Now all we must do is bring into view the extreme counterposition
Nietzsche's Overturning of Platonism 209
to Plato and Platonism and then ascertain how Nietzsche successfully adopts a stance within it.
Nietzsche's Overturning of Platonism 209
to Plato and Platonism and then ascertain how Nietzsche successfully adopts a stance within it.
Heidegger - Nietzsche - v1-2
" It is rather what is most luminous and what thereby most draws us on and liberates us.
From what we have presented, the essence of the beautiful has become clear. It is what makes possible the recovery and preservation of the view upon Being, which devolves from the most immediate fleeting appearances and which can easily vanish in oblivion. Our capac- ity to understand, phronesis, although it remains related to what is essential, of itself has no corresponding eidolon, no realm of appear- ances which brings what it has to grant us into immediate proximity and yet at the same time elevates us toward what is properly to be understood.
The third question, inquiring about the relationship between beauty and truth, now answers itself. To be sure, up to now truth has not been treated explicitly. Nevertheless, in order to achieve clarity concerning the relation of beauty and truth, it suffices if we think back to the major introductory statement and read it in the way Plato himself first In- troduces it. The major statement says that the view upon Being is proper to the essence of man, that by force of it man can comport himself to beings and to what he encounters as merely apparent things. At the place where that thought is first introduced (249 b), Plato says,
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not that the basic condition for the form of man is that he tetheatai ta onta, that he "has beings as such in view ahead of time," but ou gar he ge mepote idousa ten aletheian eis tode hexei to schema, that "the soul would never have assumed this form if it had not earlier viewed the unconcealment of beings, i. e. , beings in their unconcealment. "
The view upon Being opens up what is concealed, making it uncon- cealed; it is the basic relation to the true. That which truth essentially brings about, the unveiling of Being, that and nothing else is what beauty brings about. It does so, scintillating in fleeting appearances, by liberating us to the Being that radiates in such appearances, which is to say, to the openedness of Being, to truth. Truth and beauty are in essence related to the selfsame, to Being; they belong together in one, the one thing that is decisive: to open Being and to keep it open.
Yet in that very medium where they belong together, they must diverge for man, they must separate from one another. For the opened- ness of Being, truth, can only be nonsensuous illumination, since for Plato Being is nonsensuous. Because Being opens itself only to the view upon Being, and because the latter must always be snatched from oblivion of Being, and because for that reason it needs the most direct radiance of fleeting appearances, the opening up of Being must occur at that site where, estimated in terms of truth, the me on (eidolon), i. e. , nonbeing, occurs. But that is the site of beauty.
When we consider very carefully that art, by bringing forth the beautiful, resides in the sensuous, and that it is therefore far removed from truth, it then becomes clear why truth and beauty, their belong- ing together in one notwithstanding, still must be two, must separate from one another. But the severance, discordance in the broad sense, is not in Plato's view one which arouses dread; it is a felicitous one. The beautiful elevates us beyond the sensuous and bears us back into the true. Accord prevails in the severance, because the beautiful, as radiant and sensuous, has in advance sheltered its essence in the truth of Being as supersensuous.
Viewed more discerningly, a discordance in the strict sense lies here as well. But it belongs to the essence of Platonism that it efface that
Plato's Phaedrus 199
discordance by positing Being in such a way that it can do so without the effacement becoming visible as such. But when Platonism is over- turned everything that characterizes it must also be overturned; what- ever it can cloak and conceal, whatever it can pronounce felicitous, on the contrary, must out, and must arouse dread.
24. Nietzsche's Overturning of Platonism
We conducted an examination of the relation of truth and beauty in Plato in order to sharpen our view of things. For we are attempting to locate the place and context in Nietzsche's conception of art and truth where the severance of the two must occur, and in such a way that it is experienced as a discordance that arouses dread.
Both beauty and truth are related to Being, indeed by way of unveil- ing the Being of beings. Truth is the immediate way in which Being is revealed in the thought of philosophy; it does not enter into the sensuous, but from the outset is averted from it. Juxtaposed to it is beauty, penetrating the sensuous and then moving beyond it, liberating in the direction of Being. If beauty and truth in Nietzsche's view enter into discordance, they must previously belong together in one. That one can only be Being and the relation to Being.
Nietzsche defines the basic character of beings, hence Being, as will to power. Accordingly, an original conjunction of beauty and truth must result from the essence of will to power, a conjunction which simultaneously must become a discordance. When we try to discern and grasp the discordance we cast a glance toward the unified essence of will to power. Nietzsche's philosophy, according to his own testi- mony, is inverted Platonism. We ask: in what sense does the relation of beauty and truth which is peculiar to Platonism become a different sort of relation through the overturning?
The question can easily be answered by a simple recalculation, if "overturning" Platonism may be equated with the procedure of stand- ing all of Plato's statements on their heads, as it were. To be sure, Nietzsche himself often expresses the state of affairs in that way, not
Nietzsche's Overturning of Platonism 201
only in order to make clear what he means in a rough and ready fashion, but also because he himself often thinks that way, although he is aiming at something else.
Only late in his life, shortly before the cessation of his labors in thinking, does the full scope required by such an inversion of Platonism become clear to him. That clarity waxes as Nietzsche grasps the necessi- ty of the overturning, which is demanded by the task of overcoming nihilism. For that reason, when we elucidate the overturning of Plato- nism we must take the structure of Platonism as our point of departure. For Plato the supersensuous is the true world. It stands over all, as what sets the standard. The sensuous lies below, as the world of appearances. What stands over all is alone and from the start what sets the standard; it is therefore what is desired. After the inversion-that is easy to calculate in a formal way-the sensuous, the world of appearances, stands above; the supersensuous, the true world, lies below. With a glance back to what we have already presented, however, we must keep a firm hold on the realization that the very talk of a "true world" and "world of appearances" no longer speaks the language of Plato.
But what does that mean-the sensuous stands above all? It means that it is the true, it is genuine being. If we take the inversion strictly in this sense, then the vacant niches of the "above and below" are preserved, suffering only a change in occupancy, as it were. But as long as the "above and below" define the formal structure of Platonism, Platonism in its essence perdures. The inversion does not achieve what it must, as an overcoming of nihilism, namely, an overcoming of Plato- nism in its very foundations. Such overcoming succeeds only when the "above" in general is set aside as such, when the former positing of something true and desirable no longer arises, when the true world-in the sense of the ideal-is expunged. What happens when the true world is expunged? Does the apparent world still remain? No. For the apparent world can be what it is only as a counterpart of the true. If the true world collapses, so must the wqrld of appearances. Only then is Platonism overcome, which is to say, inverted in such a way that philosophical thinking twists free of it. But then where does such thinking wind up?
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During the time the overturning of Platonism became for Nietzsche a twisting free of it, madness befell him. Heretofore no one at all has recognized this reversal as Nietzsche's final step; neither has anyone perceived that the step is clearly taken only in his final creative year (1888). Insight into these important connections is quite difficult on the basis of the book The Will to Power as it lies before us in its present form, since the textual fragments assembled here have been removed from a great number of manuscripts written during the years 1882 to 1888. An altogether different picture results from the examination of Nietzsche's original manuscripts. But even without reference to these, there is a section of the treatise Twilight of the Idols, composed in just a few days during that final year of creative work (in September of 1888, although the book did not appear until 1889), a section which is very striking, because its basic position differs from the one we are already familiar with. The section is entitled "How the 'True World' Finally Became a Fable: the History of an Error" (VIII, 82-83; cf. WM, 567 and 568, from the year 1888. *)
The section encompasses a little more than one page. (Nietzsche's handwritten manuscript, the one sent to the printer, is extant. ) It belongs to those pieces the style and structure of which betray the fact that here, in a magnificent moment of vision, the entire realm of Nietzsche's thought is permeated by a new and singular brilliance. The title, "How the 'True World' Finally Became a Fable," says that here a history is to be recounted in the course of which the supersensuous, posited by Plato as true being, not only is reduced from the higher to the lower rank but also collapses into the unreal and nugatory. Nietz- sche divides the history into six parts, which can be readily recognized as the most important epochs of Western thought, and which lead directly to the doorstep of Nietzsche's philosophy proper.
*In these two complex notes Nietzsche defines the "perspectival relation" of will to power. Whereas in an earlier note (WM, 566) he spoke of the "true world" as "always the apparent world once again," he now (WM, 567) refrains from the opposition of true and apparent worlds as such: "Here there remains not a shadow of a right to speak of Schein . . . ," which is to say, of a world of mere appearances.
Nietzsche's Overturning of Platonism 203
For the sake of our own inquiry we want to trace that history in all brevity, so that we can see how Nietzsche, in spite of his will to subvert, preserved a luminous knowledge concerning what had occurred prior
to him.
The more clearly and simply a decisive inquiry traces the history of
Western thought back to its few essential stages, the more that his- tory's power to reach forward, seize, and commit grows. This is espe- cially the case where it is a matter of overcoming such history. Whoever believes that philosophical thought can dispense with its history by means of a simple proclamation will, without his knowing it, be dis- pensed with by history; he will be struck a blow from which he can never recover, one that will blind him utterly. He will think he is being original when he is merely rehashing what has been transmitted and mixing together traditional interpretations into something ostensibly new. The greater a revolution is to be, the more profoundly must it plunge into its history.
