would Nature ever be represented in his picture?
Infinite is the smallest portion of the world! —
In the end he paints of it what he likes.
And what does he like? Whatever he can paint!
(GS 'Jest, Cunning and Revenge' §££)

On the basis of this admittedly charmless verse, we can observe that

Nietzsche's work of the so-called middle period consists of more than a
mere overturning of the super-sensualism of Plato into a purely sensu-
alist positivism. For not only does he challenge the idea that nature can
simply be 'reproduced' in its entirety through art, but he is also chal-
lenging the idea of nature as a simple given. Referring implicitly to per-
spectivism, nature is instead seen as an infinity that cannot be depicted

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as an empirical totality. This criticism is repeated in notes from 1884,

where the object this time is Flaubert and photography. Here Nietzsche
observes that 'The "will-to-be-objective" e.g. in Flaubert is a modern
misunderstanding. . . . Gentlemen, there is no "thing-in-itself"! What
they achieve is scientism or photography, i.e. description without per-
spective, a type of Chinese painting, pure foreground and everything
full to bursting' (KSA 11:2£ [164]). His unpublished notes from the
mid- and late 1880s include a variety of references to authors such as
Zola, the Goncourt brothers, Flaubert, all of which are critical of the
realist and naturalist project.
One note from early 1884 complains of 'The lack of powerful
souls/of which an example is 'Objectivity as a modern means to lose
oneself through low self-estimation (as in Flaubert)' (KSA 11: 2$ [216]).
This criticism reiterates a point made in the previous note cited, in
which Nietzsche argues that

Greatness of form, undistracted by individual stimuli, is the expression of

greatness of character. . . . It is an act of self-hatred on the part of the mod-
erns when, like Schopenhauer, they would like to 'lose themselves' in art — to
take refuge in the object, to 'deny themselves.'
(KSA 11:25 [164]) 1 6

Through the espousal of a notion of authorial self-erasure Flaubert

counts for Nietzsche as an example again of Kantian disinterest (KSA
11:26 [389]). The attempt at self-transcendence on the part of the au-
thor or painter is, quite simply, a delusion. The desire by the author to
efface himself, to submerse himself completely in the objective world
being described, is to ignore the role of the author in constituting that
world, in having access to only certain perspectives on the world and
not others.
As if continuing his criticism of the same delusion, Nietzsche writes
some three years later, 'It is not possible to remain objective or to
suspend the interpretative, additive, supplementing, poetising power
( — which latter forges the chain that affirms the beautiful)' (WP §804).
Naturalism is driven by the same will to truth that motivates meta-
physics and thus, alongside romanticism, is to be seen as a symptom of
the modern condition. One fragment on the 'Will to Truth' (WP §4.55)

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which explores the ' longing for belief also includes contemporary nat-
uralism; Nietzsche asks, 'what does the will-to-truth mean in the
Goncourts? amongst the naturalists?' The context of these rhetorical
questions suggests the answers to be supplied. The Goncourt brothers
count amongst the 'Modern pessimists as decadents' (KSA i3:i4[222]),
alongside Schopenhauer, Baudelaire, Leopardi and Philip Mainlander.17
A fragment from 1887 develops this at much greater length. Beginning
with the title The descriptive, the picturesque as symptoms of nihilism
in the art and in psychology/ Nietzsche comments, 'Never observe in
order to observe. That produces a false optic, a squinting, something
forced and exaggerated' (KSA 1 2:9 [110]). Later he adds '"Nature" in
the artistic sense is never "true"; it exaggerates, it consumes, it leaves
gaps. The "study after nature" is a sign of submission, of weakness, a
kind of fatalism unworthy of the artist. To see what is — that belongs to
another specific kind of spirit, those who are factual, who make sure: if
this sense is developed to the full, one is inartistic' (ibid.). A similar di-
agnosis is presented in Nietzsche contra Wagner, where Nietzsche singles
out Flaubert for criticism:

With regard to artists of every kind I now make use of this principal distinc-
tion: has hatred towards life or the superabundance of life been creative here?
In Goethe, for example, superabundance became creative, in Flaubert hatred:
Flaubert, a repeat version of Pascal, but in the form of an artist, with the in-
stinctual judgement on the basis that: 'Flaubert est toujours haissable,
l'homme n'est rien, l'oeuvre est tout' . . . he tortured himself whenever he
wrote just as Pascal tortured himself when he thought — both had unegoistic
sensibilities . . . 'selflessness' — the principle of decadence, the will to termi-
nation in art as in morality.
(NCW 'We Antipodeans')

Therefore, although realism and romanticism appear to be opposed, for

Nietzsche they are both symptoms of the same nihilist problem, both
seek the erasure of the artist in the name of either a transcendental
truth or the objective truth of factual observation. Clearly, when Nietz-
sche claims that 'Aesthetics is indeed nothing but applied physiology'
(NCWWhere I Raise Objections'), or argues in a fragment from 1887
that 'The desire for art and beauty is an indirect desire for the ecstasies

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of the sexual drive, which it communicates to the cerebrum' (WP

§8o£), he is consolidating on his earlier goal of driving a wedge be-
tween art and truth. As I suggested in the previous chapter, by describ-
ing art in terms of physiology, Nietzsche is bringing it within the broad-
er compass of his project of immanence, a wider strategy which
embraces both Nietzsche's physiologically based perspectivism and his
doctrine of Eternal Return. Art 'discloses' neither the truth of the fac-
tual, 'objective' world nor that of some super-sensuous realm. In fact, it
'discloses' nothing at all. Art creates a world. It carries out a selective,
world-constitutive, operation in a manner analogous to the interpreta-
tive process of will to power, an insight which causes Nietzsche to speak
of the 'states in which we plant a transfiguration and plenitude into
things . . . until they reflect back our own plenitude and joy in life' (WP
§ 8 o i). Beauty and art are less a matter of truth than one of strength. As
Nietzsche says, 'it is a question of power (of an individual or of a peo-
ple), whether and where [the] judgement "beautiful" is given . . . the feel-
ing of power even passes the judgement "beautiful" on things and states
of affairs which the impotent instinct can only estimate as being hateful,
as "ugly"' (WP §8^2). With this assertion of the unity of the question of
art and that of power we see, too, the unity of Nietzsche's critique of
disinterestedness in the name of physiology, and the critique of artistic
truth in the name of lying. For both features reveal the status of art as a
form of interpretative will to power.

Nietzsche's 'Masculine' Aesthetics of the Artist

In the third essay of On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche remarks of
Kant that 'like all philosophers, instead of gauging the aesthetic prob-
lem on the basis of the experience of the artist (the creator) [he] pon-
dered art and the beautiful solely from the point of view of the specta-
tor, and thereby imperceptibly let the "spectator" into the concept
"beautiful" itself (OGM III §6). Nietzsche here is making two related
claims. The first is that Kant neglects the artist, while the second is that
consequently questions of'beauty,' 'sublimity' and even 'ugliness' have
meaning only when related to the passive experience of the aesthetic
viewer, listener, reader and others. As interpretations of Kant the first is

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partially incorrect, while the second is only partially correct. With re-
gard to the first, Nietzsche's sketchy knowledge is revealed through his
neglect of the extensive passages in the Critique of Judgement that Kant
devotes to the creativity of the artist. If his criticism is simply that
Kant's talk of'genius' merely perpetuates the cult of genius, a concept,
which Gadamer, too, contends is 'basically conceived from the position
of the spectator,'19 then he is incorrect here as well. Far from submit-
ting to the contemporary cult of the genius inherited from the Sturm
und Drang movement of the 1770s and 1780s, Kant is attempting to
counterbalance such notions by stressing the extent to which creative
genius (which he prefers to term merely a "talent") is guided by tech-
nique and rules of artistic production. Hence his disdain for what he
terms 'original nonsense,' in other words, artistic creativity determined
solely by the inner subjective feeling of the artist. 20 Nietzsche's criti-
cism is therefore rather misleading. Although the larger part of Kant's
account of aesthetic experience analyses the subjective perception of
the spectator, his discussion of artistic production is also a central ele-
ment of his argument. However, just as 'Kant' stands as the target of
Nietzsche's critique of formalist aesthetics in general, so here too the
object of Nietzsche's comments is the aesthetic tradition stemming from
Kant and reaching its culmination, for Nietzsche, in Schopenhauer.
With regard to Nietzsche's second criticism, he is partially correct
when he sees the Kantian spectator as the determining ground of any
judgement of beauty. I say partially correct because Kant resists any
conclusion that taste is just a matter of subjective preferences through
his recourse to the notion of subjective universality, and in this he is
working against the tradition of eighteenth-century aesthetic criticism,
in which personal, subjective responses are the sole basis of passing
judgement.21 In addition, Kant suggests that certain kinds of formal,
objective qualities, for example, the use of ornamentation or colour,
may be inappropriate objects of any judgement of taste, with the impli-
cation that the aesthetic judgement consists of a complex relation be-
tween subjective and non-subjective elements. Furthermore, Nietzsche
is only partially correct since the "subjectification" of aesthetics in Kant
does not occur "imperceptibly" but quite consciously, since it occupies a
central place in the architectonic of his critical project.
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

One can therefore defend Kant against Nietzsche's criticisms, but

perhaps a more important issue is to explore why Nietzsche considers
the putative 'subjective turn' in Kant's aesthetic theory so problematic.
In other words, what is the virtue for Nietzsche of an aesthetic of the
artist over and against the 'womanly aesthetics' of the spectator, of the
recipient? Nietzsche writes that we ' should not demand of the artist
who gives, that he become a woman — that he "receives"' (WP §811).
However, given Nietzsche's assault on notions of subjectivity, one may
well ask why we should we be interested in the artist in any case. In an-
swer to this I would argue that Nietzsche's critique of Kant is motivated
less by an interest in countering an imbalance of perspectives in Kant,
and more by his wider strategic aim to dissociate art and truth. In prac-
tice, Nietzsche devotes considerable space and time to the exploration
of the constitutive role of the spectator in the determination of the
beautiful. Without being reducible to the Kantian 'subjectivist' aesthet-
ic, Nietzsche's physiology of beauty presents many parallels with Kant's
account of aesthetic judgement; in particular one can see Nietzsche's
notion of'aesthetic rapture' as a physiological inflection of the Kantian
aesthetic state. Nietzsche's dissatisfaction with the 'womanly aesthetics'
practised hitherto is thus not guided by an objection to the orientation
of aesthetics per se, but rather by a rejection of the way in which such a
'passive' aesthetics serves to fortify the delusory belief in art as a truth -
disclosive praxis. It is motivated by a desire to counter the reification of
art embedded in the aesthetic tradition. Although I have argued, against
Nietzsche, that Kant in fact devotes considerable attention to the gene-
sis of the work of art, it has also to be conceded that Nietzsche is cor-
rect when he asserts that the experience of the artist is neglected. Kant
devotes adequate space to discussing the artist's use of rules and prece-
dents, yet the account of aesthetic experience itself is discussed exclu-
sively with reference to the reaction of the spectator to the reified aes-
thetic object, whether it is an object in nature or the finished product of
human artifice. In other words, the cognitive 'quickening' which, for
Kant, is the central element of aesthetic experience is induced by the
finished aesthetic object that, in the case of art, presents the world in a
certain way.
In the case of beauty as the symbol of morality in Kant, transcenden-

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tal poetry as the symbol of the absolute in Friedrich Schlegel or music

as the unmediated image of the Will in Schopenhauer, the aesthetic ob-
ject is seen as a specific mode of representation, which facilitates a cog-
nition that exceeds the normal bounds of conceptual experience. Thus
any orientation toward the experience of the spectator cannot but help
tend to view beauty as a form of revelation or disclosure, occasioned by
a specific object. This doctrine diverges considerably from Nietzsche's
own understanding of the understanding of art and the aesthetic, espe-
cially in respect of his emphasis on the aesthetic as a temporal process.
Of course, Nietzsche does not deny the power of the aesthetic object
over the spectator; his tirades against Wagner are motivated by the
recognition of the power of the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk over the au-
dience. Like Kant he emphasises the 'quickening' effect of such experi-
ence (though it is more physiological than cognitive), claiming, for ex-
ample, that art 'works tonically, increases strength, inflames desire' (WP
§809). Similarly, in Human All Too Human he describes the manner in
which art brings about a restructuring of experience, claiming that it
aims 'to alter one's sensibilities, partly by modifying our judgements on
our experiences . . . partly by arousing a desire for pain, for emotion in
general' (HAH I §108), and a significant portion of his critique of Wag-
ner focuses on the way in which the emotional hysteria of his operas ap-
peals to and exacerbates the degraded sensibilities of the modern audi-
ence. Nevertheless, Nietzsche attaches more importance to the analysis
of the artist's experience for two important reasons.
First, in contrast to Kant, Nietzsche tends to equate aesthetics with
the philosophy of art rather than of beauty. The aesthetic object be-
comes the work of art, and Nietzsche is less interested in the finished
artwork than in the way it functions as a sign or symptom of varying at-
titudes towards the world. Art is conceived of primarily as an activity
rather than as an assembly of objects that can be collectively termed
'works' of art. Of course, I am not pretending that Nietzsche ceases to
refer to works of art, or asserting that he denies their existence as ob-
jects. Such a claim would be absurd since he discusses individual works
throughout his career, from Boccaccio's Decameron to Wagner's Parsi-
fal and Cervantes's Don Quixote. What I am arguing, though, is that
the significance of works of art lies less in the effect they have on the

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spectator, reader or listener qua static, finished totalities, than in their

shaping of human affectivity as dynamic creations or achievements of
the artist. In other words, they count less as self-contained totalities
(and here we see another manner in which Nietzsche departs from
Kant and from Formalist aesthetics) than as the products of a particular
impulse, in short, as the achievements of interpretative will to power
sublimated into the aesthetic drive. As he states in Human All Too Human,
'so-called art proper, that of artworks, is just an appendage/ and he
continues, 'we usually start with art where we should end with it, cling
hold of it by its tail, and believe that the art of the artwork is true art
out of which life is to be improved and transformed — fools that we are'
(HAH II §174). Attention solely to artworks overlooks the central im-
portance of the aesthetic basis of interpretative will to power in gener-
al and the cultivation of the Ubermensch in particular.
In dealing with the meaning of the term 'art' in Nietzsche an added
confusion occurs in Nietzsche's willingness to use the word to describe
not only the products of the aesthetic drive but also those objects which
are socially understood as art, artworks, but which Nietzsche regards as
degraded. The most obvious example is opera, which he considers in
The Birth of Tragedy to be essentially inartistic (cf. BT §i9ff.). As I noted
previously, Nietzsche had come to recognise by the time of writing Hu-
man All Too Human that modernity was not as much incapable of produc-
ing art per se, as it was incapable of producing good art. Hence, contrary
to the argument of The Birth of Tragedy, modernity is not marked by a
complete lack of aesthetic sensibility but rather by a degraded aesthetic
sense. I cited earlier the curious discussion of'The Beyond in Art/
which notes the existence of art forms which promote a sense of the
transcendent, then concludes 'A stirring saga will emerge from this,
that there once existed such an art, such an artistic belief (HAH I §
220). Nietzsche's conclusion suggests that he terms these works 'art'
out of deference to the common understanding of the word rather than
out of any approval of their content.25 For Nietzsche, therefore, art and
the power of formal organisation that characterises the work of art
count less for themselves than for their significance as manifestation of
will to power pervading all life processes. Hence, he is trying to bridge
the gap which he sees as having sprung up, separating art from life, the

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beautiful from the interests it serves, a gap which originates in the sun-
dering of interest in artistic form from the more general interest in fur-
thering interpretative will to power. Nietzsche's examination of the
question of art primarily from the position of the artist, with its empha-
sis on the process of creating, therefore shifts attention away from the
idea of art as revealing or as disclosing a pre-existent truth, and towards
the recognition of art as a world-constitutive activity.
In his later writing, and especially in the unpublished notes of the
late 18 80s, the question of beauty and the question of art become syn-
onymous, the numerous passages entitled 'Aesthetica' invariably turn-
ing to the issue of art. This is not because Nietzsche is conforming to
the traditional identification of art and beauty, but because he sees the
activity of perceiving beauty and that of producing art as joined at their
root by a shared way of seeing the world. Of beauty he writes, 'In beau-
ty man sets himself up as the measure of perfection/ adding later that
'His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride — that
falls with the ugly, that grows with the beautiful' (77 'Skirmishes' §19).
Of art he claims that it is a 'compulsion-to-transform to perfection,'
adding further that 'Man enjoys himself in art as perfection' (77 'Skir-
mishes' §9). As will to power, art represents a mode of seeing-as, of
seeing the world as perfect, as simplified, as organised in a certain way.
It is driven by a compulsion to transform the world, and as such Nietz-
sche is interested more in the figure that puts this seeing-as into artistic
praxis, namely the artist himself. Although Nietzsche can admire the
artistic qualities of something as impersonal as the Jesuit order or the
Prussian officer corps, it is also the case that on the whole, art is de-
pendent in Nietzsche on a specific kind of individual. The work of art is
only the culmination of a process, and the process is more important
than the material product; this perception again reflects Nietzsche's
wider position, in which the process of interpretation cannot be al-
lowed to congeal into a set specific result or perspective.
So is Nietzsche claiming that the artist is merely attempting to ex-
press in material terms a pre-determined idea of the world, like the
Platonic craftsman who always works with the Form of his object in
mind? No, because the artist figure, important though he is, is in many
respects a cipher. Nietzsche writes that 'The phenomenon "artist" is still

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the most transparent: — to see through it to the basic instincts of power,

nature etc. Religion and morality too!' (WP §797). Here, too, the ori-
gins of artistic creativity are located firmly within the realm of the phys-
iological. This is not necessarily because Nietzsche seeks to deny the
importance of the conscious activity of the artist, but in order to rule
out any idealist notion of artistic vision and to counteract the cult of ge-
nius, of course, more specifically the cult of Wagner's genius. Hence one
sees a link with Nietzsche's discussion of Wagner as a medical case. The
'case' of Wagner thus gains its meaning from both Nietzsche's attempt
to perceive culture as a whole in terms of physiology and his attempt to
resist any idealist, genius-oriented notions of artistic creativity. As
Nietzsche writes in Nietzsche contra Wagner, 'My objections to Wagner
are physiological objections. Why should I still disguise them with aes-
thetic formulations?' (NCWWhere I Raise Objections').The artistic vi-
sion, the 'making perfect' so characteristic of artistic praxis, is not guid-
ed by some transcendent ideal, but rather should be seen in terms of a
transfigurative immanence that opposes any tendency to 'desensualisation.'
In a note from 188^, Nietzsche writes, 'As regards the main thing I
agree more with the artists than with any philosophers hitherto: they
have not lost the great track life goes along, they have loved the things
"of this world" . . . it is a sign of having turned out well when one, like
Goethe, clings with ever more joy and warm-heartedness to "the things
of the world"' (WP §820). Nietzsche's physiology of the artist thus for-
tifies the notion of art as being concerned with the things 'of the world'
by its refusal to seek for the source of the work of art beyond the im-
mediately apparent.
If we turn to the second aspect, namely the idea of art as world-
making rather than world-disclosing, the connection with the broader
framework of transfigurative immanence should be all too transparent.
The combination of Nietzsche's perspectivism and his resistance to
ideas of transcendence, in short, his 'immanent perspectivism' to bor-
row Nehemas's phrase,26 rules out both forms of world-disclosure dis-
cussed so far. His immanent perspectivism rules out any view of art as
mimetically disclosive of the world. At best, one could say that it dis-
closes a particular perspective of the world, but then one is forced to
admit the work represents a choice of a certain perspective over anoth-

