In the being of the artist we encounter the most perspicuous and most
familiar
mode of will to power.
Heidegger - Nietzsche - v1-2
Only a more powerful heightening can counter the tendency to sink back; simply holding onto the position already attained will not do, because the inevitable consequence is ultimate exhaustion.
In The Will to Power Nietzsche says (WM, 702):
-what man wants, what every smallest part of a living organism wants, is an increase of power. . . . Let us take the simplest case, that of primitive nourishment: the protoplasm stretches its pseudopodia in order to search for something that resists it-not from hunger but from will to power. It then attempts to overcome this thing, to appropriate it, to incorporate it. What we call "nourishment" is merely a derivative appearance, a practical appli- cation of that original will to become stronger. *
To will is to want to become stronger. Here too Nietzsche speaks by way of reversal and at the same time by way of defense against a contemporary trend, namely, Darwinism. Let us clarify this matter briefly. Life not only exhibits the drive to maintain itself, as Darwin
*Walter Kaufmann notes that all editions omit a sentence from this note. It should be inserted after the phrase "not from hunger but from will to power. " In translation it reads: "Duality as the consequence of too weak a unity. " See Kaufmann's edition of The Will to Power, p. 373, n. 80.
Will and Power 61
thinks, but also is self-assertion. The will to maintain merely clings to what is already at hand, stubbornly insists upon it, loses itself in it, and so becomes blind to its proper essence. Self-assertion, which wants to be ahead of things, to stay on top of things, is always a going back into its essence, into the origin. Self-assertion is original assertion of es- sence.
Will to power is never the willing of a particular actual entity. It involves the Being and essence of beings; it is this itself. Therefore we can say that will to power is always essential will. Although Nietzsche does not formulate it expressly in this way, at bottom that is what he means. Otherwise we could not understand what he always refers to in connection with his emphasis on the character of enhancement in will, of the "increase of power," namely, the fact that will to power is something creative. That designation too remains deceptive; it often seems to suggest that in and through will to power something is to be produced. What is decisive is not production in the sense of manufac- turing but taking up and transforming, making something other than. . . , other in an essential way. For that reason the need to destroy belongs essentially to creation. In destruction, the contrary, the ugly, and the evil are posited; they are of necessity proper to creation, i. e. , will to power, and thus to Being itself. To the essence of Being nullity belongs, not as sheer vacuous nothingness, but as the empowering "no. "
We know that German Idealism thought Being as will. That philos- ophy also dared to think the negative as proper to Being. It suffices to refer to a passage in the Preface to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Here Hegel avers that the "monstrous power of the negative" is the "energy of thinking, of the pure ego. " He continues:
Death, if we want to name that unreality so, is the most frightful thing, and to hold fast to what is dead requires the greatest force. Beauty without force hates the intellect because intellect demands of her something of which she is incapable. But the life of Spirit is not one that shies from death and merely preserves itself from corruption; it is rather the life that endures death and maintains itself in death. Spirit achieves its truth only inasmuch as it finds itself in absolute abscission. It is not this power as something positive that
62 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
averts its glance from everything negative, as when we say of something that it is nothing, or false, and that now we are done with it and can leave it behind and go on to something else; rather, it is this power only insofar as it looks the negative in the eye and lingers with it. *
Thus German Idealism too dares to think evil as proper to the essence of Being. The greatest attempt in this direction we possess in Schelling's treatise On the Essence of Human Freedom. Nietzsche had a much too original and mature relation to the history of German metaphysics to have overlooked the might of thoughtful will in Ger- man Idealism. Hence at one point he writes (WM, 416):
The significance of German philosophy (Hegel): to elaborate a pantheism in which evil, error, and suffering are not felt to be arguments against divinity. This grandiose initiative has been misused by the existing powers (the state, etc. ), as though it sanctioned the rationality of those who hap- pened to be ruling.
In contrast, Schopenhauer appears as the stubborn moral-man who in order to retain his moral estimation finally becomes a world-denier, ulti- mately a "mystic. "
This passage also reveals clearly that Nietzsche was by no means willing to join in the belittling, denegrating, and berating of German Idealism which became common with Schopenhauer and others in the middle of the nineteenth century. Schopenhauer's philosophy, which had been available in its finished form since 1818, began to reach a broader public by mid-century. Richard Wagner and the young Nietzsche were also caught up in the movement. We obtain a vivid picture of the enthusiasm for Schopenhauer which moved young people at that time from the letters of the youthful Baron Carl von Gersdorff to Nietzsche. They were friends since their high school days at Schulpforta. Especial- ly important are the letters Gersdorff wrote to Nietzsche while at the front in 1870-71. (See Die Briefe des Freiherrn Carl von Gersdorff an
Friedrich Nietzsche, edited by Karl Schlechta, first part: 1864-71, Weimar, 1934; second part: 1871-74, Weimar, 1935. )
*C. W. F. Hegel, Phiinomenologie des Geistes (Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1952), pp. 29-30.
Will and Power 63
Schopenhauer interpreted the state of affairs-that he was suddenly now being read by the educated classes-as a philosophical victory over German Idealism. But Schopenhauer advanced to the forefront of philosophy at that time not because his philosophy conquered German Idealism philosophically, but because the Germans lay prostrate before German Idealism and were no longer equal to its heights. Its decline made Schopenhauer a great man. The consequence was that the philos- ophy of German Idealism, seen from the point of view of Schopenhau- er's commonplaces, became something foreign, an oddity. It fell into oblivion. Only by detours and byways do we find our way back into that era of the German spirit; we are far removed from a truly historical relation to our history. Nietzsche sensed that here a "grandiose initia- tive" of metaphysical thought was at work. Yet for him it remained, had to remain, a mere glimmer. For the one decade of creative labor on his major work did not grant him the time and tranquillity to linger in the vast halls of Hegel's and Schelling's works.
Will is in itself simultaneously creative and destructive. Being master out beyond oneself is always also annihilation. All the designated mo- ments of will-the out-beyond-itself, enhancement, the character of command, creation, self-assertion-speak clearly enough for us to know that will in itself is already will to power. Power says nothing else than the actuality of will.
Prior to our general description of Nietzsche's concept of will we made brief reference to the metaphysical tradition, in order to suggest that the conception of Being as will is not in itself peculiar. But the same is true also of the designation of Being as power. No matter how decisively the interpretation of Being as will to power remains Nietz- sche's own, and no matter how little Nietzsche explicitly knew in what historical context the very concept of power as a determination o_f Being stood, it is certain that with this interpretation of the Being of beings Nietzsche advances into the innermost yet broadest circle of Western thought.
Ignoring for a moment the fact that for Nietzsche power means the same as will, we note that the essence of power is just as intricate as the essence of will. We could clarify the state of affairs by proceeding
64 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
as we did when we listed the particular definitions of will that Nietzsche gives. But we will now emphasize only two moments within the essence of power.
Nietzsche often identifies power with force, without defining the latter more closely. Force, the capacity to be gathered in itself and prepared to work effects, to be in a position to do something, is what the Creeks (above all, Aristotle) denoted as dynamis. But power is every bit as much a being empowered, in the sense of the process of domi- nance, the being-at-work of force, in Creek, energeia. Power is will as willing out beyond itself, precisely in that way to come to itself, to find and assert itself in the circumscribed simplicity of its essence, in Creek, entelecheia. For Nietzsche power means all this at once: dynamis, energeia, entelecheia.
In the collection of treatises by Aristotle which we know under the title Metaphysics there is one, Book Theta (IX), that deals with dyna- mis, energeia, and entelecheia, as t h e highest determinations of Being. *
What Aristotle, still on the pathway of an original philosophy, but also already at its end, here thinks, i. e. , asks, about Being, later is transformed into the doctrine of potentia and actus in Scholastic plii- losophy. Since the beginning of modern times philosophy entrenches itself in the effort to grasp Being by means of thinking. In that way the determinations of Being, potentia and actus, slip into the vicinity of the basic forms of thought or judgment. Possibility, actuality, and necessity along with them become modalities of Being and of thinking. Since then the doctrine of modalities becomes a component part of every doctrine of categories.
What contemporary academic philosophy makes of all this is a mat- ter of scholarship and an exercise in intellectual acuity. What we find
*Heidegger had lectured in the summer of 1931 on Aristotle, Metaphysics IX. (The text of that course appeared in 1981 as vol. 33 of the Gesamtausgabe. ) On the question of aletheia and Being in chapter 10 of Metaphysics IX, see Martin Heidegger, Logik: Die Frage nach der Wahrheit (Frankfurt/Main: V. Klostermann, 1976), pp. 170-82, the text of his 1925-26 lecture course. Cf. the review of this volume in Research in Phenomenology, VI (1976), 151-66.
