No More Learning

In order to draw near to the essential will of Nietzsche's thinking, and remain close to it, our thinking must acquire enormous range, plus the ability to see beyond everything that is fatally contemporary in Nietzsche. His knowledge of art and his struggle on behalf of the possibility of great art are dominated by one thought, which he at one point expresses briefly in the following way: "What alone can regener- ate us? Envisionment of what is perfect" (XIV, 171).
But Nietzsche was also aware of the immense difficulty of such a task. For who is to determine what the perfect is? It could only be those who are themselves perfect and who therefore know what it means. Here yawns the abyss of that circularity in which the whole of human Dasein moves. What health is, only the healthy can say. Yet healthful- ness is measured according to the essential starting point of health. What truth is, only one who is truthful can discern; but the one who is truthful is determined according to the essential starting point of truth.
When Nietzsche associates art in the grand style with classical taste, he does not fall prey to some sort of classicism. Nietzsche is the first-if we discount for the moment Holderlin-to release the "classical" from the misinterpretations of classicism and humanism. His position vis-a- vis the age of Winckelmann and Goethe is expressed clearly enough (WM, 849):
It is an amusing comedy, which we are only now learning to laugh at, which we are now for the first time seeing, that the contemporaries of Herder, Winckelmann, Goethe, and Hegel claimed to have rediscovered the classical ideal . . . and Shakespeare at the same time! And this same generation had in a rather nasty way declared itself independent of the French classical
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school, as if the essential matters could not have been learned there as well as here! But they wanted "nature," "naturalness": oh, stupidity! They be- lieved that the classic was a form of naturalness!
If Nietzsche emphasizes constantly and with conscious exaggeration the physiological aspects of the aesthetic state, it is in reaction to the poverty and lack of antithesis within classicism; he wants to put in relief the original conflict of life and thereby the roots of the necessity for a victory. The "natural" to which Nietzsche's aesthetics refers is not that of classicism: it is not something accessible to and calculable for a human reason which is apparently unruffled and quite sure of itself; it is not something without hazard, comprehensible to itself. On the contrary, Nietzsche means what is bound to nature, which the Greeks of the Golden Age call deinon and deinotaton, the frightful. *
In contrast to classicism, the classical is nothing that can be immedi- ately divined from a particular past period of art. It is instead a basic structure of Dasein, which itself first creates the conditions for any such period and must first open itself and devote itself to those condi- tions. But the fundamental condition is an equally original freedom with regard to the extreme opposites, chaos and law; not the mere subjection of chaos to a form, but that mastery which enables the primal wilderness of chaos and the primordiality of law to advance under the same yoke, invariably bound to one another with equal necessity. Such mastery is unconstrained disposition over that yoke, which is as equally removed from the paralysis of form in what is dogmatic and formalistic as from sheer rapturous tumult. Wherever unconstrained disposition over that yoke is an event's self-imposed law, there is the grand style; wherever the grand style prevails, there art in
the purity of its essential plenitude is actual. A;t may be adjudged only in accordance with what its essential actuality is; only in accordance
*During the summer semester of 1935 Heidegger had elaborated the meaning of deinon, deinotaton in a course entitled "Introduction to Metaphysics. " There he trans- lated the word also as das Unheimliche, the uncanny, and das Cewaltige, the powerful, in his interpretation of a choral song (verses 332-75) from Sophocles' Antigone. See Martin Heidegger, Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik, pp. 112 ff. ; in the English translation pp. 123 ff.
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with its essential actuality should it be conceived as a configuration of beings, that is to say, as will to power.
Whenever Nietzsche deals with art in the essential and definitive sense, he always refers to art in the grand style. Against this backdrop, his innermost antipathy to Wagner comes to light most sharply, above all because his conception of the grand style includes at the same time a fundamental decision, not only about Wagner's music, but about the essence of music as such. [Cf. these remarks from the period of The Dawn, 1880-81: "Music has no resonance for the transports of the spirit" (XI, 336); "The poet allows the drive for knowledge to play; the musician lets it take a rest" (XI, 337). Especially illuminating is a longer sketch from the year 1888 with the title " 'Music'-and the Grand Style" (WM, 842). ]*
Nietzsche's meditation on art is "aesthetics" because it examines the state of creation and enjoyment. It is the "extreme" aesthetics inas- much as that state is pursued to the farthest perimeter of the bodily state as such, to what is farthest removed from the spirit, from the spirituality of what is created, and from its formalistic lawfulness. However, precisely in that far remove of physiological aesthetics a sudden reversal occurs. For this "physiology" is not something to which everything essential in art can be traced back and on the basis of which it can be explained. While the bodily state as such continues to participate as a condition of the creative process, it is at the same time what in the created thing is to be restrained, overcome, and surpassed. The aesthetic state is the one which places itself under the law of the grand style which is taking root in it. The aesthetic state itself is truly what it is only as the grand style. Hence such aesthetics, within
*The brackets appear in Heidegger's text, presumably because the reference is a kind of "footnote"; it is not likely that these remarks were added to the manuscript at the time of publication. The opening lines of The Will to Power number 842 are perhaps most relevant here: "The greatness of an artist is not measured by the 'beautiful feelings' he arouses: that is what the little ladies like to believe. Rather, it is measured by gradients of approximation to the grand style, by the extent to which the artist is capable of the grand style. That style has in common with great passion that it disdains to please; that it forgets about persuading; that it commands; that it wills. . . . To become master of the chaos that one is; to compel one's chaos to become form: logical, simple, unequivocal; to become mathematics, Jaw-that is the grand ambition here. -"
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itself, is led beyond itself. The artistic states are those which place themselves under the supreme command of measure and law, taking themselves beyond themselves in their will to advance. Such states are what they essentially are when, willing out beyond themselves, they are more than they are, and when they assert themselves in such mastery.