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er, which of course undermines the realist ideal of a work completely

immersed in the objective world 'as it really is.' His immanent perspec-
tivism therefore compels us to rule out talk of art either as a revelation
of some higher, super-sensuous truth or as a reproduction of the objec-
tive visible world (as if such a thing existed). At the same time his im-
manent perspectivism draws us inevitably towards a notion of art as
world making. As a perspectival practice art represents a fictive world
in various selected ways. As a process of transfigurative immanence art
forces us to conclude that since there is no 'real/ determinable world to
which each perspective can be related, each is the construction of a par-
ticular world. The physiology of art further strengthens this idea by re-
lating the demands for any particular world to immanent needs, that is,
those of the organism, rather than to transcendent truth values.
There is, in addition, one further reason why Nietzsche calls for a
turn to the 'masculine' aesthetics of the artist, and it is one suggested by
Derrida. For what is significant about Nietzsche's call is not just his plea
for a re-orientation to the aesthetics of the artist, but also the fact that
he couches it in such gender-specific terms. The artist adopts, so Nietz-
sche has argued, a masculine standpoint of giving, whereas, by implica-
tion, that of the woman, the feminine position, is one of passive accept-
ance. As Derrida has pointed out, Nietzsche is here 'dealing with a very
old philosopheme of production/27 whereby masculinity has always been
regarded as the productive gender against the sterility of the feminine.
It is notable, too, that Nietzsche sees the relation between the sexes as
based on the process of giving and taking we have seen elucidated
above, from his claim that the foundation of all love is desire for appro-
priation (GS §14), to his comparison of feminine and masculine love,
where the former is characterised as a desire 'to be taken, to be accept-
ed as a possession' and the latter as a desire to possess: 'the woman gives
herself away, the man appropriates' (GS §363).
In this move to the (masculine) aesthetics of the artist, Nietzsche is
undertaking a number of things. First, he is drawing attention to the
long tradition within metaphysics of comparing the relation of certain
oppositional pairs to that between the sexes. Within the sphere of aes-
thetics one can point out the tradition, in the eighteenth century, of see-
ing aesthetics as a feminine discipline in contrast to the masculine

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rigours of logic. In addition, the sublime and the beautiful were distin-
guished in terms of gender. If we follow this Nietzschean thematic a
little further it becomes clear that his turn to the 'masculine' aesthetics
of the artist is not necessarily an attempt to assimilate or repeat the tra-
dition, because it is in the name of this new attention to 'masculine' art
that Nietzsche is criticising traditional aesthetics. In this regard it is
worth noting that in the aphorism on love from The Gay Science cited
earlier, the relation between the two sexes, while still based on the par-
adigm of appropriation and giving, has inverted the usual relation, inas-
much as it is the woman who gives herself, and the man who receives,
or even reaches out and seizes for himself, a relation repeated in Beyond
Good and Evil, where Nietzsche writes that 'Man . . . has to conceive of
woman as possession, as property which can be locked away' (BGE
§238). This inversion would not be so significant except for the fact
that, as I indicated earlier, Nietzsche also sees woman as closer to the
artistic temperament than man ('woman is so artistic').
Nietzsche's use of well-established aesthetic philosophemes thus
consists of more than merely replicating the inherited aesthetic dis-
course. Rather, by deliberately playing with such inherited philoso-
phemes he should be seen as bringing together, on another level, the
aesthetic and the erotic, a move we have already seen previously in his
claim that aesthetic and sexual pleasure are synonymous, or that 'mak-
ing music is another way of making children' ( WP §800).The intertwin-
ing of erotics and aesthetics serves, as a strategy, further to dissociate
the question of art from the metaphysical understanding of truth,
which in turn adds force to the severance of art as Nietzsche under-
stands it from the idea of art as revelation of truth, either positivist or
transcendent.
Second, Nietzsche's turn to the masculine aesthetic of the artist ex-
plicitly pits the artist against truthfulness inasmuch as the latter is fre-
quently described as a woman in Nietzsche. It is a further example of
Nietzsche exacerbating the discord between truth and art by occasion-
ally casting their relation in the terms of the opposition of the genders.
It is an opposition which points towards a third problem, which I can
only briefly discuss here. What paradoxically unites the masculine aes-
thetic of the artist with the woman is their common pre-disposition to

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giving. Nietzsche writes that we 'should not demand of the artist who
gives, that he become a woman — that he "receives"' ( WP §811).Yet as I
have already suggested, he seems less concerned with the femininity of
aesthetics than with its passivity, for which the woman, on this occa-
sion, stands as a cipher, following the traditional discourse of produc-
tion. It is moreover this aspect of the problem which I shall be dealing
with.
As Derrida points out, Nietzsche's use of the metaphors of appropri-
ation and donation is far from being one of pure contingency, for the
metaphysical conception of truth has always been based on the para-
digm of appropriation. Truth is always something to be 'attained' or
'grasped/ This notion of truth as something to be possessed, of appro-
priation as prior to truth, is a recurrent feature of metaphysical thinking
and contrasts with Nietzsche's metaphor of truth as a woman, who, hid-
ing behind a veil of dissimulation, always resists that masculine desire to
be her master and possessor. It is a desire for mastery that will never be
satisfied (and here we see a parallel with the inability of will to power to
exhaust its possibilities), for, as Nietzsche says, 'Are there not grounds
for the suspicion that all philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists,
have been inexpert about women? That the gruesome earnestness, the
clumsy obtrusiveness with which they have hitherto usually approached
truth were awkward and very improper means for winning over a
woman for oneself?' (BGE preface). With this speculation Nietzsche is
not merely engaging in a whimsical play with ideas that are also related
to his claim that, spawned by the ascetic ideal, metaphysicians avoid
women and the body (and that Socrates only married out of a wicked
sense of irony). He is also challenging once more the ideology of the
given, the notion of truth as something waiting to be appropriated,
which brings us back to his turn to the aesthetics of the artist as he who
gives. By stressing the idea of the artist who gives, like the woman who
gives herself, Nietzsche is aiming to dissociate aesthetics even further
from metaphysics by overturning the topos of artistic representation as
appropriation; with this, of course, Nietzsche is also moving further
away from the notion of art as either concealing or revealing the truth.
For art is closely bound up with the philosopheme of production, one
which brings us into proximity with Nietzsche's theory of interpreta-

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 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

tion as a transformational activity. Significantly, the topos of gift-giving

plays a notable role in Nietzsche, and it again contradicts the metaphys-
ical model of truth as possession.29 As Zarathustra declares, 'I love him
whose soul squanders itself, who neither wants nor returns thanks; for
he always gives' (Z prologue §4) However, it is important to recognise
that this is not only an economic metaphor of exchange and expendi-
ture, but also one of production and creation. Nietzsche notes, 'It's
more than a matter of giving: it's one of creating, one of violence' (KSA
10:16 [40]). It is moreover within Nietzsche's discussion of aesthetics
that, I would argue, this process occurs, and it reminds us of the central
place which the question of art occupies in Nietzsche's critical assault
on metaphysics. It is within the turn to the aesthetics of the artist that
the various themes of appropriation, giving, woman, dissimulation,
truth and creation are brought into a meaningful relation. The inconsis-
tencies in Nietzsche's twisting and turning from the feminine to the
masculine in his confrontation with the aesthetic tradition stems from
the fact that he is always using such terms strategically, in which when-
ever one term is not sufficient, it is discarded and replaced by another.

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 8

Overcoming Nihilism

Art, Modernity and Beyond

A central element in my account of Nietzsche's aesthetic theory has

been the intimate connection between his thoughts on art in general
and his concern with the crisis of nihilism. Despite his references to fig-
ures from the entire history of art, from Aeschylus, Simonides and Eu-
ripides through to Raphael, Michelangelo, Beethoven and Schubert, his
concern with the question of art is primarily motivated by the pressing
issue of modernity. In this respect, as I have suggested previously, Nietz-
sche's thought represents the latest staging of the Querelle desAnciens et
des Modernes; his writing is dominated by the overwhelming sense that
contemporary artistic practice is decadent, and that this decadence is all
the more deplorable given that he accords to art the potential for func-
tioning as the counter-movement to general nihilism. The most prob-
lematic case is, of course, Richard Wagner, but other figures loom
prominently in Nietzsche's list of decadents, such as Zola, Delacroix,
Flaubert, Berlioz and Victor Hugo. However, Nietzsche's sense of the
need for aesthetic reform stems from a wider sense of cultural crisis;
aesthetic renewal is necessary not only because the inherited forms of
aesthetic practice bear no meaningful relation to contemporary cul-
ture, but also because modernity is to be overcome. Hence Nietzsche
seems to continue the tradition stemming from Schiller, in which aes-
thetic reform opens the way to cultural revolution. There is an impor-
tant difference, however. For Schiller, and for the early romantics such
as Novalis and the Schlegel brothers, aesthetic and cultural innovation
was to take place in the name of a transcendent value. There always re-
mains an exterior norm of which art can function as the preeminent
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

cultural expression. For Nietzsche the crisis is of a different order; it

stems not only from the questionable worth of contemporary cultural
practices and institutions, but also from the recognition that the possi-
bility of adhering to external norms has vanished. If the Querelle desAn-
ciens et des Modernes and its German inflection represent the advent of a
consciousness of modernity, then in Nietzsche one can see its intensifi-
cation and culmination. As I noted earlier, Nietzsche's thought is organ-
ised around the central problem of modernity, namely, interrogation of
the means by which modernity may derive its normativity from itself.
Historically, the most prominent way in which this issue emerged was
in the aesthetic sphere, where the appropriation of classical culture was
linked to a notion of cultural 'rebirth' in the Renaissance, a sense of re-
newal that eventually led to a questioning of the legitimacy of that clas-
sical inheritance. In Nietzsche's own time, of course, aesthetic mod-
ernism in the form of an avant-garde was only in its infancy. While the
birth of a 'modern' cultural sensibility (in which the relation between
the present and the past becomes a problem) can be traced back to the
late seventeenth century, it was only in the latter half of the nineteenth
century that the 'new,' a sense of truth to present times, became a defin-
ing value within artistic practice. Materialist accounts have often linked
the birth of the avant-garde with the rise of consumer culture. The
avant-garde has been interpreted as a reaction to mass popular culture,
while the logic of artistic innovation mirrors the rise of novelty as a
central value in the consumer culture of the nineteenth century. Cer-
tainly, for Nietzsche, there was a clear link between the two; his various
criticisms of Wagner return repeatedly to the composer's purported
error of having transformed art into popular theatre.
Charles Baudelaire is often thought of as the first figure for whom
modernity was experienced as an acute problem. Indeed, the meaning
of 'modernity' has been interpreted entirely through the prism of
Baudelaire.l Nietzsche was also interested in Baudelaire, seeing in him a
symptom of the decadent modern soul that had lapsed into nihilistic
pessimism. Yet while Baudelaire stands as one well-known manifesta-
tion of the decadence of modernity, the exemplary case is to be found
in Richard Wagner. The increasing unravelling of musical structure, the

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reliance on spectacle, the dissolution of resolving cadence through the

use of a perpetually modulating 'endless melody' are all, as hallmarks of
Wagner's music, symptomatic of the passive will to destruction that,
for Nietzsche, was the consequence of the implosion of metaphysical
culture.
Wagner's music represents the culmination of romanticism in music
and also the moment of its unravelling. The chromatic undermining of
tonality in his work looks forward to its complete destruction in the
work of Schoenberg. The work of Wagner is of especial interest, for in
addition to the fascination he exerted over Nietzsche, his role as a
symptom of modernity was also recognised by Adorno. As I noted ear-
lier, there is an important affinity between Adorno and Nietzsche; in
particular, I have suggested that Adorno's 'negative dialectic' can be
used to characterise the logic of interpretation and will to power in
Nietzsche.4 This affinity is thus continued in their analyses of Wagner,
which exhibit instructive parallels. At the same time, the comparison
between Nietzsche and Adorno raises a number of other important
questions. Adorno is most frequently regarded as the arch-modernist,
defending modernism and the autonomous work of art as the necessary
and only viable possibility for the work of art in the age of mass culture.
In contrast, Nietzsche's rhetoric is constantly targeted at the mod-
ernism of Wagner, and its incipient forms in romanticism and realism,
as microcosms of the larger problem of nihilism. The equation of Nietz-
sche with anti-modernism is not a new one, and more recently his cri-
tique of modernity has also been interpreted as an early case of post-
modernism..5 However, such easy categorisation is all too simple, most
immediately because the opposition of modern and post-modern is it-
self highly problematic. In this final chapter I shall therefore explore
Nietzsche's place within the landscape of aesthetic debate concerning
modernism and its limits. I shall make frequent reference to Adorno,
not only because his work (still) presents one of the most powerful ex-
amples of modernist theorising, but also because of its frequent prox-
imity to Nietzsche. I shall start by summarising the nature of Nietz-
sche's complaint against romanticism and realism as outgrowths of
nihilism.

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 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

Realism, Romanticism, Nihilism

For Nietzsche nihilism arises when 'the highest values devalue them-
selves' (WP §2). The expectation of absolute values is disappointed,
leading to a refusal to accept the legitimacy of any values. Consequent-
ly, as Nietzsche notes in the opening of The Antichrist, modern man is
plunged into a state of neurosis:' "I know neither my way in nor out; I
am everything that knows neither in nor out" laments the modern hu-
man' (A §1). Nihilism is characterised for Nietzsche by loss and confu-
sion, a feeling that threatens to plunge Western society into an abyss of
passivity.Yet nihilism is also'ambiguous' (WP §22), and the responses to
the crisis of modernity are various.
I have already commented in previous chapters on the distinction
made by Nietzsche between active and reactive nihilism. Reactive ni-
hilism is the pessimism of the weak, in other words, those who still
cling to the ideal of some transcendent, unchanging truth, and who
condemn all existence for not meeting that expectation. The sense of
mourning at the loss of such certain truths is accompanied by the con-
viction of the worthlessness of all existence, since it cannot be justified
by some higher authority. It produces the desire for revenge, for de-
struction. Here one is reminded of Nietzsche's typological classification
of romanticism in The Gay Science as a destructive condition charac-
terised by precisely that feeling of lack: 'The longing for destruction,
change, becoming can be the expression of a superabundant power
pregnant with the future (my term for that, as is known, is
"Dionysian"); but it can also be the hate of the ill-constituted, the disin-
herited, the underprivileged, who destroys, has to destroy, because that
which is permanent, indeed all permanence, all being itself, provokes it
and arouses indignation' (GS §370).
One notes here that although superficially such reactive nihilism
seems to have turned against the order and hierarchy of tradition, it is
in fact still bound closely to it, and to metaphysics in general, by the
spirit of ressentiment, by the desire to wreak revenge. It is merely a mod-
ern form of the same spirit of ressentiment which, Nietzsche believes,
motivated Christianity. In On the Genealogy of Morals he cites the obvious
relish Thomas Aquinas takes in imagining the future sufferings of those

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non-believers:' "Beati in regno coelesti" he says, meek as a lamb, "vide-

bunt poenas damnatorum, ut beatitudo illis magis complaceat" [the
blessed in the kingdom of heaven will see the punishments of the
damned in order that their bliss will be more delightful for them]'
(OGM I §i£). In the case of metaphysics the mark is the constant ran-
cour of philosophers against the inconstant and that which resists logi-
cal analysis. In reactive nihilism, and Nietzsche regards the growing an-
archist movement of his own time as an example of this (GS §370),
energies are turned against cultural order and tradition. As early as
1873 Nietzsche complains of 'Bakunin, who, in his hatred for the pres-
ent, intends to destroy history and the past' (KSA 7:26[i4]).This spirit
of revenge uniting the two marks them out as partners in a self-
consuming dialectic. Against this can be set active nihilism, whose char-
acter is now a little clearer on the basis of the analyses of interpretation
and temporality in the preceding chapters. Active nihilism rests on
recognition of the perspectivism of interpretation, acceptance of the
contingency of knowledge and recognition that 'knowledge' is inter-
pretative will to power. And of course the crucial element in this is the
absence of nostalgia for anything metaphysics might regard as 'true
knowledge.'
The advent of nihilism has its aesthetic dimensions, and before ex-
amining these it is necessary to recall that art, for Nietzsche, is consti-
tuted less by artworks and more by the state of artistic creativity. The
reason is straightforward. As Nietzsche notes, 'For art to exist, for any
sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological
precondition is indispensable: intoxication. Intoxication must first have
heightened the excitability of the entire machine: no art results before
that happens' (77 'Skirmishes' §8). At the same time, however, 'art' also
designates both those objects Nietzsche considers products of genuine
aesthetic intoxication as well as the debased, 'unaesthetic' artworks of
modern society. In his work on modernity the opposition of classical
and romantic functions as an aesthetic metaphor for the active /reactive
dichotomy of nihilism. However, it is also rather more than merely a
metaphor. The manner in which the problem of modernity is confront-
ed in art can be regarded as central to understanding the crisis facing
contemporary society, and the classical artistic response, in the form of

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 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

Dionysian classicism, should be understood as providing the key to the

overcoming of reactive nihilism in all other spheres of social being.
Nietzsche thus uses Dionysian classicism as a model, in order to suggest
an aesthetic practice that would counter the problems of modernity. It
is a practice that diverges considerably, however, from the actual artistic
responses of modernism which for Nietzsche consisted of romanticism
and realism.
One of the principal features of romanticism, for Nietzsche, is its
status as a neurotic condition. I have indicated previously how Nietz-
sche describes the decadence of modernity in medical terms, as a neu-
rosis in need of a cure, and his description of romanticism is no differ-
ent. He quotes with approval a passage from the Goncourt brothers'
novel Manette Salomon, which observes that Delacroix 'is the . . . image
of the decadence of our time, the spoilt one, confusion . . . the pas-
sions, the nerves, thefaiblesses of our time, modern torment,' adding a
further comment at the end that 'Delacroix [is] a kind of Wagner' (KSA
11:2£ [141]). A second note in the Nachlass quotes another passage
from the same novel, half translated and half in French, once again with
regard to Delacroix; 'Delacroix — he promised everything, announced
everything. His pictures? Aborted masterpieces; the person who, apres
tout, will arouse the passions comme tout grand incomplet, a feverish life in
all h e c r e a t e s , une agitation de lunettes, un dessinfou' (KSA 1i:2£ [ 1 4 2 ] ) .
For all his admiration for Beethoven, Nietzsche is also aware of the
composer's shortcomings: 'merely imagine Beethoven as he appears be-
side Goethe — say at their meeting atTeplitz: as semi-barbarism beside
culture, as the people beside nobility' (GS § 103).This reservation about
Beethoven appears in other works, too, such as Daybreak, where Nietz-
sche compares, by juxtaposition, the 'coarse, obstinate, impatient tone'
of Beethoven's music with the 'convulsive and importunate restless-
ness' of Wagner (D §218). Beethoven is 'the first great romantic, in the
sense of the French conception of romanticism, as Wagner is the last
great romantic — both instinctive opponents of classical taste, of severe
style — to say nothing of "grand" style' (WP §842). In Beyond Good and
Evil Nietzsche devotes a lengthy aphorism to the discussion of Richard
Wagner and French Wagnerianism. He writes,

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 OVERCOMING NIHILISM

all of them fanatics of expression 'at any price' — I emphasise Delacroix, the
most closely related to Wagner — all of them great discoverers in the realm of
the sublime . . . even greater discoverers as regards effects, display . . . born
enemies of logic and straight lines, lusting after the alien, the exotic, the mon-
strous, the crooked, the contradictory; Tantaluses of the will as human beings,
successful plebeians who knew themselves to be incapable of a respectable
tempo, a lento in their work and creativity . . . unbridled workers, near self-
destroyers in their work, antinomians and rebels against custom, ambitious
and insatiable without balance and enjoyment, all of them eventually breaking
down and sinking down before the cross (and that with right and reason: for
who of them would have been sufficiently profound and original for a philos-
ophy of the Antichrist?)
(BG£ §2*6)