W e must measure Nietzsche's brief portrayal of the history of Plato- nism and its overcoming by this standard. Why do we emphasize here things that are evident? Because the form in which Nietzsche relates the history might easily tempt us to take it all as a mere joke, whereas something very different is at stake here (cf. Beyond Good and Evil, no. 213, "What a philosopher is," VII, 164 ff. ).
The six divisions of the history of Platonism, culminating in emer- gence from Platonism, are as follows.
"I. The true world, attainable for the wise, the pious, the virtuous man-he lives in it, he is it. "
Here the founding of the doctrine by Plato is established. To all appearances, the true world itself is not handled at all, but only how man adopts a stance toward it and to what extent it is attainable. And the essential definition of the true world consists in the fact that it is attainable here and now for man, although not for any and every man, and not without further ado. It is attainable for the virtuous; it is the supersensuous. The implication is that virtue consists in repudiation of the sensuous, since denial of the world that is closest to us, the sensuous
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world, is proper to the Being of beings. Here the "true world" is not yet anything "Platonic," that is, not something unattainable, merely desirable, merely "ideal. " Plato himself is who he is by virtue of the fact that he unquestioningly and straightforwardly functions on the basis of the world of Ideas as the essence of Being. The supersensuous is the idea. What is here envisioned in the eyes of Greek thought and exis- tence is truly seen, and experienced in such simple vision, as what makes possible every being, as that which becomes present to itself (see Vom Wesen des Grundes, 1929, part two). Therefore, Nietzsche adds the following commentary in parentheses: "(Oldest form of the idea, relatively sensible, simple, convincing. Circumlocution for the sen- tence '1, Plato, am the truth. ')" The thought of the Ideas and the interpretation of Being posited here are creative in and of themselves. Plato's work is not yet Platonism. The "true world" is not yet the object of a doctrine; it is the power of Dasein; it is what lights up in becoming present; it is pure radiance without cover.
"2. The true world, unattainable for now, but promised for the wise, the pious, the virtuous man ('for the sinner who repents'). "
With the positing of the supersensuous as true being, the break with the sensuous is now expressly ordained, although here again not straightaway: the true world is unattainable only in this life, for the duration of earthly existence. In that way earthly existence is denigrated and yet receives its proper tension, since the supersensuous is promised as the "beyond. " Earth becomes the "earthly. " The essence and exis- tence of man are now fractured, but that makes a certain ambiguity possible. The possibility of "yes and no," of "this world as well as that one," begins; the apparent affirmation of this world, but with a reserva- tion; the ability to go along with what goes on in this world, but keeping that remote back door ajar. In place of the unbroken essence of the Greek, which while unbroken was not without hazard but was passion- ate, which grounded itself in what was attainable, which drew its defini- tive boundaries here, which not only bore the intractability of fate but in its affirmation struggled for victory-in place of that essence begins something insidious. In Plato's stead, Platonism now rules. Thus:
Nietzsche's Overturning of Platonism 205
"(Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, insidious, ungraspable -it becomes woman, it becomes Christian. . . . )" The supersensuous is no longer present within the scope of human existence, present for it and for its sensuous nature. Rather, the whole of human existence becomes this-worldly to the extent that the supersensuous is inter- preted as the "beyond. " In that way the true world now becomes even truer, by being displaced ever farther beyond and away from this world; it grows ever stronger in being, the more it becomes what is promised and the more zealously it is embraced, i. e. , believed in, as what is promised. If we compare the second part of the history with the first, we see how Nietzsche in his description of the first part consciously sets
Plato apart from all Platonism, protecting him from it.
"3. The true world, unattainable, indemonstrable, unpromisable, but even as thought, a consolation, an obligation, an imperative. "
This division designates the form of Platonism that is achieved by the Kantian philosophy. The supersensuous is now a postulate of prac- tical reason; even outside the scope of all experience and demonstration it is demanded as what is necessarily existent, in order to salvage ade- quate grounds for the lawfulness of reason. To be sure, the accessibility of the supersensuous by way of cognition is subjected to critical doubt, but only in order to make room for belief in the requisition of reason. Nothing of the substance and structure of the Christian view of the world changes by virtue of Kant; it is only that all the light of knowl- edge is cast on experience, that is, on the mathematical-scientific inter- pretation of the "world. " Whatever lies outside of the knowledge possessed by the sciences of nature is not denied as to its existence but is relegated to the indeterminateness of the unknowable. Therefore: "(The old sun, basically, but seen through haze and skepticism; the ide~ rarified, grown pallid, Nordic, Konigsbergian. )" A transformed world -in contrast to the simple clarity by which Plato dwelled in direct contact with the supersensuous, as discernible Being. Because he sees through the unmistakable Platonism of Kant, Nietzsche at the same time perceives the essential difference between Plato and Kant. In that way he distinguishes himself fundamentally from his contemporaries,
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who, not accidentally, equate Kant and Plato-if they don't interpret
Plato as a Kantian who didn't quite make it.
"4. The true world-unattainable? In any case, unattained. And as unattained also unknown. Consequently, also, not consolatory, re- demptive, obligating: to what could something unknown obligate us?
With the fourth division, the form to which Platonism commits itself as a consequence of the bygone Kantian philosophy is historically attained, although without an originally creative overcoming. It is the age following the dominance of German Idealism, at about the middle of the last century. With the help of its own chief principle, the theoretical unknowability of the supersensuous, the Kantian system is unmasked and exploded. If the supersensuous world is altogether unat- tainable for cognition, then nothing can be known about it, nothing can be decided for or against it. It becomes manifest that the supersensuous does not come on the scene as a part of the Kantian philosophy on the grounds of basic philosophical principles of knowledge but as a conse- quence of uneradicated Christian-theological presuppositions. * In that regard Nietzsche on one occasion observes of Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, "They are all mere Schleiermachers" (XV, 112). The observation has two edges: it means not only that these men are at bottom camouflaged theologians but also that they are what that name suggests-Schleier-macher, makers of veils, men who veil things. In opposition to them stands the somewhat halfhearted rejection of the supersensuous as something unknown, to which, after Kant, no cognition can in principle attain. Such rejection
is a kind of first glimmer of "probity" of meditation amid the
*Unerschiitterter theologisch-christlicher Voraussetzungen. The formulation is remi- niscent of Heidegger's words in Being and Time, section 44 C: "The assertion of 'eternal truths' and the confusion of the phenomenally grounded 'ideality' of Dasein with an idealized absolute subject belong to those residues of Christian theology in philosophical problems which have not yet been radically extruded [zu den Hingst noch nicht radikal ausgetriebenen Resten von christlicher Theologie innerhalb der philosophischen Prob· lematik. ]"
Nietzsche's Overturning of Platonism 207
captiousness and "counterfeiting" that came to prevail with Platonism. Therefore: "(Gray morning. First yawnings of reason. Cockcrow of positivism. )" Nietzsche descries the rise of a new day. Reason, which here means man's knowing and inquiring, awakens and comes to its senses.
"5. The 'true world'-an idea which is of use for nothing, which is no longer even obligating-an idea become useless, superfluous, conse- quently, a refuted idea: let us abolish it! "
With this division Nietzsche designates the first segment of his own way in philosophy. The "true world" he now sets in quotation marks. It is no longer his own word, the content of which he himself could still affirm. The "true world" is abolished. But notice the reason: because it has become useless, superfluous. In the shimmering twilight a new standard of measure comes to light: whatever does not in any way at any time involve man's Dasein can make no claim to be affirmed. Therefore: "(Bright day; breakfast; return of bon sens and of cheerful- ness; Plato's embarrassed blush; pandemonium of all free spirits. )" Here Nietzsche thinks back on the years of his own metamorphosis, which is intimated clearly enough in the very titles of the books he wrote during that time: Human, All Too Human (I 878), The Wander- er and His Shadow (1880), The Dawn (1881), and The Gay Science (1882). Platonism is overcome inasmuch as the supersensuous world, as the true world, is abolished; but by way of compensation the sensu- ous world remains, and positivism occupies it. What is now required is a confrontation with the latter. For Nietzsche does not wish to tarry in the dawn of morning; neither will he rest content with mere fore- noon. In spite of the fact that the supersensuous world as the true world has been cast aside, the vacant niche of the higher world remains, ami so does the blueprint of an "above and below," which is to say, so does
Platonism. The inquiry must go one step farther.
"6. Thetrueworldweabolished:whichworldwasleft? theapparent one perhaps? . . . But no! along with the true world we have also abolished the apparent one! "
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That Nietzsche appends a sixth division here shows that, and how, he must advance beyond himself and beyond sheer abolition of the supersensuous. W e sense it directly from the animation of the style and manner of composition-how the clarity of this step conducts him for the first time into the brilliance of full daylight, where all shadows dwindle. Therefore: "(Midday; moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error; highpoint of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA. )" Thus the onset of the final stage of his own philosophy.