The artistic states are-and that means art is-nothing else than will to power. Now we understand Nietzsche's principal declaration con- cerning art as the great "stimulant of life. " "Stimulant" means what conducts one into the sphere of command of the grand style.
But now we also see more clearly in what sense Nietzsche's statement about art as the great stimulant of life represents a reversal of Schopen- hauer's statement which defines art as a "sedative of life. " The reversal does not consist merely in the fact that "sedative" is replaced by "stimulant," that the calming agent is exchanged for an excitant. The reversal is a transformation of the essential definition of art. Such thinking about art is philosophical thought, setting the standards through which historical confrontation comes to be, prefiguring what is to come. This is something to consider, if we wish to decide in what sense Nietzsche's question concerning art can still be aesthetics, and to what extent it in any case must be such. What Nietzsche says at first with respect to music and in regard to Wagner applies to art as a whole: " . . . we no longer know how to ground the concepts 'model,' 'mastery,' 'perfection'-in the realm of values we grope blindly with the instincts of old love and admiration; we nearly believe that 'what is good is what
pleases us' " (WM, 838).
In opposition to the "complete dissolution of style" in Wagner, rules
and standards, and above all the grounding of such, are here demanded clearly and unequivocally; they are identified as what comes first and is essential, beyond all sheer technique and mere invention and en- hancement of "means of expression. " "What does all expansion of the means of expression matter when that which expresses, namely art itself, has lost the law that governs it! " Art is not only subject to rules, must not only obey laws, but is in itself legislation. Only as legislation is it truly art. What is inexhaustible, what is to be created, is the law. Art that dissolves style in sheer ebullition of feelings misses the mark,
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in that its discovery of law is essentially disturbed; such discovery can become actual in art only when the law drapes itself in freedom of form, in order in that way to come openly into play.
Nietzsche's aesthetic inquiry explodes its own position when it ad- vances to its own most far-flung border. But aesthetics is by no means overcome. Such overcoming requires a still more original metamor- phosis of our Dasein and our knowledge, which is something that Nietzsche only indirectly prepares by means of the whole of his meta- physical thought. Our sole concern is to know the basic position of Nietzsche's thought. At first glance, Nietzsche's thinking concerning art is aesthetic; according to its innermost will, it is metaphysical, which means it is a definition of the Being of beings. The historical fact that every true aesthetics-for example, the Kantian-explodes itself is an unmistakable sign that, although the aesthetic inquiry into art does not come about by accident, it is not what is essential.
For Nietzsche art is the essential way in which beings are made to be beings. Because what matters is the creative, legislative, form- grounding aspect of art, we can aim at the essential definition of art by asking what the creative aspect of art at any given time is. The question is not intended as a way of determining the psychological motivations that propel artistic creativity in any given case; it is meant to decide whether, when, and in what way the basic conditions of art in the grand style are there; and whether, when, and in what way they are not. Neither is this question in Nietzsche's view one for art history in the usual sense: it is for art history in the essential sense, as a question that participates in the formation of the future history of Dasein.
The question as to what has become creative in art, and what wants to become creative in it, leads directly to a number of other questions. What is It in the stimulant that properly stimulates? What possibilities are present here? How on the basis of such possibilities is the configura- tion of art determined? How is art the awakening of beings as beings? To what extent is it will to power?