In his final analyses of Wagner he goes even further. Wagner does not
aim merely to rebel against tradition and custom, rather he panders to
the weak: * Revenge against life itself— the most voluptuous kind of rap-
ture for such impoverished ones!. . . .Wagner just as much as Schopen-
hauer answers the double requirement of these latter — they deny life,
they defame it, thus they are my antipodes' (NCW'We Antipodeans'). In
The Case of Wagner Nietzsche once again uses medical imagery, asking, 'Is
Wagner even a human? Is he not rather a disease? He makes everything
he touches sickly — he has made music sickly' (CW§s).
What is significant about all these discussions is the diagnosis of ro-
manticism as a neurotic condition permeated by confusion. Most espe-
cially in the passages on Delacroix, one can see how the reaction against
the bankruptcy of traditional cultural norms has led to the unleashing
of self-destructive energies. It is a confusion accompanied by prolonged
introspection, with the emphasis constantly on subjective expression 'at
any price/The extreme self-absorption that Nietzsche mentions here
parallels the birth of asceticism he outlines in On the Genealogy of Morals;
asceticism was seen to be a dangerous cultural manifestation because it
represents a turning of energies, more specifically will to power, against
themselves, rather than directing them outwards; it constitutes a
fetishism of the process which first generated subjectivity. Here again
the ambiguity of nihilism becomes apparent, for the ascetic spirit that

22 I
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

informs the pessimistic neurosis of modernity represents the triumph

of a particular direction in will to power, rather than its lack.
The state of repressive self-absorption characteristic of romanticism
occurs in Nietzsche's more general description of the modern subject
in The Antichrist. For Nietzsche it seems from the fact that while the log-
ic of metaphysics, and hence the entire edifice of Western culture, is in
the process of collapsing, the transcendent foundation of their authori-
ty still remains as an object of desire. All romantics eventually sink
down 'before the Cross/ an indication that they too are caught up in the
reactive moment of the dialectic of nihilism. His interpretation suggests
that behind their antinomian production there still lies the hope for re-
demption through some form of restoration of transcendent values, a
hope whose lack of fulfilment leads inevitably to despair. The example
of Wagner is of importance here, in particular Parsifal, which for Nietz-
sche signifies the composer's ultimate weakness: 'For Parsifal is a work
of spite, of vengefulness, of secret poison against the preconditions of
life, a bad work. The sermon on poverty remains a stimulant to the un-
natural. I despise everyone who does not feel Parsifal as an assassination
of morality' (NCW 'Wagner as the Apostle of Chastity').
I have noted earlier one of Nietzsche's criticisms of realism, namely,
that it was founded on the same errors as metaphysics in general, in its
belief in truthfulness. In addition, in many respects it constitutes the
partner to romanticism in the dialectic of reactive nihilism. Nietzsche
explicitly refers to Flaubert in Twilight of the Idols in such terms: 'On ne
peut penser et ecrire qu'assis (G. Flaubert). With that I have you, ni-
hilist! The posterior is a sin against the holy spirit. It is only ideas gained
from walking that have any worth' (77 'Maxims and Arrows' §34). The
self-erasure of the author in the name of objectivity is a central element
in the nihilist orientation of realism. Nietzsche is quite clear about the
impossibility of the author's transcending his own subjective perspec-
tive: 'People have regarded as "impersonal" what was the expression of
the most powerful persons. . . . But the gentlemen would love to hide
and be rid of themselves, e.g. Flaubert' (KSA 11: 2£ [117]). Moreover he
interprets such putative self-transcendence on the part of the artist as
an expression of decadence, a denigration of the self which mirrors the
romantic denigration of the objective. Like Flaubert, Zola counts as a

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prime case of such decadence. With his 'delight in stinking' (77 'Skir-
mishes' §i) Zola is ranked alongside Victor Hugo, Kant, Liszt and oth-
ers as one of the 'impossibles/ Significantly, Zola is accused of produc-
ing the same type of disorientation as romanticism, and Nietzsche thus
mentions him alongside Wagner: 'a wild multiplicity, an overwhelming
mass, before which the senses become confused; brutality in colour,
material, desires. Examples: Zola, Wagner' (WP §827). Like Wagner,
Hugo and Hyppolyte Taine, Zola is guilty of an 'inability to tyrannize
over oneself concerning the main thing — namely in regard to the work
itself (omitting, shortening, clarifying, simplifying)' (WP §849).
Akin to romanticism, realism also turns out to be a reactive response
to the loss of tradition and the legitimacy of traditional values. This
time, however, unlike romanticism, it does not resort to a destructive
and self-destructive ressentiment against the world, but rather takes
refuge in an 'objective' order of things, at the same time wiping out the
subject that might put the legitimacy of that order in doubt once again.
It is a rejection of tradition in the name of a higher objective truth, un-
critically re-inscribing those values which sustained tradition into a new
scheme of values, a phenomenon to which I alluded in the previous
chapter. The intimate connection between realism and romanticism be-
comes apparent again in the operas of Wagner, in which redemption is
achieved through the negation of consciousness. Hence, as I have men-
tioned previously, in Tristan and Isolde the lovers' redemption is achieved
through their death, while in Parsifal the eponymous hero achieves the
redemptive healing of Amfortas's wound by accident. Paradoxically,
therefore, self-denial functions as the basis for both the romanticism of
Wagner and the realism of Flaubert or Zola.
I have already explored the criticisms by Nietzsche of Wagner's com-
positional technique. However, they require revisiting in the context of
the current discussion. Nietzsche's hostility focuses primarily on Wag-
ner's use of the minimal leitmotif in the unfolding of'endless melody.'
The term suggests, and is often thought of as, a continuously flowing
melodic structure in which caesuras and cadences are minimised, but
this is a slightly misleading definition. Rather, it is based on the notion
that every element of the melody is of equal significance. The structure
of the melodic period, in which certain elements have priority over

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others, and in which much of the material consist of ornamentation and

'filling out/ is shrunken to minimal motifs. Wagner's use of the leitmotif
as the basis of the new musical form, endlessly developed and repeated,
leads to the dissolution of traditional musical structure. As Carl
Dahlhaus has noted,

Differentiation between regular and irregular syntax almost ceases to be of

any formal importance . . . one could very well make an analogy with the
'emancipation of dissonance' and speak of the emancipation of the metrically
irregular phrase — which hereupon ceases to be irregular: whereas irregulari-
ty was previously an exception to a norm of regularity, a license, the purpose
of which was understandable only be reference to that norm, emancipated ir-
regularity exists in its own right. The 'emancipation' does not mean that there
is no longer any difference between consonance and dissonance . . . only that
the difference is no longer an integral part of the musical structure.6

The reference to dissonance, although intended merely as an analogy, is

important, for Wagner's music is characterised by a chromatic tonality
which stretches tonal structure to the limit. And this is a consequence
of the dissolution of inherited melodic structure. If the tonal structure
of melody is no longer governed by the hierarchies of the melodic peri-
od, then tonality itself loses its function in the punctuation of melodic
form. There thus arises what is often referred to as the 'wandering
tonality' of Wagnerian music drama, which prefigures the complete
emancipation of dissonance in the music of Arnold Schoenberg.
Although technically and theoretically inaccurate, the notion that
endless melody comprises a continuously flowing melody nevertheless
contains a certain truth about the phenomenology of musical listening,
for it gives rise to the perception that the melody, unpunctuated by peri-
odic structures or harmonic cadences, flows continuously. This percep-
tion lies at the root of Nietzsche's criticism of Wagner's music. Having
referred to Wagner as 'the expression of physiological degeneration,'
Nietzsche adds further, 'life no longer inhabits the whole . . . the whole
is no longer a whole. Yet that is an analogy for every decadent style . . .
in moral terms, "freedom of the individual" — when broadened into a
political theory, "equal rights for all"' (CW §7). Nietzsche's comments
on the loss of structure are ostensibly aimed at the leitmotif, but his em-

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 OVERCOMING NIHILISM

phasis on the political and social ramifications of'endless melody' are

also undoubtedly references to Wagner's own revolutionary ideals.
Nietzsche's critique thus focuses on the fact that in 'endless melody'
larger structures are dissolved in the promotion of the micro-structure
of the motif, a technique he views as chaotic, and which could lead to
dangerous social consequences. In the same passage Nietzsche adds that
the result is iParalysis, toil, petrifaction or hostility and chaos every-
where: both confront one, the higher the organisational form one as-
cends to' (ibid.). It is apparent that Nietzsche's opposition stems both
from aesthetic and political reasons; his opposition to the dissolving of
traditional musical hierarchies is not only derived from his classical
preference, but also from his opposition to democratic politics. Nietz-
sche is therefore relying on a conservative view which regards a com-
plete dissolution of structure as leading to chaos, even though Wagner's
music constitutes only the inception of a process that finds its culmina-
tion in Schoenberg's twelve-tone music. Adorno later commented that
'the fact that Nietzsche found Wagner formless shows that even he still
heard him with the ears of the Biedermeier listener,' and this impres-
sion is fortified by Nietzsche's taste for composers such as Mendelssohn
and Bizet, his preference for Mozart over Beethoven, his dislike of Liszt
or his inability to understand the 'undeniable liking for Brahms that is
instilled here and there' (CWSecond Postscript').8

Nietzsche, Adorno and Modernism

For all its cogency with regard to the question of romanticism and real-
ism, Nietzsche's aesthetic theory regresses into conservative reaction
when faced with the actual details of Wagner's music. For Nietzsche the
decadence of Wagner and his status as a symptom of enfeebled will to
power derive from the structural and tonal dissonance of his work,
which count as the aesthetic symbols of the crisis of modernity. In this
regard, for all his recognition that he too is a modern, Nietzsche is
deeply anti-modern, a fact he himself declares: 'I am just as much a
child of this time as Wagner, I mean a decadent: only I understood the
fact and fought against it' (CW foreword). Faced with Wagner's use of
dissonance and chromaticism, a practice that would, in principle, com-
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

bat the cultural congealing Nietzsche was so keen to undermine, he re-

treats into the safe world of Bizet's Carmen.9 Nietzsche's response to
Wagner alone therefore poses difficult questions for the widespread in-
terpretation of Nietzsche as the exemplary thinker of pure dissonance.
At the same time, however, one has to be cautious in simply labelling
Nietzsche's anti-modernism as a reactionary conservatism. His criti-
cism of antiquarian history, for example, makes it difficult to see him as
attempting to reinstate tradition in the face of its dissolution. Second,
elements of Nietzsche's critique of Wagner are echoed by the musical
aesthetics of Adorno, and the latter is often interpreted as the arch de-
fender of modernism. Nietzsche thus occupies a more complex posi-
tion than the outline of his response to Wagner initially suggests.
Although he chides Nietzsche for his conservative response to Wag-
ner, Adorno's own remarks focus on similar aspects of the Wagnerian
music drama, and in strikingly similar ways. Where Nietzsche had criti-
cised Wagner's theatricality, Adorno takes issue with his reliance on
phantasmagoria; where Nietzsche's putatively Biedermeier taste rebels
against the formlessness of the ' endless melody,' Adorno questions the
'inexorable progression that fails to create any new quality and con-
stantly flows into the already known.' Like Nietzsche, Adorno sees
dissonance and the concomitant dominance of ambiguity as central to
Wagner's work, but he also considers the function of repetition. It is in
the context of Wagner's reliance on the repetitious use of the leitmotif
that Adorno makes possibly his best-known remark about Wagner,
namely, that it is music 'intended for the forgetful' (ISW, p. 31). Most
immediately, Adorno's comment refers to the way that the logic of the
commodity has inscribed itself in Wagner's music, in which the leitmotif
functions like an advertisement. However, while Wagner's music is the
first to reflect the prevailing commodity culture of modernity, repeti-
tion also enacts an extraordinary regression, in that time comes to a
standstill. And this sense of time being brought to a halt is fortified by
the collapse of musical syntax. One is reminded of Nietzsche's criticism
that in Wagner all sense of rhythm and hence time collapses, and so too
for Adorno, 'the absence of any real harmonic progression becomes the
phantasmagorical emblem for time standing still . . . in the memory of

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 OVERCOMING NIHILISM

a pristine age where time is guaranteed only by the stars' (p. 87). The
apparent modernity of Wagner is thus transformed into a regressive ar-
chaism, in which a timeless mythic reality is substituted for historical
actuality. As Adorno later states, Wagner 'refused to jeopardize the spell
of opera by immersing it in the sober factuality of concrete social con-
ditions' (p. 1i^). While his political motivation is entirely different,
Adorno's comments on Wagner's banishing of history recalls Nietz-
sche's assault on romanticism as the latest aesthetic expression of a
metaphysics that views everything sub specie aeternae. In addition, it
echoes Nietzsche's early criticism of monumental history, which, in its
appropriation of history, tends towards an unhistorical mythification of
the past devoid of historical objectivity.
The archaic appears too in Wagner's reliance on gesture, in other
words, his reduction of melody to the minimal expressive utterance.
Adorno interprets this as a regression to the most primal elements of
music, thus overturning the entire tradition: 'It is no doubt true that all
music has its roots in gesture of this kind and harbours it within itself.
In the West, however, it has been sublimated and interiorized into ex-
pression, while at the same time the principle of construction subjects
the overall flow of the music to a process of logical synthesis; great mu-
sic strives for a balance of the two elements. Wagner's position lies
athwart this tradition' (ISW, p. 3 g). Yet while the dominance of gesture
might indicate the primacy of the spontaneous, self-expressive subject,
Wagnerian gesture is for Adorno precisely the opposite: reflex imita-
tions of an external alienated reality.
At the root of Adorno's remarks is the criticism that Wagner's prac-
tice is undialectical. Perhaps unexpectedly, but in keeping with my gen-
eral reading, this is reminiscent of Nietzsche the secret dialectician. In
the same way that Nietzsche finds in the syntactically unstructured end-
less melody an expression of enfeebled will to power, so for Adorno the
undialectical dissolution of musical syntax and tonal hierarchy in Wag-
ner paradoxically leads to an ahistorical subjectless archaism. Nietz-
sche's critique of unmeditated expressiveness is motivated not only by
his suspicion of its claim to authenticity and truth, but also by the con-
viction that 'The value of a thing sometimes lies not in what one attains

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 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

with it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us' (77 'Skirmishes'
§3 8). The artistic expressiveness of modernity has not been accom-
plished against a process of negation.
Although Wagner is (rightly) seen as the exemplar of romanticism,
his music contains elements of both the extreme subjectivism of ro-
manticism and the positivist ideology of realism. I noted earlier how for
Nietzsche the erasure of subjectivity in realism is matched by Wagner's
wilful annihilation of the individual in the search for redemption. So
too for Adorno, Wagner's music turns from the extreme idealism of its
redemptive annihilation of the subject to a positivistic use of a specific
leitmotif to introduce each individual character. It therefore contains the
seeds of both subsequent developments in twentieth-century music,
which for Adorno are exemplified by Schoenberg and Stravinsky. In
Schoenberg theWagnerian dissolution of tonal structure is continued to
its logical end, while in Stravinsky there occurs the regression to the ar-
chaic and the elimination of the individual that had also been central to
Wagner. In his Philosophy of Modern Music Adorno continues his interro-
gation of the artistic response to the crisis of the legitimacy of the in-
herited musical language.12 It represents an analogue to the more gen-
eral sense of crisis which he, in common with Nietzsche, sees as
characteristic of modernity. Permeating Adorno's approach to the issue
is the conviction that the dialectic of musical change cannot be turned
back, that is, that the musical language inherited from classicism is a
product of a specific set of social, historical and musicological forces
now been superseded. Regarding Beethoven he notes,

it is the total niveau of Beethoven's technique which gives the chord its specif-
ic weight. The components of this technique include the tension between the
most extreme dissonance possible for him and consonance . . . and the dy-
namic conception of tonality as a whole. But the historical process through
which this weight has been lost is irreversible. The chord itself, as an obsolete
form, represents in its dissolution a state of technique contradictory as a
whole to the state of technique actually in practice.
(PMM, pp. 3 j-6)

For Adorno the only truly authentic response is therefore to pursue the

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 OVERCOMING NIHILISM

dissolution of tonality to its logical conclusion, since atonality is 'the

fulfilled purification of music from all conventions' (p. 40 n.). 13
Seen in these terms, Schoenberg's twelve-tone music represents a
liberation of the subjectivity of the composer from the objectivity of
musical form, that is, the musical tradition, and Adorno sees the history
of music as gaining its momentum from the tension between these two
poles, the specificity of artistic expression and the generality of the mu-
sical vocabulary. As Adorno says, traditional music 'had further to con-
tent itself with rendering the specific continuously by means of config-
urations of the general, which these configurations paradoxically
present as identical with the unique. Beethoven's entire oeuvre is an ex-
egesis of this paradox' (PMM, pp. £1—2). One notes the function, for
Adorno, of this tension between expression and tradition, and it can be
compared with the stress Nietzsche lays on tradition as the productive
site of resistance to the self-assertion of aesthetic will to power.
According to Adorno one of the aspects of musical form which mir-
rors this dichotomy is the opposition between melody and harmony, or
between homophony and polyphony. In this compositional opposition
are sedimented, in mediated form, the social relations between the in-
dividual subject and the objectivity of the social collective. Twelve-tone
music represents a sublation of this opposition (PMM, pp. £3—4) inas-
much as polyphony is sublated into the purely subjective disposition
over the grammar of musical form. Adorno writes, 'The epistemologi-
cal energy of modern music finds its legitimacy not in that it relates
back to the "great bourgeois past"— to the heroic classicism of the revo-
lutionary period — but rather in that it neutralizes in itself romantic dif-
ferentiation in terms of technique and, thereby, according to its sub-
stantiality. The subject of modern music . . . is the emancipated,
isolated, concrete subject of the late bourgeois phase' (p. gy).
Thus in Adorno's reading, Schoenberg's invention of twelve-tone
music with its concomitant rejection of tradition represents a complete
subjectification of musical form. The subject remains sovereign over the
work, and the work is truly modern, that is, as owing nothing to the
past. It is also the only authentic possibility, in contrast to the path tak-
en by Stravinsky. Adorno sees Stravinsky's reversion to classicism as a

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 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

reactionary attempt to deny history by the restitution of obsolete

forms. He begins his account of Stravinsky by quoting a passage from
Hegel's Aesthetics: 'Nor is it of any real assistance to him that he further
appropriates, so to speak . . . a view of the world that belongs to the
past. . . and, let us say, turns Roman Catholic' (VMM, p. 13^).This dic-
tum serves as the guiding principle in his interpretation of Stravinsky,
whom he sees as reactionary in comparison with the authentic mod-
ernism of Schoenberg. He claims, for example, that 'In Stravinsky the
desire of the adolescent is ever stubbornly at work; it is the struggle of
the youth to become a valid, proven classicist' (p. 137). In Stravinsky
the dialectic of innovation and tradition, of expression and construction
or of subjective autonomy and objective musical grammar has been re-
solved in favour of the latter.
Adorno sees a parallel, quite striking in the light of Nietzsche's own
remarks, between Stravinsky, positivism and Flaubert. Stravinsky's mu-
sic executes a negation of the subject by passing over into the objective, a
process symbolised above all in The Kite of Spring. Adorno writes, 'In
Stravinsky's case subjectivity assumes the character of sacrifice, but —
and this is where he sneers at the tradition of humanistic art — music does
not identify with the victim, but rather with the destructive element.
Through the liquidation of the victim it rids itself of all intentions, that
is, of its own subjectivity' (p. 143). As such it is a musical parallel to
Flaubert: 'At first the music states: this is the situation as it was, and the
music is as far removed from adopting a position as was Flaubert in
Madame Bovary. Atrocity is observed with a certain satisfaction, but it is
not transfigured' (p. 146). Adorno comments later that Stravinsky be-
longs to Machian positivism, 'a type ofWestern art the highest summit of
which lies in the work of Baudelaire, in which the individual, through the
force of emotional sensation, enjoys his own annihilation. Therefore, the
mythologizing tendency of The Kite of Spring continues where Wagner
left off (p. 166). Paradoxically, Stravinsky is as much heir to Wagner as is
Schoenberg, and we are reminded of the dual significance of Wagnerian
opera. On the one hand, Wagner's chromaticism represents the subjec-
tive disruption of musical tradition and anticipates Schoenberg's twelve-
tone music. On the other, his espousal of myth, his yearning for redemp-
tion through the erasure of his heroes, pre-figures Stravinsky's mythic