Will and Power 65
in Aristotle, as knowledge of dynamis, energeia, entelecheia, is still philosophy; that is to say, the book of Aristotle's Metaphysics which we have referred to is the most worthy of question of all the books in the entire Aristotelian corpus. Although Nietzsche does not appreciate the concealed and vital connection between his concept of power, as a concept of Being, and Aristotle's doctrine, and although that connec- tion remains apparently quite loose and undetermined, we may say that the Aristotelian doctrine has more to do with Nietzsche's doctrine of will to power than with any doctrine of categories and modalities in academic philosophy. But the Aristotelian doctrine itself devolves from a tradition that determines its direction; it is a first denouement of the first beginnings of Western philosophy in Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides.
However, we should not understand the reference to the inner rela- tion of Nietzsche's will to power to dynamis, energeia, and entelecheia in Aristotle as asserting that Nietzsche's doctrine of Being can be interpreted immediately with the help of the Aristotelian teaching. Both must be conjoined in a more original context of questions. That is especially true of Aristotle's doctrine. It is no exaggeration to say that we today simply no longer understand or appreciate anything about Aristotle's teaching. The reason is simple: we interpret his doctrine right from the start with the help of corresponding doctrines from the Middle Ages and modern times, which on their part are only a trans- formation of and a decline from Aristotelian doctrine, and which there- fore are hardly suited to provide a basis for our understanding.
Thus when we examine various aspects of the essence of will to power as powerfulness of will, we recognize how that interpretation of beings stands within the basic movement of Western thought. We discern how solely for that reason it is able to bring an essential thru~t to the task of thinking in the twentieth century.
But of course we will never comprehend the innermost historicity of Nietzschean thought, by virtue of which it spans the breadth of centu- ries, if we only hunt for reminiscences, borrowings, and divergences in an extrinsic manner. We must grasp what it was that Nietzsche prop- erly wanted to think. It would be no great trick-better, it would be
66 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
precisely that, a mere trick-if, armed with a readymade conceptual apparatus, we proceeded to flush out particular disagreements, contra- dictions, oversights, and overhasty and often superficial and contingent remarks in Nietzsche's presentations. As opposed to that, we are searching for the realm of his genuine questioning.
In the final year of his creative life Nietzsche was wont to designate his manner of thinking as "philosophizing with the hammer. " The expression has more than one meaning, in accordance with Nietzsche's own viewpoint. Least of all does it mean to go in swinging, wrecking everything. It means to hammer out a content and an essence, to sculpt a figure out of stone. Above all it means to tap all things with the hammer to hear whether or not they yield that familiar hollow sound, to ask whether there is still solidity and weight in things or whether every possible center of gravity has vanished from them. That is what Nietzsche's thought wants to achieve: it wants to give things weight and importance again.
Even if in the execution much remained unaccomplished and only projected, we should not conclude from the manner of Nietzsche's speech that the rigor and truth of the concept, the relentless effort to ground things by inquiring into them, was of secondary importance for his philosophical exertions. Whatever is a need in Nietzsche, and there- fore a right, does not apply to anyone else; for Nietzsche is who he is, and he is unique. Yet such singularity takes on definition and first becomes fruitful when seen within the basic movement of Western thought.
11. The Grounding Question and the Guiding Question of Philosophy
We provided a general characterization of the will as will to power in order to illuminate to some extent the region we must now investigate. We will begin the interpretation of Book III, "Principle of a New Valuation," with the fourth and final chapter, "Will to Power as Art. " As we make clear in rough outline how Nietzsche grasps art and how
he approaches the question of art, it will become clear at the same time
why an interpretation of the nucleus of will to power must begin precisely here, with art.
Of course, it is decisive that the basic philosophical intention of the interpretation be held fast. Let us try to sharpen that intention further. The inquiry goes in the direction of asking what the being is. This traditional "chief question" of Western philosophy we call the guiding question. But it is only the penultimate question. The ultimate, i. e. ,
first question is: what is Being itself? This question, the one which above all is to be unfolded and grounded, we call the grounding ques- tion of philosophy, because in it philosophy first inquires into the ground of beings as ground, inquiring at the same time into its own ground and in that way grounding itself. Before the question is posed explicitly, philosophy must, if it wants to ground itself, get a firm foothold on the path of an epistemology or doctrine of consciousness; but in so doing it remains forever on a path that leads only to the anteroom of philosophy, as it were, and does not penetrate to the very center of philosophy. The grounding question remains as foreign to
Nietzsche as it does to the history of thought prior to him.
68 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
But when the guiding question (What is the being? ) and the ground- ing question (What is Being? ) are asked, we are asking: What is . . . ? The opening up of beings as a whole and of Being is the target for thought. Beings are to be brought into the open region of Being itself, and Being is to be conducted into the open region of its essence. The openness of beings we call unconcealment-aletheia, truth. The guid- ing and the grounding questions of philosophy ask what beings and Being in truth are. With the question of the essence of Being we are inquiring in such a way that nothing remains outside the question, not even nothingness. Therefore the question of what Being in truth is must at the same time ask what the truth in which Being is to be illumined itself is. Truth stands with Being in the realm of the ground- ing question, not because the possibility of truth is cast in doubt epistemologically, but because it already belongs to the essence of the grounding question in a distinctive sense, as its "space. " In the ground- ing and guiding questions concerning Being and beings, we are also asking simultaneously and inherently about the essence of truth. "Al- so" about truth, we say, speaking altogether extrinsically. For truth cannot be what "also" comes forward somewhere in proximity to Be- ing. Rather, the questions will arise as to how both are united in essence and yet are foreign to one another, and "where," in what domain, they somehow come together, and what that domain itself "is. " Those are indeed questions that inquire beyond Nietzsche. But they alone provide the guarantee that we will bring his thought out into the open and make it fruitful, and also that we will come to experience and know the essential borders between us, recognizing what is different in him.
But if will to power determines beings as such, which is to say, in their truth, then the question concerning truth, i. e. , the question of the essence of truth, must always be inserted into the interpretation of beings as will to power. And if for Nietzsche art attains an exceptional position within the task of a general interpretation of all occurrence, which is understood as will to power, then the question of truth must play a leading role precisely here.
12. Five Statements on Art
We shall now attempt a first characterization of Nietzsche's total conception of the essence of art. We will do this by exhibiting a sequence of five statements on art which provide weighty evidence.
Why is art of decisive importance for the task of grounding the principle of the new valuation? The immediate answer is found in number 797 of The Will to Power, which really ought to stand in the position of number 794* : "The phenomenon 'artist' is still the most perspicuous-. " At first we will read no further, but consider only this statement. "The most perspicuous," that is, what for us is most accessible in its essence, is the phenomenon "artist"-the being of an artist. With this being, the artist, Being lights up for us most immediately and brightly. Why? Nietzsche does not explicitly say why; yet we can easily discover the reason. To be an artist is to be able to bring something forth. But to bring forth means to establish in Being something that does not yet exist. It is as though in bringing-forth we dwelled upon the coming to be of beings and could see there with utter clarity their essence. Because it is a matter of illuminating will to power as the basic character of beings, the task must begin where what is in question shows itself most brightly. For all clarifying must proceed from what is clear to what is obscure, not the other way round.
Being an artist is a way of life. What does Nietzsche say about life in general? He calls life "the form of Being most familiar to us" (WM, 689). For him "Being" itself serves only "as a generalization of the
*I. e. , as the first of all the aphorisms and notes gathered under the title "Will to Power as Art. "
70 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
concept 'life' (breathing), 'being besouled,' 'willing, effecting,' 'becom- ing'" (WM, 581 ). "'Being'-we have no other way to represent it than as 'living. ' How then can something dead 'be'? " (WM, 582). "If the innermost essence of Being is will to power . . . " (WM, 693).
With these somewhat formula-like references we have already taken measure of the framework within which the "artist phenomenon" is to be conceived, the framework that is to be maintained throughout the coming considerations. We repeat: the being of an artist is the most perspicuous mode of life. Life is for us the most familiar form of Being. The innermost essence of Being is will to power.
In the being of the artist we encounter the most perspicuous and most familiar mode of will to power. Since it is a matter of illuminating the Being of beings, meditation on art has in this regard decisive priority.
