Nietzsche on Art and Life

Book excerpt: 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.