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 OVERCOMING NIHILISM

celebration of the collective sacrifice of the individual. For Adorno

Stravinsky's elimination of the subject dissolves the tension between in-
dividual style and universal musical form. Paralleling his celebration of
sacrifice is his espousal, in later neo-classical works such as The Soldier's
Tale, of a self-less pastiche of quotations from other works; spontaneity
gives to way to reproduction: 'the subject. . . actually ceases to engage
in "production," and must content itself with the hollow echo of objec-
tive musical language, which is no longer its own' (pp. 181—2). Later
Adorno adds, 'Out of the externalized language of music, which has
been reduced to rubble, The Soldier's Tale constructs a second language of
dreamlike regression (p. 181). Against the modernist idea of a progres-
sive employment of ever renewed artistic forms, Stravinsky's music re-
sponds to the demand 'that something should sound as if it had been
present since the beginning of time' (p. 216). As such it has been sug-
gested that Stravinsky's music foreshadows the wider characteristics of
post-modernism in its rejection of the narrative of human emancipation
through autonomy and its rejection of the notion of progress. It inverts
the development of musical form and merely parrots the broken frag-
ments of the tradition, since the annihilation of the subject means the
loss of any organising principle.
Adorno thus appears unequivocally to espouse the modernism of
Schoenberg and to express dismay at the identification with the collec-
tive in Stravinsky. However, his position is actually rather more ambigu-
ous. He is aware, for example, that the path of Schoenberg risks repeat-
ing the erasure of identity found in Stravinsky, inasmuch as twelve-tone
technique, through its espousal of free atonality, tended towards a co-
ordinateless, inarticulate state of absolute indifference. He writes, 'Dif-
ferentiation is only of any force when it distinguishes itself from that
which is already implicitly established' (p. 79) and adds later 'that the
very universality of dissonance has suspended the concept itself, that
dissonance was possible only in tension leading to consonance' (p. 8^).
In other words, the shock effect of twelve-tone technique, its value as
an expression of subjective freedom, is negated by a lack of determina-
cy, giving way to an inchoate flux in which freedom and shock lose their
meaning. Likewise, he concludes that 'Stravinsky's regression to ar-
chaism is not totally alien to authenticity, even if authenticity is com-

231
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

pletely destroyed by it' (p. 216). Indeed, Adorno sees the inherent dan-
gers of Schoenberg's modernism reach their climax in the work of
Schoenberg's pupils Alban Berg and Anton von Webern. This danger
was already recognised in an early essay on Webern's Five Orchestral
Pieces in which Adorno argues

The difficulty and exclusiveness of the works of Anton von Webern has to do
with the fact that in them the tension between given form and personal free-
dom is completely dissolved, because they allot the form-giving right alone to
the individual. Whereas it is normally precisely through the tension which
governs the relation between the community and the individual that the intel-
ligibility of musicfindsits completion, that which the communityfindsintel-
ligible serves to ratify the individual and opens the community to the explo-
sive will of the individual.14

As Adorno later writes in Aesthetic Theory,' However much a song by We-

bern is more thoroughly constructed, the universality of the language
of Schubert's Winterreise secures for it an element of superiority/15
This analysis of Adorno's account of the trajectory of modern music
reveals instructive parallels with Nietzsche, and these similarities make
it difficult to label Nietzsche simply as an anti-modernist. Clearly,
Nietzsche is opposed to a certain tendency in modernism, but this un-
ease is shared by Adorno; although Adorno stops short of saying as
much, his own account seems to admit that Schoenberg's work leads to
a dead end, and this is the ultimate aporia of modernism. For both
Adorno and Nietzsche the constant danger is that modernity will lead
to the erasure of subjectivity. Admittedly, Nietzsche argues that the hu-
man subject is to be superseded by the Ubermensch, but for both a
central goal is the preservation of a certain type of individual. Nietz-
sche's critique of the subject is a critique of a particular conception of
subjectivity, namely, the guilty subject of metaphysics. In addition, the
ritual annihilation of the subject in tragedy, despite its similarities with
the sacrifice in Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, constitutes only one step
in the movement of a dialectic, where the Apollonian and the
Dionysian remain in unresolved tension. In similar fashion, for Adorno
the aesthetic goal is the emancipation of the reified, alienated subject of

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 OVERCOMING NIHILISM

modernity. Modern art is the expression of protest against its pending

demise.
In The Gay Science Nietzsche refers to art as the 'good will to appear-
ance' (GS §107). As I have indicated throughout, this is to be under-
stood in terms of a logic of immanence. All knowledge, all interpreta-
tion consists of necessary illusion, but art alone declares its status as
such. It is because of this that Bohrer stresses the irruptive basis of
Nietzschean appearance. On the one hand, appearance consists of an
illusory semblance of the timeless; on the other, Nietzsche views the
appearance of appearance as a sudden event that disrupts the illusion of
permanence. The Apollonian dream always has Dionysian intoxication
inscribed within it. This supplements my earlier assertion that in The
Birth of Tragedy the Dionysian is always already mediated by Apollonian
intelligibility. Crucial in this regard is Nietzsche's reference to both
Apollonian and Dionysian intoxication (TI 'Skirmishes' §10). Here the
distinction between dream and intoxication has been erased; the only
difference now is that the Apollonian impulse is a visionary and the
Dionysian a carnal intoxication.
Nietzsche's notion of art as the 'good' will to appearance contrasts
with the Wagnerian music drama in which the theatre seduces and de-
ludes the spectator: 'He flatters every nihilistic (Buddhist) instinct and
dresses it up in music, he flatters every form of Christianity, every reli-
gious expression of decadence . . . through persuasion of the senses'
(CW'First Postscript'). In addition, Nietzsche's foregrounding of the il-
lusoriness of aesthetic appearance clashes with the claim of Wagnerian
theatre to represent the process of redemptive transcendence, with all
its metaphysical connotations. Again Nietzsche's critique throws up im-
portant parallels with Adorno, for illusion plays a prominent part in the
latter's thinking and is also closely linked to the functional role of disso-
nance. Having criticised Wagner's use of phantasmagoria, Adorno gen-
eralises the notion in his account of modern art and illusion: 'During
the nineteenth century aesthetic semblance was heightened to the point
of phantasmagoria. Artworks effaced the traces of their production,
probably because the victorious positivistic spirit penetrated art to the
degree that art aspired to be a fact and was ashamed of whatever re-

233
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

vealed its compact immediateness as mediated' (AT, p. 102). The un-

mentioned subject is Wagner, but Adorno's inclusion of positivism in
the same sentence as the reference to Wagnerian phantasmagoria again
reinforces the critique shared with Nietzsche, that extreme subjec-
tivism and extreme objectivism stem from the same root. An exempla-
ry case of this might be a painter such as Jean-Leon Gerome, whose ob-
session with photographic verisimilitude is matched only by the
notoriety of his romantic fascination with the exotic.
Yet as Adorno notes,'Phantasmagoria became an embarrassment be-
cause the gapless being-in-itself, after which the pure artwork strives, is
incompatible with its determination as something humanly made' (AT,
p. 102), and hence modern art frequently attempts to shake off this il-
lusory quality. The most powerful way in which this is rejected is
through dissonance, since, for Adorno, dissonance contradicts the har-
mony that is essential to artistic illusion or semblance (p. n o ) . And yet
the dissonant rejection of semblance is always only partially successful,
for art is inherently illusory and hence bound to semblance, and the re-
volt against semblance is based on 'the hope that aesthetic semblance
could rescue itself from the morass in which it is sunk by pulling itself
up by the scruff of its own neck' (p. 103).17
Nietzsche and Adorno both regard art as a necessarily illusionistic
disruption of illusory semblance, in that art is only ever an appearance.
Hence art forms the microcosm of the more general cultural task of es-
tablishing a normativity that does not appeal to an external foundation.
However, there is an important difference between the two. Ultimate-
ly, Adorno harbours the desire for afinalreconciliation with reality that
is only ever deferred by aesthetic illusion, and it is because of this that
he regards the aporias of art as essentially tragic. For Nietzsche any such
melancholy science would be seen as an example of weak nihilism.
Moreover, for all the similarities in their interpretations of modern art,
Adorno and Nietzsche diverge on one important point: whereas
Adorno locates the aporia of modernism in the consequences of tech-
nique, Nietzsche sees it as originating in the weakly nihilistic impulse
that gave birth to its logic. His conservative response to the chromati-
cism of Wagnerian music can be read as a critique of the deficiencies
which derive from its extreme subjectivism.

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 OVERCOMING NIHILISM

The Sublime: After Modernity

During the course of my account of Nietzsche I have repeatedly
stressed his intellectual debt to Kant and Hegel; in particular, I have ex-
plored his productive appropriation of the notion of the sublime.
Specifically, the tragic dialectic of Apollo and Dionysus draws upon the
sublime in outlining the kind of aesthetic experience engendered by
witnessing the tragic action. Nietzsche is anxious to move away from an
aesthetic based purely on the spectator's experience, and hence the
sublime impulse, which could be seen as a kind of constructive disso-
nance, becomes essential to Nietzsche's prescription of what a counter-
metaphysical art should be based on. This configuration of the sublime,
modernity and the aesthetic recalls the importance of the historical
sublime, which, I suggested, underpinned the temporal logic of moder-
nity. In addition, it almost inevitably invites comparison with a more re-
cent attempt to explore the interlinking of these issues, namely, Jean-
Francois Lyotard's characterisation of the post-modern.
For Lyotard the sublime is central to an understanding of both mod-
ern and post-modern culture; it underpins both, thus confirming their
intrinsic affinity as well as underlying their difference. Lyotard simpli-
fies Kant's account of the dialectic of the sublime with the summation
that the sublime 'carries with it both pleasure and pain . . . a conflict
between the faculties of a subject, the faculty to conceive of something
and the faculty to "present" something/18 The sublime is founded on the
experience of an internal dissonance, and this contradiction between
the limitations of intuitive powers to 'present' something and the abili-
ty of reason to conceive of the infinite receives its aesthetic inflection in
the artistic enterprise of modern art to 'make visible that there is some-
thing which can be conceived and which can be neither seen nor made
visible.'19 This identification of the sublime as the basis of modern art
confirms Nietzsche's equation of romanticism with modernity, for the
modernist practice of 'making an allusion to the unpresentable'
echoes the role accorded to art, the symbol of the infinite, by romantics
such as the Schlegel brothers or Novalis. So too Wagner's chromati-
cism, or the dissonance of Schoenberg, can be read as an artistic allu-
sion to the unpresentable, namely, absolute subjective freedom. Ly-
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

otard extends this definition to encompass artists such as Kasimir Male-

vich, Barnett Newman or minimalist sculptors such as Donald Judd or
Robert Morris, whose blank abstract works purportedly allegorise the
unpresentable. Amongst these 'moderns' one could also, of course, in-
clude Nietzsche himself, whose key terms 'Dionysus' and 'Apollo' are
mediated 'forms of appearing/
The sublimicist sensibility of modern art is derived partly, therefore,
from recognition of the limitation of representation. As Lyotard notes,
'realism/ which had exercised a dominance over visual representation
since the Quattrocento, maintained increasingly little credibility, and
consequently artists, from Cezanne onwards, were no longer con-
cerned with the establishment of a personal style, but with much more
fundamental questions. Cezanne's atomisation of the pictorial surface
drives from the insight that 'elementary sensations are hidden in ordi-
nary perception which remains under the hegemony of habitual or clas-
sical ways of looking.'21 Accordingly, the sublime begins to take on two
senses. First, it seems to imply the recognition of the irreducible het-
erogeneity of a reality already perceived subliminally, and consequently
consists of attempts at its representation. The most concrete example of
this subliminal aesthetic can be found in Surrealism, with its symbolic
presentations of the repressed in experience, the uncanny. One might
think here of Max Ernst's use offrottage, the automatic drawing and
writing of Andre Masson or the paranoiac-critical method of Dali. The
second sense of the sublime emerges as a consequence of the emancipa-
tion of artistic production. Lyotard conceives innovation as itself sub-
lime through highlighting the potential infinity of possibilities open to
art, and here there is a parallel with the limitless possibilities, too, of
techno-scientific progress.22
The sublime therefore inheres in either the artistic representation of
experience as uncanny or the expansive possibilities of constantly re-
marking art and its rules. Nietzsche's reading of tragedy exemplifies the
former and thus reminds us of the modernity of his interpretation while,
paradoxically, he remains implacably opposed to the other sublime of
modern culture, its belief in infinite progress. Yet the sublime is also
central to an understanding of post-modernity, and the difference rests
on the fact that the modern sublime is founded on nostalgia; the unpre-

236
 OVERCOMING NIHILISM

sentable remains as a palpable absence, a 'missing contents.' One can

trace this idea back to Hegel's identification of the constitutive gap in
Romantic art between the Absolute and the plastic means of its repre-
sentation. Hence in Proust, 'the unity of the book, the odyssey of that
consciousness, even if it is deferred from chapter to chapter, is not seri-
ously challenged/23 In this context, while Nietzsche's criticism of'the
beyond in art' (HAH I §220) may refer to a quasi-religious Wagnerian
search for transcendence, it may also be expanded to encompass the
nostalgia for artistic forms that have been rendered obsolete by the
process of artistic progress.
In contrast the post-modern sublime is stripped of any such nostalgia
and denies the imaginary solace of final reconciliation. In the post-
modern, 'the sublime of immanence replaces the sublime of transcen-
dence.' The avant-garde destruction of the inherited vocabulary and
syntax of artistic form no longer serves the aim of finding a new means
of presenting the unpresentable, but rather is the expression of an ex-
hilaration at the possibility of infinite artistic experiment and develop-
ment. Hence while the dissonance of the modernist sublime is sus-
tained by the promise of ultimate solace, the dissonance of the
post-modern, the collapse of consensus concerning the appropriate
artistic practice, is left unresolved. Indeed, the lack of resolution is cel-
ebrated and figures as part of a much larger political aim of resisting the
impulse towards totality. In this sense he conceives the work of art as an
irruptive event, parallel with the micrological 'event' of the individual
phrase or sentence cut off from larger totalising narratives.
This account of the sublime is strongly reminiscent of Nietzsche's
critique of modernism and indicates the extent to which an unorthodox
reading of the dramatic poetry of classical Athens pre-figured central
debates over the meaning of modern and contemporary culture. For
both Lyotard and Nietzsche the loss of the real should no longer be an
object of mourning and melancholy, but instead celebrated as an eman-
cipatory occasion. Lyotard's interest in art as an event also recalls
Nietzsche's own notion of art as an event, as a punctuation of will to
power. Furthermore, his contrast between the post-modern sublime of
immanence and the modern sublime of transcendence again echoes
Nietzsche's critique of the metaphysical culture of modernity. Yet while

237
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

Nietzsche's criticisms of the art and culture of his own time find nu-
merous echoes in the critical analysis of post-modernity, there are still
significant differences. Lyotard's celebration of the absolute hetero-
geneity or plurality of artistic practices exemplifies a widespread theo-
retical motif in late-twentieth-century thought; it parallels, for exam-
ple, the emphasis on differential desire of Gilles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari, whose celebrated schizoanalysis of capitalism re-figures the
subject as a heteronomous desiring-machine. While Nietzsche criti-
cises systematic thinking for its dishonesty, the constant focus of his re-
lentless tirades against Wagner is the disorganisation caused by his re-
duction of music to the micrological. Furthermore, Nietzsche's own
reading of the meaning of the sublime can be mobilised in a critical in-
terrogation of those more recent positions.
Returning to Lyotard, an important issue is raised by his failure to
explain what is gained from the sublime.28 Having stated that the sub-
lime is a source of gratification, Lyotard fails to indicate what this grati-
fication consists in. Given that the nostalgic sublime is regarded as in
some sense inauthentic, Lyotard does not offer a convincing account of
why the possibility of endless experimentation, in line with the model
of techno-scientific progress, is a source of gratification. This stands in
contrast both with Kant and with Nietzsche. For Kant the displeasure of
the experience of inadequacy gives way to the pleasure produced by the
revelation of power of reason. Kant's re-assertion of the noumenal self
ill fits Nietzsche's own position, but since The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche
had posited the necessity of a final recouping of some form of illusion,
even though its value remains completely contingent and unsure.
Though his dialectical reading of tragedy reeks 'offensively Hegelian,' it
nevertheless sustains his wider view of art. While Nietzsche regards 'joy
in uncertainty and polysemy' as the sign of a strong spirit, dissonance,
contradiction and ambiguity are not ends in themselves, but rather
strategic moves in the project of undermining the amnesiac illusions of
metaphysics. Hence the restoration of (Apollonian) illusion through the
detour of the Dionysian never is, properly speaking, a simple restora-
tion. Again it is the axiological role of contradiction and negation that
forces one to refer to Nietzsche's preference for a Dionysian classicism.
Lyotard offers no promise of anything achieved through struggle, which

238
 OVERCOMING NIHILISM

is at the heart of Nietzsche's thinking. As Nietzsche repeatedly argues,

the value of anything achieved is through the measure of resistance
overcome, and he regards a certain type of artistic practice, tragedy, as
forming the paradigmatic case of such a process. However, the absence
of sublime nostalgia produces the kind of freedom that Nietzsche found
meaningless and ultimately nihilistic. In this context one might cite, in
support of Nietzsche, the numerous contemporary criticisms that Ly-
otard's exhilarating and sublime liberation turns out to be an empty sty-
listic game, 'irony produced only by the disillusion of things, a fossilized
irony . . . the irony of repentance and ressentiment towards one's own
culture/ 29
The idea of a post-modern sensibility in which the unpresentable is
no longer conceived of as a missing content bears a superficial resem-
blance to Nietzsche's anti-Platonism. An important element in Nietz-
sche's criticism of Kant is that for all the latter's distance from meta-
physical realism, his constructivist epistemology is only half-hearted;
particularly in his moral theory, Kant regards the noumenal realm not
merely as a theoretical posit, but as real. As I argued in the first chapter,
Nietzsche regards the object not merely as resistant or opaque to
knowledge, but as having been constituted by the interpreting process.
However, while his critique focuses on the metaphysical ideology of the
given, it also recognises the psychological necessity of drawing a partic-
ular horizon; a completely perspectiveless anti-metaphysics is as impos-
sible as is the metaphysical idea of a perspectiveless knowledge. The
sublime differs from the romantic or Kantian notion in that it refuses
the concept of an absolute that can only be alluded to, but it also differs
from Lyotard's 'post-modern' sublime in that it maintains the necessity
of believing in the sublime object at the same time as its disavowal. I
noted earlier Nietzsche's critique of modern subjectivity, and in partic-
ular his diagnosis of the paralysis of the modern subject when faced
with an infinity of freedoms. So here, too, Lyotard's founding of the
sublime in the possibility of infinite experiment and development
stands as an exemplar of the modernity of which Nietzsche was critical.
One can also bring into consideration Nietzsche's criticisms of Wagner.
Behind his apparently conservative criticisms of the Wagnerian atomisa-
tion of melodic structure and the concomitant loss of rhythm, a serious

239
 NIETZSCHE, AESTHETICS AND MODERNITY

point is being made about the function of tonal and syntactic disso-
nance, namely, that the elevation of the subjective, allegorised by the
leitmotif, to the highest principle, results in its dissolution. The absence
of a temporal and cultural horizon is as problematic as its excess; both
are therefore expressions of enfeebled will to power in the form of a
weak self. Of course, Nietzsche was witness only to the emergence of
modernism, but his analysis outlined a similar position that, as I have ar-
gued, was later put forward in more systematic fashion by Adorno,
looking back on the maturation of modernism. Ultimately, therefore,
Nietzsche's position leads to the conclusion that the discarding of any
sense of the real replicates many of the problems that Nietzsche had
seen as characteristic of the culminating, disastrous and nihilistic phase
of modernity. The sense of the real, of some external normativity, has
to be maintained, but in order that this does not lead to a regression to
metaphysics, it can only be allowed to appear as a Dionysian trauma.30
As Nietzsche states, 'the preference for questionable and terrible
things is a symptom of strength' (WP §8^2), and it is only on the basis of
this strength that the destruction of illusion can be coupled with its
necessity.
In Aesthetic Theory Adorno writes, 'There is no art that is entirely de-
void of affirmation, since by its very existence every work rises above
the plight and degradation of everyday existence. . . .This apriority of
the affirmative is art's ideological dark side' (AT, p. 160). Nietzsche's
contention was that in the crisis of nihilism art had lost its affirmative
character and as such also its power to intervene in the construction of
post-metaphysical normative horizons. As is now clear, the dialectic of
interpretation that Nietzsche puts forward in the place of metaphysical
knowledge is based on the sublime, and it is the sublime that governs
the logic of will to power. Adorno's fear of pure affirmativity was fo-
cused on the equation of the affirmative with the administered culture
of modernity, manifest in the kitsch of the culture industry. Modernist
negation is seen as the only authentic counter, even though it leads to a
number of aporia, as in the examples of Schoenberg and Webern. For
Nietzsche the pure negation in the nascent modernism of his own time
was the symptom of nihilistic passivity and hence cultural collapse. Af-
firmation thus plays a crucial role in the strategic resistance to nihilism.