How and where does Nietzsche think about the question concerning what is properly creative in art? He does it in those reflections that try to grasp in a more original way the distinction and opposition between
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the classical and romantic, in numbers 843 to 850 of The Will to Power. Here we cannot go into the history of the distinction and its role in art criticism, where it both clarifies and confuses. We can only pursue the matters of how Nietzsche by way of an original definition of the distinction delineates more sharply the essence of art in the grand style, and how he provides enhanced clarity for his statement that art is the stimulant of life. Of course, it is precisely these fragments that show how very much all this remains a project for the future. Here also, when clarifying the distinction between the classical and the romantic, Nietzsche has in view as his example, not the period of art around 1800, but the art of Wagner and of Greek tragedy. He thinks always on the basis of the question of the "collective artwork. " That is the question of the hierarchy of the arts, the question of the form of the essential art. The terms "romantic" and "classic" are always only foreground and by way of allusion.
"A romantic is an artist whose great dissatisfaction with himself makes him creative-one who averts his glance from himself and his fellows, and looks back" (WM, 844). Here what is properly creative is discontent, the search for something altogether different; it is desire and hunger. With that, its opposite is already foreshadowed. The contrary possibility is that the creative is not a lack but plenitude, not a search but full possession, not a craving but a dispensing, not hunger but superabundance. Creation out of discontent takes "action" only in revulsion toward and withdrawal from something else. It is not active but always reactive, utterly distinct from what flows purely out of itself and its own fullness. With a preliminary glance cast toward these two basic possibilities of what is and has become creative in art, Nietzsche poses the question of "whether or not behind the antithesis of the classical and romantic that of the active and reactive lies concealed" (WM, 847). Insight into this further and more originally conceived opposition implies, however, that the classical cannot be equated with the active. For the distinction of active and reactive intersects with another, which distinguishes whether "the cause of creativity is longing after immobility, eternity, 'Being,' or longing after destruction, change, Becoming" (WM, 846). The latter distinction thinks the dif-
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ference between Being and Becoming, a juxtaposition that has re- mained dominant from the early period of Occidental thought, through its entire history, up to and including Nietzsche.
But such differentiation of longing after Being and longing after Becoming in the creative principle is still ambiguous. The ambiguity can be transformed into a clear distinction by an examination of the distinction between the active and the reactive. The latter "schema" is to be given preference over the former one and must be posited as the basic schema for the determination of the possibilities of the crea- tive principle in art. In The Will to Power, number 846, Nietzsche exhibits the twofold significance of longing after Being and longing after Becoming with the help of the schema of the active and the reactive. If we use the term "schema" here, it is not to suggest an extrinsically applied framework for a mere descriptive classification and division of types. "Schema" means the guideline derived from the essence of the matter, previewing the way the decision will take.
Longing after Becoming, alteration, and therefore destruction too, can be-but need not necessarily be-"an expression of superabundant strength, pregnant with the future. " Such is Dionysian art. But longing after change and Becoming can also spring from the dissatisfaction of those who hate everything that exists simply because it exists and stands. Operative here is the counterwill typical of the superfluous, the underprivileged, the disadvantaged, for whom every existent superior- ity constitutes in its very superiority an objection to its right to exist.
Correspondingly, the longing after Being, the will to eternalize, may derive from the possession of plenitude, from thankfulness for what is; or the perduring and binding may be erected as law and compulsion by the tyranny of a willing that wants to be rid of its inmost suffering. It therefore imposes these qualities on all things, in that way taking its revenge on them. Of such kind is the art of Richard Wagner, the art of "romantic pessimism. " On the contrary, wherever the untamed and overflowing are ushered into the order of self-created law, there is classical art. But the latter cannot without further ado be conceived as the active: the purely Dionysian is also active. Just as little is the classical merely longing for Being and duration. Of such kind is roman-
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tic pessimism also. The classical is a longing for Being that flows from the fullness of gift-giving and yes-saying. With that, once more, an indication of the grand style is given.
Indeed it first seems as though the "classical style" and the "grand style" simply coincide with one another. Nevertheless, we would be thinking too cursorily were we to explain the state of affairs in this customary way. True, the immediate sense of Nietzsche's statements seems to speak for such an equation. By proceeding in that way, how- ever, we do not heed the decisive thought. Precisely because the grand style is a bountiful and affirmative willing toward Being, its essence reveals itself only when a decision is made, indeed by means of the grand style itself, about the meaning of the Being of beings. Only on that basis is the yoke defined by which the antitheses are teamed and harnessed. But the essence of the grand style is initially given in the foreground description of the classical. Nietzsche never expresses him- self about it in another way. For every great thinker always thinks one
jump more originally than he directly speaks. Our interpretation must therefore try to say what is unsaid by him.