The portrayal of all six divisions of the history of Platonism is so arranged that the "true world," the existence and legitimacy of which is under consideration, is in each division brought into connection with the type of man who comports himself to that world. Consequently, the overturning of Platonism and the ultimate twist out of it imply a metamorphosis of man. At the end of Platonism stands a decision concerning the transformation of man. That is how the phrase "high- point of humanity" is to be understood, as the peak of decision, namely, decision as to whether with the end of Platonism man as he has been hitherto is to come to an end, whether he is to become that kind of man Nietzsche characterized as the "last man," or whether that type of man can be overcome and the "overman" can begin: "lncipit Zara- thustra. " By the word "overman" Nietzsche does not mean some miraculous, fabulous being, but the man who surpasses former man. But man as he has been hitherto is the one whose Dasein and relation to Being have been determined by Platonism in one of its forms or by a mixture of several of these. The last man is the necessary consequence of unsubdued nihilism. The great danger Nietzsche sees is that it will all culminate in the last man, that it will peter out in the spread of the increasingly insipid last man. "The opposite of the overman is the last man: I created him at the same time I created the former" (XIV, 262).
That suggests that the end first becomes visible as an end on the basis of the new beginning. To put it the other way round, overman's identity first becomes clear when the last man is perceived as such.
Now all we must do is bring into view the extreme counterposition
Nietzsche's Overturning of Platonism 209
to Plato and Platonism and then ascertain how Nietzsche successfully adopts a stance within it. What results when, along with the true world, the apparent world too is abolished?
The "true world," the supersensuous, and the apparent world, the sensuous, together make out what stands opposed to pure nothingness; they constitute beings as a whole. When both are abolished everything collapses into the vacuous nothing. That cannot be what Nietzsche means. For he desires to overcome nihilism in all its forms. When we recall that, and how, Nietzsche wishes to ground art upon embodying life by means of his physiological aesthetics, we note that this implies an affirmation of the sensuous world, not its abolition. However, ac- cording to the express wording of the final division of the history of Platonism, "the apparent world is abolished. " Certainly. But the sensu- ous world is the "apparent world" only according to the interpretation of Platonism. With the abolition of Platonism the way first opens for
the affirmation of the sensuous, and along with it, the nonsensuous world of the spirit as well. It suffices to recall the following statement from The Will to Power, no. 820:
For myself and for all those who live-are permitted to live-without the anxieties of a puritanical conscience, I wish an ever greater spiritualization and augmentation of the senses. Yes, we ought to be grateful to our senses for their subtlety, fullness, and force; and we ought to offer them in return the very best of spirit we possess.
What is needed is neither abolition of the sensuous nor abolition of the nonsensuous. On the contrary, what must be cast aside is the misinterpretation, the deprecation, of the sensuous, as well as the extravagant elevation of the supersensuous. A path must be cleared for a new interpretation of the sensuous on the basis of a new hierarchy of the sensuous and nonsensuous. The new hierarchy does not simply wish to reverse matters within the old structural order, now reverencing the sensuous and scorning the nonsensuous. It does not wish to put what was at the very bottom on the very top. A new hierarchy and new valuation mean that the ordering structure must be changed. To that
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extent, overturning Platonism must become a twisting free of it. How far the latter extends with Nietzsche, how far it can go, to what extent it comes to an overcoming of Platonism and to what extent not-those are necessary critical questions. But they should be posed only when we have reflected in accordance with the thought that Nietzsche most intrinsically willed-beyond everything captious, ambiguous, and defi- cient which we might very easily ascribe to him here.
25. The New Interpretation of Sensuousness and the Raging Discordance between Art and Truth
We are now asking what new interpretation and ordering of the sensu- ous and nonsensuous results from the overturning of Platonism. To what extent is "the sensuous" the genuine "reality"? What transforma- tion accompanies the inversion? What metamorphosis underlies it? We must ask the question in this last form, because it is not the case that things are inverted first, and then on the basis of the new position gained by the inversion the question is posed, "What is the result? " Rather, the overturning derives the force and direction of its motion from the new inquiry and its fundamental experience, in which true being, what is real, "reality," is to be defined afresh.
We are not unprepared for these questions, provided we have tra- versed the path of the entire lecture course, which from the outset has aimed in their direction.
We unfolded all our questions concerning art for the explicit and exclusive purpose of bringing the new reality, above all else, into sharp focus. In particular, the presentation of Nietzsche's "physiological aesthetics" was elaborated in such a way that we now only need to grasp in a more fundamental manner what was said there. We do that in· order to pursue his interpretation of the sensuous in its principal direction, which means, to see how he achieves a stand for his thought after both the true and the apparent worlds of Platonism have been abolished.
Nietzsche recognizes rapture to be the basic actuality of art. In
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contrast to Wagner, he understands the feeling of increment of force, plenitude, and the reciprocal enhancement of all capacities, as a being beyond oneself, hence a coming to oneself in the supreme lucidity of Being-not a visionless tumult. But in Nietzsche's view that implies at the same time the emergence of the abyss of "life," of life's essential contradictions, not as moral evil or as something to be negated, but as what is to be affirmed. The "physiological," the sensuous-corporeal, in itself possesses this beyond-itself. The inner constitution of the sensu- ous was clarified by emphasis on the relation of rapture to beauty, and of creation and enjoyment to form. What is proper to form is the constant, order, overview, boundary, and law. The sensuous in itself is directed toward overview and order, toward what can be mastered and firmly fixed. What makes itself known here with regard to the essence of the "sensuous" we now need grasp only in its principal relations, in order to see how for Nietzsche the sensuous constitutes reality proper.
What lives is exposed to other forces, but in such a way that, striving against them, it deals with them according to their form and rhythm, in order to estimate them in relation to possible incorporation or elimination. According to this angle of vision, everything that is en- countered is interpreted in terms of the living creature's capacity for life. The angle of vision, and the realm it opens to view, themselves draw the borderlines around what it is that creatures can or cannot encounter. For example, a lizard hears the slightest rustling in the grass but it does not hear a pistol shot fired quite close by. Accordingly, the creature develops a kind of interpretation of its surroundings and there- by of all occurrence, not incidentally, but as the fundamental process of life itself: "The perspectival [is] the basic condition of all life" (VII, 4).
With a view to the basic constitution of living things Nietzsche says (XIII, 63), "The essential aspect of organic beings is a new manifold, which is itself an occurrence. " The living creature possesses the char- acter of a perspectival preview which circumscribes a "line of horizon" about him, within whose scope something can come forward into appearance for him at all. Now, in the "organic" there is a multiplicity of drives and forces, each of which has its perspective. The manifold
The New Interpretation of Sensuousness 213
of perspectives distinguishes the organic from the inorganic. Yet even the latter has its perspective; it is just that in the inorganic, in attraction and repulsion, the "power relations" are clearly fixed (XIII, 62). The mechanistic representation of "inanimate" nature is only a hypothesis for purposes of calculation; it overlooks the fact that here too relations of forces and concatenations of perspectives hold sway. Every point of force per se is perspectival. As a result it becomes manifest "that there is no inorganic world" (XIII, 81). Everything "real" is alive, is "per- spectival" in itself, and asserts itself in its perspective against others. On that basis we can understand Nietzsche's note from the years 1886-87 (XIII, 227-28):
Fundamental question: whether the perspectival is proper to the being, and is not only a form of observation, a relation between different beings? Do the various forces stand in relation, so that the relation is tied to a perceptual optics? That would be possible if all Being were essentially something which perceives.
We would not have to go far to find proof to show that this conception of beings is precisely that of Leibniz, except that Nietzsche eliminates the latter's theological metaphysics, i. e. , his Platonism. All being is in itself perspectival-perceptual, and that means, in the sense now deline- ated, "sensuous. "
The sensuous is no longer the "apparent," no longer the penumbra; it alone is what is real, hence "true. " And what becomes of semblance? Semblance itself is proper to the essence of the real. We can readily see that in the perspectival character of the actual. The following statement provides an opening onto the matter of semblance within the perspectivally constructed actual: "With the organic world begin in- determinateness and semblance" (XIII, 288; cf. also 229). In the unity of an organic being there is a multiplicity of drives and capacities (each of which possesses its perspective) which struggle against one another. In such a multiplicity the univocity of the particular perspective in which the actual in any given case stands is lost. The equivocal char- acter of what shows itself in several perspectives is granted, along with the indeterminate, which now appears one way, then another, which
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first proffers this appearance, then that one. But such appearance becomes semblance in the sense of mere appearance only when what becomes manifest in one perspective petrifies and is taken to be the sole definitive appearance, to the disregard of the other perspectives that crowd round in turn.
In that way, palpable things, "objects," emerge for creatures in what they encounter; things that are constant, with enduring qualities, by which the creature can get its bearings. The entire range of what is fixed and constant is, according to the ancient Platonic conception, the region of "Being," the "true. " Such Being, viewed perspectivally, is but the one-sided, entrenched appearance, which is taken to be solely definitive. It thus becomes mere appearance; Being, the true, is mere appearance, error.
Error begins in the organic world. "Things," "substances," properties, act- "ivities" [Tiitig"keiten"]-one should not read all that into the inorganic world! They are the specific errors by virtue of which organisms live (XIII, 69).