However, here Nietzsche speaks only of the "artist phenomenon," not about art. Although it is difficult to say what art "as such" is, and how it is, still it is clear that works of art too belong to the reality of art, and furthermore so do those who, as we say, "experience" such works. The artist is but one of those things that together make up the actuality of art as a whole. Certainly, but this is precisely what is decisive in Nietzsche's conception of art, that he sees it in its essential entirety in terms of the artist; this he does consciously and in explicit opposition to that conception of art which represents it in terms of those who "enjoy" and "experience" it.
That is a guiding principle of Nietzsche's teaching on art: art must be grasped in terms of creators and producers, not recipients. Nietzsche expresses it unequivocally in the following words (WM, 811): "Our aesthetics heretofore has been a woman's aesthetics, inasmuch as only the recipients of art have formulated their experiences of 'what is beautiful. ' In all philosophy to date the artist is missing. . . . " Philos- ophy of art means "aesthetics" for Nietzsche too-but masculine aes- thetics, not feminine aesthetics. The question of art is the question of the artist as the productive, creative one; his experiences of what is beautiful must provide the standard.
We now go back to number 797: "The phenomenon 'artist' is still the most perspicuous-. " If we take the assertion in the guiding con-
Five Statements on Art 71 text of the question of will to power, with a view to the essence of art,
then we derive at once two essential statements about art:
I. Art is the most perspicuous and familiar configuration of will to power;
2. Art must be grasped in terms of the artist.
And now let us read further (WM, 797): ". . . from that position to scan the basic instincts of power, of nature, etc. ! Also of religion and morals! " Here Nietzsche says explicitly that with a view toward the essence of the artist the other configurations of will to power also- nature, religion, morals, and we might add, society and individual, knowledge, science, and philosophy-are to be observed. These kinds of beings hence correspond in a certain way to the being of the artist, to artistic creativity, and to being created. The remaining beings, which the artist does not expressly bring forth, have the mode of Being that corresponds to what the artist creates, the work of art. Evidence for such a thought we find in the aphorism immediately preceding (WM, 796): "The work of art, where it appears without artist, e. g. , as body, as organization (the Prussian officer corps, the Jesuit order). To what extent the artist is only a preliminary stage. The world as a work of art that gives birth to itself-. " Here the concept of art and of the work of art is obviously extended to every ability to bring forth and to everything that is essentially brought forth. To a certain extent that also corresponds to a usage that was common until the outset of the nine- teenth century. Up to that time art meant every kind of ability to bring forth. Craftsmen, statesmen, and educators, as men who brought some- thing forth, were artists. Nature too was an artist, a female artist. At that time art did not mean the current, narrow concept, as applied to "fine art," which brings forth something beautiful in its work.
However, Nietzsche now interprets that earlier, extended usage of art, in which fine art is only one type among others, in such a way that all bringing-forth is conceived as corresponding to fine art and to the artist devoted to it. "The artist is only a preliminary stage" means the artist in the narrower sense, one who brings forth works of fine art. On that basis we can exhibit a third statement about art:
72 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
3. According to the expanded concept of artist, art is the basic occurrence of all beings; to the extent that they are, beings are self- creating, created.
But we know that will to power is essentially a creating and destroy- ing. That the basic occurrence of beings is "art" suggests nothing else than that it is will to power.
Long before Nietzsche grasps the essence of art explicitly as a con- figuration of will to power, in his very first writing, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, he sees art as the basic character of beings. Thus we can understand why during the time of his work on The Will to Power Nietzsche returns to the position he maintained on art in The Birth of Tragedy. An observation that is pertinent here is taken up into The Will to Power (WM, 853, Section IV). The final paragraph of the section reads: "Already in the Foreword [i. e. , to the book The Birth of Tragedy], where Richard Wagner is invited, as it were, to a dialogue, this confession of faith, this artists' gospel, appears: 'art as the proper task of life, art as its metaphysical activity. . . . ' " "Life" is not only meant in the narrow sense of human life but is identified with "world" in the Schopenhauerian sense. The statement is reminiscent of Schopenhauer, but it is already speaking against him.
Art, thought in the broadest sense as the creative, constitutes the basic character of beings. Accordingly, art in the narrower sense is that activity in which creation emerges for itself and becomes most per- spicuous; it is not merely one configuration of will to power among others but the supreme configuration. Will to power becomes genu- inely visible in terms of art and as art. But will to power is the ground upon which all valuation in the future is to stand. It is the principle of the new valuation, as opposed to the prior one which was dominated by religion, morality, and philosophy. If will to power therefore finds its supreme configuration in art, the positing of the new relation of will to power must proceed from art. Since the new valuation is a revalua- tion of the prior one, however, opposition and upheaval arise from art. That is averred in The Will to Power, no. 794:
Our religion, morality, and philosophy are decadence-forms of humanity. - T h e countermovement: art.
Five Statements on Art 73
According to Nietzsche's interpretation the very first principle of morality, of Christian religion, and of the philosophy determined by Plato reads as follows: This world is worth nothing; there must be a "better" world than this one, enmeshed as it is in sensuality; there must be a "true world" beyond, a supersensuous world; the world of the senses is but a world of appearances.
In such manner this world and this life are at bottom negated. If a "yes" apparently is uttered to the world, it is ultimately only in order to deny the world all the more decisively. But Nietzsche says that the "true world" of morality is a world of lies, that the true, the supersensu- ous, is an error. The sensuous world-which in Platonism means the world of semblance and errancy, the realm of error-is the true world. But the sensuous, the sense-semblant, is the very element of art. So it is that art affirms what the supposition of the ostensibly true world denies. Nietzsche therefore says (WM, 853, section II): "Art as the single superior counterforce against all will to negation of life, art as the anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, anti-Nihilist par excellence. " With that we attain a fourth statement about the essence of art:
4. Art is the distinctive countermovement to nihilism.
The artistic creates and gives form. If the artistic constitutes meta- physical activity pure and simple, then every deed, especially the high- est deed and thus the thinking of philosophy too, must be determined by it. The concept of philosophy may no longer be defined according to the pattern of the teacher of morality who posits another higher world in opposition to this presumably worthless one. Against the nihilistic philosopher of morality (Schopenhauer hovers before Nietz- sche as the most recent example of this type) must be deployed the philosopher who goes counter, who emerges from a countermoveme~t, the "artist-philosopher. " Such a philosopher is an artist in that he gives form to beings as a whole, beginning there where they reveal them- selves, i. e. , in man. It is with this thought in mind that we are to read number 795 of The Will to Power:
The artist-philosopher. Higher concept of art. Whether a man can remove himself far enough from other men, in order to give them form? (-Prelimi-
74 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
nary exercises: l. the one who gives himself form, the hermit; 2. the artist
hitherto, as the insignificant perfecter of a piece of raw material. )
Art, particularly in the narrow sense, is yes-saying to the sensuous, to semblance, to what is not "the true world," or as Nietzsche says succinctly, to what is not "the truth. "
In art a decision is made about what truth is, and for Nietzsche that always means true beings, i. e. , beings proper. This corresponds to the necessary connection between the guiding question and the grounding question of philosophy, on the one hand, and to the question of what truth is, on the other. Art is the will to semblance as the sensuous. But concerning such will Nietzsche says (XIV, 369): "The will to sem-
blance, to illusion, to deception, to Becoming and change is deeper, more 'metaphysical,' than the will to truth, to reality, to Being. " The true is meant here in Plato's sense, as being in itself, the Ideas, the supersensuous. The will to the sensuous world and to its richness is for Nietzsche, on the contrary, the will to what "metaphysics" seeks. Hence the will to the sensuous is metaphysical. That metaphysical will is actual in art.
Nietzsche says (XIV, 368):
Very early in my life I took the question of the relation of art to truth seriously: even now I stand in holy dread in the face of this discordance. My first book was devoted to it. The Birth of Tragedy believes in art on the background of another belief-that it is not possible to live with truth, that the "will to truth" is already a symptom of degeneration.
The statement sounds perverse. But it loses its foreignness, though not its importance, as soon as we read it in the right way. "Will to truth" here (and with Nietzsche always) means the will to the "true world" in the sense of Plato and Christianity, the will to supersensuousness, to being in itself. The will to such "true beings" is in truth a no-saying to our present world, precisely the one in which art is at home. Because this world is the genuinely real and only true world, Nietzsche can declare with respect to the relation of art and truth that "art is worth more than truth" (WM, 853, section IV). That is to say, the sensuous stands in a higher place and is more genuinely than the supersensuous.