Therefore, we can demarcate the essence of the grand style only with explicit reservations. We may formulate it in the following way: the grand style prevails wherever abundance restrains itself in simplicity. But in a certain sense that is also true of the rigorous style. And even if we clarify the greatness of the grand style by saying it is that superi- ority which compels everything strong to be teamed with its strongest antithesis under one yoke, that too applies also to the classical type. Nietzsche himself says so (WM, 848): "In order to be the classical type, one must possess all strong, apparently contradictory gifts and desires: but in such a way that they go together under one yoke. " And again (WM, 845): "Idealization of the magnificent blasphemer (the sense for his greatness) is Creek; the humiliation, defamation, vilifica- tion of the sinner is Judea-Christian. "
But whatever keeps its antithesis merely beneath it or even outside of it, as something to be battled and negated, cannot be great in the sense of the grand style, because it remains dependent upon, and lets itself be led by, what it repudiates. It remains reactive. On the contrary,
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in the grand style nascent law grows out of original action, which is itself the yoke. (Incidentally, we should note that the image of the "yoke" stems from the Greek mode of thought and speech. ) The grand style is the active will to Being, which takes up Becoming into itself. *
But whatever is said about the classical type is said with the intention of making the grand style visible by means of what is most akin to it. Hence only what assimilates its sharpest antithesis, and not what merely holds that antithesis down and suppresses it, is truly great; such trans- formation does not cause the antithesis to disappear, however, but to come to its essential unfolding. We recall what Nietzsche says about the "grandiose initiative" of German Idealism, which tries to think of evil as proper to the essence of the Absolute. Nevertheless, Nietzsche would not consider Hegel's philosophy to be a philosophy in the grand style. It marks the end of the classical style.
But quite beyond the effort to establish a "definition" of the grand style, we must investigate the more essential matter of the way in which Nietzsche tries to determine what is creative in art. This we can do with the aid of a classification of artistic styles within the framework of the distinctions active-reactive and Being-Becoming. In that regard some basic determinations of Being manifest themselves: the active and reac- tive are conjoined in the essence of motion (kinesis, metabole). With a view to these determinations, the Greek definitions of dynamis and energeia take shape as determinations of Being in the sense of presenc- ing. If the essence of the grand style is determined by these ultimate and primal metaphysical contexts, then they must rise to meet us wherever Nietzsche tries to interpret and grasp the Being of beings.
Nietzsche interprets the Being of beings as will to power. Art he considers the supreme configuration of will to power. The proper
*Der grosse Stil ist der aktive Wille zum Sein, so zwar, dass dieser das Werden in sich aufhebt. The Hegelian formulation das Werden in sich aufheben at first seems to mean that the will to Being cancels and transcends Becoming. But the will to Being would have to be a kind of surpassing that preserves Becoming-else it would be, in Hegel's words, the lifeless transcendence of an empty universal, in Nietzsche's, the subterfuge of clever but weary men who must avenge themselves on Time. In the fourth and final section of his Introduction to Metaphysics Heidegger suggests how Sein and Werden may be, must be, thought together as physis.
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essence of art is exemplified in the grand style. But the latter, because of its own essential unity, points to an original, concrescive unity of the active and reactive, of Being and Becoming. At the same time we must consider what the precedence of the distinction active-reactive, which is expressly emphasized over the distinction of Being and Becoming, suggests about Nietzsche's metaphysics. For formally one could sub- sume the distinction active-reactive under one member of the subordi- nate distinction of Being and Becoming-i. e. , under Becoming. The articulation of the active, and of Being and Becoming, into an original unity proper to the grand style must therefore be carried out in will to power, if will to power is thought metaphysically. But will to power is as eternal recurrence. In the latter Nietzsche wants his thinking to fuse Being and Becoming, action and reaction, in an original unity. With that we are granted a vista onto the metaphysical horizon upon which we are to think what Nietzsche calls the grand style and art in general.
However, we would like to clear the path to the metaphysical realm first of all by passing through the essence of art. It may now become clearer why our inquiry into Nietzsche's basic metaphysical position takes art as its point of departure, and that our starting point is by no means arbitrary. The grand style is the highest feeling of power. Ro- mantic art, springing from dissatisfaction and deficiency, is a wanting- to-be-away-from-oneself. But according to its proper essence, willing is to-want-oneself. Of course, "oneself" is never meant as what is at hand, existing just as it is; "oneself" means what first of all wants to become what it is. Willing proper does not go away from itself, but goes way beyond itself; in such surpassing itself the will captures the one who wills, absorbing and transforming him into and along with itself. Want- ing-to-be-away-from-oneself is therefore basically a not-willing. In con- trast, wherever superabundance and plenitude, that is, the revelation of essence which unfolds of itself, bring themselves under the law of the simple, willing wills itself in its essence, and is will. Such will is will to power. For power is not compulsion or violence. Genuine power does not yet prevail where it must simply hold its position in response to the threat of something that has not yet been neutralized. Power prevails only where the simplicity of calm dominates, by which the antithetical
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is preserved, i. e. , transfigured, in the unity of a yoke that sustains the tension of a bow.