In the organic world, the world of embodying life, where man too resides, "error" begins. That should not be taken as meaning that creatures, in distinction to members of the inorganic realm, can go astray. It means that those beings which in the definitive perspectival horizon of a creature appear to constitute its firmly established, existent world, in their Being are but appearance, mere appearance. Man's logic serves to make what he encounters identical, constant, ascertainable. Being, the true, which logic "firmly locates" (petrifies}, is but sem- blance; a semblance, an apparentness, that is essentially necessary to the creature as such, which is to say, a semblance that pertains to his survival, his establishment of self amidst ceaseless change. Because the real is perspectival in itself, apparentness as such is proper to reality. Truth, i. e. , true being, i. e. , what is constant and fixed, because it is the petrifying of any single given perspective, is always only an apparent- ness that has come to prevail, which is to say, it is always error. For that reason Nietzsche says (WM, 493}, "Truth is the kind of error without
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which a certain kind of living being could not live. The value for life ultimately decides. "
Truth, that is, the true as the constant, is a kind of semblance that is justified as a necessary condition of the assertion of life. But upon deeper meditation it becomes clear that all appearance and all apparent- ness are possible only if something comes to the fore and shows itself at alL What in advance enables such appearing is the perspectival itself. That is what genuinely radiates, bringing something to show itself. When Nietzsche uses the word semblance [Schein] it is usually am- biguous. He knows it, too. "There are fateful words which appear to express an insight but which in truth hinder it; among them belongs the word 'semblance,' 'appearance'" (XIII, 50). Nietzsche does not become master of the fate entrenched in that word, which is to say, in the matter. He says (ibid. ),~· 'Semblance' as I understand it is the actual and sole reality of things. " That should be understood to mean not that
reality is something apparent, but that being-real is in itself perspecti- val, a bringing forward into appearance, a letting radiate; that it is in itself a shining. Reality is radiance.
Hence I do not posit "semblance" in opposition to "reality," but on the contrary take semblance to be the reality which resists transformation into an imaginative "world of truth. " A particular name for that reality would be "will to power," designated of course intrinsically and not on the basis of its ungraspable, fluid, Protean nature (XIII, 50; from the year 1886, at the latest).
Reality, Being, is Schein in the sense of perspectival letting-shine. But proper to that reality at the same time is the multiplicity of perspectives, and thus the possibility of illusion and of its being made fast, which means the possibility of truth as a kind of Schein in the_ sense of "mere" appearance. If truth is taken to be semblance, that is, as mere appearance and error, the implication is that truth is the fixed semblance which is necessarily inherent in perspectival shining-it is illusion. Nietzsche often identifies such illusion with "the lie": "One who tells the truth ends by realizing that he always lies" (XII, 293).
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Indeed Nietzsche at times defines perspectival shining as Schein in the sense of illusion and deception, contrasting illusion and deception to truth, which, as "Being," is also at bottom error.
We have already seen that creation, as forming and shaping, as well as the aesthetic pleasures related to such shaping, are grounded in the essence of life. Hence art too, and precisely it, must cohere most intimately with perspectival shining and letting shine. Art in the proper sense is art in the grand style, desirous of bringing waxing life itself to power. It is not an immobilizing but a liberating for expansion, a clarifying to the point of transfiguration, and this in two senses: first, stationing a thing in the clarity of Being; second, establishing such clarity as the heightening of life itself.
Life is in itself perspectival. It waxes and flourishes with the height and heightening of the world which is brought forward perspectivally to appearance, with the enhancement of the shining, that is, of what brings a thing to scintillate in such a way that life is transfigured. "Art and nothing but art! " (WM, 853, section II). Art induces reality, which is in itself a shining, to shine most profoundly and supremely in scintil- lating transfiguration. If "metaphysical" means nothing else than the essence of reality, and if reality consists in shining, we then understand the statement with which the section on art in The Will to Power closes (WM, 853}: " . . . 'art as the proper task of life, art as its metaphysical activity . . . . ' " Art is the most genuine and profound will to semblance, namely, to the scintillation of what transfigures, in which the supreme lawfulness of Dasein becomes visible. In contrast, 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 im- mobilizing of life, and hence its inhibition and dissolution. "We have art so that we do not perish from the truth" (WM, 822}. It is "not possible . . . to live with the truth," if life is always enhancement of life; the "will to truth," i. e. , to fixed apparition, is "already a symptom of degeneration" (XIV, 368}. Now it becomes clear what the fifth and concluding proposition concerning art avers: art is worth more than truth.
Both art and truth are modes of perspectival shining. But the value
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of the real is measured according to how it satisfies the essence of reality, how it accomplishes the shining and enhances reality. Art, as transfiguration, is more enhancing to life than truth, as fixation ofan apparition.
Now too we perceive to what extent the relation of art and truth must be a discordance for Nietzsche and for his philosophy, as inverted Platonism. Discordance is present only where the elements which sever the unity of their belonging-together diverge from one another by virtue of that very unity. The unity of their belonging-together is granted by the one reality, perspectival shining. To it belong both apparition and scintillating appearance as transfiguration. In order for the real (the living creature) to be real, it must on the one hand ensconce itself within a particular horizon, thus perduring in the illu- sion of truth. But in order for the real to remain real, it must on the other hand simultaneously transfigure itself by going beyond itself, surpassing itself in the scintillation of what is created in art-and that means it has to advance against the truth. While truth and art are
proper to the essence of reality with equal originality, they must diverge from one another and go counter to one another.
But because in Nietzsche's view semblance, as perspectival, also possesses the character of the nonactual, of illusion and deception, he must say, "The will to semblance, to illusion, to deception, to Becom- ing and change is deeper, more 'metaphysical' [that is to say, corre- sponding more to the essence of Being] than the will to truth, to actuality, to Being" (XIV, 369). This is expressed even more decisively in The Will to Power, no. 853, section I, where semblance is equated with "lie": " W e need the lie in order to achieve victory over this reality, this 'truth,' which is to say, in order to live . . . . That the lie is necessary for life is itself part and parcel of the frightful and questionable char- acter of existence. "
Art and truth are equally necessary for reality. As equally necessary they stand in severance. But their relationship first arouses dread when we consider that creation, i. e. , the metaphysical activity of art, receives yet another essential impulse the moment we descry the most tremen- dous event-the death of the God of morality. In Nietzsche's view,
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existence can now be endured only in creation. Conducting reality to the power of its rule and of its supreme possibilities alone guarantees Being. But creation, as art, is will to semblance; it stands in severance from truth.
Art as will to semblance is the supreme configuration of will to power. But the latter, as the basic character of beings, as the essence of reality, is in itself that Being which wills itself by willing to be Becoming. In that way Nietzsche in will to power attempts to think the original unity of the ancient opposition of Being and Becoming. Being, as permanence, is to let Becoming be a Becoming. The origin of the thought of "eternal recurrence" is thereby indicated.
In the year 1886, in the middle of the period when he labored on the planned major work, Nietzsche's first treatise, The Birth of Trage- dy from the Spirit of Music (1872), appeared in a new edition. It bore the altered title The Birth of Tragedy, or Greek Civilization and Pessi- mism; New Edition, with an Attempt at Self-criticism (see I, l-14). The task which that book had first ventured to undertake remained the same for Nietzsche.
He pinpoints the task in a passage that is often quoted but just as often misinterpreted. The correct interpretation devolves from the entirety of this lecture course. Rightly grasped, the passage can serve as a rubric that characterizes the course's starting point and the direc- tion of its inquiry. Nietzsche writes (I, 4):
. . . Nevertheless, I do not wish to suppress entirely how unpleasant it now seems to me, how alien it stands before me now, after sixteen years-before an eye which has grown older, a hundred times more fastidious, but by no means colder, an eye which would not be any the less prepared to undertake the very task that audacious book ventured for the first time: to see science under the optics of the artist, but art under the optics of life. . . .
Half a century has elapsed for Europe since these words were penned. During the decades in question the passage has been misread again and again, precisely by those people who exerted themselves to resist the increasing uprooting and devastation of science. From Nietzsche's words they gathered the following: the sciences may no longer be conducted in an arid, humdrum manner, they may no longer
The New Interpretation of Sensuousness 219
"gather dust," far removed from "life"; they have to be shaped "artisti- cally," so that they are attractive, pleasing, and in good taste-all that, because the artistically shaped sciences must be related to "life," re- main in proximity to "life," and be readily useful for "life. "
Above all, the generation that studied at the German universities between 1909 and 1914 heard the passage interpreted in this way. Even in the form of the misinterpretation it was a help to us. But there was no one about who could have provided the correct reading of it. That would have required re-asking the grounding question of Occidental philosophy, questioning in the direction of Being by way of actual inquiry.
To explain our understanding of the phrase cited, "to see science under the optics o f the artist, but art under the optics o f life," we must refer to four points, all of which, after what we have discussed, will by now be familiar to us.
First, "science" here means knowing as such, the relation to truth.
Second, the twofold reference to the "optics" of the artist and of life indicates that the "perspectival character" of Being becomes essential. Third, the equation of art and the artist directly expresses the fact that art is to be conceived in terms of the artist, creation, and the grand
style.
Fourth, "life" here means neither mere animal and vegetable Being
nor that readily comprehensible and compulsive busyness of everyday existence; rather, "life" is the term for Being in its new interpretation, according to which it is a Becoming. "Life" is neither "biologically" nor "practically" intended; it is meant metaphysically. The equation of Being and life is not some sort of unjustified expansion of the biologi- cal, although it often seems that way, but a transformed interpretation of the biological on the basis of Being, grasped in a superior way-this, of course, not fully mastered, in the timeworn schema of "Being and Becoming. "
Nietzsche's phrase suggests that on the basis of the essence of Being art must be grasped as the fundamental occurrence of beings, as the properly creative. But art conceived in that way defines the arena in which we can estimate how it is with "truth," and in what relation art and truth stand. The phrase does not suggest that artistic matters be
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jumbled with the "conduct of science," much less that knowledge be subjected to aesthetic rehabilitation. Nor does it mean that art has to follow on the heels of life and be of service to it; for it is art, the grand style, which is to legislate the Being of beings in the first place.
