Nietzsche on Art and Life

Nietzsche was not interested in the nature of art as such, or in providing an aesthetic theory of a traditional sort. For he regarded the significance of art to lie not in l'art pour l'art, but in the role that it might play in enabling us positively to 'revalue' the world and human experience. This volume brings together a number of distinguished figures in contemporary Anglo-American Nietzsche scholarship to examine his views on art and the aesthetic in the context of this wider philosophical project. All of the major themes of Nietzsche's aesthetics are discussed: art and the affirmation of life, the relationship between art and truth, music, tragedy, the nature of aesthetic experience, the role of art in Nietzsche's positive ethics, his critique of romanticism, and his ambivalent attitude towards Richard Wagner. This is a fine collection of subtle and coherent reflections on a major theme of Nietzschean obscurantism. Daniel Binney, Times Higher EducationIntroduction ; 1. Art and Affirmation ; 2. Beauty is False, Truth Ugly: Nietzsche on Art and Life ; 3. Nietzsche on Tragedy and Morality ; 4. Nietzsche's Illusion ; 5. Orchestral Metaphysics: The Birth of Tragedy between Drama, Opera and Philosophy ; 6. Nietzsche on Ethics and Aesthetics ; 7. Zarathustra vs. Faust, or Anti-Romantic Rivalry among Superhumans ; 8. Attuned, Transcendent, and Transfigured: Nietzsche's Appropriation of Schopenhauer's Aesthetic Psychology ; 9. Nietzsche on Distance, Beauty and Truth ; 10. Nietzsche and Music ; 11. Nietzsche on Wagner