240
 OVERCOMING NIHILISM

However, affirmation tout court was as problematic for Nietzsche as it

was for Adorno. Affirmative optimism was the fatal error of meta-
physics, beginning with Socrates' search for certain definitions. In
terms of aesthetic practice, itself a microcosm of wider social and cul-
tural values, Nietzsche holds tenaciously to the necessity of both nega-
tion and affirmation, with the tension between the two being left unre-
solved. Here, then, is perhaps the most striking of the many
contradictions in Nietzsche's oeuvre, namely, that in spite of his many
criticisms of dialectics, from Socrates to Hegel, dialectical thought is
central to his own aesthetic theory and hence to his thinking in general.

241
 Notes

Introduction
1 Zeitler (1900). See also Ludovici (1911), Meyer (1991),Young (1992).
2 Habermas (1987), pp. 7—8.
3 Deleuze (1983).
4 Jaspers (1966).
5 See Connor (1991) for a cogent critique of anti-foundationalist thought.
6 There have been some dissenting voices. See, for example, Breazeale (197^).
Breazeale's argument not only suggests ways in which Nietzsche's thought still
bears the traces of Hegel, but also points out the extent to which Deleuze's
portrait of the latter thinker amounts to an insensitive caricature.
7 Strong notes that 'In a genealogical understanding, there is almost no auto-
matic logic to the evolution of a set of events, certainly no Aufhebung.' Strong
(i97$), P- 3°-
8 See Smith (1996), p. 88. Smith's comments refer to three texts by Bataille:
T h e Notion of Expenditure,' Bataille (1985), pp. 116—29, Bataille (1988) and
Bataille (1992).
9 Adorno (1990), p. 14^.
10 Ibid., p. 1^8.
11 Ibid., p. 13.
12 Hegel (1969), p. 107.
13 In his essay on differance, Derrida writes, 'differance . . . maintaining rela-
tions of profound affinity with Hegelian discourse . . . is also, up to a certain
point, unable to break with that discourse . . . but it can operate a kind of in-
finitesimal and radical displacement of it.' Derrida (1982), p. 14.
14 See Nehemas (198^), pp. 24—34. This similarity is of no little significance giv-
en that Socrates represents for Nietzsche the founder of metaphysical tradi-
tion he seeks to undermine.
15 See Young (1992).
16 See Barker (1992). Barker notes that in Nietzsche 'the evaluative nexus of aes-
thetic energy is internal and solipsistic, sufficient unto itself (p. 71).
17 Ansell-Pearson (1991b).
 NOTES TO PP. I O—I 9

18 On the evolution of the modern sense of time and history see Koselleck
(198^) and Osborne (199^).

Chapter 1. Truth, Interpretation and the Dialectic of Nihilism

1 Hume (1984), p. 234.
2 If Nietzsche's critique were focused on the first edition of the Critique of Pure
Reason he might be more justified, for in that edition Kant writes (A 249) that
'the concept of appearances . . . establishes the objective reality of noumena.'
In the second edition of 1787 (B), however, he deletes the passage, replacing it
with a lengthy discussion on the nature of the noumenon as itself a construct
of human thought, in order to make sense of the notion of phenomena. See
Kant (1989), B 3o6ff.
3 Bataille (1988), p. 109.
4 Holub(i99£).
5 See, for example, Pautrat (1971), Kofman, (1972) and Derrida (1979).
6 This point has been made in Baker and Hacker (1989)^. 18.
7 The term 'Augustinian' derives from Wittgenstein, who analyses a similar
conception of language in Augustine's Confessions. See Wittgenstein (19^3), §1.
8 Simon (1980), pp. 187—9.
9 Michael Dummett, who is correctly seen as thoroughly grounded in the tradi-
tion of logical semantics founded by Frege, has nevertheless come to a similar
conclusion. In his essay on realism he notes that 'the realist holds that the
meanings of statements . . . are not directly tied to the kind of evidence for
them that we can have, but consist in the manner of their determination as
true or false by states of affairs whose existence is not dependent on our pos-
session of evidence for them. The anti-realist insists, on the contrary, that the
meanings of these statements are tied directly to what we count as evidence
for them . . . which we could know and which we should count as evidence
for its truth.' Dummett (1978), p. 146. While Dummett's concerns seem to
be distant from those of Nietzsche, his endorsement of anti-realism leads to
conclusions which bear some proximity to Nietzsche's thinking, most notably,
perhaps, Dummett's assertion of the impossibility of speaking of history as a
discrete entity existing apart from our statements about it. See Dummett,
T h e Reality of the Past,' in (1978), pp. 3^8-74.
I o Schleiermacher (1977), p. 167. For an exhaustive account of Schleiermacher's
'linguistic turn' see Frank (1977).
I1 In The Gay Science Nietzsche commends Hume's scepticism regarding causality
(GS §3£7). However, this has to be contrasted with his view of Hume as one
more exemplar of the unphilosophical English, alongside Locke and Hobbes
(BGE §252).
12 Hume notes that 'all our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv'd from
simple impressions which are correspondent to them and which they exactly
represent.' Hume (1984), p. 52.

244
 NOTES TO PP. 20 — 3 3

13 Kofman (1972).
14 Kofman also indicates the extent to which Nietzsche attempts to avoid this
process of petrifaction in his own work by employing a constantly shifting
range of metaphors, such as those of the bee, the spider, the tree and the
fortress to describe the production of meaning. I would temper her assertions
with the observation that Nietzsche also coins a new, post-metaphysical vo-
cabulary, in which certain terms such as 'Becoming' ['Werden'], 'Life' ['Leben'],
'Interpretation' ['Auslegung'] and 'Falsehood' ['Luge'] are privileged, conse-
quently recurring throughout his writings. This conflict could be interpreted
as a recognition on Nietzsche's part of the necessity to employ a finite vocab-
ulary to make any meaningful statements, while at the same time also being
aware of the dangers of this repeated use of the same terms. This is a theme I
discuss later.
1 £ On these shared characteristics of the thinking of John Searle and Jacques
Derrida, see Manfred Frank's essay 'Die Entropie der Sprache' in Frank
(1980), pp. 141—210.
16 A probing and insightful discussion of nihilism in Nietzsche is offered in Vatti-
mo (1988). See alsoVattimo (1989).
17 At the conclusion of book I of A Treatise of Human Nature Hume notes that 'we
are apt not only to forget our scepticism but even our modesty too; and make
use of such terms as these, 'tis evident, 'tis certain, 'tis undeniable; which a due
deference to the public ought, perhaps prevent' (p. 321). However, he then
adds a caveat to this observation, namely, that his use of such terms does not
imply any less scepticism. It is almost as if he shrinks from the consequences of
his own comment.
18 Nietzsche's critique of science has been the subject of a recent study in Babich
(1994).
19 Kant (1989), B xi—xii.
20 Kant (1988), p. 7.
21 Cf. Kant (1989), B 432-^9^.
2 2 When writing about Nietzsche one has to be wary about the use of the notion
of ideology, which of course cannot be set against some 'true' representation
of the Real. Mark Warren has suggested ways in which it might be meaningful
to talk in terms of a Nietzschean theory of ideology. See Warren (1984).
2 3 The idea that science (specifically technology) and theology represent mutual-
ly exclusive values is one that Heidegger, and more recently Vattimo, have
been at pains to discredit. Vattimo writes, 'Even technology is a fable or Sage,
a transmitted message: when seen in this light it is stripped of all its (imagi-
nary) claims to be able to constitute a new "strong" reality that could be taken
as self-evident.'Vattimo (1988), p. 29.
24 Nehemas (198^), p. 71.
2$ Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 'The Communist Manifesto,' in Marx
(1977), p. 224.
26 As Walter Kaufmann notes, although Nietzsche was undoubtedly influenced
 NOTES TO PP. 34—48

by Bourget, to the extent even of quoting his 'Theory of Decadence' from the
Essais, his reading of Bourget produced little change in the substance of his un-
derstanding of modernity and rather simply extended the vocabulary at his
disposal. See Kaufmann (1974), P- 73-
27 This phrase comes from Gianni Vattimo. See Vattimo (1988), pp. 19—30.
28 See, for example, Schrift (1990), Nehemas (19 8 $), Abel (1984), Figl (1982).
29 Michael Dummett, 'The Philosophical Basis of Intuitionistic Logic,' in Dum-
mett(i978),pp. 21^-47.
3o See, for example, HAH II § 19 or GS § 11 2.
31 See Schlegel's Jena and Cologne Lectures of 1804—$, in Friedrich Schlegel
(1967), vol. XII, p. 37ff. and p. 39 iff. For a concise account of Schlegel's re-
placement of Being by Becoming as foundation seeWessell (1973).
32 Heidegger (1991), vols. II and III. See also Figi (1982), p. 73ff.
33 The principal example of this mode of reading is Kofman (1972).
34 Schrift (1989), p. 191.
3£ As Alexander Nehemas has noted, 'Though the world is always "more" than
our theories, this is only because there can always be more theories, not be-
cause its essential nature remains untouched.' Nehemas (1983), pp. 486—7.
36 Critics such as Paul de Man consider language the key to Nietzsche's critique.
See de Man (1974). In contrast, I would argue that language, while important
in the early writings, later constitutes only one of various weapons in the
struggle to displace metaphysics.
37 See Heidegger (1991), vol. Ill, p. 212; Kaufmann (1974). Kaufmann writes,
'Nietzsche's central concern is with man, and power is to him above all a state
of human being' (p. 4 2 o).
38 This point has been made by Wolfgang Miiller-Lauter in Miiller-Lauter
(i974)-
39 Foucault(i977),p. 27.
40 Heidegger (1977). See also Zimmerman (1990).
41 On the relation of Nietzsche's thinking to the hermeneutic tradition from
Schleiermacher onwards see Davey (1986).
42 This point has been made by Karsten Harries in Harries (1988), p. 3 3ff.
43 As Josef Simon notes, the difference between Nietzsche and Enlightenment
thinkers is that whereas all share a recognition of the historicity of knowledge,
Nietzsche thereby affirms the process of enlightenment without end, i.e., the
activity itself, whereas other thinkers such as Kant and Hegel see humanity as
being on the path towards some goal of complete enlightened being. Simon
(1989).
44 Hegel (1969), p. 82.
4.5 Ibid., p. 113.
46 Adorno (1990), pp. 144—£.
47 Ibid., p. i4£.
48 Ibid., p. 160.

246
 NOTES TO PP. £O~S

Chapter 2. Nietzsche's Subject

1 Habermas ( 1 9 8 7 ) ^ . 160. Habermas's position has recently been criticised by
Hudson (1993).
2 I am referring here to Lukacs's The Destruction of Reason, which, by common
consent, relies on a crude form of caricature. See Lukacs (1980).
3 Apel, in Freundlich and Hudson (1993), p. 2^.
4 On Nietzsche's impact in the early twentieth century see Taylor (1990).
5 In this respect it is important to recall Nietzsche's influence on conservative
figures such as Ludwig Klages or the poet Stefan George and the so-called
George Circle. See Raschel (1984).
6 Within anthropology this thesis has been pursued most single-mindedly by
Benj amin Whorf (19^6).
7 Derrida (1982), p. 16.
8 'Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,' in Derrida
(1978), pp. 280—1. In drawing a contrast between Nietzsche and Derrida on
the possibility of critiquing metaphysics I am working against the interpreta-
tion of Nehemas, who maintains linguistic reform is not on the agenda in
Nietzsche's critical thinking. Michel Haar, influenced by Derrida, reads Nietz-
sche otherwise, maintaining that he deliberately plays with the meaning of
metaphysical concepts in order to bring out the ambiguities of meaning, with
precisely the goal of undercutting the language of metaphysics. See Haar
(1977). One might go further and suggest, as Strong has done, that Nietzsche
coins his own set of counter-metaphysical concepts, imbued though they are
with a certain irony and distance.
9 Foucault(i 9 7 4),p. 47.
I o 'One thing is certain: man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem
that has been posed for human knowledge. Taking a relatively short chrono-
logical sample within a restricted geographical area — European culture since
the sixteenth century — one can be certain that man is a recent invention with-
in it.' Foucault (1989), p. 386.
I1 In the case of authorial subjectivity, for example, Foucault notes that 'the au-
thor does not precede the works, he is a certain functional principle by which,
in our culture, one limits, excludes and chooses; in short one impedes the free
circulation . . . of fiction.' Foucault (1979), p. i£9-
1 2 See in particular Foucault (19 8 8 ), pp. 3 9—6 8.
13 Plato (197^), 79b.
14 See Plato (19££), 434e—444c.
1 s Admittedly, Plato does view the ideal soul as one in which 'reason and its sub-
ordinates are all agreed that reason should rule' (442c), yet his insistence on
the soul as a self-disciplined organisation of elements is not so distant from
Nietzsche's own notion of the self as a disciplined harnessing of the disparate
instinctual energies. One might compare Plato's conception with Nietzsche's
 NOTES TO PP. £ £ ~ 7 I

view of'corruption as the expression of a threatening anarchy among the in-

stincts' (BGE §2^8).
16 Rene Descartes (1984), vol. II, p. 18.
17 Ibid., p. £9.
18 Kant (19^6).
19 On this topic see Brown (1988). See also Foucault on the concepts oVakrasia
and 'enkrateia' in Foucault (1984), pp. 63—77. Foucault's account should be
treated with caution, however, for it relies excessively on Plato as a source.
From a Nietzschean perspective Plato was of course a most ungreek Greek.
20 The phrase has been coined by Fritjof Bergman in 'Nietzsche's Critique of
Morality,' in Solomon and Higgins (1988), pp. 29—4^.
21 There have been attempts to overcome this difficulty through the synthesis of
phenomenological and physiological approaches to consciousness. See, for ex-
ample, Hundert (1989).
2 2 The idea that moral behaviour and judgements are profoundly affected by the
contingencies of the agent's environment has been explored by, amongst oth-
ers, Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel, according to the notion of'moral
luck.'Williams states, 'the aim of making morality immune to luck is bound to
be disappointed . . . the dispositions of morality . . . are as "conditioned" as
anything else,' and yet the belief 'is so intimate to our notion of morality, in
fact, that its failure may rather make us consider whether we should not give
up that notion altogether.'Williams (1981), pp. 21-2. See also Nagel (1979).
23 This stands in contrast to Foucault's genealogy of the subject, in which it is
only ever a discursive formation.
24 Thiele (1990).
2£ See Phaedrus 2£3d in Plato (1973).
26 Nehemas (198^), p. 182; Altieri (1976).
27 Wittgenstein (1970), § 1 o 1.
28 Wittgenstein (19^3), §146.
2 9 Quoted in Budd (19 89), pp. 2 8-9.
30 For a concise account of Wittgenstein's writings on subjectivity see Budd
(1989). It is also worth noting that the early writings of both Nietzsche and
Wittgenstein were profoundly influenced by Schopenhauer, and one can thus
posit an indirect connection between the two. A concise summation of the in-
fluence of Schopenhauer on Wittgenstein can be found in Magee (1983), pp.
286—31^.
31 This point has been made by Dews (1987).
3 2 Deleuze and Guattari (1983).
33 Bruce Detwiler has brought to prominence the extent to which Nietzsche's
anti-democratic political views have been systematically underplayed since
Walter Kaufmann's rehabilitation of Nietzsche after the Second World War.
See Detwiler (1990).
34 Other examples of Nietzsche's critique of the herd can be found in BGE §§44,
191, 202, 203, 212; GS §§23, go; Z ' O f the 1001 Goals.'

248
 NOTES TO PP. 7 ^ — 8 4

3£ David Cooper has also put forward Goethe's name as candidate for Uber-
mensch in Cooper (1983). As Cooper points out, though, one has to be cau-
tious when identifying any actual historical figures with the Nietzschean type,
since there are many such candidates ranging from Socrates to Cesare Borgia
or Machiavelli. Few, I think, would concur with Baumler's preferred choice of
Hitler.
3 6 Houlgate (1991).
37 Bataille, 'Hegel,' in Bataille (1988).

Chapter 3. Laughter and Sublimity

1 A comprehensive exploration of the relation of Nietzsche to Schiller has re-
cently appeared in Martin (1996).
2 Schiller (1967), p. 9.
3 See Woodmansee (1993).
4 This reading has most been recently been proposed by Young (1992).
£ The parallel between Nietzsche and Hegel in terms of their shared belief in
modernity as spelling the death of art has been recently taken up again by
Reschke (199^).
6 'Genesis and Genealogy (Nietzsche),' in de Man (1979), pp. 79—102.
7 A useful collection of essays discussing the function of the dialogue in Plato
can be found in Griswold (1988).
8 See Staten (1990) and Boning (1990).
9 See, for example, Samuel Monk's seminal study (Monk i960), orWeiskel
(1976).
10 Longinus (196^), p. 2.
11 On this topic see de Bolla (1989), p. 36ff.
12 Burke (1987), p. 57-
13 Kant (19^2), §28.
14 As Jacques Derrida has pointed out, there is no reason why the sublime cannot
equally apply to the infinitely small, although Kant gives no space for consid-
eration of this possibility. Derrida (1987), p. 136.
1 £ With the reworking of Kant's aesthetic by Schiller the groundwork is pre-
pared for the philosophies of art which dominate the nineteenth century. As
Peter Szondi notes, Kant's aesthetic is still firmly in the mould of the psychol-
ogising aesthetic theories of Burke, Shaftesbury or Hutcheson, who are more
interested in the feeling aroused by the object than by any inherent character-
istics it may possess. However, where Szondi might be criticised is in his asser-
tion that Friedrich Schlegel was the first to leave the Enlightenment
' Wirkungsasthetik' behind, for as I have suggested, Schiller's role is pivotal in
seeing aspects of subjective experience objectified in the formal structure of
the artwork. See Szondi, 'Antike und Moderne in der Asthetik der
Goethezeit,' in Szondi (1974), p. i4^ff.
16 'On the Sublime' refers to the essay 'Uber das Erhabene' in Schiller (1962),