Will to power is properly there where power no longer needs the accoutrements of battle, in the sense of being merely reactive; its superiority binds all things, in that the will releases all things to their essence and their own bounds. When we are able to survey what Nietzsche thinks and demands with regard to the grand style, only then have we arrived at the peak of his "aesthetics," which at that point is no longer aesthetics at all. Now for the first time we can glance back over our own way and try to grasp what up to now has eluded us. Our path toward an understanding of Nietzsche's thought on art advanced as follows.
In order to attain that field of vision in which Nietzsche's inquiry moves, five statements (in addition to his principal statement) on art were listed and discussed along general lines, but not properly ground- ed. For the grounding can unfold only by way of a return back to the essence of art. But the essence of art is elaborated and determined in Nietzsche's "aesthetics. " We tried to portray that aesthetics by bring- ing together traditional views into a new unity.
The unifying center was provided by what Nietzsche calls the grand style. So long as we do not make an effort to establish internal order in Nietzsche's doctrine of art, in spite of the matter's fragmentary character, his utterances remain a tangle of accidental insights into and arbitrary observations about art and the beautiful. For that reason the path must always be held clearly in view.
It advances from rapture, as the basic aesthetic mood, to beauty, as attuning; from beauty, as the standard-giver, back to what takes its measure from beauty, to creation and reception; from these, in turn, over to that in which and as which the attuning is portrayed, to form. Finally, we tried to grasp the unity of the reciprocal relation of raptu. re and beauty, of creation, reception, and form, as the grand style. In the grand style the essence of art becomes actual.
18. Grounding the Five Statements on Art
How, and to what extent, can we now ground the five statements on art listed earlier?
The first statement says: art is for us the most familiar and perspicu- ous configuration of will to power. To be sure, we may view the statement as grounded only when we are familiar with other forms and stages of will to power, that is to say, only when we have possibilities for comparison. But even now elucidation of the statement is possible, merely on the basis of the clarified essence of art. Art is the configura- tion most familiar to us, since art is grasped aesthetically as a state; the state in which it comes to presence and from which it springs is a state proper to man, and hence to ourselves. Art belongs to a realm where we find ourselves-we are the very realm. Art does not belong to regions which we ourselves are not, and which therefore remain foreign to us, regions such as nature. But art, as a human production, does not belong simply in a general way to what is well known to us; art is the most familiar. The grounds for that lie in Nietzsche's conception of the kind of givenness of that in which, from the aesthetic point of view, art is actual. It is actual in the rapture of embodying life. What does Nietzsche say about the givenness of life? "Belief in the body is more fundamental than belief in the soul" (WM, 491). And: "Essential: to
proceed from the body and use it as the guideline. It is the much richer phenomenon, which admits of more precise observation. Belief in the body is better established than belief in the spirit" (WM, 532).
According to these remarks the body and the physiological are also
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more familiar; being proper to man, they are what is most familiar to him. But inasmuch as art is grounded in the aesthetic state, which must be grasped physiologically, art is the most familiar configuration of will to power, and at the same time the most perspicuous. The aesthetic state is a doing and perceiving which we ourselves execute. W e do not dwell alongside the event as spectators; we ourselves remain within the state. Our Dasein receives from it a luminous relation to beings, the sight in which beings are visible to us. The aesthetic state is the envisionment through which we constantly see, so that everything here is discernible to us. Art is the most visionary configuration of will to power. *
The second statement says: art must be grasped in terms of the artist. It has been shown that Nietzsche conceives of art in terms of the creative behavior of the artist; why such a conception should be neces- sary has not been shown. The grounding of the demand expressed in the statement is so odd that it does not seem to be a serious grounding at all. At the outset, art is posited as a configuration of will to power. But will to power, as self-assertion, is a constant creating. So art is interrogated as to that in it which is creative, superabundance or priva- tion. But creation within art actually occurs in the productive activity of the artist. Thus, initiating the inquiry with the activity of the artist most likely guarantees access to creation in general and thereby to will to power. The statement follows from the basic premise concerning art as a configuration of will to power.
The listing and the grounding of this statement do not mean to suggest that Nietzsche holds up prior aesthetics in front of him, sees that it is inadequate, and notices too that it usually, though not exclu- sively, takes the man who enjoys works of art as its point of departure. With these facts staring him in the face it occurs to him to try another. way for once, the way of the creators. Rather, the first and leading basic experience of art itself remains the experience that it has a significance
*"Visionary" is to translate durchsichtig, otherwise rendered as "lucid" or "perspicu- ous. " The entire paragraph expands upon Nietzsche's statement concerning art as the most perspicuous form of will to power by interpreting the vision, die Sicht, and envisionment, das Sichtige, that art opens up for beings.