Five Statements on Art 75
In that regard Nietzsche says, "W e have art in order not to perish from the truth" (WM, 822). Again "truth" means the "true world" of the supersensuous, which conceals in itself the danger that life may perish, "life" in Nietzsche's sense always meaning "life which is on the as- cent. " The supersensuous lures life away from invigorating sensuality, drains life's forces, weakens it. When we aim at the supersensuous, submission, capitulation, pity, mortification, and abasement become positive "virtues. " "The simpletons of this world," the abject, the wretched, become "children of God. " They are the true beings. It is the lowly ones who belong "up above" and who are to say what is "lofty," that is, what reaches their own height. For them all creative heightening and all pride in self-subsistent life amount to rebellion, delusion, and sin. But we have art so that we do not perish from such supersenst. ious "truth," so that the supersensuous does not vitiate life to the point of general debility and ultimate collapse. With regard to the essential relation of art and truth yet another statement about art, the final one in our series, results:
5. Art is worth more than "the truth. "
Let us review the preceding statements:
l. Art is the most perspicuous and familiar configuration of will to power;
2. Art must be grasped in terms of the artist;
3. According to the expanded concept of artist, art is the basic occurrence of all beings; to the extent that they are, beings are self- creating, created;
4. Art is the distinctive countermovement to nihilism.
At the instigation of the five statements on art, we should now recall an utterance of Nietzsche's on the same subject cited earlier: ". . . we find it to be the greatest stimulans of life-" (WM, 808). Earlier the statement served only as an example of Nietzsche's procedure of rever- sal (in this case the reversal of Schopenhauer's sedative). Now we must grasp the statement in terms of its most proper content. On the basis of all the intervening material we can easily see that this definition of
76 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
art as the stimulant of life means nothing else than that art is a configu- ration of will to power. For a "stimulant" is what propels and advances, what lifts a thing beyond itself; it is increase of power and thus power pure and simple, which is to say, will to power. Hence we cannot merely append to the five previous statements the one about art as the greatest stimulant of life. On the contrary, it is Nietzsche's major statement on art. Those five statements enlarge upon it.
On the cursory view, we are already at the end of our task. We were to indicate art as a configuration of will to power. Such is Nietzsche's intention. But with a view to Nietzsche we are searching for something else. We are asking, first, what does this conception of art achieve for the essential definition of will to power and thereby for that of beings as a whole? We can come to know that only if beforehand we ask, second, what is the significance of this interpretation for our knowledge of art and for our position with respect to it?
13. Six Basic Developments in the History of Aesthetics
We shall begin with the second question. In order to come to terms with it we must characterize Nietzsche's procedure for defining the essence of art with greater penetration and must place it in the context of previous efforts to gain knowledge of art.
With the five statements on art that we brought forward the essential aspects of Nietzsche's interrogation of art have been estab- lished. From them one thing is clear: Nietzsche does not inquire into art in order to describe it as a cultural phenomenon or as a monument to civilization. Rather, by means of art and a characterization of the essence of art, he wants to show what will to power is. Nevertheless, Nietzsche's meditation on art keeps to the traditional path. The path is defined in its peculiarity by the term "aesthetics. " True, Nietzsche speaks against feminine aesthetics. But in so doing he speaks for mascu- line aesthetics, hence for aesthetics. In that way Nietzsche's interroga- tion of art is aesthetics driven to the extreme, an aesthetics, so to speak, that somersaults beyond itself. But what else should inquiry into art and knowledge of it be than "aesthetics"? What does "aesthetics" mean?
The term "aesthetics" is formed in the same manner as "logic" and "ethics. " The word episteme, knowledge, must always complete these terms. Logic: logike episteme: knowledge of logos, that is, the doctrine of assertion or judgment as the basic form of thought. Logic is knowl- edge of thinking, of the forms and rules of thought. Ethics: ethike episteme: knowledge of ethos, of the inner character of man and of the way it determines his behavior. Logic and ethics both refer to human behavior and its lawfulness.
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The word "aesthetics" is formed in the corresponding way: aisthetike episteme: knowledge of human behavior with regard to sense, sensa- tion, and feeling, and knowledge of how these are determined.
What determines thinking, hence logic, and what thinking comports itself toward, is the true. What determines the character and behavior of man, hence ethics, and what human character and behavior comport themselves toward, is the good. What determines man's feeling, hence aesthetics, and what feeling comports itself toward, is the beautiful. The true, the good, and the beautiful are the objects of logic, ethics, and aesthetics.
Accordingly, aesthetics is consideration of man's state of feeling in its relation to the beautiful; it is consideration of the beautiful to the extent that it stands in relation to man's state of feeling. The beautiful itself is nothing other than what in its self-showing brings forth that state. But the beautiful can pertain to either nature or art. Because art in its way brings forth the beautiful, inasmuch as it is "fine" art, meditation on art becomes aesthetics. With relation to knowledge of art and inquiry into it, therefore, aesthetics is that kind of meditation on art in which man's affinity to the beautiful represented in art sets the standard for all definitions and explanations, man's state of feeling remaining the point of departure and the goal of the meditation. The relation of feeling toward art and its bringing-forth can be one of production or of reception and enjoyment.
Now, since in the aesthetic consideration of art the artwork is defined as the beautiful which has been brought forth in art, the work is represented as the bearer and provoker of the beautiful with relation to our state of feeling. The artwork is posited as the "object" for a "subject"; definitive for aesthetic consideration is the subject-object relation, indeed as a relation of feeling. The work becomes an object in terms of that surface which is accessible to "lived experience. "
Just as we say that a judgment that satisfies the laws of thought promulgated in logic is "logical," so do we apply the designation "aes- thetic," which really only means a kind of observation and investigation with regard to a relation of feeling, to this sort of behavior itself. We speak of aesthetic feeling and an aesthetic state. Strictly speaking, a
History of Aesthetics 79
state of feeling is not "aesthetic. " It is rather something that can become the object of aesthetic consideration. Such consideration is called "aesthetic" because it observes from the outset the state of feeling aroused by the beautiful, relates everything to that state, and defines all else in terms of it.
The name "aesthetics," meaning meditation on art and the beautiful, is recent. It arises in the eighteenth century. But the matter which the word so aptly names, the manner of inquiry into art and the beautiful on the basis of the state of feeling in enjoyers and producers, is old, as old as meditation on art and the beautiful in Western thought. Philo- sophical meditation on the essence of art and the beautiful even begins as aesthetics.
In recent decades we have often heard the complaint that the innu- merable aesthetic considerations of and investigations into art and the beautiful have achieved nothing, that they have not helped anyone to gain access to art, that they have contributed virtually nothing to artistic creativity and to a sound appreciation of art. That is certainly true, especially with regard to the kind of thing bandied about today under the name "aesthetics. " But we dare not derive our standards for judging aesthetics and its relation to art from such contemporary work. For, in truth, the fact whether and how an era is committed to an aesthetics, whether and how it adopts a stance toward art of an aesthetic character, is decisive for the way art shapes the history of that era-or remains irrelevant for-it.
Because what stands in question for us is art as a configuration of will to power, which is to say, as a configuration of Being in general, indeed the distinctive one, the question of aesthetics as the basic sort of meditation on art and the knowledge of it can be treated only with respect to fundamentals. Only with the help of a reflection on th~ essence of aesthetics developed in this way can we get to the point where we can grasp Nietzsche's interpretation of the essence of art; only with the help of such a reflection can we at the same time take a position with regard to Nietzsche's interpretation, so that on this basis a confrontation can flourish.
In order to characterize the essence of aesthetics, its role in Western
80 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
thought, and its relation to the history of Western art, we shall in- troduce six basic developments for con~ideration. Such consideration, of course, can only be by way of brief reference.
I. The magnificent art of Greece remains without a corresponding cognitive-conceptual meditation on it, such meditation not having to be identical with aesthetics. The lack of such a simultaneous reflection or meditation on great art does not imply that Greek art was only "lived," that the Greeks wallowed in a murky brew of "experiences" braced by neither concepts nor knowledge. It was their good fortune that the Greeks had no "lived experiences. " On the contrary, they had such an originally mature and luminous knowledge, such a passion for knowledge, that in their luminous state of knowing they had no need of "aesthetics. "
2. Aesthetics begins with the Greeks only at that moment when their great art and also the great philosophy that flourished along with it comes to an end. At that time, during the age of Plato and Aristotle, in connection with the organization of philosophy as a whole, those basic concepts are formed which mark off the boundaries for all future inquiry into art. One of those basic notions is the conceptual pair hyle-morphe, materia-forma, matter-form.