The phrase demands knowledge of the event of nihilism. In Nietz- sche's view such knowledge at the same time embraces the will to overcome nihilism, indeed by means of original grounding and ques- tioning.
From what we have presented, the essence of the beautiful has become clear. It is what makes possible the recovery and preservation of the view upon Being, which devolves from the most immediate fleeting appearances and which can easily vanish in oblivion. Our capac- ity to understand, phronesis, although it remains related to what is essential, of itself has no corresponding eidolon, no realm of appear- ances which brings what it has to grant us into immediate proximity and yet at the same time elevates us toward what is properly to be understood.
The third question, inquiring about the relationship between beauty and truth, now answers itself. To be sure, up to now truth has not been treated explicitly. Nevertheless, in order to achieve clarity concerning the relation of beauty and truth, it suffices if we think back to the major introductory statement and read it in the way Plato himself first In- troduces it. The major statement says that the view upon Being is proper to the essence of man, that by force of it man can comport himself to beings and to what he encounters as merely apparent things. At the place where that thought is first introduced (249 b), Plato says,
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not that the basic condition for the form of man is that he tetheatai ta onta, that he "has beings as such in view ahead of time," but ou gar he ge mepote idousa ten aletheian eis tode hexei to schema, that "the soul would never have assumed this form if it had not earlier viewed the unconcealment of beings, i. e. , beings in their unconcealment. "
The view upon Being opens up what is concealed, making it uncon- cealed; it is the basic relation to the true. That which truth essentially brings about, the unveiling of Being, that and nothing else is what beauty brings about. It does so, scintillating in fleeting appearances, by liberating us to the Being that radiates in such appearances, which is to say, to the openedness of Being, to truth. Truth and beauty are in essence related to the selfsame, to Being; they belong together in one, the one thing that is decisive: to open Being and to keep it open.
Yet in that very medium where they belong together, they must diverge for man, they must separate from one another. For the opened- ness of Being, truth, can only be nonsensuous illumination, since for Plato Being is nonsensuous. Because Being opens itself only to the view upon Being, and because the latter must always be snatched from oblivion of Being, and because for that reason it needs the most direct radiance of fleeting appearances, the opening up of Being must occur at that site where, estimated in terms of truth, the me on (eidolon), i. e. , nonbeing, occurs. But that is the site of beauty.
When we consider very carefully that art, by bringing forth the beautiful, resides in the sensuous, and that it is therefore far removed from truth, it then becomes clear why truth and beauty, their belong- ing together in one notwithstanding, still must be two, must separate from one another. But the severance, discordance in the broad sense, is not in Plato's view one which arouses dread; it is a felicitous one. The beautiful elevates us beyond the sensuous and bears us back into the true. Accord prevails in the severance, because the beautiful, as radiant and sensuous, has in advance sheltered its essence in the truth of Being as supersensuous.
Viewed more discerningly, a discordance in the strict sense lies here as well. But it belongs to the essence of Platonism that it efface that
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discordance by positing Being in such a way that it can do so without the effacement becoming visible as such. But when Platonism is over- turned everything that characterizes it must also be overturned; what- ever it can cloak and conceal, whatever it can pronounce felicitous, on the contrary, must out, and must arouse dread.
24. Nietzsche's Overturning of Platonism
We conducted an examination of the relation of truth and beauty in Plato in order to sharpen our view of things. For we are attempting to locate the place and context in Nietzsche's conception of art and truth where the severance of the two must occur, and in such a way that it is experienced as a discordance that arouses dread.
Both beauty and truth are related to Being, indeed by way of unveil- ing the Being of beings. Truth is the immediate way in which Being is revealed in the thought of philosophy; it does not enter into the sensuous, but from the outset is averted from it. Juxtaposed to it is beauty, penetrating the sensuous and then moving beyond it, liberating in the direction of Being. If beauty and truth in Nietzsche's view enter into discordance, they must previously belong together in one. That one can only be Being and the relation to Being.
Nietzsche defines the basic character of beings, hence Being, as will to power. Accordingly, an original conjunction of beauty and truth must result from the essence of will to power, a conjunction which simultaneously must become a discordance. When we try to discern and grasp the discordance we cast a glance toward the unified essence of will to power. Nietzsche's philosophy, according to his own testi- mony, is inverted Platonism. We ask: in what sense does the relation of beauty and truth which is peculiar to Platonism become a different sort of relation through the overturning?
The question can easily be answered by a simple recalculation, if "overturning" Platonism may be equated with the procedure of stand- ing all of Plato's statements on their heads, as it were. To be sure, Nietzsche himself often expresses the state of affairs in that way, not
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only in order to make clear what he means in a rough and ready fashion, but also because he himself often thinks that way, although he is aiming at something else.
Only late in his life, shortly before the cessation of his labors in thinking, does the full scope required by such an inversion of Platonism become clear to him. That clarity waxes as Nietzsche grasps the necessi- ty of the overturning, which is demanded by the task of overcoming nihilism. For that reason, when we elucidate the overturning of Plato- nism we must take the structure of Platonism as our point of departure. For Plato the supersensuous is the true world. It stands over all, as what sets the standard. The sensuous lies below, as the world of appearances. What stands over all is alone and from the start what sets the standard; it is therefore what is desired. After the inversion-that is easy to calculate in a formal way-the sensuous, the world of appearances, stands above; the supersensuous, the true world, lies below. With a glance back to what we have already presented, however, we must keep a firm hold on the realization that the very talk of a "true world" and "world of appearances" no longer speaks the language of Plato.
But what does that mean-the sensuous stands above all? It means that it is the true, it is genuine being. If we take the inversion strictly in this sense, then the vacant niches of the "above and below" are preserved, suffering only a change in occupancy, as it were. But as long as the "above and below" define the formal structure of Platonism, Platonism in its essence perdures. The inversion does not achieve what it must, as an overcoming of nihilism, namely, an overcoming of Plato- nism in its very foundations. Such overcoming succeeds only when the "above" in general is set aside as such, when the former positing of something true and desirable no longer arises, when the true world-in the sense of the ideal-is expunged. What happens when the true world is expunged? Does the apparent world still remain? No. For the apparent world can be what it is only as a counterpart of the true. If the true world collapses, so must the wqrld of appearances. Only then is Platonism overcome, which is to say, inverted in such a way that philosophical thinking twists free of it. But then where does such thinking wind up?
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During the time the overturning of Platonism became for Nietzsche a twisting free of it, madness befell him. Heretofore no one at all has recognized this reversal as Nietzsche's final step; neither has anyone perceived that the step is clearly taken only in his final creative year (1888). Insight into these important connections is quite difficult on the basis of the book The Will to Power as it lies before us in its present form, since the textual fragments assembled here have been removed from a great number of manuscripts written during the years 1882 to 1888. An altogether different picture results from the examination of Nietzsche's original manuscripts. But even without reference to these, there is a section of the treatise Twilight of the Idols, composed in just a few days during that final year of creative work (in September of 1888, although the book did not appear until 1889), a section which is very striking, because its basic position differs from the one we are already familiar with. The section is entitled "How the 'True World' Finally Became a Fable: the History of an Error" (VIII, 82-83; cf. WM, 567 and 568, from the year 1888. *)
The section encompasses a little more than one page. (Nietzsche's handwritten manuscript, the one sent to the printer, is extant. ) It belongs to those pieces the style and structure of which betray the fact that here, in a magnificent moment of vision, the entire realm of Nietzsche's thought is permeated by a new and singular brilliance. The title, "How the 'True World' Finally Became a Fable," says that here a history is to be recounted in the course of which the supersensuous, posited by Plato as true being, not only is reduced from the higher to the lower rank but also collapses into the unreal and nugatory. Nietz- sche divides the history into six parts, which can be readily recognized as the most important epochs of Western thought, and which lead directly to the doorstep of Nietzsche's philosophy proper.
*In these two complex notes Nietzsche defines the "perspectival relation" of will to power. Whereas in an earlier note (WM, 566) he spoke of the "true world" as "always the apparent world once again," he now (WM, 567) refrains from the opposition of true and apparent worlds as such: "Here there remains not a shadow of a right to speak of Schein . . . ," which is to say, of a world of mere appearances.
Nietzsche's Overturning of Platonism 203
For the sake of our own inquiry we want to trace that history in all brevity, so that we can see how Nietzsche, in spite of his will to subvert, preserved a luminous knowledge concerning what had occurred prior
to him.
The more clearly and simply a decisive inquiry traces the history of
Western thought back to its few essential stages, the more that his- tory's power to reach forward, seize, and commit grows. This is espe- cially the case where it is a matter of overcoming such history. Whoever believes that philosophical thought can dispense with its history by means of a simple proclamation will, without his knowing it, be dis- pensed with by history; he will be struck a blow from which he can never recover, one that will blind him utterly. He will think he is being original when he is merely rehashing what has been transmitted and mixing together traditional interpretations into something ostensibly new. The greater a revolution is to be, the more profoundly must it plunge into its history.
W e must measure Nietzsche's brief portrayal of the history of Plato- nism and its overcoming by this standard. Why do we emphasize here things that are evident? Because the form in which Nietzsche relates the history might easily tempt us to take it all as a mere joke, whereas something very different is at stake here (cf. Beyond Good and Evil, no. 213, "What a philosopher is," VII, 164 ff. ).