249
 NOTES TO PP. 8 ^ — 9 0

Vol. XXI, pp. 38—54, and not the roughly contemporaneous 'Vom Erhabenen,'
in vol. XX, pp. 171—9£, where the other essays 'On the Basis of the Enjoyment
of Tragic Objects' (pp. 133—47) and'OnTragic Art' (pp. 148—70) appear.
17 Schiller (1962), vol. XXI, p. 38.
18 Ibid., p. 39.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid., p. 40.
21 Ibid., p. 48.
22 Ibid., p. 43.
23 Ibid., p. 4^.
24 Ibid., p. £2. As Gary Shapiro has observed, this privilege of the sublime is a
typical feature of modernist poetics, where the beautiful is seen as inevitably
having to give way to the terror of sublimity, since it is an unsustainable illu-
sion, a view Shapiro sees exemplified in a line from one of Rilke's Duino Ele-
gies, where Rilke writes, 'For the beautiful is nothing / but the start of terror
we can hardly bear [Denn das Schone ist nichts / als des Schrecklichen An-
fang, den wir noch grade ertragen]. See Shapiro (198^), pp. 213—3^.
2$ Schiller (1962), vol. XX, p. 148.
26 Ibid., p. 140.
27 Schopenhauer (19^8), vol. I, p. 27^.
28 Ibid., p. 202.
29 Ibid., p. 2o£.
30 Ibid., p. 2^2.
31 Ibid., p. 2£3.
32 Christopher Janaway has recently explored a potential contradiction in
Schopenhauer's account of tragedy. While, as an art form, it should be the ob-
ject ofWill-less aesthetic contemplation, Schopenhauer also envisages that the
spectator will feel fear and pity, both of which are intimately related to the
self-expressions of the Will. As Janaway concludes, it is only when subsumed
under the notion of the sublime that this tension can be resolved. See Janaway
(1996).
33 Schopenhauer (19^8), Vol. II, p. 433.
34 Given my previous emphasis on the importance of Hegel to Nietzsche, it may
seem odd that I have not discussed Hegel's thoughts on the sublime. While the
sublime features in the analysis of Symbolic art in his Lectures on Aesthetics,
Hegel transforms the sublime such that from describing the subjective experi-
ence of the artist and spectator, it becomes a quality of die content of the Sym-
bolic work of art. Having noted that T h e sublime is the attempt to express the
infinite without finding in the realm of phenomena an object which proves ad-
equate for this representation,' Hegel adds that 'differing from Kant, we need
not place [the sublime] in the pure subjectivity of the mind and its Ideas of
Reason; on the contrary, we must grasp it as grounded in the one absolute
substance qua the content which is to be represented.' Hegel (197£a), vol. I, p.
 NOTES TO PP. 90—I I 6

363. Hegel is thus working with a theory of the sublime which plays little part
in the thought of Nietzsche and which also stands apart from the eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century tradition.
3£ Sloterdijk (1988). Sloterdijk subsequently employs the term in his own work
on Nietzsche and tragedy (1990).
36 It seems not to occur to de Man that the Nachlass from the period of The Birth
of Tragedy might cause him to revise his reading of the latter.
37 See, for example, Schopenhauer (19^8), vol. I, §36ff.
3 8 The classic text of Schiller's which introduces this term and also contrasts it
with the 'sentimental' is 'Uber Naive und Sentimentale Dichtung,' or 'On
Naive and Sentimental Poetry,' in Schiller (1962), vol. XX, pp. 413—^03.
39 As Nicholas Martin has pointed out, Nietzsche felt awkward about Schiller's
category of the 'sentimental' since, unlike the 'naive,' it could not be equated
with either of his own terms. Martin (1996), p. 3 2ff.
40 Sloterdijk (1990), p. 28.
41 See Burnett (1983), pp. 1^—104.
42 It will have become clear that while for Kant, Schiller and Schopenhauer the
aesthetic object can be either natural or a product of human artifice, for Nietz-
sche it is merely to be seen as the work of art.
43 See Lippitt (1992).
44 Hegel (1975a), vol. I, p. 601.
4£ Ibid., vol. II, p. 1199.
46 Modiano (1987). Modiano notes that 'the comic needs the sublime for its sur-
vival, for otherwise it would lose the contrast between ideality and mundane
existence which defines its special dialectical character' (p. 241).
47 Benjamin (198^), pp. 1 2^—8. Benjamin traced the origin of this co-mingling
back to the examples of Shakespeare and Calderon, which he sharply distin-
guished from classical tragedy. For reasons that are clear, this distinction need
not be so absolute.
48 Schopenhauer (19^8), vol. I, p. 322.
49 Vernant (1983), p. 19^.The Greek 'apolis means 'cityless,' while 'daimori de-
notes any unspecified minor deity, such as the one Socrates claimed had spo-
ken to him through his inner voice.
go This point has been made by Babette Babich (1994), pp. 244—£.

Chapter 4. Wagner, Modernity and the Problem of Transcendence

1 For a brief synopsis of'endless melody' see Dahlhaus (1980), pp. £ 2—64.
2 This has been suggested by Strong (1988), pp. 1 £3—174.
3 Friedrich Nietzsche, 'On Music and Words,' trans. W. Kaufmann, in Dahlhaus
(1980), p. 108.
4 Ibid., pp. 11 £—16.
£ Ibid., p. 109.
 NOTES TO PP. I I 6 — 3 4

6 Wagner (1979), v °l- 6, no. 184.

7 Ibid., vol. 7, no. 71. See also vol. 7, no. 46, to Jakob Sulzer, dated 10—12 May

8 On this issue in Wagner see Strong (19 7 g), p. 2 2 8ff.

9 For a brief account of Tristan and Isolde see the chapter devoted to it in
Dahlhaus (1979).
Io For a recent account of the aesthetics of Schlegel and others see Behler
o

(1992). For all his scathing criticisms of romanticism, Nietzsche's project is

still deeply indebted to romantic theory, and this is not only because of his ear-
ly infatuation with Schopenhauer. His interpretative dialectic as I formulated it
in the first chapter is prefigured by the role of dialectic in early romantic liter-
ary theory. Of Friedrich Schlegel, Jochen Schulte-Sasse has written, 'Intellec-
tual annihilation means a mode of thinking that sublates what it negates; that
subsumes and includes specific, concrete ideas — that is potentially all possible
semantic "identities" — while at the same time floating between these "identi-
ties," never arresting their meaning . . . it is intended to permit thinking that
is not constrained by always already existent social inscriptions.' Schulte-Sasse
(198^), p. i n . Schulte-Sasse's description accords very closely with Nietz-
sche's own project.
I1 In the Republic Plato makes two criticisms of art. The first, put forward in book
II, is that many artists portray the gods and mythic heroes in ignoble and
shameful ways and that therefore they offer a potentially corrupting set of val-
ues. However, in this book Plato does not recommend the wholesale expung-
ing of art from the ideal state. Rather, 'our first business is to supervise the
production of stories and choose only those we think suitable, and reject the
rest' (377c). In book X, on the other hand, his position hardens; any kind of
art is false, inasmuch as it deals only with surface appearance: 'all the poets
from Homer onwards have no grasp of truth but merely produce a superficial
likeness of any subject they treat, including human excellence' (6ooe). Rather
unconvincingly, Plato adds later that poetry may remain within the state, pro-
vided it can argue the case for its retention.
12 Of the Symbolic Hegel writes, 'the Idea still seeks its genuine expression in art,
because in itself it is still abstract and indeterminate and therefore does not
have its adequate manifestation on and in itself, but finds itself confronted by
what is external to itself, external things in nature and human affairs. Now,
since it has only an immediate inkling of its own abstractions in this objective
world or drives itself with its undetermined universals into a concrete exis-
tence, it corrupts and falsifies the shapes that it finds confronting it,' Hegel
(1975a), vol. I, p. 300. There is naturally a crucial difference between Nietz-
sche and Hegel, since the latter sees the Symbolic as the prelude to the Classi-
cal in which the Idea finds adequate form, while Nietzsche disputes both the
idea that art can be located on a teleological historical schema and the concep-
tion of art as a vehicle of truth.
13 In a highly suggestive article on Nietzsche and music, Gary Peters reads Nietz-
 NOTES TO PP. I 34—8

schean music as pointing above all towards a radical improvisational practice.

Drawing on the (apparently) improvisational nature of Nietzsche's own writ-
ing, Peters argues that a Nietzschean music would comprise 'an instantaneous
scrutinization of radically isolated tonal points devoid of past or future.' My
own reading tends towards an opposing position, giving due account to the
importance of the classical in Nietzsche's aesthetic thought. See Peters
(i993), P- i£4-
14 Nietzsche makes numerous references to Mozart, all of them praising him in
terms similar to his commendation of the Greeks. Praising the 'cheerful, sun-
ny, tender, frivolous spirit of Mozart' (WS §165), Nietzsche writes that he
'gave forth the age of Louis the Fourteenth and the art of Racine and Claude
Lorraine in ringing gold' (HAH II §171), his music displays a 'charm and gra-
ciousness of the heart' (HAH II §298) that 'shows what Germans should strive
after' (ibid.), and he 'finds his inspirations not in listening to music but in look-
ing at life' (WS § i p ) .

Chapter 5. Memory, History and Eternal Recurrence

1 In book IV of The Physics Aristotle is puzzled by the paradox of time, inasmuch
as 'Some of it has been and is not, some of it is to be and is not yet.' From this
observation he notes that 'it would seem to be impossible that what is com-
posed of things that are not should not participate in being' (218a 1—2). Yet as
various commentators have objected, Aristotle's couching of the problem of
time in these terms appears possible only on the premise that existence can
only be predicated of something in the present, i.e., an object referred to in
the present tense of the verb 'be.' Hence if we cannot say that something 'is' in
the present, we must infer that it does not have full reality or existence, a con-
clusion which parallels Plato's argument that because mundane objects are
brought into being and then decay with time, they therefore do not truly ex-
ist. See Aristotle (1983).
2 See, for example, Nietzsche's account of Heraclitus in 'Philosophy in the Trag-
ic Age of the Greeks,' KSA 7, p. 8 2 2ff.
3 Kosellek(i98£).
4 Immanuel Kant, 'An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?' in
Kant (1991), pp. 41—£3. See also 'Idea for a Universal History with Cos-
mopolitan Intent' in the same volume, pp. £4—60.
g Osborne (199^), esp. p. i3ff.
6 Hegel ( 1 9 7 ^ ) , p. 64.
7 The co-existence of these two tendencies, apparently opposed but actually in-
terdependent, was remarked on by Nietzsche's contemporary, the art histori-
an Alois Riegl. See Riegl (1982).
8 The parallel between modernity and metaphysics inevitably invites compari-
son with Karl Lowith's notion of modernity as the secularisation of the Chris-
tian view of world history. For Lowith the Christian notion of a divine inter-
 NOTES TO PP.

vention which would bring an end to mundane history becomes translated

into the modernist ideology of progress, in which at some time in the future
humanity will have reached a state of perfection, and history will have effec-
tively come to a halt. See Lowith (1949). Nietzsche certainly sees a parallel
between metaphysics and Christianity, though this stems less from a process of
secularisation than from the fact that they are both symptoms of the same
drive to petrify temporal existence, and to valorise a conceptual ideality.
Lowith's account has been subjected to an exhaustive critique by Hans Blu-
menberg (198^). On this debate see also Wallace (1981).
9 Although Nietzsche was not familiar with Marx, Marx provides the prime ex-
ample of critical history in Nietzsche's sense. Famously, Marx claims, 'The tra-
dition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the
living,' a view which he follows later with the assertion that in contrast to the
bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth century, the * social revolution of
the nineteenth century cannot draw its poetry from the past but only from the
future.' Karl Marx, T h e Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,' in Marx
(i977), PP- 3OO> 3° 2 -
10 Benjamin (1979), p. 3^2.
11 Although Benjamin and Nietzsche both see the collector as the exemplar of
the modern type, their evaluation is quite distinct. Benjamin sees the collector
as preserving a past that commodified culture is rushing to forget, interpret-
ing him in a much more positive light than does Nietzsche. See Abbas (1989).
12 Knodt (1989) has made a useful comparison of Nietzsche's critique of linear
time with that of Schopenhauer, pointing out, for example, that the latter
equates subjective time with linear time, in contrast to the goalless strivings of
the Will, which naturally give priority to a cyclical notion of temporality. Yet
although Schopenhauer views cyclical time as more primordial than the (Aris-
totelian) idea of time as a linear succession of 'nows,' he then reverts back to
more traditional notions of temporality and redemption when he stresses the
ability of the ascetic or the person held by an aesthetic experience to elude the
strivings of the Will, and hence to escape from time itself. The notion of tran-
scendence in Schopenhauer is naturally opposed to a cyclical idea of time, thus
revealing a considerable distance between Schopenhauerian time and Nietz-
sche's 'circulus vitiosus.'
13 I am referring primarily to Klossowski (1969), Stambaugh (1972) and Lowith

14 Heidegger (1991), vol. II, 'The Eternal Recurrence of the Same,' p. 6.

15 Ibid.
16 This interpretation has been offered by Wood (1989).
17 Kant (1989), pp. 396-421.
18 See Warren (1988), pp. 196—203.
19 Benjamin (1983), p. 134.
20 On the German inflections of what was originally a French literary debate see
 NOTES TO PP. I £ 3 —6£

Behler (1992), pp. 9^—130; Menges (1988); Hans Robert Jauss, 'Schlegels
und Schillers Replik auf die "Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes,"' in Jauss
(1970), pp. 67-106.
21 Del Caro (1989). Del Caro argues that Nietzsche's return to some form of
classical norm is partly inspired by Goethe, who shared his antipathy towards
romanticism. Significantly, as del Caro points out (p. £94), Nietzsche's diagno-
sis of romanticism as being a sickly phenomenon was one already made by
Goethe, who also regarded classicism as essentially healthy in contrast.
22 Karl Heinz Bohrer, 'Aesthetics and Historicism: Nietzsche's Idea of "Appear-
ance," ' in Bohrer (1994), pp. 113—47.
23 Adorno (1991), p. 3iff.
24 Ibid., p. 33.
2 $ Because of the shifting meanings of 'Dionysian,' Eugen Fink accused it of lack-
ing clarity, of being intuited 'mystically.' It is undoubtedly because of his failure
to take into account the internally complex nature of the Dionysian that led
Fink to such a conclusion. See Fink (i960), p. 27.
26 Kant(i9$2),§i£.
27 Crowther (1989), p. 1^3.
28 As Christoph Menke has argued, this notion of aesthetic indeterminacy or
negation has formed the basis of the aesthetic tradition from Kant onwards,
culminating perhaps in Adorno's linking of modernism and negation and
Jacques Derrida's equation of the slippage of meaning between signs with the
aesthetic process. See Menke (1991).
29 See, for example, Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy (1988), especially pp. 39-58.
3 o This parallels the interpretation of Nietzsche in Nehemas (198^).
31 This point has been made by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe in Lacoue-Labarthe

32 This point has been made by JacquesTaminiaux in 'The Nostalgia for Greece at
the Dawn of Classical Germany,' in Taminiaux (1993), pp. 73—9 2. Taminiaux is
referring to the specific case of Goethe, who, unlike Holderlin or Schiller,
views the Greeks as exemplary models but does not conceive of himself as
separated from them by a great historical gulf. Nostalgia, for Taminiaux, is in-
timately connected with the sense of exile, and in this sense Nietzsche, like
Goethe, envisions a re-activation of Greek culture through an overcoming of
historical distance. In contrast, Schiller and Holderlin are weighted by moder-
nity's sense of history.
3 3 Wilfried van der Will has criticised the reading of Nietzsche by Lyotard and
Derrida for keeping Nietzsche entrapped within the perpetual critique of
modernity in which 'the open-endedness of fragmentary, playful, associative
writing appears the most lofty goal that can be desired.' See van der Will
(1993). My own interpretation accords with van der Will's criticism in that it
also emphasises the role of monumentality to Nietzsche as a form of exempla-
riness in aesthetic practice.
 NOTES TO PP. I 6 7 — 7 6

Chapter 6. Towards a Physiological Aesthetic

1 In ^[69 of Being and Time (Heidegger 1967), which is concerned with the prob-
lem of transcendence, Heidegger constantly describes concernful being-in-
the-world as attending to Dasein's 'whither' [Wb/iin] (e.g., p. 416), its relation
of'towards-which' [Wbzu](e.g., p. 41^), and the structure of care as constitut-
ed by 'Being-alongside' [Sein bei] (e.g., p. 404), all of which use spatial
metaphors. Most obvious of all, though, is Heidegger's insistence on the
'There' [Da] of Dasein, which in his later works will become the clearing of
Being's self-disclosure.
2 Blondel (1991).
3 See EH, 'Why I Am So Clever,' §2, GS, §§^9, 306, 367, or WP, §6^2, 702.
4 This is the case with Blondel's reading, which critiques interpretations that see
in Nietzsche a joyful affirmation of textual play, a fetishism of the text, in or-
der then to give primacy to the body. See also Blondel's criticism of certain
post-structuralist readings of Nietzsche. Blondel (1981—2).
£ On Nietzsche's relation to Lange see Stack (1983).
6 Schopenhauer (19^8), vol. II, p. 284.
7 For an account ofWundt and the history of early experimental psychology see
Danziger (1990).
8 Helmut Pfotenhauer has given an outline of the physiological literature with
which Nietzsche was familiar in Pfotenhauer (198^), pp. 71-6. On the influ-
ence ofWilhelm Roux on Nietzsche see Miiller-Lauter (1978).
9 On the function of medical imagery in Nietzsche see Malcolm Pasley, 'Nietz-
sche's Use of Medical Imagery,' in Pasley (1978), pp. i 23—^8.
10 See Richard Brown (1989), n. 4.
11 Other examples listed by Brown include Nietzsche's reference to 'physiologi-
cal purification and strengthening' (WP §9^3); 'physiological well-being'
(OGM III §11); 'physiological exhaustion' (WP §230) and 'physiological deca-
dence' (WP§8£i).
12 This point is made by Nussbaum (1998).
13 On Nietzsche's physiological aesthetics see also Gerhardt (1984). Gerhardt
argues that Nietzsche comes to a physiology only late in his career, whereas I
am suggesting that it is the result of a continuous development of the same
theme.
14 See Heidegger (1991), vol. I, § 1 £, 'Kant's Doctrine of the Beautiful: Its Misin-
terpretation by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche,' pp. 107—14.
i$ See Djuric (198^), pp. 209—22, and Heftrich (1991).
16 Ernst Behler has suggested that Nietzsche entertains both a concept of art
as play, symbolised in the ideas of Fart pour Fart, and one of art as a life-
enhancing practice. I shall argue, however, that this sense of play in art, which
Nietzsche sees in the artist's willingness to play with truth, is far from the
ideas of Fart pour Fart. Art-as-play in Nietzsche is not necessarily opposed to
 NOTES TO PP. I 7 7 — 8 6

the idea of art-as-will-to-power but rather complements it, as part of the in-
terpretative process. See Behler (1988), p. iooff.
17 Kant (i9£2), $S-
18 There is an important exception to this, namely, Kant's recognition of
the sublime in the case of self-sacrifice by soldiers on behalf of some higher
moral ideal. Kant could be criticised for inconsistency in this particular ex-
ample, since it appears to contradict the link between sublimity and rep-
resentation. However, the fact that the soldiers defending a moral ideal
question actively disregard threats to their own existence lends it a qual-
ity comparable to the aesthetic experience. Kant's distinction allows us to
understand why we can allow fictional events or objects to affect us while
we know they do not actually exist, without having to resort to contem-
porary theories of make-believe, such as that of Kendall Walton, who pro-
poses the curious notion that fiction is a game of make-believe into which
the spectator knowingly enters, and that emotional responses to what are
known to be fictional events are in fact 'pretend' responses. See Walton
(1990).
19 Schopenhauer (19^8), vol. I, p. 2^3.
20 Ibid., p. 2£9.
21 See Schulte-Sasse (198^), p. SyiL
2 2 Quoted in ibid., p. 87.
2 3 Schulte-Sasse quotes August Schlegel as asserting that 'It is the essence of the
fine arts not to want to be useful. In a certain sense the beautiful is the oppo-
site of the useful' (p. 88).
24 See, for example, Bell (1981), Fry (1920) or Greenberg (1939), (1940).
2 g Hanslick (18 ^4).
26 Gautier's classic statement of the doctrine of'art for art's sake' occurs in the
preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin: 'Nothing is really beautiful except that
which cannot be used for anything; everything that is useful is ugly, for it is the
expression of some need.' Gautier (19^^), p. 23. The most recent and com-
prehensive account of Gautier and criticism is Snell (1982).
27 For other references to Hanslick see also KSA 7: 9(8] and KSA 7:9 [98]. Nietz-
sche also refers to Gautier a number of times, including WP §103, KSA 13:11
[296] and WP §8i£. Nietzsche's interest in Hanslick in the early 1870s obvi-
ously derives from his interest at that time in music, whereas his comments on
Gautier are much more set within the context of French literary and artistic
culture.
28 Mallarme (1945), p. 366.
2 9 This idea is explored in Piitz (1963), pp. 1 £— 16.
30 It is important to take note of Ernst Behler's observations (Behler 1978) that
Nietzsche's concept of romanticism is on the whole limited to the 'late' ro-
manticism of mid-nineteenth-century France, the primary figure being Victor
Hugo, rather than the work of the early romantics in Germany.
 NOTES TO PP. I9O—2O£