-what man wants, what every smallest part of a living organism wants, is an increase of power. . . . Let us take the simplest case, that of primitive nourishment: the protoplasm stretches its pseudopodia in order to search for something that resists it-not from hunger but from will to power. It then attempts to overcome this thing, to appropriate it, to incorporate it. What we call "nourishment" is merely a derivative appearance, a practical appli- cation of that original will to become stronger. *
To will is to want to become stronger. Here too Nietzsche speaks by way of reversal and at the same time by way of defense against a contemporary trend, namely, Darwinism. Let us clarify this matter briefly. Life not only exhibits the drive to maintain itself, as Darwin
*Walter Kaufmann notes that all editions omit a sentence from this note. It should be inserted after the phrase "not from hunger but from will to power. " In translation it reads: "Duality as the consequence of too weak a unity. " See Kaufmann's edition of The Will to Power, p. 373, n. 80.
Will and Power 61
thinks, but also is self-assertion. The will to maintain merely clings to what is already at hand, stubbornly insists upon it, loses itself in it, and so becomes blind to its proper essence. Self-assertion, which wants to be ahead of things, to stay on top of things, is always a going back into its essence, into the origin. Self-assertion is original assertion of es- sence.
Will to power is never the willing of a particular actual entity. It involves the Being and essence of beings; it is this itself. Therefore we can say that will to power is always essential will. Although Nietzsche does not formulate it expressly in this way, at bottom that is what he means. Otherwise we could not understand what he always refers to in connection with his emphasis on the character of enhancement in will, of the "increase of power," namely, the fact that will to power is something creative. That designation too remains deceptive; it often seems to suggest that in and through will to power something is to be produced. What is decisive is not production in the sense of manufac- turing but taking up and transforming, making something other than. . . , other in an essential way. For that reason the need to destroy belongs essentially to creation. In destruction, the contrary, the ugly, and the evil are posited; they are of necessity proper to creation, i. e. , will to power, and thus to Being itself. To the essence of Being nullity belongs, not as sheer vacuous nothingness, but as the empowering "no. "
We know that German Idealism thought Being as will. That philos- ophy also dared to think the negative as proper to Being. It suffices to refer to a passage in the Preface to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Here Hegel avers that the "monstrous power of the negative" is the "energy of thinking, of the pure ego. " He continues:
Death, if we want to name that unreality so, is the most frightful thing, and to hold fast to what is dead requires the greatest force. Beauty without force hates the intellect because intellect demands of her something of which she is incapable. But the life of Spirit is not one that shies from death and merely preserves itself from corruption; it is rather the life that endures death and maintains itself in death. Spirit achieves its truth only inasmuch as it finds itself in absolute abscission. It is not this power as something positive that
62 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
averts its glance from everything negative, as when we say of something that it is nothing, or false, and that now we are done with it and can leave it behind and go on to something else; rather, it is this power only insofar as it looks the negative in the eye and lingers with it. *
Thus German Idealism too dares to think evil as proper to the essence of Being. The greatest attempt in this direction we possess in Schelling's treatise On the Essence of Human Freedom. Nietzsche had a much too original and mature relation to the history of German metaphysics to have overlooked the might of thoughtful will in Ger- man Idealism. Hence at one point he writes (WM, 416):
The significance of German philosophy (Hegel): to elaborate a pantheism in which evil, error, and suffering are not felt to be arguments against divinity. This grandiose initiative has been misused by the existing powers (the state, etc. ), as though it sanctioned the rationality of those who hap- pened to be ruling.
In contrast, Schopenhauer appears as the stubborn moral-man who in order to retain his moral estimation finally becomes a world-denier, ulti- mately a "mystic. "
This passage also reveals clearly that Nietzsche was by no means willing to join in the belittling, denegrating, and berating of German Idealism which became common with Schopenhauer and others in the middle of the nineteenth century. Schopenhauer's philosophy, which had been available in its finished form since 1818, began to reach a broader public by mid-century. Richard Wagner and the young Nietzsche were also caught up in the movement. We obtain a vivid picture of the enthusiasm for Schopenhauer which moved young people at that time from the letters of the youthful Baron Carl von Gersdorff to Nietzsche. They were friends since their high school days at Schulpforta. Especial- ly important are the letters Gersdorff wrote to Nietzsche while at the front in 1870-71. (See Die Briefe des Freiherrn Carl von Gersdorff an
Friedrich Nietzsche, edited by Karl Schlechta, first part: 1864-71, Weimar, 1934; second part: 1871-74, Weimar, 1935. )
*C. W. F. Hegel, Phiinomenologie des Geistes (Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1952), pp. 29-30.
Will and Power 63
Schopenhauer interpreted the state of affairs-that he was suddenly now being read by the educated classes-as a philosophical victory over German Idealism. But Schopenhauer advanced to the forefront of philosophy at that time not because his philosophy conquered German Idealism philosophically, but because the Germans lay prostrate before German Idealism and were no longer equal to its heights. Its decline made Schopenhauer a great man. The consequence was that the philos- ophy of German Idealism, seen from the point of view of Schopenhau- er's commonplaces, became something foreign, an oddity. It fell into oblivion. Only by detours and byways do we find our way back into that era of the German spirit; we are far removed from a truly historical relation to our history. Nietzsche sensed that here a "grandiose initia- tive" of metaphysical thought was at work. Yet for him it remained, had to remain, a mere glimmer. For the one decade of creative labor on his major work did not grant him the time and tranquillity to linger in the vast halls of Hegel's and Schelling's works.
Will is in itself simultaneously creative and destructive. Being master out beyond oneself is always also annihilation. All the designated mo- ments of will-the out-beyond-itself, enhancement, the character of command, creation, self-assertion-speak clearly enough for us to know that will in itself is already will to power. Power says nothing else than the actuality of will.
Prior to our general description of Nietzsche's concept of will we made brief reference to the metaphysical tradition, in order to suggest that the conception of Being as will is not in itself peculiar. But the same is true also of the designation of Being as power. No matter how decisively the interpretation of Being as will to power remains Nietz- sche's own, and no matter how little Nietzsche explicitly knew in what historical context the very concept of power as a determination o_f Being stood, it is certain that with this interpretation of the Being of beings Nietzsche advances into the innermost yet broadest circle of Western thought.
Ignoring for a moment the fact that for Nietzsche power means the same as will, we note that the essence of power is just as intricate as the essence of will. We could clarify the state of affairs by proceeding
64 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
as we did when we listed the particular definitions of will that Nietzsche gives. But we will now emphasize only two moments within the essence of power.
Nietzsche often identifies power with force, without defining the latter more closely. Force, the capacity to be gathered in itself and prepared to work effects, to be in a position to do something, is what the Creeks (above all, Aristotle) denoted as dynamis. But power is every bit as much a being empowered, in the sense of the process of domi- nance, the being-at-work of force, in Creek, energeia. Power is will as willing out beyond itself, precisely in that way to come to itself, to find and assert itself in the circumscribed simplicity of its essence, in Creek, entelecheia. For Nietzsche power means all this at once: dynamis, energeia, entelecheia.
In the collection of treatises by Aristotle which we know under the title Metaphysics there is one, Book Theta (IX), that deals with dyna- mis, energeia, and entelecheia, as t h e highest determinations of Being. *
What Aristotle, still on the pathway of an original philosophy, but also already at its end, here thinks, i. e. , asks, about Being, later is transformed into the doctrine of potentia and actus in Scholastic plii- losophy. Since the beginning of modern times philosophy entrenches itself in the effort to grasp Being by means of thinking. In that way the determinations of Being, potentia and actus, slip into the vicinity of the basic forms of thought or judgment. Possibility, actuality, and necessity along with them become modalities of Being and of thinking. Since then the doctrine of modalities becomes a component part of every doctrine of categories.
What contemporary academic philosophy makes of all this is a mat- ter of scholarship and an exercise in intellectual acuity. What we find
*Heidegger had lectured in the summer of 1931 on Aristotle, Metaphysics IX. (The text of that course appeared in 1981 as vol. 33 of the Gesamtausgabe. ) On the question of aletheia and Being in chapter 10 of Metaphysics IX, see Martin Heidegger, Logik: Die Frage nach der Wahrheit (Frankfurt/Main: V. Klostermann, 1976), pp. 170-82, the text of his 1925-26 lecture course. Cf. the review of this volume in Research in Phenomenology, VI (1976), 151-66.