The six divisions of the history of Platonism, culminating in emer- gence from Platonism, are as follows.
"I. The true world, attainable for the wise, the pious, the virtuous man-he lives in it, he is it. "
Here the founding of the doctrine by Plato is established. To all appearances, the true world itself is not handled at all, but only how man adopts a stance toward it and to what extent it is attainable. And the essential definition of the true world consists in the fact that it is attainable here and now for man, although not for any and every man, and not without further ado. It is attainable for the virtuous; it is the supersensuous. The implication is that virtue consists in repudiation of the sensuous, since denial of the world that is closest to us, the sensuous
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world, is proper to the Being of beings. Here the "true world" is not yet anything "Platonic," that is, not something unattainable, merely desirable, merely "ideal. " Plato himself is who he is by virtue of the fact that he unquestioningly and straightforwardly functions on the basis of the world of Ideas as the essence of Being. The supersensuous is the idea. What is here envisioned in the eyes of Greek thought and exis- tence is truly seen, and experienced in such simple vision, as what makes possible every being, as that which becomes present to itself (see Vom Wesen des Grundes, 1929, part two). Therefore, Nietzsche adds the following commentary in parentheses: "(Oldest form of the idea, relatively sensible, simple, convincing. Circumlocution for the sen- tence '1, Plato, am the truth. ')" The thought of the Ideas and the interpretation of Being posited here are creative in and of themselves. Plato's work is not yet Platonism. The "true world" is not yet the object of a doctrine; it is the power of Dasein; it is what lights up in becoming present; it is pure radiance without cover.
"2. The true world, unattainable for now, but promised for the wise, the pious, the virtuous man ('for the sinner who repents'). "
With the positing of the supersensuous as true being, the break with the sensuous is now expressly ordained, although here again not straightaway: the true world is unattainable only in this life, for the duration of earthly existence. In that way earthly existence is denigrated and yet receives its proper tension, since the supersensuous is promised as the "beyond. " Earth becomes the "earthly. " The essence and exis- tence of man are now fractured, but that makes a certain ambiguity possible. The possibility of "yes and no," of "this world as well as that one," begins; the apparent affirmation of this world, but with a reserva- tion; the ability to go along with what goes on in this world, but keeping that remote back door ajar. In place of the unbroken essence of the Greek, which while unbroken was not without hazard but was passion- ate, which grounded itself in what was attainable, which drew its defini- tive boundaries here, which not only bore the intractability of fate but in its affirmation struggled for victory-in place of that essence begins something insidious. In Plato's stead, Platonism now rules. Thus:
Nietzsche's Overturning of Platonism 205
"(Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, insidious, ungraspable -it becomes woman, it becomes Christian. . . . )" The supersensuous is no longer present within the scope of human existence, present for it and for its sensuous nature. Rather, the whole of human existence becomes this-worldly to the extent that the supersensuous is inter- preted as the "beyond. " In that way the true world now becomes even truer, by being displaced ever farther beyond and away from this world; it grows ever stronger in being, the more it becomes what is promised and the more zealously it is embraced, i. e. , believed in, as what is promised. If we compare the second part of the history with the first, we see how Nietzsche in his description of the first part consciously sets
Plato apart from all Platonism, protecting him from it.
"3. The true world, unattainable, indemonstrable, unpromisable, but even as thought, a consolation, an obligation, an imperative. "
This division designates the form of Platonism that is achieved by the Kantian philosophy. The supersensuous is now a postulate of prac- tical reason; even outside the scope of all experience and demonstration it is demanded as what is necessarily existent, in order to salvage ade- quate grounds for the lawfulness of reason. To be sure, the accessibility of the supersensuous by way of cognition is subjected to critical doubt, but only in order to make room for belief in the requisition of reason. Nothing of the substance and structure of the Christian view of the world changes by virtue of Kant; it is only that all the light of knowl- edge is cast on experience, that is, on the mathematical-scientific inter- pretation of the "world. " Whatever lies outside of the knowledge possessed by the sciences of nature is not denied as to its existence but is relegated to the indeterminateness of the unknowable. Therefore: "(The old sun, basically, but seen through haze and skepticism; the ide~ rarified, grown pallid, Nordic, Konigsbergian. )" A transformed world -in contrast to the simple clarity by which Plato dwelled in direct contact with the supersensuous, as discernible Being. Because he sees through the unmistakable Platonism of Kant, Nietzsche at the same time perceives the essential difference between Plato and Kant. In that way he distinguishes himself fundamentally from his contemporaries,
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who, not accidentally, equate Kant and Plato-if they don't interpret
Plato as a Kantian who didn't quite make it.
"4. The true world-unattainable? In any case, unattained. And as unattained also unknown. Consequently, also, not consolatory, re- demptive, obligating: to what could something unknown obligate us?
With the fourth division, the form to which Platonism commits itself as a consequence of the bygone Kantian philosophy is historically attained, although without an originally creative overcoming. It is the age following the dominance of German Idealism, at about the middle of the last century. With the help of its own chief principle, the theoretical unknowability of the supersensuous, the Kantian system is unmasked and exploded. If the supersensuous world is altogether unat- tainable for cognition, then nothing can be known about it, nothing can be decided for or against it. It becomes manifest that the supersensuous does not come on the scene as a part of the Kantian philosophy on the grounds of basic philosophical principles of knowledge but as a conse- quence of uneradicated Christian-theological presuppositions. * In that regard Nietzsche on one occasion observes of Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, "They are all mere Schleiermachers" (XV, 112). The observation has two edges: it means not only that these men are at bottom camouflaged theologians but also that they are what that name suggests-Schleier-macher, makers of veils, men who veil things. In opposition to them stands the somewhat halfhearted rejection of the supersensuous as something unknown, to which, after Kant, no cognition can in principle attain. Such rejection
is a kind of first glimmer of "probity" of meditation amid the
*Unerschiitterter theologisch-christlicher Voraussetzungen. The formulation is remi- niscent of Heidegger's words in Being and Time, section 44 C: "The assertion of 'eternal truths' and the confusion of the phenomenally grounded 'ideality' of Dasein with an idealized absolute subject belong to those residues of Christian theology in philosophical problems which have not yet been radically extruded [zu den Hingst noch nicht radikal ausgetriebenen Resten von christlicher Theologie innerhalb der philosophischen Prob· lematik. ]"
Nietzsche's Overturning of Platonism 207
captiousness and "counterfeiting" that came to prevail with Platonism. Therefore: "(Gray morning. First yawnings of reason. Cockcrow of positivism. )" Nietzsche descries the rise of a new day. Reason, which here means man's knowing and inquiring, awakens and comes to its senses.
"5. The 'true world'-an idea which is of use for nothing, which is no longer even obligating-an idea become useless, superfluous, conse- quently, a refuted idea: let us abolish it! "
With this division Nietzsche designates the first segment of his own way in philosophy. The "true world" he now sets in quotation marks. It is no longer his own word, the content of which he himself could still affirm. The "true world" is abolished. But notice the reason: because it has become useless, superfluous. In the shimmering twilight a new standard of measure comes to light: whatever does not in any way at any time involve man's Dasein can make no claim to be affirmed. Therefore: "(Bright day; breakfast; return of bon sens and of cheerful- ness; Plato's embarrassed blush; pandemonium of all free spirits. )" Here Nietzsche thinks back on the years of his own metamorphosis, which is intimated clearly enough in the very titles of the books he wrote during that time: Human, All Too Human (I 878), The Wander- er and His Shadow (1880), The Dawn (1881), and The Gay Science (1882). Platonism is overcome inasmuch as the supersensuous world, as the true world, is abolished; but by way of compensation the sensu- ous world remains, and positivism occupies it. What is now required is a confrontation with the latter. For Nietzsche does not wish to tarry in the dawn of morning; neither will he rest content with mere fore- noon. In spite of the fact that the supersensuous world as the true world has been cast aside, the vacant niche of the higher world remains, ami so does the blueprint of an "above and below," which is to say, so does
Platonism. The inquiry must go one step farther.
"6. Thetrueworldweabolished:whichworldwasleft? theapparent one perhaps? . . . But no! along with the true world we have also abolished the apparent one! "
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That Nietzsche appends a sixth division here shows that, and how, he must advance beyond himself and beyond sheer abolition of the supersensuous. W e sense it directly from the animation of the style and manner of composition-how the clarity of this step conducts him for the first time into the brilliance of full daylight, where all shadows dwindle. Therefore: "(Midday; moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error; highpoint of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA. )" Thus the onset of the final stage of his own philosophy.
The portrayal of all six divisions of the history of Platonism is so arranged that the "true world," the existence and legitimacy of which is under consideration, is in each division brought into connection with the type of man who comports himself to that world. Consequently, the overturning of Platonism and the ultimate twist out of it imply a metamorphosis of man. At the end of Platonism stands a decision concerning the transformation of man. That is how the phrase "high- point of humanity" is to be understood, as the peak of decision, namely, decision as to whether with the end of Platonism man as he has been hitherto is to come to an end, whether he is to become that kind of man Nietzsche characterized as the "last man," or whether that type of man can be overcome and the "overman" can begin: "lncipit Zara- thustra. " By the word "overman" Nietzsche does not mean some miraculous, fabulous being, but the man who surpasses former man. But man as he has been hitherto is the one whose Dasein and relation to Being have been determined by Platonism in one of its forms or by a mixture of several of these. The last man is the necessary consequence of unsubdued nihilism. The great danger Nietzsche sees is that it will all culminate in the last man, that it will peter out in the spread of the increasingly insipid last man. "The opposite of the overman is the last man: I created him at the same time I created the former" (XIV, 262).
