No More Learning

If by an "idealistic interpretation of the will" we understand every conception that in any way emphasizes representation, thought, knowl- edge, and concept as essential components of will, then Aristotle's interpretation of will is undoubtedly idealistic. So in the same way are those of Leibniz and Kant; but then so too is that of Nietzsche. Proof for this assertion is quite easy to come by: we need only read a bit farther into that passage where Nietzsche says that will consists of a multiplicity of feelings.
Therefore, just as we must acknowledge feeling, and indeed many types of feelings, as ingredients of the will, so must we also in the second place
The Idealistic Interpretation 57
acknowledge thinking: in every act of the will there is a commandeering thought; - a n d one should not think that he can sever this thought from the "willing," as though will would be what were left over! (VII, 29).
That is spoken clearly enough, not only against Schopenhauer, but against all those who want to appeal to Nietzsche when they defy thinking and the power of the concept.
In the light of these clear statements by Nietzsche, an outright rejection of the idealistic interpretation of his doctrine of will seems futile. But perhaps one might argue that Nietzsche's conception of will differs from that of German Idealism. There too, however, the Kantian and Aristotelian concept of will is adopted. For Hegel, knowing and willing are the same, which is to say, true knowledge is also already action and action is only in knowledge. Schelling even says that what actually wills in the will is the intellect. Is that not unclouded Idealism, if one understands by that a tracing of will back to representation? But by his extravagant turn of phrase Schelling wants to emphasize nothing else than what Nietzsche singles out in the will when he says that will is command. For when Schelling says "intellect," and when German Idea. lism speaks of knowing, they do not mean a faculty of representa- tion as the discipline of psychology would think it; they do not mean the kind of behavior that merely accompanies and observes the other processes of psychic life. Knowing means opening upon Being, which is a willing-in Nietzsche's language, an "affect. " Nietzsche himself says, "To will is to command: but commanding is a particular affect (this affect is a sudden explosion of energy)-intent, clear, having one thing exclusively in view, innermost conviction of its superiority, cer- tain that it will be obeyed-" (XIII, 264). To have one thing clearly, intently, exclusively in view: what else is that than, in the strict sens~ of the word, holding one thing before oneself, presenting it before oneself? But intellect, Kant says, is the faculty of representation.
No designation of will is more common in Nietzsche than the one just cited: to will is to command; in the will lies a commandeering thought. But at the same time no other conception of will emphasizes
58
THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
more decisively than this one the essential role of knowledge and representation, the role of intellect, in the will.
Hence, if we want to get as close as we can to Nietzsche's conception of the will, and stay close to it, then we are well advised to hold all the usual terminology at a distance. Whether we call his conception idealis- tic or nonidealistic, emotional or biological, rational or irrational-in each case it is a falsification.
10. Will and Power. The Essence of Power
Now we can-indeed it seems we must-gather together the series of determinations of the essence of will which we have elaborated and conjoin them in a single definition: will as mastery over something, reaching out beyond itself; will as affect (the agitating seizure); will as passion (the expansive plunge into the breadth of beings); will as feeling (being the state of having a stance-toward-oneself); and will as com- mand. With some effort we certainly could produce a formally proper "definition" bristling with all these attributes. All the same, we will forego that. Not as though we laid no value on strict and univocal concepts-on the contrary, we are searching for them. But a notion is not a concept, not in philosophy at any rate, if it is not founded and grounded in such a way as to allow what it is grasping to become its standard and the pathway of its interrogation, instead of camouflaging it under the net of a mere formula. But what the concept "will," as the basic character of beings, is to grasp, i. e. , Being, is not yet in our vicinity; better, we are not close enough to it. To be cognizant, to
know, is not mere familiarity with concepts. Rather, it is to grasp what the concept itself catches hold of. To grasp Being means to remain knowingly exposed to its sudden advance, its presencing. If we consider what the word "will" is to name, the essence of beings themselves, then we shall comprehend how powerless such a solitary word must remain, even when a definition is appended to it. Hence Nietzsche can say, "Will: that is a supposition which clarifies nothing else for me. For those who know, there is no willing" (XII, 303). From such statements
60 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
we should not conclude that the whole effort to capture the essence of will is without prospect, nothing worth, and that therefore it is a matter of indifference and arbitrariness what words or concepts we use when speaking of "will. " On the contrary, we have to question, right from the start and continually, on the basis of the matter itself. Only in that way do we arrive at the concept and at the proper use of the word.
Now, in order from the outset to avoid the vacuity of the word "will," Nietzsche says "will to power. " Every willing is a willing to be more. Power itself only is inasmuch as, and so long as, it remains a willing to be more power. As soon as such will disappears, power is no longer power, even if it still holds in subjection what it has overmas- tered. In will, as willing to be more, as will to power, enhancement and heightening are essentially implied. For only by means of perpetual heightening can what is elevated be held aloft. 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.