Will and Power 65
in Aristotle, as knowledge of dynamis, energeia, entelecheia, is still philosophy; that is to say, the book of Aristotle's Metaphysics which we have referred to is the most worthy of question of all the books in the entire Aristotelian corpus. Although Nietzsche does not appreciate the concealed and vital connection between his concept of power, as a concept of Being, and Aristotle's doctrine, and although that connec- tion remains apparently quite loose and undetermined, we may say that the Aristotelian doctrine has more to do with Nietzsche's doctrine of will to power than with any doctrine of categories and modalities in academic philosophy. But the Aristotelian doctrine itself devolves from a tradition that determines its direction; it is a first denouement of the first beginnings of Western philosophy in Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides.
However, we should not understand the reference to the inner rela- tion of Nietzsche's will to power to dynamis, energeia, and entelecheia in Aristotle as asserting that Nietzsche's doctrine of Being can be interpreted immediately with the help of the Aristotelian teaching. Both must be conjoined in a more original context of questions. That is especially true of Aristotle's doctrine. It is no exaggeration to say that we today simply no longer understand or appreciate anything about Aristotle's teaching. The reason is simple: we interpret his doctrine right from the start with the help of corresponding doctrines from the Middle Ages and modern times, which on their part are only a trans- formation of and a decline from Aristotelian doctrine, and which there- fore are hardly suited to provide a basis for our understanding.
Thus when we examine various aspects of the essence of will to power as powerfulness of will, we recognize how that interpretation of beings stands within the basic movement of Western thought. We discern how solely for that reason it is able to bring an essential thru~t to the task of thinking in the twentieth century.
But of course we will never comprehend the innermost historicity of Nietzschean thought, by virtue of which it spans the breadth of centu- ries, if we only hunt for reminiscences, borrowings, and divergences in an extrinsic manner. We must grasp what it was that Nietzsche prop- erly wanted to think. It would be no great trick-better, it would be
66 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
precisely that, a mere trick-if, armed with a readymade conceptual apparatus, we proceeded to flush out particular disagreements, contra- dictions, oversights, and overhasty and often superficial and contingent remarks in Nietzsche's presentations. As opposed to that, we are searching for the realm of his genuine questioning.
In the final year of his creative life Nietzsche was wont to designate his manner of thinking as "philosophizing with the hammer. " The expression has more than one meaning, in accordance with Nietzsche's own viewpoint. Least of all does it mean to go in swinging, wrecking everything. It means to hammer out a content and an essence, to sculpt a figure out of stone. Above all it means to tap all things with the hammer to hear whether or not they yield that familiar hollow sound, to ask whether there is still solidity and weight in things or whether every possible center of gravity has vanished from them. That is what Nietzsche's thought wants to achieve: it wants to give things weight and importance again.
Even if in the execution much remained unaccomplished and only projected, we should not conclude from the manner of Nietzsche's speech that the rigor and truth of the concept, the relentless effort to ground things by inquiring into them, was of secondary importance for his philosophical exertions. Whatever is a need in Nietzsche, and there- fore a right, does not apply to anyone else; for Nietzsche is who he is, and he is unique. Yet such singularity takes on definition and first becomes fruitful when seen within the basic movement of Western thought.
11. The Grounding Question and the Guiding Question of Philosophy
We provided a general characterization of the will as will to power in order to illuminate to some extent the region we must now investigate. We will begin the interpretation of Book III, "Principle of a New Valuation," with the fourth and final chapter, "Will to Power as Art. " As we make clear in rough outline how Nietzsche grasps art and how
he approaches the question of art, it will become clear at the same time
why an interpretation of the nucleus of will to power must begin precisely here, with art.
Of course, it is decisive that the basic philosophical intention of the interpretation be held fast. Let us try to sharpen that intention further. The inquiry goes in the direction of asking what the being is. This traditional "chief question" of Western philosophy we call the guiding question. But it is only the penultimate question. The ultimate, i. e. ,
first question is: what is Being itself? This question, the one which above all is to be unfolded and grounded, we call the grounding ques- tion of philosophy, because in it philosophy first inquires into the ground of beings as ground, inquiring at the same time into its own ground and in that way grounding itself. Before the question is posed explicitly, philosophy must, if it wants to ground itself, get a firm foothold on the path of an epistemology or doctrine of consciousness; but in so doing it remains forever on a path that leads only to the anteroom of philosophy, as it were, and does not penetrate to the very center of philosophy. The grounding question remains as foreign to
Nietzsche as it does to the history of thought prior to him.
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But when the guiding question (What is the being? ) and the ground- ing question (What is Being? ) are asked, we are asking: What is . . . ? The opening up of beings as a whole and of Being is the target for thought. Beings are to be brought into the open region of Being itself, and Being is to be conducted into the open region of its essence. The openness of beings we call unconcealment-aletheia, truth. The guid- ing and the grounding questions of philosophy ask what beings and Being in truth are. With the question of the essence of Being we are inquiring in such a way that nothing remains outside the question, not even nothingness. Therefore the question of what Being in truth is must at the same time ask what the truth in which Being is to be illumined itself is. Truth stands with Being in the realm of the ground- ing question, not because the possibility of truth is cast in doubt epistemologically, but because it already belongs to the essence of the grounding question in a distinctive sense, as its "space. " In the ground- ing and guiding questions concerning Being and beings, we are also asking simultaneously and inherently about the essence of truth. "Al- so" about truth, we say, speaking altogether extrinsically. For truth cannot be what "also" comes forward somewhere in proximity to Be- ing. Rather, the questions will arise as to how both are united in essence and yet are foreign to one another, and "where," in what domain, they somehow come together, and what that domain itself "is. " Those are indeed questions that inquire beyond Nietzsche. But they alone provide the guarantee that we will bring his thought out into the open and make it fruitful, and also that we will come to experience and know the essential borders between us, recognizing what is different in him.
But if will to power determines beings as such, which is to say, in their truth, then the question concerning truth, i. e. , the question of the essence of truth, must always be inserted into the interpretation of beings as will to power. And if for Nietzsche art attains an exceptional position within the task of a general interpretation of all occurrence, which is understood as will to power, then the question of truth must play a leading role precisely here.
12. Five Statements on Art
We shall now attempt a first characterization of Nietzsche's total conception of the essence of art. We will do this by exhibiting a sequence of five statements on art which provide weighty evidence.
Why is art of decisive importance for the task of grounding the principle of the new valuation? The immediate answer is found in number 797 of The Will to Power, which really ought to stand in the position of number 794* : "The phenomenon 'artist' is still the most perspicuous-. " At first we will read no further, but consider only this statement. "The most perspicuous," that is, what for us is most accessible in its essence, is the phenomenon "artist"-the being of an artist. With this being, the artist, Being lights up for us most immediately and brightly. Why? Nietzsche does not explicitly say why; yet we can easily discover the reason. To be an artist is to be able to bring something forth. But to bring forth means to establish in Being something that does not yet exist. It is as though in bringing-forth we dwelled upon the coming to be of beings and could see there with utter clarity their essence. Because it is a matter of illuminating will to power as the basic character of beings, the task must begin where what is in question shows itself most brightly. For all clarifying must proceed from what is clear to what is obscure, not the other way round.
Being an artist is a way of life. What does Nietzsche say about life in general? He calls life "the form of Being most familiar to us" (WM, 689). For him "Being" itself serves only "as a generalization of the
*I. e. , as the first of all the aphorisms and notes gathered under the title "Will to Power as Art. "
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concept 'life' (breathing), 'being besouled,' 'willing, effecting,' 'becom- ing'" (WM, 581 ). "'Being'-we have no other way to represent it than as 'living. ' How then can something dead 'be'? " (WM, 582). "If the innermost essence of Being is will to power . . . " (WM, 693).
With these somewhat formula-like references we have already taken measure of the framework within which the "artist phenomenon" is to be conceived, the framework that is to be maintained throughout the coming considerations. We repeat: the being of an artist is the most perspicuous mode of life. Life is for us the most familiar form of Being. The innermost essence of Being is will to power.
In the being of the artist we encounter the most perspicuous and most familiar mode of will to power. Since it is a matter of illuminating the Being of beings, meditation on art has in this regard decisive priority.