That suggests that the end first becomes visible as an end on the basis of the new beginning. To put it the other way round, overman's identity first becomes clear when the last man is perceived as such.
Now all we must do is bring into view the extreme counterposition
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to Plato and Platonism and then ascertain how Nietzsche successfully adopts a stance within it. What results when, along with the true world, the apparent world too is abolished?
The "true world," the supersensuous, and the apparent world, the sensuous, together make out what stands opposed to pure nothingness; they constitute beings as a whole. When both are abolished everything collapses into the vacuous nothing. That cannot be what Nietzsche means. For he desires to overcome nihilism in all its forms. When we recall that, and how, Nietzsche wishes to ground art upon embodying life by means of his physiological aesthetics, we note that this implies an affirmation of the sensuous world, not its abolition. However, ac- cording to the express wording of the final division of the history of Platonism, "the apparent world is abolished. " Certainly. But the sensu- ous world is the "apparent world" only according to the interpretation of Platonism. With the abolition of Platonism the way first opens for
the affirmation of the sensuous, and along with it, the nonsensuous world of the spirit as well. It suffices to recall the following statement from The Will to Power, no. 820:
For myself and for all those who live-are permitted to live-without the anxieties of a puritanical conscience, I wish an ever greater spiritualization and augmentation of the senses. Yes, we ought to be grateful to our senses for their subtlety, fullness, and force; and we ought to offer them in return the very best of spirit we possess.
What is needed is neither abolition of the sensuous nor abolition of the nonsensuous. On the contrary, what must be cast aside is the misinterpretation, the deprecation, of the sensuous, as well as the extravagant elevation of the supersensuous. A path must be cleared for a new interpretation of the sensuous on the basis of a new hierarchy of the sensuous and nonsensuous. The new hierarchy does not simply wish to reverse matters within the old structural order, now reverencing the sensuous and scorning the nonsensuous. It does not wish to put what was at the very bottom on the very top. A new hierarchy and new valuation mean that the ordering structure must be changed. To that
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extent, overturning Platonism must become a twisting free of it. How far the latter extends with Nietzsche, how far it can go, to what extent it comes to an overcoming of Platonism and to what extent not-those are necessary critical questions. But they should be posed only when we have reflected in accordance with the thought that Nietzsche most intrinsically willed-beyond everything captious, ambiguous, and defi- cient which we might very easily ascribe to him here.
25. The New Interpretation of Sensuousness and the Raging Discordance between Art and Truth
We are now asking what new interpretation and ordering of the sensu- ous and nonsensuous results from the overturning of Platonism. To what extent is "the sensuous" the genuine "reality"? What transforma- tion accompanies the inversion? What metamorphosis underlies it? We must ask the question in this last form, because it is not the case that things are inverted first, and then on the basis of the new position gained by the inversion the question is posed, "What is the result? " Rather, the overturning derives the force and direction of its motion from the new inquiry and its fundamental experience, in which true being, what is real, "reality," is to be defined afresh.
We are not unprepared for these questions, provided we have tra- versed the path of the entire lecture course, which from the outset has aimed in their direction.
We unfolded all our questions concerning art for the explicit and exclusive purpose of bringing the new reality, above all else, into sharp focus. In particular, the presentation of Nietzsche's "physiological aesthetics" was elaborated in such a way that we now only need to grasp in a more fundamental manner what was said there. We do that in· order to pursue his interpretation of the sensuous in its principal direction, which means, to see how he achieves a stand for his thought after both the true and the apparent worlds of Platonism have been abolished.
Nietzsche recognizes rapture to be the basic actuality of art. In
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contrast to Wagner, he understands the feeling of increment of force, plenitude, and the reciprocal enhancement of all capacities, as a being beyond oneself, hence a coming to oneself in the supreme lucidity of Being-not a visionless tumult. But in Nietzsche's view that implies at the same time the emergence of the abyss of "life," of life's essential contradictions, not as moral evil or as something to be negated, but as what is to be affirmed. The "physiological," the sensuous-corporeal, in itself possesses this beyond-itself. The inner constitution of the sensu- ous was clarified by emphasis on the relation of rapture to beauty, and of creation and enjoyment to form. What is proper to form is the constant, order, overview, boundary, and law. The sensuous in itself is directed toward overview and order, toward what can be mastered and firmly fixed. What makes itself known here with regard to the essence of the "sensuous" we now need grasp only in its principal relations, in order to see how for Nietzsche the sensuous constitutes reality proper.
What lives is exposed to other forces, but in such a way that, striving against them, it deals with them according to their form and rhythm, in order to estimate them in relation to possible incorporation or elimination. According to this angle of vision, everything that is en- countered is interpreted in terms of the living creature's capacity for life. The angle of vision, and the realm it opens to view, themselves draw the borderlines around what it is that creatures can or cannot encounter. For example, a lizard hears the slightest rustling in the grass but it does not hear a pistol shot fired quite close by. Accordingly, the creature develops a kind of interpretation of its surroundings and there- by of all occurrence, not incidentally, but as the fundamental process of life itself: "The perspectival [is] the basic condition of all life" (VII, 4).
With a view to the basic constitution of living things Nietzsche says (XIII, 63), "The essential aspect of organic beings is a new manifold, which is itself an occurrence. " The living creature possesses the char- acter of a perspectival preview which circumscribes a "line of horizon" about him, within whose scope something can come forward into appearance for him at all. Now, in the "organic" there is a multiplicity of drives and forces, each of which has its perspective. The manifold
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of perspectives distinguishes the organic from the inorganic. Yet even the latter has its perspective; it is just that in the inorganic, in attraction and repulsion, the "power relations" are clearly fixed (XIII, 62). The mechanistic representation of "inanimate" nature is only a hypothesis for purposes of calculation; it overlooks the fact that here too relations of forces and concatenations of perspectives hold sway. Every point of force per se is perspectival. As a result it becomes manifest "that there is no inorganic world" (XIII, 81). Everything "real" is alive, is "per- spectival" in itself, and asserts itself in its perspective against others. On that basis we can understand Nietzsche's note from the years 1886-87 (XIII, 227-28):
Fundamental question: whether the perspectival is proper to the being, and is not only a form of observation, a relation between different beings? Do the various forces stand in relation, so that the relation is tied to a perceptual optics? That would be possible if all Being were essentially something which perceives.
We would not have to go far to find proof to show that this conception of beings is precisely that of Leibniz, except that Nietzsche eliminates the latter's theological metaphysics, i. e. , his Platonism. All being is in itself perspectival-perceptual, and that means, in the sense now deline- ated, "sensuous. "
The sensuous is no longer the "apparent," no longer the penumbra; it alone is what is real, hence "true. " And what becomes of semblance? Semblance itself is proper to the essence of the real. We can readily see that in the perspectival character of the actual. The following statement provides an opening onto the matter of semblance within the perspectivally constructed actual: "With the organic world begin in- determinateness and semblance" (XIII, 288; cf. also 229). In the unity of an organic being there is a multiplicity of drives and capacities (each of which possesses its perspective) which struggle against one another. In such a multiplicity the univocity of the particular perspective in which the actual in any given case stands is lost. The equivocal char- acter of what shows itself in several perspectives is granted, along with the indeterminate, which now appears one way, then another, which
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first proffers this appearance, then that one. But such appearance becomes semblance in the sense of mere appearance only when what becomes manifest in one perspective petrifies and is taken to be the sole definitive appearance, to the disregard of the other perspectives that crowd round in turn.
In that way, palpable things, "objects," emerge for creatures in what they encounter; things that are constant, with enduring qualities, by which the creature can get its bearings. The entire range of what is fixed and constant is, according to the ancient Platonic conception, the region of "Being," the "true. " Such Being, viewed perspectivally, is but the one-sided, entrenched appearance, which is taken to be solely definitive. It thus becomes mere appearance; Being, the true, is mere appearance, error.
Error begins in the organic world. "Things," "substances," properties, act- "ivities" [Tiitig"keiten"]-one should not read all that into the inorganic world! They are the specific errors by virtue of which organisms live (XIII, 69).
In the organic world, the world of embodying life, where man too resides, "error" begins. That should not be taken as meaning that creatures, in distinction to members of the inorganic realm, can go astray. It means that those beings which in the definitive perspectival horizon of a creature appear to constitute its firmly established, existent world, in their Being are but appearance, mere appearance. Man's logic serves to make what he encounters identical, constant, ascertainable. Being, the true, which logic "firmly locates" (petrifies}, is but sem- blance; a semblance, an apparentness, that is essentially necessary to the creature as such, which is to say, a semblance that pertains to his survival, his establishment of self amidst ceaseless change. Because the real is perspectival in itself, apparentness as such is proper to reality. Truth, i. e. , true being, i. e. , what is constant and fixed, because it is the petrifying of any single given perspective, is always only an apparent- ness that has come to prevail, which is to say, it is always error. For that reason Nietzsche says (WM, 493}, "Truth is the kind of error without
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which a certain kind of living being could not live. The value for life ultimately decides. "
Truth, that is, the true as the constant, is a kind of semblance that is justified as a necessary condition of the assertion of life. But upon deeper meditation it becomes clear that all appearance and all apparent- ness are possible only if something comes to the fore and shows itself at alL What in advance enables such appearing is the perspectival itself. That is what genuinely radiates, bringing something to show itself. When Nietzsche uses the word semblance [Schein] it is usually am- biguous. He knows it, too. "There are fateful words which appear to express an insight but which in truth hinder it; among them belongs the word 'semblance,' 'appearance'" (XIII, 50). Nietzsche does not become master of the fate entrenched in that word, which is to say, in the matter. He says (ibid. ),~· 'Semblance' as I understand it is the actual and sole reality of things. " That should be understood to mean not that
reality is something apparent, but that being-real is in itself perspecti- val, a bringing forward into appearance, a letting radiate; that it is in itself a shining. Reality is radiance.