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for the grounding of history, and that its essence consists in such significance. Thus the creator, the artist, must be fixed in view. Nietzsche expresses the historical essence of art early on in the follow- ing words: "Culture can proceed only on the basis of the centralizing significance of an art or an artwork" (X, 188).
The third statement says: art is the basic occurrence within beings as a whole. On the basis of what has gone before, this statement is the least transparent and least grounded of all, that is, within and on the basis of Nietzsche's metaphysics. Whether, and to what extent, beings are most in being in art can be decided only when we have answered two questions. First, in what does the beingness of beings consist? What is the being itself in truth? Second, to what extent can art, among beings, be more in being than the others?
The second question is not altogether foreign to us, since in the fifth statement something is asserted of art which ascribes to it a peculiar precedence. The fifth statement says: art is worth more than truth. "Truth" here means the true, in the sense of true beings; more precise- ly, beings that may be considered true being, being-in-itself. Since Plato, being-in-itself has been taken to be the supersensuous, which is removed and rescued from the transiency of the sensuous. In Nietz- sche's view the value of a thing is measured by what it contributes to the enhancement of the actuality of beings. That art is of more value than truth means that art, as "sensuous," is more in being than the supersensuous. Granted that supersensuous being served heretofore as what is highest, if art is more in being, then it proves to be the being most in being, the basic occurrence within beings as a whole.
Yet what does "Being" mean, if the sensuous can be said to be more in being? What does "sensuous" mean here? What does it have to do with "truth"? How can it be even higher in value than truth? What does "truth" mean here? How does Nietzsche define its essence? At present all this is obscure. We do not see any way in which the fifth statement might be sufficiently grounded; we do not see how the statement can be grounded.
Such questionableness radiates over all the other statements, above all, the third, which obviously can be decided and grounded only when
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the fifth statement has been grounded. But the fifth statement must be presupposed if we are to understand the fourth as well, according to which art is the countermovement to nihilism. For nihilism, i. e. , Platonism, posits the supersensuous as true being, on the basis of which all remaining beings are demoted to the level of proper nonbeing, demoted, denigrated, and declared nugatory. Thus everything hangs on the explanation and grounding of the fifth statement: art is worth more than truth. What is truth? In what does its essence consist?
That question is always already included in the guiding question and the grounding question of philosophy. It runs ahead of them and yet is most intrinsic to these very questions. It is the primal question of philosophy.
19. The Raging Discordance between Truth and Art
That the question concerning art leads us directly to the one that is preliminary to all questions already suggests that in a distinctive sense it conceals in itself essential relations to the grounding and guiding questions of philosophy. Hence our previous clarification of the essence of art will also be brought to a fitting conclusion only in terms of the question of truth.
In order to discern the connection between art and truth right from the outset, the question concerning the essence of truth and the way in which Nietzsche poses and answers the question should be prepared. Such preparation is to occur through a discussion of what it is in the essence of art that calls forth the question concerning truth. To that end we should remember once more Nietzsche's words on the connec- tion between art and truth. He jotted them down in the year 1888 on the occasion of a meditation on his first book: "Very early in my life I took the question of the relation of art to truth seriously: and even now I stand in holy dread in the face of this discordance" (XIV, 368).
The relation between art and truth is a discordance that arouses dread. * To what extent? How, and in what respects, does art come into relation to truth? In what sense is the relation for Nietzsche a discordance? In order to see to what extent art as such comes into
*Ein Entsetzen erregender Zwiespalt. In the title of this section, Der erregende Zwiespalt zwischen Wahrheit und Kunst, the phrase erregende Zwiespalt is actually a condensation of the statement made here. That is to say, discordance between art and truth "rages" insofar as it arouses dread.
The Raging Discordance 143.
relation to truth, we must say more clearly than we have before what Nietzsche understands by "truth. " In our previous discussions we gave some hints in this direction. But we have not yet advanced as far as a conceptual definition of Nietzsche's notion of truth. For that we require a preparatory reflection.
A meditation on fundamentals concerning the realm in which we are moving becomes necessary whenever we speak the word "truth" in a way that is not altogether vacuous. For without insight into these contexts we lack all the prerequisites for understanding the point where all the bypaths of Nietzsche's metaphysical thought clearly converge. It is one thing if Nietzsche himself, under the burdens that oppressed him, did not achieve sufficient perspicuity here; it is another if we who follow him renounce the task of penetrating meditation.
Every time we try to achieve clarity with regard to such basic words as truth, beauty, Being, art, knowledge, history, and freedom, we must heed two things.