However, here Nietzsche speaks only of the "artist phenomenon," not about art. Although it is difficult to say what art "as such" is, and how it is, still it is clear that works of art too belong to the reality of art, and furthermore so do those who, as we say, "experience" such works. The artist is but one of those things that together make up the actuality of art as a whole. Certainly, but this is precisely what is decisive in Nietzsche's conception of art, that he sees it in its essential entirety in terms of the artist; this he does consciously and in explicit opposition to that conception of art which represents it in terms of those who "enjoy" and "experience" it.
That is a guiding principle of Nietzsche's teaching on art: art must be grasped in terms of creators and producers, not recipients. Nietzsche expresses it unequivocally in the following words (WM, 811): "Our aesthetics heretofore has been a woman's aesthetics, inasmuch as only the recipients of art have formulated their experiences of 'what is beautiful. ' In all philosophy to date the artist is missing. . . . " Philos- ophy of art means "aesthetics" for Nietzsche too-but masculine aes- thetics, not feminine aesthetics. The question of art is the question of the artist as the productive, creative one; his experiences of what is beautiful must provide the standard.
We now go back to number 797: "The phenomenon 'artist' is still the most perspicuous-. " If we take the assertion in the guiding con-
Five Statements on Art 71 text of the question of will to power, with a view to the essence of art,
then we derive at once two essential statements about art:
I. Art is the most perspicuous and familiar configuration of will to power;
2. Art must be grasped in terms of the artist.
And now let us read further (WM, 797): ". . . from that position to scan the basic instincts of power, of nature, etc. ! Also of religion and morals! " Here Nietzsche says explicitly that with a view toward the essence of the artist the other configurations of will to power also- nature, religion, morals, and we might add, society and individual, knowledge, science, and philosophy-are to be observed. These kinds of beings hence correspond in a certain way to the being of the artist, to artistic creativity, and to being created. The remaining beings, which the artist does not expressly bring forth, have the mode of Being that corresponds to what the artist creates, the work of art. Evidence for such a thought we find in the aphorism immediately preceding (WM, 796): "The work of art, where it appears without artist, e. g. , as body, as organization (the Prussian officer corps, the Jesuit order). To what extent the artist is only a preliminary stage. The world as a work of art that gives birth to itself-. " Here the concept of art and of the work of art is obviously extended to every ability to bring forth and to everything that is essentially brought forth. To a certain extent that also corresponds to a usage that was common until the outset of the nine- teenth century. Up to that time art meant every kind of ability to bring forth. Craftsmen, statesmen, and educators, as men who brought some- thing forth, were artists. Nature too was an artist, a female artist. At that time art did not mean the current, narrow concept, as applied to "fine art," which brings forth something beautiful in its work.
However, Nietzsche now interprets that earlier, extended usage of art, in which fine art is only one type among others, in such a way that all bringing-forth is conceived as corresponding to fine art and to the artist devoted to it. "The artist is only a preliminary stage" means the artist in the narrower sense, one who brings forth works of fine art. On that basis we can exhibit a third statement about art:
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3. According to the expanded concept of artist, art is the basic occurrence of all beings; to the extent that they are, beings are self- creating, created.
But we know that will to power is essentially a creating and destroy- ing. That the basic occurrence of beings is "art" suggests nothing else than that it is will to power.
Long before Nietzsche grasps the essence of art explicitly as a con- figuration of will to power, in his very first writing, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, he sees art as the basic character of beings. Thus we can understand why during the time of his work on The Will to Power Nietzsche returns to the position he maintained on art in The Birth of Tragedy. An observation that is pertinent here is taken up into The Will to Power (WM, 853, Section IV). The final paragraph of the section reads: "Already in the Foreword [i. e. , to the book The Birth of Tragedy], where Richard Wagner is invited, as it were, to a dialogue, this confession of faith, this artists' gospel, appears: 'art as the proper task of life, art as its metaphysical activity. . . . ' " "Life" is not only meant in the narrow sense of human life but is identified with "world" in the Schopenhauerian sense. The statement is reminiscent of Schopenhauer, but it is already speaking against him.
Art, thought in the broadest sense as the creative, constitutes the basic character of beings. Accordingly, art in the narrower sense is that activity in which creation emerges for itself and becomes most per- spicuous; it is not merely one configuration of will to power among others but the supreme configuration. Will to power becomes genu- inely visible in terms of art and as art. But will to power is the ground upon which all valuation in the future is to stand. It is the principle of the new valuation, as opposed to the prior one which was dominated by religion, morality, and philosophy. If will to power therefore finds its supreme configuration in art, the positing of the new relation of will to power must proceed from art. Since the new valuation is a revalua- tion of the prior one, however, opposition and upheaval arise from art. That is averred in The Will to Power, no. 794:
Our religion, morality, and philosophy are decadence-forms of humanity. - T h e countermovement: art.
Five Statements on Art 73
According to Nietzsche's interpretation the very first principle of morality, of Christian religion, and of the philosophy determined by Plato reads as follows: This world is worth nothing; there must be a "better" world than this one, enmeshed as it is in sensuality; there must be a "true world" beyond, a supersensuous world; the world of the senses is but a world of appearances.
In such manner this world and this life are at bottom negated. If a "yes" apparently is uttered to the world, it is ultimately only in order to deny the world all the more decisively. But Nietzsche says that the "true world" of morality is a world of lies, that the true, the supersensu- ous, is an error. The sensuous world-which in Platonism means the world of semblance and errancy, the realm of error-is the true world. But the sensuous, the sense-semblant, is the very element of art. So it is that art affirms what the supposition of the ostensibly true world denies. Nietzsche therefore says (WM, 853, section II): "Art as the single superior counterforce against all will to negation of life, art as the anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, anti-Nihilist par excellence. " With that we attain a fourth statement about the essence of art:
4. Art is the distinctive countermovement to nihilism.
The artistic creates and gives form. If the artistic constitutes meta- physical activity pure and simple, then every deed, especially the high- est deed and thus the thinking of philosophy too, must be determined by it. The concept of philosophy may no longer be defined according to the pattern of the teacher of morality who posits another higher world in opposition to this presumably worthless one. Against the nihilistic philosopher of morality (Schopenhauer hovers before Nietz- sche as the most recent example of this type) must be deployed the philosopher who goes counter, who emerges from a countermoveme~t, the "artist-philosopher. " Such a philosopher is an artist in that he gives form to beings as a whole, beginning there where they reveal them- selves, i. e. , in man. It is with this thought in mind that we are to read number 795 of The Will to Power:
The artist-philosopher. Higher concept of art. Whether a man can remove himself far enough from other men, in order to give them form? (-Prelimi-
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nary exercises: l. the one who gives himself form, the hermit; 2. the artist
hitherto, as the insignificant perfecter of a piece of raw material. )
Art, particularly in the narrow sense, is yes-saying to the sensuous, to semblance, to what is not "the true world," or as Nietzsche says succinctly, to what is not "the truth. "
In art a decision is made about what truth is, and for Nietzsche that always means true beings, i. e. , beings proper. This corresponds to the necessary connection between the guiding question and the grounding question of philosophy, on the one hand, and to the question of what truth is, on the other. Art is the will to semblance as the sensuous. But concerning such will Nietzsche says (XIV, 369): "The will to sem-
blance, to illusion, to deception, to Becoming and change is deeper, more 'metaphysical,' than the will to truth, to reality, to Being. " The true is meant here in Plato's sense, as being in itself, the Ideas, the supersensuous. The will to the sensuous world and to its richness is for Nietzsche, on the contrary, the will to what "metaphysics" seeks. Hence the will to the sensuous is metaphysical. That metaphysical will is actual in art.
Nietzsche says (XIV, 368):
Very early in my life I took the question of the relation of art to truth seriously: even now I stand in holy dread in the face of this discordance. My first book was devoted to it. The Birth of Tragedy believes in art on the background of another belief-that it is not possible to live with truth, that the "will to truth" is already a symptom of degeneration.
The statement sounds perverse. But it loses its foreignness, though not its importance, as soon as we read it in the right way. "Will to truth" here (and with Nietzsche always) means the will to the "true world" in the sense of Plato and Christianity, the will to supersensuousness, to being in itself. The will to such "true beings" is in truth a no-saying to our present world, precisely the one in which art is at home. Because this world is the genuinely real and only true world, Nietzsche can declare with respect to the relation of art and truth that "art is worth more than truth" (WM, 853, section IV). That is to say, the sensuous stands in a higher place and is more genuinely than the supersensuous.