Hence I do not posit "semblance" in opposition to "reality," but on the contrary take semblance to be the reality which resists transformation into an imaginative "world of truth. " A particular name for that reality would be "will to power," designated of course intrinsically and not on the basis of its ungraspable, fluid, Protean nature (XIII, 50; from the year 1886, at the latest).
Reality, Being, is Schein in the sense of perspectival letting-shine. But proper to that reality at the same time is the multiplicity of perspectives, and thus the possibility of illusion and of its being made fast, which means the possibility of truth as a kind of Schein in the_ sense of "mere" appearance. If truth is taken to be semblance, that is, as mere appearance and error, the implication is that truth is the fixed semblance which is necessarily inherent in perspectival shining-it is illusion. Nietzsche often identifies such illusion with "the lie": "One who tells the truth ends by realizing that he always lies" (XII, 293).
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Indeed Nietzsche at times defines perspectival shining as Schein in the sense of illusion and deception, contrasting illusion and deception to truth, which, as "Being," is also at bottom error.
We have already seen that creation, as forming and shaping, as well as the aesthetic pleasures related to such shaping, are grounded in the essence of life. Hence art too, and precisely it, must cohere most intimately with perspectival shining and letting shine. Art in the proper sense is art in the grand style, desirous of bringing waxing life itself to power. It is not an immobilizing but a liberating for expansion, a clarifying to the point of transfiguration, and this in two senses: first, stationing a thing in the clarity of Being; second, establishing such clarity as the heightening of life itself.
Life is in itself perspectival. It waxes and flourishes with the height and heightening of the world which is brought forward perspectivally to appearance, with the enhancement of the shining, that is, of what brings a thing to scintillate in such a way that life is transfigured. "Art and nothing but art! " (WM, 853, section II). Art induces reality, which is in itself a shining, to shine most profoundly and supremely in scintil- lating transfiguration. If "metaphysical" means nothing else than the essence of reality, and if reality consists in shining, we then understand the statement with which the section on art in The Will to Power closes (WM, 853}: " . . . 'art as the proper task of life, art as its metaphysical activity . . . . ' " Art is the most genuine and profound will to semblance, namely, to the scintillation of what transfigures, in which the supreme lawfulness of Dasein becomes visible. In contrast, 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 im- mobilizing of life, and hence its inhibition and dissolution. "We have art so that we do not perish from the truth" (WM, 822}. It is "not possible . . . to live with the truth," if life is always enhancement of life; the "will to truth," i. e. , to fixed apparition, is "already a symptom of degeneration" (XIV, 368}. Now it becomes clear what the fifth and concluding proposition concerning art avers: art is worth more than truth.
Both art and truth are modes of perspectival shining. But the value
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of the real is measured according to how it satisfies the essence of reality, how it accomplishes the shining and enhances reality. Art, as transfiguration, is more enhancing to life than truth, as fixation ofan apparition.
Now too we perceive to what extent the relation of art and truth must be a discordance for Nietzsche and for his philosophy, as inverted Platonism. Discordance is present only where the elements which sever the unity of their belonging-together diverge from one another by virtue of that very unity. The unity of their belonging-together is granted by the one reality, perspectival shining. To it belong both apparition and scintillating appearance as transfiguration. In order for the real (the living creature) to be real, it must on the one hand ensconce itself within a particular horizon, thus perduring in the illu- sion of truth. But in order for the real to remain real, it must on the other hand simultaneously transfigure itself by going beyond itself, surpassing itself in the scintillation of what is created in art-and that means it has to advance against the truth. While truth and art are
proper to the essence of reality with equal originality, they must diverge from one another and go counter to one another.
But because in Nietzsche's view semblance, as perspectival, also possesses the character of the nonactual, of illusion and deception, he must say, "The will to semblance, to illusion, to deception, to Becom- ing and change is deeper, more 'metaphysical' [that is to say, corre- sponding more to the essence of Being] than the will to truth, to actuality, to Being" (XIV, 369). This is expressed even more decisively in The Will to Power, no. 853, section I, where semblance is equated with "lie": " W e need the lie in order to achieve victory over this reality, this 'truth,' which is to say, in order to live . . . . That the lie is necessary for life is itself part and parcel of the frightful and questionable char- acter of existence. "
Art and truth are equally necessary for reality. As equally necessary they stand in severance. But their relationship first arouses dread when we consider that creation, i. e. , the metaphysical activity of art, receives yet another essential impulse the moment we descry the most tremen- dous event-the death of the God of morality. In Nietzsche's view,
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existence can now be endured only in creation. Conducting reality to the power of its rule and of its supreme possibilities alone guarantees Being. But creation, as art, is will to semblance; it stands in severance from truth.
Art as will to semblance is the supreme configuration of will to power. But the latter, as the basic character of beings, as the essence of reality, is in itself that Being which wills itself by willing to be Becoming. In that way Nietzsche in will to power attempts to think the original unity of the ancient opposition of Being and Becoming. Being, as permanence, is to let Becoming be a Becoming. The origin of the thought of "eternal recurrence" is thereby indicated.
In the year 1886, in the middle of the period when he labored on the planned major work, Nietzsche's first treatise, The Birth of Trage- dy from the Spirit of Music (1872), appeared in a new edition. It bore the altered title The Birth of Tragedy, or Greek Civilization and Pessi- mism; New Edition, with an Attempt at Self-criticism (see I, l-14). The task which that book had first ventured to undertake remained the same for Nietzsche.
He pinpoints the task in a passage that is often quoted but just as often misinterpreted. The correct interpretation devolves from the entirety of this lecture course. Rightly grasped, the passage can serve as a rubric that characterizes the course's starting point and the direc- tion of its inquiry. Nietzsche writes (I, 4):
. . . Nevertheless, I do not wish to suppress entirely how unpleasant it now seems to me, how alien it stands before me now, after sixteen years-before an eye which has grown older, a hundred times more fastidious, but by no means colder, an eye which would not be any the less prepared to undertake the very task that audacious book ventured for the first time: to see science under the optics of the artist, but art under the optics of life. . . .
Half a century has elapsed for Europe since these words were penned. During the decades in question the passage has been misread again and again, precisely by those people who exerted themselves to resist the increasing uprooting and devastation of science. From Nietzsche's words they gathered the following: the sciences may no longer be conducted in an arid, humdrum manner, they may no longer
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"gather dust," far removed from "life"; they have to be shaped "artisti- cally," so that they are attractive, pleasing, and in good taste-all that, because the artistically shaped sciences must be related to "life," re- main in proximity to "life," and be readily useful for "life. "
Above all, the generation that studied at the German universities between 1909 and 1914 heard the passage interpreted in this way. Even in the form of the misinterpretation it was a help to us. But there was no one about who could have provided the correct reading of it. That would have required re-asking the grounding question of Occidental philosophy, questioning in the direction of Being by way of actual inquiry.
To explain our understanding of the phrase cited, "to see science under the optics o f the artist, but art under the optics o f life," we must refer to four points, all of which, after what we have discussed, will by now be familiar to us.
First, "science" here means knowing as such, the relation to truth.
Second, the twofold reference to the "optics" of the artist and of life indicates that the "perspectival character" of Being becomes essential. Third, the equation of art and the artist directly expresses the fact that art is to be conceived in terms of the artist, creation, and the grand
style.
Fourth, "life" here means neither mere animal and vegetable Being
nor that readily comprehensible and compulsive busyness of everyday existence; rather, "life" is the term for Being in its new interpretation, according to which it is a Becoming. "Life" is neither "biologically" nor "practically" intended; it is meant metaphysically. The equation of Being and life is not some sort of unjustified expansion of the biologi- cal, although it often seems that way, but a transformed interpretation of the biological on the basis of Being, grasped in a superior way-this, of course, not fully mastered, in the timeworn schema of "Being and Becoming. "
Nietzsche's phrase suggests that on the basis of the essence of Being art must be grasped as the fundamental occurrence of beings, as the properly creative. But art conceived in that way defines the arena in which we can estimate how it is with "truth," and in what relation art and truth stand. The phrase does not suggest that artistic matters be
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jumbled with the "conduct of science," much less that knowledge be subjected to aesthetic rehabilitation. Nor does it mean that art has to follow on the heels of life and be of service to it; for it is art, the grand style, which is to legislate the Being of beings in the first place.
The phrase demands knowledge of the event of nihilism. In Nietz- sche's view such knowledge at the same time embraces the will to overcome nihilism, indeed by means of original grounding and ques- tioning.