Chapter 7. Art,Truth and Woman

1 See Jacques Taminiaux, 'Between the Aesthetic Attitude and the Death of Art,'
in Taminiaux (199 3), pp. g $—j 2.
2 Hegel (1975a), vol. I, p. 73.
3 Schelling (1978), p. 231. On the role of Schelling as an intermediary between
Kant and Hegel see Wicks (1994), PP- 57~69- See also Bowie (1993), esp. pp.
4SS4-
4 For a succinct account of Schlegel's conception of poetry see Behler (1992),
pp. 131—80.
g August Schlegel, 'Vorlesungen iiber die schone Literatur und Kunst,' in
Schlegel (1989), vol. I, p. 220.
6 This theme is explored in Menke (1991).
7 Derrida (1979).
8 The role of reflection in romanticism has been explored in Walter Benjamin,
'The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism,' in Benjamin (1996), pp.
116—200. In the reflective unfolding of the work, criticism played a vital role
in completing the process. For romantics such as the Schlegel brothers, there-
fore, criticism was not extrinsic to the work, a notion subsequently taken up
by Derrida, Barthes and Lacan.
9 Heidegger (1991), vol. I, p. 109.
10 Ibid., p. 216.
11 Ibid., p. 217.
12 Most obviously, of course, in 77, 'How the "true world" eventually became a
fable.'
13 On the configuration of woman, distance and veiled dissimulation see Derrida
(I979)> PP- 37—63. See also, more recently, Vasseleu (1993). Vasseleu attends
particularly to the metaphor of the sea in Nietzsche, which functions as a fig-
ure for the perpetual dissimulation of identity. The classic discussion of marine
metaphors in Nietzsche is Irigaray (1991).
14 The general difficulties of Nietzsche's account of woman have been explored
in Irigaray (1991) and Ansell-Pearson (1993). Ansell-Pearson is particularly
critical of Derrida for his unquestioning affirmation of Nietzsche, even when
the latter is most hostile to feminism and patronising to women.
1£ On the wider critique of mass culture as feminine see Andreas Huyssen, 'Mass
Culture as Woman: Modernism's Other,' in Huyssen (1986).
16 Nietzsche's comments on the erasure of authorial subjectivity are also part of
a response to Burckhardt's Der Cicerone, which equates grand style with 'im-
personality': see Burckhardt (18^^), p. 17^. See also Nietzsche, KSA 11:2£
['17].
17 The philosopher Philipp Mainlander was the author of Die Philosophie der Erlb-
sung [The Philosophy of Redemption] (Berlin: T. Grieben, 1876). Nietzsche's
relation to Mainlander has recently been discussed in Decher (1996).
18 Urs Heftrich has made a similar point in Heftrich (1991), p. 2

258
 NOTES TO PP. 2O£—26

19 Gadamer (196^), p. 88.

20 See especially §§46 and 47 of The Critique of Judgement on the relation of genius
to rules.
21 An informative contrast can be made, for example, between Kant's Critique of
Judgement and Burke (1987).
22 KSA7:j [9].
23 E.g.,BG£§2^6.
24 ' "Don Quixote" is one of the most harmful of books' (KSA 8:8 [7]).
2$ Nietzsche's willingness to apply the word 'Kunst' both to what might be called
authentic art and to those trivial works of contemporary art such as opera
which he considers as unaesthetic may well lie behind Behler's confusion as re-
gards the significance attached to the notion of play in Nietzsche. As I noted in
the previous chapter, Behler ascribes to Nietzsche an attitude which would
lead him to condone Fart pour Yart as a mode of understanding art. My own
interpretation differs somewhat.
26 See Nehemas (1983).
27 Derrida(i979),p. 77.
28 See Burke (1987) or Kant (i960), which devotes a whole section to the anal-
ogy between the relation of the sexes and that of the beautiful and the sublime.
29 On this theme see Shapiro (1991).

Chapter 8. Overcoming Nihilism

1 The most obvious example is the work ofWalter Benjamin, whose writings re-
peatedly return to Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal. See especially Benjamin (1983).
2 See, for example, KSA 13:11 [1^9]. Nietzsche also linked Baudelaire with
Sainte-Beuve, of whom he made vicious criticisms, concluding that Sainte-
Beuve was 'a prototype of Baudelaire' (77 'Skirmishes' §3).
3 Adorno (1981).
4 Albrecht Wellmer has also noted that Adorno's thought 'secretly communi-
cates' with Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. See Wellmer (1991), p. 1.
5 See, for example, the essays collected in Koelb (1990) on this topic.
6 Dahlhaus (1980), pp. 60— 1.
7 Adorno (1981), p. $5.
8 A recent essay has put forward the speculative proposition that Nietzsche
would have been sympathetic to jazz. Quite apart from the methodological
questions that are raised by such speculation, it seems highly improbable, giv-
en Nietzsche's conservatism. See Carvalho (1998).
9 The Case of Wagner begins with a celebration of Bizet, noting that 'This music
appears to me to be perfect. . . . It constructs, it organises, it becomes com-
plete: with this it forms the opposite to the polyp of music, "endless melody"'
(CW §1). As Walter Kaufmann has noted, Nietzsche had rather sentimental
tastes, showing a preference for Claude Lorraine and the novelist Adalbert
Stifter. See Kaufmann, 'Translator's Introduction' (1974), p. 12.
 NOTES TO PP. 2 26 — 3 8

Io Peter Hohendahl has recently defended Adorno against his detractors, partic-
ularly in terms of the concept of the culture industry. Where Adorno is often
seen as displaying a typical modernist disdain for mass culture, Hohendahl ar-
gues for a more differentiated picture, in which the 'culture industry' denotes
the commodification and reification of both popular culture and so-called high
art. See Hohendahl (199^), especially pp. 119—48.
II Adorno (1981), p. 43.
1 2 Adorno (1987).
13 In another essay on Schoenberg Adorno writes, 'Schoenberg's nonconformity
is not a matter of temperament. . . . His integrity was forced on him; he had
to work out the tension between the Brahmsian and Wagnerian elements. His
expansive imagination thrived on Wagnerian material, whereas the demands
of compositional consistency, the responsibility of respecting the music's in-
trinsic tendencies drew him to Brahmsian methods.' Adorno (1967), pp.
i£2-3.
14 Theodor Adorno, 'Anton von Webern: Zur Auffuhrung der Fiinf Orchester-
stiicke, op. 10, in Zurich' (1926), cited in Paddison (1993), p. $i.
ig Adorno (1997), pp. 1^9—60.
16 Bohrer, 'Aestheticism and Historicism: Nietzsche's Idea of Appearance,' in
Bohrer(i99 4 ),pp. 113-47.
17 Adorno frequently uses this figure of speech, and it is intended less as a criti-
cism than as an assertion of the circular situation in which art, and more gen-
erally philosophy, finds itself. In Minima Moralia he uses the story of Baron von
Munchhausen: 'Today nothing less is demanded of the thinker than that he
should be at any time both inside and outside the matter — the gesture of
Munchhausen, who pulls himself out of the swamp by his own ponytail.' See
Adorno (1978), §46.
18 Lyotard (19 84b), p. 77.
19 Ibid., p. 78.
20 Ibid.
21 Lyotard (19 84c), p. 40.
22 See Lyotard (1982), p. 68.
23 Ibid., p. 80.
24 In the previous aphorism (HAH I §219) Nietzsche complains of the religious
basis of modern music, citing in particular the seminal role of Palestrina after
the Council of Trent.
i£ Lyotard (1984a), p. 1^3.
26 At the culmination of The Differend Lyotard, drawing on Wittgenstein's notion
of'language games,' concludes that 'the heterogeneity of phrase regimens and
of genres of discourse' is the only 'insurmountable obstacle' to the totalising
impulse of capitalism and modernity, noting that resistance based around
counter-narratives or ideologies ultimately replicates the totalising logic of
modernity.
2 7 Deleuze and Guattari (1983).

260
 NOTES TO PP. 2 38—40

2 8 This point has been made by Crowther (1992).

29 Jean Baudrillard, quoted in Bews (1997), p. si'• See a l s o Jameson (1991), es-
pecially chapter 1, or Callinicos (1986).
30 The notion of a cultural practice in which the real appears, but as the site of
trauma, has been explored recently in Hal Foster, 'The Return of the Real,' in
Foster (1996), pp. 12 7—6 8. Foster's focus of interest is the work of artists such
as Andy Warhol or Cindy Sherman, indicating a type of post-modern artistic
practice that is difficult to square with Lyotard's stipulation of the avant-garde
as essentially sublime.

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 Index

absolute knowledge, 147 Antigone, 104

absolute, the, 73, 131 anti-humanism, 67
Achilles, 72, 101, i$2 anti-modernism, 1 $ 1, 162, 232
Adorno,Theodor, 1 , 2 , 3 , $ , 12,47, antiquarian history, 140, 141, 143,
i$6, 192,217, 22$, 226-34, i$o,226
240—1,246; Aesthetic Theory 240; Apollo, 8, 79, 94, 96, 102, 109,
In Search of Wagner 226—7; Negative i n , 112, 23^-6
Dialectics; Philosophy of Modern Apollonian, 2, 8, $4, $7, 80, 93, 94,
Music 228-33 99, 101, 102, 103, 107, 110-12,
x
Aeschylus, 21$; Prometheus Bound, £3> 1 £4, l 6 3> 173, ^ 3 , 232,
103,108 233,238
aesthetic experience, 207 appearance, 28, 29, 30, 36, 106,
aesthetics of the artist 20$; feminine i 9 7 , 1 9 8 , 199,232
aesthetics 193, 20$, 213; Aquinas,Thomas, 100, 218
masculine aesthetics 193, 20^—14 Archilochus, 16$
affectivity, 6$, 81, 82, 87, 174 aristocratic morality, 70
affirmation, 4 , $, 12, 89, 72, 92, aristocracy of affects, 69
103, 121, 144, i $ 2 , i $ 4 , 1 6 3 , Aristotle, 16, 136, 146, 186
240—1; affirmativity, 12,37 a r t , 1, 3 , 9 , 1 1 , $ 1 , 9 2 , 9 6 , 1 1 2 ,
agency, $ 4 - 9 , 60, 67 122, 1 $ 4 , 1 7 3 , 1 8 0 , 1 8 $ , 1 9 1 ,
Alcaeus, 16$ 197, 204, 209, 230, 240;
Alcibiades, $4, 73 Nietzsche's definition of art, 207,
algodicy, 90 208, 219, art and truth, 193—204,
ambiguity, 84, 131, 1 $8, 160, 161, 206, 21 2; art and will to power,
17$,188,226,238 204,208
amorjati, 148, 149, i$2 artist, $ 1 , 73, 124, 132, 133, 182,
anarchy, 119, 188, 219; anarchism, 184,194,203,20$,206,209
artworks, $ 1 , 9 3 , 9 8

277
 INDEX

aesceticism, 4$, 48, 49, 55, 73, 117, Blondel, Eric, 167
170; ascetic ideal, 44, ^ 8 , 64; Boccaccio, Giovanni, Decameron, 207
ascetic priest, 48, 64, 108 body, the 11, 38, 48, s s , 56y S8, ^9,
Athens, 72, 237 60,126,i££,167-9,171,172,
atomisation, 123, 236, 239 173, 213; embodiment, 88,90,
Aufhebung, 4, 6 91
St. Augustine, ^6 Bohrer, Karl-Heinz, 1^4, 233
authenticity, 119, 227, 228, 231 Bourget, Paul, Essais de Psychologie
autonomy, 54., Sj, £9, 82, 137, 179, Contemporaine, 119
181 Brahms, Johannes, 121, 126, 22^
avant-garde, 10, 12, 137, 216 Buddha, ^4
Buddhism, 34, 77, 170-1, 233
Babylon, 97 Burke, Edmund, 81, 84, 86
Bacon, Francis, 13 Byron, Lord George, 197
Bakunin, Mikhail, 219
baroque, 127, 128, 172 Caesar, Julius, 54, 73
Bataille, Georges, 4, 15, go, 77 capitalism, 124, 1^6, 238
Baudelaire, Charles, 2, 137, 203, Cervantes, Miguel de, Don Quixote,
216,230 207
beauty/the beautiful, 84, 8£, 94, 96, Cezanne, Paul, 236
9 8 , 9 9 , i£3> !£9> 162,176, 177, chaos, 2, 33, 69, 76, 8$, 138, 196,
183, 184, i8$, 194,199,204, 22£
2o£,209 Christ, £4, 1^7
becoming, 9, 29, 3^-6, 97, 13^, Christianity, 6, 2gy 30, £ 3 - 4 , 56, 64,
140, 146, i £ 3 , i £ 7 , i$8, 19s 272, 233; Christian morality,
being, 9, 29, 3^, 3 6 , 4 1 , 4 4 , 4 6 , 4 7 ,
146,19s chromaticism, 22^, 230, 23^
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 133, 21 £, Church, the, £6, 172
22O,22£,228 Church Fathers, ^6, 69
Bell, Clive, 179 classical, 112, 162, 188; classical
Benjamin,Walter, 106, 141, i £ i , scholarship, i £ ; classicism,
IS4-S, l6 £> l 8 6 > l 8 7 , 228-9
Berg,Alban, 232 comedy, 93,104—6
Berlioz, Hector, 21£ commerce, 118, 124, 1^6, 179, 226
Bernard, Claude, 169, 172 concepts, £, 19, 20, 22, 2 4 , 4 2 , 9 0 ,
beyond, the, 120, 167 ii£,116,192,194
Biedermeier, 2 2^—6 consciousness, $, 46, ^2, $7, 60,
Bildungsroman, 68 62-6,7£,9£
Bizet, 2 2^; Carmen, 226 contradiction, 2—3 , £ , 4 7 , 4 8 , 2 3 8

278
 INDEX

convention, 18^ 9 6 , 9 7 , 9 8 , 9 9 , 100, 102, 104,

Corneille, Pierre, i6^ 107, 109, n o , i n , 112, i 2 £ ,
Creon, 108 128, 129, 134, 1 £ 4 , i £ 7 , 1 6 3 ,
critical history, 140 167, 173, 183, 192, 196, 232,
culture, 7, 8$, 87, 97, 102, 143, 200 233; Dionysian classicism, 1 o,
culture industry, 240 128, 144, 15-3, 163, 182, 188,
cynicism, 138, 171 190, 220, 238; Dionysus, 8 , 7 1 ,
Crowther, r, Paul, 7 9 , 9 6 , 9 7 , " I , I I 2 , i £ 7 , 23s,
236
Dada, £i disinterestedness, 11, 84, 176—7,
Dahlhaus, Carl, 224 182,204
Dali, Salvador, 236 dissimulation, 199, 213
dancing, iggy 173, 198 dissonance, 113, 224—£, 231, 233,
Dante, Aligheri, Divine Comedy, 1 2 2 23^237,238
death of God, 30, 90 distance, 198, 199; pathos of
decadence, 33, 34, 42, 4 3 , 44, 70, distance, 7, 70
75, 119-21, 143, 162, IJS, 203, Doric art, 9 7 , 9 8 ; Doric pre-
2 2O, 2 24-£ censorship, 96, 97, 99, 173
deconstruction, 6, 16, 51 drives, 6^, 73
degeneration, 170, 224; degenerate Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 16 2
art, 127 dualism, 28, 196; metaphysical
Delacroix, Eugene, 126, 137, 2 i £ , dualism, ^ 8 , 123, 197
220,221 Dummett, Michael, 3^
Deleuze, Gilles, 3, 4, $o, 67, 238;
Anti-Oedipus, 67 economics, 60
Derrida, Jacques, 6, 16, go, 52, 54, education, 142
67, 192, 211, 213; differance, 3, Edda, 1 8 8
4, 5, 67; ecriture, 67; Speech and ego, 44, 101; egoism, 77
Phenomena, g 2; Spurs, 19 2 empiricism, 13, 14, 18; empirical
Descartes, Rene, 6, 7, 15, 24, ss> world, 19
S*> 57, &5, 67, 69, 73; Meditations endless melody, 113, 120, 128, i £ £ ,
on First Philosophy, 55 223-4,226
desire, 67, 70, 88, 113, 180, 183, enigma, 43, 60, 6^, 199; woman as
211,238 enigma, 199
destruction, 86 Enlightenment, the, 10, 8^
dialectics, 3, 4, $, 34, 4^-9, 68, 76, epistemology, 17, 2 £, 60;
127, 128, i £ 2 , i £ 7 , 1 6 3 , 2 2 7 , constructivist epistemology, i£,
2 2
3 > 23£> 241 3£, 3 6 , 239; realist epistemology,
Dionysian, 2, 8, ^4, Sy9 80, 91, 93, 21

279
 INDEX

Ernst, Max, 236 Germany, io^, 142, 143; German

error, ^6 culture, 143
Eternal Recurrence, 9, 3^, 138, Gerome, Jean-Leon, 234
H 4 - £ 2 > lSS, J £ 6 , l 6 1 , l 6 S Gesamtkunstwerk, 113, 207

Euripides, ^4, 111, 21 £ Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, ^4, 74,

Europe, 4 3 , 138; European Culture, 7£, 123, 142, i £ 3 , 1 6 3 , 2 0 3 , 2 1 0 ,
44, S3, 111; Europeans, 23,62 220; Willhelm Meister, 68
expression, 126, 187, 227, 229, 231 Gogol, Nikolai, 197
Goncourt, Edmond and Jules, 162,
falsehood, 29, 36, 129, 130, 19^, 203,220
197,198 grammar, 17, 18, 37, £2, 54., 60, 66,
Fere, Charles, 169 93, J 3£
Fischer, Kuno, 179 Greece, £3, ^6, 199; Greeks, 72, 9^,
Flaubert, Gustave, 137, 202, 203, 96, 118, 128, 129, 130, 142, iss,
2 i £ , 2 2 2 , 230; Madame Bovary, 164, 186, 197, 198, 199; Greek
230 culture, 71
forgetfulness, 2, 21— £, 26, 139, i^6, Greenberg, Clement, 179
16^,238 Guattari, Felix, see Deleuze, Gilles
form, 128; formalist aesthetics, 11, guilt, £4, S6, 59, 61, 63; guilty
123, 174, 17^-8 2, 2O£, 2O8 conscience, 64
form of appearing, 80, 1ig, 129,
196,236 Habermas, Jiirgen, 2, £0
Foucault, Michel, £3, 64, 67, 70; Hafiz (Shams ed-Dfn Muhammed),
rapport-a-soi, £3 163
fragmentariness, i££, 160 Hamann, Johann, 18
freedom, 33, 69, 70, ygy 83, 8$, Hamlet, 91
189,239 Hanslick, Eduard, 179
free spirit, $4, JS, 76, 107, 128 hardness, 70, 77
Freud, Sigmund, 148 Hegel, Georg, 1, 2,4, g9 6, 7, i£,
Fry, Roger, 179 7^,76, 77, 79, 84, 106, i n , 131,
future, the, 137, 141, I ^ I 137, H7, i£2, i£9, i7£, 190,
I
9I, 2
3 £ , 2 3 7 j Aesthetics /Lectures
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 2o£ on Fine Art, 230; Science of Logic, 6
Gautier,Theophile, 179, 180 Heidegger, Martin, £0, 14^, 148,
genealogy, 4, 30, 62, 63, 140 167, 175, J94, l9S, l9*>
genius, 100, 108, 132, 133, 164, Heracles, 102
169,2O£ Heraclitus, 139
geometry, 27 herd, 71, 76; herd instinct, 71