Five Statements on Art 75
In that regard Nietzsche says, "W e have art in order not to perish from the truth" (WM, 822). Again "truth" means the "true world" of the supersensuous, which conceals in itself the danger that life may perish, "life" in Nietzsche's sense always meaning "life which is on the as- cent. " The supersensuous lures life away from invigorating sensuality, drains life's forces, weakens it. When we aim at the supersensuous, submission, capitulation, pity, mortification, and abasement become positive "virtues. " "The simpletons of this world," the abject, the wretched, become "children of God. " They are the true beings. It is the lowly ones who belong "up above" and who are to say what is "lofty," that is, what reaches their own height. For them all creative heightening and all pride in self-subsistent life amount to rebellion, delusion, and sin. But we have art so that we do not perish from such supersenst. ious "truth," so that the supersensuous does not vitiate life to the point of general debility and ultimate collapse. With regard to the essential relation of art and truth yet another statement about art, the final one in our series, results:
5. Art is worth more than "the truth. "
Let us review the preceding statements:
l. Art is the most perspicuous and familiar configuration of will to power;
2. Art must be grasped in terms of the artist;
3. According to the expanded concept of artist, art is the basic occurrence of all beings; to the extent that they are, beings are self- creating, created;
4. Art is the distinctive countermovement to nihilism.
At the instigation of the five statements on art, we should now recall an utterance of Nietzsche's on the same subject cited earlier: ". . . we find it to be the greatest stimulans of life-" (WM, 808). Earlier the statement served only as an example of Nietzsche's procedure of rever- sal (in this case the reversal of Schopenhauer's sedative). Now we must grasp the statement in terms of its most proper content. On the basis of all the intervening material we can easily see that this definition of
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art as the stimulant of life means nothing else than that art is a configu- ration of will to power. For a "stimulant" is what propels and advances, what lifts a thing beyond itself; it is increase of power and thus power pure and simple, which is to say, will to power. Hence we cannot merely append to the five previous statements the one about art as the greatest stimulant of life. On the contrary, it is Nietzsche's major statement on art. Those five statements enlarge upon it.
On the cursory view, we are already at the end of our task. We were to indicate art as a configuration of will to power. Such is Nietzsche's intention. But with a view to Nietzsche we are searching for something else. We are asking, first, what does this conception of art achieve for the essential definition of will to power and thereby for that of beings as a whole? We can come to know that only if beforehand we ask, second, what is the significance of this interpretation for our knowledge of art and for our position with respect to it?
13. Six Basic Developments in the History of Aesthetics
We shall begin with the second question. In order to come to terms with it we must characterize Nietzsche's procedure for defining the essence of art with greater penetration and must place it in the context of previous efforts to gain knowledge of art.
With the five statements on art that we brought forward the essential aspects of Nietzsche's interrogation of art have been estab- lished. From them one thing is clear: Nietzsche does not inquire into art in order to describe it as a cultural phenomenon or as a monument to civilization. Rather, by means of art and a characterization of the essence of art, he wants to show what will to power is. Nevertheless, Nietzsche's meditation on art keeps to the traditional path. The path is defined in its peculiarity by the term "aesthetics. " True, Nietzsche speaks against feminine aesthetics. But in so doing he speaks for mascu- line aesthetics, hence for aesthetics. In that way Nietzsche's interroga- tion of art is aesthetics driven to the extreme, an aesthetics, so to speak, that somersaults beyond itself. But what else should inquiry into art and knowledge of it be than "aesthetics"? What does "aesthetics" mean?
The term "aesthetics" is formed in the same manner as "logic" and "ethics. " The word episteme, knowledge, must always complete these terms. Logic: logike episteme: knowledge of logos, that is, the doctrine of assertion or judgment as the basic form of thought. Logic is knowl- edge of thinking, of the forms and rules of thought. Ethics: ethike episteme: knowledge of ethos, of the inner character of man and of the way it determines his behavior. Logic and ethics both refer to human behavior and its lawfulness.
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The word "aesthetics" is formed in the corresponding way: aisthetike episteme: knowledge of human behavior with regard to sense, sensa- tion, and feeling, and knowledge of how these are determined.
What determines thinking, hence logic, and what thinking comports itself toward, is the true. What determines the character and behavior of man, hence ethics, and what human character and behavior comport themselves toward, is the good. What determines man's feeling, hence aesthetics, and what feeling comports itself toward, is the beautiful. The true, the good, and the beautiful are the objects of logic, ethics, and aesthetics.
Accordingly, aesthetics is consideration of man's state of feeling in its relation to the beautiful; it is consideration of the beautiful to the extent that it stands in relation to man's state of feeling. The beautiful itself is nothing other than what in its self-showing brings forth that state. But the beautiful can pertain to either nature or art. Because art in its way brings forth the beautiful, inasmuch as it is "fine" art, meditation on art becomes aesthetics. With relation to knowledge of art and inquiry into it, therefore, aesthetics is that kind of meditation on art in which man's affinity to the beautiful represented in art sets the standard for all definitions and explanations, man's state of feeling remaining the point of departure and the goal of the meditation. The relation of feeling toward art and its bringing-forth can be one of production or of reception and enjoyment.
Now, since in the aesthetic consideration of art the artwork is defined as the beautiful which has been brought forth in art, the work is represented as the bearer and provoker of the beautiful with relation to our state of feeling. The artwork is posited as the "object" for a "subject"; definitive for aesthetic consideration is the subject-object relation, indeed as a relation of feeling. The work becomes an object in terms of that surface which is accessible to "lived experience. "
Just as we say that a judgment that satisfies the laws of thought promulgated in logic is "logical," so do we apply the designation "aes- thetic," which really only means a kind of observation and investigation with regard to a relation of feeling, to this sort of behavior itself. We speak of aesthetic feeling and an aesthetic state. Strictly speaking, a
History of Aesthetics 79
state of feeling is not "aesthetic. " It is rather something that can become the object of aesthetic consideration. Such consideration is called "aesthetic" because it observes from the outset the state of feeling aroused by the beautiful, relates everything to that state, and defines all else in terms of it.
The name "aesthetics," meaning meditation on art and the beautiful, is recent. It arises in the eighteenth century. But the matter which the word so aptly names, the manner of inquiry into art and the beautiful on the basis of the state of feeling in enjoyers and producers, is old, as old as meditation on art and the beautiful in Western thought. Philo- sophical meditation on the essence of art and the beautiful even begins as aesthetics.
In recent decades we have often heard the complaint that the innu- merable aesthetic considerations of and investigations into art and the beautiful have achieved nothing, that they have not helped anyone to gain access to art, that they have contributed virtually nothing to artistic creativity and to a sound appreciation of art. That is certainly true, especially with regard to the kind of thing bandied about today under the name "aesthetics. " But we dare not derive our standards for judging aesthetics and its relation to art from such contemporary work. For, in truth, the fact whether and how an era is committed to an aesthetics, whether and how it adopts a stance toward art of an aesthetic character, is decisive for the way art shapes the history of that era-or remains irrelevant for-it.
Because what stands in question for us is art as a configuration of will to power, which is to say, as a configuration of Being in general, indeed the distinctive one, the question of aesthetics as the basic sort of meditation on art and the knowledge of it can be treated only with respect to fundamentals. Only with the help of a reflection on th~ essence of aesthetics developed in this way can we get to the point where we can grasp Nietzsche's interpretation of the essence of art; only with the help of such a reflection can we at the same time take a position with regard to Nietzsche's interpretation, so that on this basis a confrontation can flourish.
In order to characterize the essence of aesthetics, its role in Western
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thought, and its relation to the history of Western art, we shall in- troduce six basic developments for con~ideration. Such consideration, of course, can only be by way of brief reference.
I. The magnificent art of Greece remains without a corresponding cognitive-conceptual meditation on it, such meditation not having to be identical with aesthetics. The lack of such a simultaneous reflection or meditation on great art does not imply that Greek art was only "lived," that the Greeks wallowed in a murky brew of "experiences" braced by neither concepts nor knowledge. It was their good fortune that the Greeks had no "lived experiences. " On the contrary, they had such an originally mature and luminous knowledge, such a passion for knowledge, that in their luminous state of knowing they had no need of "aesthetics. "
2. Aesthetics begins with the Greeks only at that moment when their great art and also the great philosophy that flourished along with it comes to an end. At that time, during the age of Plato and Aristotle, in connection with the organization of philosophy as a whole, those basic concepts are formed which mark off the boundaries for all future inquiry into art. One of those basic notions is the conceptual pair hyle-morphe, materia-forma, matter-form.