First, that a clarification is necessary here has its grounds in the concealment of the essence of what is named in such words. Such clarification becomes indispensable from the moment we experience the fact that human Dasein, insofar as it is-insofar as it is itself-is steered directly toward whatever is named in such basic words and is inextricably caught up in relations with them. That becomes manifest whenever human Dasein becomes historical, and that means whenever it comes to confront beings as such, in order to adopt a stance in their midst and to ground the site of that stance definitively. Depending on what knowledge retains essential proximity to what is named in such basic words, or lapses into distance from it, the content of the name, the realm of the word, and the compelling force of the naming power vary.
When we consider this state of affairs in relation to the word "truth" in an extrinsic and desultory manner, we are accustomed to saying that the word has sundry meanings which are not sharply distinguished from one another, meanings that belong together on the basis of a common ground which we are vaguely aware of but which we do not clearly perceive. The most extrinsic form in which we encounter the
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ambiguity of the word is the "lexical. " In the dictionary the meanings are enumerated and exhibited for selection. The life of actual language consists in multiplicity of meaning. To relegate the animated, vigorous word to the immobility of a univocal, mechanically programmed se- quence of sighs would mean the death of language and the petrifaction and devastation of Dasein.
Why speak of such commonplaces here? Because the "lexical" repre- sentation of the multiplicity of meanings for such a basic word easily causes us to overlook the fact that here all the meanings and the differences among them are historical and therefore necessary. Accord- ingly, it can never be left to caprice, and can never be inconsequential, which of the word meanings we choose in our attempt to grasp the essence named-and thus already illuminated-in the basic word and to classify it as a key word for a given discipline and area of inquiry. Every attempt of this kind is a historical decision. The leading meaning of such a basic word, which speaks to us more or less clearly, is nothing evident, although our being accustomed to it seems to suggest that. Basic words are historical. That does not mean simply that they have various meanings for various ages which, because they are past, we can survey historically; it means that they ground history now and in the times to come in accordance with the interpretation of them that comes to prevail. The historicity of the basic words, understood in this fash- ion, is one of the things that must be heeded in thinking through those basic words.
Second, we must pay attention to the way such basic words vary in meaning. Here there are principal orbits or routes; but within them meanings may oscillate. Such oscillation is not mere laxity in linguistic usage. It is the breath of history. When Goethe or Hegel says the word "education," and when an educated man of the 1890s says it, not only is the formal content of the utterance different, but the kind of world encapsulated in the saying is different, though not unrelated. When Goethe says "nature," and when Holderlin speaks the same word, different worlds reign. Were language no more than a sequence of communicative signs, then it would remain something just as arbitrary and indifferent as the mere choice and application of such signs.
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But because in the very foundations of our being language as reso- nant signification roots us to our earth and transports and ties us to our world, meditation on language and its historical dominion is always the action that gives shape to Dasein itself. The will to originality, rigor, and measure in words is therefore no mere aesthetic pleasantry; it is the work that goes on in the essential nucleus of our Dasein, which is historical existence.
But in what sense are there what we have called principal orbits or routes for the historical expansion of meanings among the basic words? Our example will be the word "truth. " Without insight into these connections, the peculiarity, difficulty, and genuine excitement apropos of the question of truth remain closed to us; so does the possibility of understanding Nietzsche's deepest need with respect to the question of the relation of art and truth.
The assertion "Among Goethe's accomplishments in the field of science the theory of colors also belongs" is true. With the statement we have at our disposal something that is true. We are, as we say, in possession of "a truth. " The assertion 2 X 2 = 4 is true. With this statement we have another "truth. " Thus there are many truths of many kinds: things we determine in our everyday existence, truths of natural science, truths of the historical sciences. To what extent are these truths what their name says they are? To the extent that they satisfy generally and in advance whatever is proper to a "truth. " Such is what makes a true assertion true. Just as we call the essence of the
just "justice," the essence of the cowardly "cowardice," and the essence of the beautiful "beauty," so must we call the essence of the true "truth. " But truth, conceived as the essence of the true, is solely one. For the essence of something is that in which everything of that kind-in our case, everything true-dovetails. If truth suggests the essence of the true, then truth is but one: it becomes impossible to talk about "truths. "
Thus we already have two meanings for the word "truth," basically different but related to one another. If the word "truth" is meant in the sense which admits of no multiplicity, it names the essence of the true. On the contrary, if we take the word in the sense where a plurality
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is meant, then the word "truth" means not the essence of the true but any given truth as such. The essence of a matter can be conceived principally or exclusively as what may be attributed to anything that satisfies the essence of the matter. If one restricts himself to this plausible conception of essence, which, however, is neither the sole nor the original conception, as the one which is valid for many, the follow- ing may be readily deduced concerning the essential word "truth. " Because being true may be asserted of every true statement as such, an abbreviated form of thought and speech can also call what is true itself a "truth. " But what is meant here is "something true. " Something true now is called simply "truth. " The name "truth" is in an essential sense ambiguous. Truth means the one essence and also the many which satisfy the essence. Language itself has a peculiar predilection for that sort of ambiguity. We therefore encounter it early on and constantly. The inner grounds for the ambiguity are these: inasmuch as we speak, and that means comport ourselves to beings through speech, speaking on the basis of beings and with reference back to them, we mean for the most part beings themselves. The being in question is always this or that individual and specific being. At the same time it is a being as such, that is, it is of such a genus and species, such an essence. This house as such is of the essence and species "house. "
When we mean something true, we of course understand the essence of truth along with it. We must understand the latter if, whenever we intend something true, we are to know what we have in front of us. Although the essence itself is not expressly and especially named, but always only previewed and implied, the word "truth," which names the essence, is nevertheless used for true things themselves. The name for the essence glides unobtrusively into our naming such things that participate in that essence. Such slippage is aided and abetted by the fact that for the most part we let ourselves be determined by beings themselves and not by their essence as such.