280
 INDEX

Hesiod, 130 interpretation, 6, 7, 10, 17, 34-49,

historiography, 140, i £ i $1,68,69, 73,74, 77, 107, 187
history, 2, 9, 23, 26, 136, 142, 143, intoxication, 1^4, 183, 173, 219,
147, i £ i , i £ 2 , i $ 3 , 1^4, 164; 233
historical present, 137; historical irony, 2,6, 191, 19^, 198
sense, 136, 138, 140, 141, 16^; intention, 38—9
historical sublime, 137, 1^0,
Jacobi, Friedrich, 30
Hobbes, Thomas, 10; Jaspers, Karl, 3
Home, Lord Henry, 178 Jesuit Order, 18^, 209
Homer, 96, 100—2, 129, 163; Job, 162
Homeric poems, 71; Iliad, 1 o 1; Judd, Donald, 236
Odyssey, 101
Hugo,Victor, 119, 121, 188, 223 Kant, Immanuel, 6, 11, 14, i£, 19,
human being, 6, 2$, 26, ^ 3 , 73, 74, 27, 28, 29-30, £i,£6, 6^,79,
84 84, 87, 89, 101, i n , 116, 129,
Humboldt, Alexander, 18 136, i£7, i £ 8 , i£9, 174, I7S,
Hume, David, 13, 18—19, 24, 28; A 178, 179, 190, 2 0 4 , 2 0 7 , 2 2 3 ,
Treatise of Human Nature, 13 238, 239, 240; Critique of
Husserl, Edmund, $2 Judgement, 11, 8 1 , 82, 83, 160,
Hutcheson, Francis, 84 164, 17 $; Critique of Pure Reason,
hysteria, 118, 200 14,27,146,176,177,20s
kitsch, 240
idealisation, 186 Kleist, Heinrich von, 197
Idealism, 87; idealist, 11 knowledge, 6, 7, 13, 14, 19, 22, 24,
identity, s, 2S, 29 2£, 26, 27, 30, 34, 3 8 , 4 1 , 4 2 ,
ideology, 24, 26, 28,60,61,93,96, 43, 4<T, 4 6 , 49, £4, 63, 67, 11$,
99,102,138,213,228,239 J34,239
illusion, 2, 23, 24, 28, 40, 77, 80, Kofman, Sarah, 16, 20, go
8 £ , 9 £ , 9 7 , 102, 109, 112, 233, Kojeve, Alexandre, 4
238 Koselleck, Reinhardt, 13 6
imagination, 83, 90
immanence, £, 7, 8-9, 10, 132, 157, Lange, Friedrich, History of
172,204,210, 211,237 Materialism, 168
incompleteness, 134, 160 language, i £ , 1 6 - 2 1 , 22, 24, 2$, 26,
individual, 88, 93, 228; 28, 29, £2, £3, £4, £ 7 , 6 4 , 107,
individualism, 63 ii£,13s,160
instinct, 26, 38,63,69,74 Fart pour Tart, 11, 174,80, 181, 182

281
 INDEX

Leibniz, Gottfried, i$ ^4, $ $ , $ 6 , £ 8 , 6 1 , 6 2 , 6 $ , 70,

leitmotif 134, 137, 1$$, 223-4, 226, 7 2 , 7 9 , 87, 8 9 , 9 1 , 9 2 , 101, 10$,
240 107, n o , 120, 123, 126, 13$,
Leonardo da Vinci, 73 138, 147, 148, i £ 6 , i£7, 211,
Leopardi, Giacomo, 197, 203 232,241
liberalism, $1, 70 Michelangelo, 122, 21$
life, 2$, 3 ^ , 4 0 , 4 4 , 4 8 , 4 9 , 130, Midas, 91
i3£> l 8 $ , I 9 S , 203,208 Middle Ages, 170
Liszt, Franz, 116, 223 mimesis, 86, 88, 89, 142, 149
logic, 2$, 66, $ 1 , 9 2 , 11$, 13$, 176 mise-en-abyme, 12, 127
Longinus, On the Sublime, 81 m o d e r n i s m , 12, 127
Lotze, Hermann, 179 m o d e r n i t y , 1, 2, 10, 12, 2 1 , 2 3 ,
Lukacs, Georg, go 30-2, 33,42,43,4^,60,62,63,
Lyotard, Jean-Francois, 23^—40 64, 7 1 , 7 2 , 7 4 , 7 ^ , 7 6 , 7 8 , 9 6 ,
Locke, John, 16 in, 114, 121, 123, 124, 127,
128, 1 3 2 , 1 3 6 , 137, 141, 143,
Mainlander, Phillip, 203 148,i£o,i£i,i$3,i$6,176,
Malevich, Kasimir, 236 179, 188, 1 8 9 , 2 1 9 , 2 2 6 , 2 2 8 ,
Mallarme, Stephane, 120, 181 232,23$
man, ^ 3 , 6 3 , 8$ Monteverdi, Giuseppe, 113
Man, Paul de, 80 monumental history, 140, 141, 143,
Marx, Karl, 2,32 i£S,227
Masson, Andre, 236 morality, $4, $6, 70, 71, 73, 83, 84,
mathematics, 26 87,92, 107, 170, 179; moral
meaning, 12, 1 $, 17, 21, £2, 128, education, 8$—6; moral
i$6, 160, 196; negation of judgements, 171; moral law, 84
meaning, 31, 33, 3 6 , 9 0 , 9 1 , 9 3 , Morris, Robert, 236
1 0 2 , 1 0 4 , 1 0 8 , 128, 131 Mozart,Wolfgang, 134, 22$
medical imagery, 169 music, 1 2 ,113, 11$, 116, 119, 121,
mass public, 118 123, 127, 181,188, 194,196
melody, 113, 120, 1$$ myth, 116, 227, 2 3 0
memory, 21 — $, 139
Mendelssohn, Felix, 22$ naive, the, 9$, 96
metaphor, 7, 10, 16—21, 24, 26, 32, Napoleon Bonaparte, $4
4 6 , £ 4 , 9 7 , 107 nature, 20, 27, 42, 8$, 96, 104;
metaphysics, 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, naturalness, 74, 18$
i3-!7, 20, 21-$, 26, 27, 28, 29, negation, 4, $, 6, 34, 4$, 46, 48, 71,
3°, 3 1 , 3 3 - 6 , 3 8 , 4 8 , £ o , $ i , $ 3 , 72,76, 89,92, 103, 104, 113,

282
 INDEX

116, i £ 2 , 1^6, 1 6 3 , 2 2 8 , 2 3 0 , 'RichardWagner in Bayreuth',

2 3 8 , 2 4 1 ; negativity, 12, 3 4 , 4 7 ; 116; 'On the Uses and
negative dialectic, £ , 7 , 47—8 Disadvantages of History for
n e o - classicism, 186 Life', 9, i£, 20,63, 139, 147,
neurosis, i £ i , 2 0 0 , 2 2 0 1 s 1; The Will to Power, 39—44
new, the, 10, 1 3 6 , i £ i nihilism, 2, 12, 21, 2^-34, 3 6 , 4 2 ,
N e w m a n , Barnett, 236 43,4^,60,61,62,64,77,78,
Nietzsche, Friedrich: The Antichrist, 92, 9 4 , 103, 106, 107, 140, 148,
iJS, 2 2 2; Beyond Good and Evil, i £ i , i £ 2 , 1 6 2 , 1 7 0 , 171, 187,
J 2 lo
7 , 3> 7 o , 73) 5, J
47, H , 8 193,203,218-19,222,234,240;
169, 1 7 1 , 2 1 2; The Birth of Tragedy, nihilist, 1, 3 4 , 4 4 , 104, 109
9, 11, i £ , £ ° , £7, 78-109, non-identical, 3, g, 19, 20, 29, 48
n o - i £ , 129, 131, i£3, i£7, 163, normativity, 1 , 2 , 3 , 8, 10, 3^, 47,
171,*73, !74,181,196,198, £i,79,107,136,234,240
2 0 8 , 2 3 3 ; The Case of Wagner, 1 1 9 , nostalgia, 1^0—64, 236—7, 238,
1 2 1, 1 7 1 , 1 8 8 , 2 2 1 ; Daybreak, 3 o , 239
£ 7 , 6 0 , 1 2 4 , i 2 £ , 1 7 0 , 2 0 0 ; Ecce noumenal, 29, 193, 196, 238, 239
Homo, 68,69, 77, n o , H4, lS7, Novalis, Heinrich, 106, 192, 2 i £ ,
169; The Gay Science, 2 2, $2, £ 7 ,
6 2 , 6 4 , i o $ , i2£, 144, 147, i 6 £ ,
170, 1 7 3 , 1 8 1 , 1 8 6 , 1 9 8 , 2 0 1 , objectivity, 4^, 47, £ i , 143; aesthetic
2 1 2 ; T h e G r e e k State' , 7 2 ; objectivity, 143, 144
'Homer's Competition' , 7 1 ; Odysseus, 101, 197
Human All Too Human, 78, 112, Oedipus, ^6, 102, 103, 107, 108,
119, 121, 123, 124, 127, 129, 109
130, 1 3 1 , 1 3 2 , i £ 9 , 1 6 0 , 1 6 2 , Olympian, 7 2 , 9^, 9 6 , 9 7 , 1 0 4
169, 1 7 3 , 1 8 1 , 1 8 6 , 1 9 6 , 1 9 8 , opera, 6 2 , 1 1 1 , 11£, 1 1 7 , 2 3 0
207, 208; Nietzsche contra Wagner, optimism, 1 1 2 , 1 1 4 , 137, 241
119, 1 20, 203, 2 10;'On Music
and Words', 1ig; On the Genealogy Parmenides, 139
of Morals, ^3, 60, 64, 7^, 170, Pascal, Blaise, 203
i7£, 179, 180, 204, 2 i 8 - i 9 ; ' O n past, the 1 3 7 , 1 4 1 , i £ i ;
Truth and Lie in Their Extra- appropriation of the past, 141,
Moral Sense', 16, 21, 2^, $j, 91,
139; Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 68, Pautrat, Bernard, 16
IO
£, H 4 , J 49, i £ ° ; Twilight of the perspective, 23, 38, 42, 44, 4-S, 4$,
Idols, 18, 29, £4, 70, 72, 74, i £ 4 , 47, 6^, 76, 239; perspectivism,
180, 183; Untimely Meditations: 3 7 , 4 £ , 140, 204, 210

283
 INDEX

pessimism, 3 3 , 4 ^ , 6 2 , 7 9 , 148, 171, R a p h a e l , S a n z i o , 1 2 2 , 1 7 2 , 21 £

*7S, 187 r a t i o n a l i t y , go, 51, 126

phantasmagoria, 226, 233 realism, 87, 192, 2 0 1 , 218, 222,
philosophers, 23, 28, 29,46 223,228
8 J
philosophy, 14, 16, 23, 24, 27, 30, r e a s o n , 2 7 , 2 8 , 2 9 , 4 4 , 5°, 3> 33,

39,191 146

photography, 234 redemption, 30, 49, 6 1 , 1 1 4 , 1 1 6 ,

physiology, 10, 11, 22, 3 8 , 4 4 , 4 8 , 120,187

^ 2 , ^ 6 , ^ 8 , 6 4 , 169, 170, 186, relativism, 35, 4.5
203,2 04; physiology of art, 172, r e l i g i o n , 2 $ , 2 9 , 3 0 , 1 2 1 , 122, 132
173—82,206,210,211 Renaissance, 7 4 , 144, 172, 216
Plato, 6, 7, 14, 28, £4, ss, 0 , 65, r e p e t i t i o n , 22, 142, 1 4 8 , 154, 1^6,
6 9 , 7 2 , 8 0 , 13s, 14s, 182, 193, 226
2oi; Vhaedo, 55, g6, 73; Phaedrus, r e p r e s e n t a t i o n , 1 1 , 18, 2 8 , 8 0 , 8 2 ,
55, 56, 6 £ ; Republic, 28, 55, ^6, 88, 9 1 , 92, 9 3 , 96, 97, 99, 101,
6^; Platonic idea, 94, 14^, 178; 102, 1 2 8 , 1 3 1 , 1^8, 187
platonism / anti-platonism, 2 £, res cogitans, gg
294,239 resistance 42, 4 3 , 44, 4^, 72, 179
Poe, Edgar Allan, 194 ressentiment, 22o, 223, 239

popular culture, 118, 119 revolution, 78, 142, 16^

positivism, 201, 228, 230, 234 rhythm, 119, i££, 182
Postmodern, the, 237, 239; romanticism, 9, 3^, 87, 106, 127,
postmodernism, £ 1, 231 132, 133, 160, 162, 174, 186,

Poussin, Nicolas, 186 187, 188, 192, 199,218,219,

power, $ 0 , 4 1 , 4 2 , 1 £4, 161 220, 221,228,234,23^;

present, the, 137, i £ i , 154 r o m a n t i c , 1 1 2 , 1^9, 179

principium Individuationis, 87, 89, Roux,Willhelm, 169

100,168 Rubens, Peter Paul, 163
progress: progress and modernity,
136; belief in progress, 137, 138, sacrifice, 230, 231
231 Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustin de,
prosopography, £4 180
Proust, Marcel, 237 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 16, 20; Cours
psychology, 2 8 , 8 4 , 171 de Linguistique Generale, 16
Pythagoras, 182 scepticism, 1 , 1 3 , 24, 2 8 , 76
Schelling, August, 1 , 1 7 7 , 1 9 1 ;
Querelle desAnciens et des Modernes, System of Transcendental Idealism,
10, 137, ,216 191

284
 INDEX

Schiller, Friedrich, 8, 78, 79, 81, Simonides, 1 29

84-7, sin, 5s, $6
8 9 , 9 0 , 9 2 , 9 8 , 101, 104,
142, 1 £3, 21 £; Letters on the slave morality, 119
Aesthetics Education of Man, 78, 84; Sloterdijk, Peter, 90, 96
'On the Sublime', 84; 'OnTragic Socrates, 6, 2g, 54., 5$, 72, 73, io£,
Art', 84; 'On the Basis of the i n , 112, 132, 13s, i£7, 213,
Enjoyment of Tragic Objects', 84 241; Socratic culture, 114, 1 21
Schlegel, August, 21 £; Lectures on Sophocles: Antigone, 103,104, 108;
Fine Literature and Art, 1 7 8 Oedipus at Colonus, 103; Oedipus
Schlegel, Friedrich, 191, 194, 207, Tyrannos, 103, 108
2i£,23S soul, the, 30, SS, 6^, 70, 73, 172,
Schleiermacher, Friedrich von, 18 noble soul, yg, 76
Schoenberg, Arnold, 12,224, 22^, Spinoza, Baruch, ig, jg
228, 230, 231,232, 240 Stendhal, 179, 180
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 8, 11, 14, 55, Sterne, Lawrence, 128, 129
79, 80, 81, 87-9, 90, 91, 93, Stravinsky, Igor, 228, 229, 230; The
100, 101, 106, 111, 113, 116, Rite of Spring, 2 3 0 , 2 3 2 ; The
i2£, 126, 173, 174, I7£, 176, Soldier's Tale, 2 3 1
177,178,180,193,196,203, s t r u g g l e , 228
2o£; TheWorld asWill and Sturm und Drang, 106, 1^3, 2o£
Representation, 90, 168 style, 188, 190; grand style, 127
Schubert, Franz, 21 £, 232 sublime, the, 8, 79, 81—89, 9°, 9 1 >
Schumann, Robert, 200 99, 101, 106, 108, 131, i £ 4 , i^8,
science, 13, 14, 26, 27, 30,42,6^, i£9, 177, 180, 23^-40
8$,114, 142, 148, 160,169, 198, subjectivity, 7, £0—77, 8 1 , 82, 84,
201; scientists, 13 3 8 7 , 8 8 , 9 £ , 1 0 0 , 117, 182-3,
Scott, Walter, 188 228,229,230,232,239
self, 65, 68, 86, 88, 89, 90; self- Surrealism, 236
negation, 62, 67, 107, 116, 117, systematic thinking, 4, 47
1 29, 202; self-overcoming, 68,
70,73,7S, !33> l95 Taine, Hippolyte, 223
semantics, 17 teleology, 146
sexuality, ^6, ^3, 172, 173, 183, theatre, 12, 8 4 , 117, 170, 199, 2 0 0 ,
212 233; theatricality, 226
Shaftesbury, Anthony 3rd Earl, 84 theoretical culture, 114, 149
sickliness, 1^4, 171 Thersites, 71
Siegfried, 117 thing-in-itself, 14, 168
Simmel, Georg, 2 Tieck, Ludwig, 126
 INDEX

t i m e , 9 , 1 0 , 25, 2 8 , 1 3 ^ , 1 3 6 , 1 3 8 , 112,113—21, 126,128,132,133,

139, I 4 3 , I 4 £ , I 4 6 , I£O, I £ I , 134, J 3 7 , i S S , l 6
3 , J72,175,
1^6, 2 2 6 ; t e m p o r a l i t y , 1 3 2 , 1 3 7 , 179,181,183,188,210,217,
141, i^o 220—1, 2 2 2 ,2 2 4 , 2 2 £ , 2 2 6 , 2 2 7 ,
tradition, 6, 120, 1^4, 229, 230, 231 230, 236, 238; 'Letters to Liszt',
tragedy, 8, 80, 8 1 , 84, 86, 88, 89, 116; Art and Revolution, 114;
9 0 - 1 0 9 , i n , 114, 129, i ^ 6 , 164, German Art and German Politics,
i 8 ^ , 186, 187, 200, 238;tragic 114; Opera and Drama, 181;
culture, 11 5 Parsifal, 1 1 6 , 2 0 7 , 2 2 2 ; Ring of the
transcendence, 7, 9, 18, 30, 38, 82, Nibelungen, 1 1 6 ; Tristan und Isolde,
83, 116, 120, 1 2 3 , 1 3 1 , 1 3 2 , 133, i n , 116, 2 23;Wagnerianism,
i4£> H 7 , i £ o , i ^ 3 , 1 £4, i £ 7 , 220
166, 172, 184, 191,210 war, 84
trauma, 240 weakness of will, 120, 188
truth, 6 , 7 , 11, 1 6 - 2 1 , 22, 24, 26, Weber, Ernst, 169
27, 29, 34, 3£, 3 7 , 4 1 , 4 2 , 4 3 , Weber, Max, 2
46, £ i , 8 0 , 9 1 , 9 7 , 130, i £ 7 , 192, Webern, Anton von, 232, 240
i9£, 201, 212, 213, 214; Will, the, 80, 8 7 , 8 9 , 9 ^ , 1 1 ; , 116,
truthfulness, 148, 201 168,174, 178, 180, 194
twelve-tone music, 229, 231 will to power, 4, 11, 3^, 37, 39-44,
4 ^ , 4 8 , ^ 9 , 6 8 , 6 9 , 7 0 , 7 3 , 76,
Ubermensch, 6, 51,54, 62, 63, 69, 77, 120, i£7, 161, 1 8 4 , 1 8 6 , 1 8 8 ,
7 i , 7 2 , 74, 7£, 7 6 , 7 8 , 105, 108, 204,108,209,213,225,227,
109,152,208,232 240; will to truth, 198, 202
ugliness, 162, 183—4, 2 o 4 Winckelmann, Johannes, 74
understanding, 83 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 66—67
universalisation, 20, 21, 24 woman, 192, 199, 200, 206, 212,
214
value, 1, 62, 9 1 , 93, 97, 102, 118, world, the, 19, 21,44,67, 86,90,
171; crisis of value, 2, 32, 33; 101,161,19s
revaluation of values, 34; self- Wundt,Willhelm, 169
devaluation of values, 21, 30, 3 1 ,
43, 44, 13 8, 171; value systems, Xanthippe, 103

Venetian Republic, 108 Zarathustra, 5J, 59, 68, 77, i o £ ,

Vischer, Friedrich, 106 H9, i£3, 2 I 4
Zeno the Eleate, 72
Wagner, Cosima, 71 Zeus, 97
Wagner, Richard, 1 2 , 6 2 , 7 9 , 1 1 1 , Zola, Emile, 162, 202, 2 i £ , 223

286