The manner in which we examine the basic words therefore moves along two principal routes: the route of the essence, and that which veers away from the essence and yet is related back to it. But an interpretation which is as old as our traditional Western logic and
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grammar makes this apparently simple state of affairs even simpler and therefore more ordinary. It is said that the essence-here the essence of the true, which makes everything true be what it is-because it is valid for many true things, is the generally and universally valid. The truth of the essence consists in nothing else than such universal validity. Thus truth, as the essence of the true, is the universal. However, the "truth" which is one of a plurality, "truths," the individual truth, true propositions, are "cases" that fall under the universal. Nothing is clear- er than that. But there are various kinds of clarity and transparency, among them a kind that thrives on the fact that what seems to be lucid is really vacuous, that the least possible amount of thought goes into it, the danger of obscurity being thwarted in that way. But so it is when one designates the essence of a thing as the universal concept. That in certain realms-not all-the essence of something holds for many particular items (manifold validity} is a consequence of the essence, but it does not hit upon its essentiality.
The equating of essence with the character of the universal, even as an essential conclusion which has but conditional validity, would of itself not have been so fatal had it not for centuries barred the way to a decisive question. The essence of the true holds for the particular assertions and propositions which, as individuals, differ greatly from one another according to content and structure. The true is in each case something various, but the essence, as the universal which is valid for many, is one. But universal validity, which is valid for many things that belong together, is now made what is universally valid without qualifi- cation. "Universally valid" now means not only valid for many particu- lar items that belong together, but also what is always and everywhere valid in itself, immutable and eternal, transcending time.
The result is the proposition of the immutability of essences, includ- ing the essence of truth. The proposition is logically correct but meta-· physically untrue. Viewed in terms of the particular "cases" of the many true statements, the essence of the true is that in which the many dovetail. The essence in which the many dovetail must be one and the same thing for them. But from that it by no means follows that the essence in itself cannot be changeable. For, supposing that the essence
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of truth did change, that which changes could always still be a "one" which holds for "many," the transformation not disturbing that rela- tionship. But what is preserved in the metamorphosis is what is un- changeable in the essence, which essentially unfolds in its very transformation. The essentiality of essence, its inexhaustibility, is there- by affirmed, and also its genuine selfhood and selfsameness. The latter stands in sharp contrast to the vapid selfsameness of the monotonous, which is the only way the unity of essence can be thought when it is taken merely as the universal. If one stands by the conception of the selfsameness of the essence of truth which is derived from traditional logic, he will immediately (and from that point of view quite correctly) say: "The notion of a change of essence leads to relativism; there is only one truth and it is the same for everybody; every relativism is disruptive of the general order and leads to sheer caprice and anarchy. " But the right to such an objection to the essential transformation of truth stands and falls with the appropriateness of the representation of the "one" and the "same" therein presupposed, which is called the abso- lute, and with the right to define the essentiality of essence as manifold validity. The objection that essential transformation leads to relativism is possible only on the basis of deception concerning the essence of the absolute and the essentiality of essence.
That digression must suffice for our present effort to unfold what Nietzsche in his discussions of the relation between art and truth understands by "truth. " According to what we have shown, we must first ask upon which route of meaning the word "truth" moves for Nietzsche in the context of his discussions of the relationship between art and truth. The answer is that it moves along the route which deviates from the essential route. That. means that in the fundamental question which arouses dread Nietzsche nevertheless does not arrive at the proper question of truth, in the sense of a discussion of the essence of the true. That essence is presupposed as evident. For Nietzsche truth is not the essence of the true but the true itself, which satisfies the essence of truth. It is of decisive importance to know that Nietzsche does not pose the question of truth proper, the question concerning the essence of the true and the truth of essence, and with it the question
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of the ineluctable possibility of its essential transformation. Nor does he ever stake out the domain of the question.