Against realism: Nietzsche on art
A new publication of the philosopher's notebooks includes aphorisms on aesthetics.
The publication of a first English translation of Nietzsche’s notebooks provides further views on aesthetics, which I have previously covered here. Part 1 is here (free); part 2 is here (paid subscribers only). Friedrich Nietzsche, J.M. Baker Jr, Christiane Hertel (trans.), Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Dawn (Winter 1879/80-Spring 1881), is the thirteenth of nineteen volumes in the Stanford University Press edition of the German-language Friedrich Nietzsche Sämtliche Werke has been published. It covers the notebooks from late 1879 to early 1881, at a time when Nietzsche was writing Dawn (Morgenröthe, 1881), the second book of his “free spirit” trilogy. Even a well-informed Nietzsche reader may draw a blank at that, as it is the least widely read of his books. These notes relate to a critique of the generation of morals, particularly the topics of dissimulation and self-deception, the subjects of Dawn. The title refers to the potential rebirth of modern man, freed from the shackles of Judeo-Christian religion and worldview, led by great self-actualised men – the Übermenschen.
The philosopher succinctly summarises his primary concern in this period like so: “The greatest problem of the coming age is the eradication of moral concepts and the cleansing from our representations of moral forms or colors that have crept into them and are often difficult to recognize.”[i] He meditates on the nature of morality and how it arises and if some different system of values can govern man’s conduct. Christian morality divides people (according to their characters) into obedient slaves or mindless enforcer. Both act from character, rather than making value judgements based on personal and social good. The claims that Christian morality has the right to be considered normative (as per Pascal) are spurious, Nietzsche contends – as outlined in many of his published books. “[…] Christianity takes no pleasure in the human being.”[ii]
Nietzsche rails against misguided egalitarianism, democracy, socialism and (of course) Christianity, which he sees at the root of modern European man’s slave morality and the ultimate cause of many of civilisation’s parlous state. He sees a levelling of people as a rebellion against natural inequality and exceptional men. It makes men manageably pliable. However, Nietzsche opens the door to individualism for its own sake – the myth of meritocracy, which allows the collectivised minority to seize its power and advantages and (ultimately) its supremacy, as Gaetano Mosca argued. There are few autobiographical comments, but these are indirect and brief, so the reader only averagely acquainted with the philosopher’s life will be able to glean anything from them.
He wonders at the alienness of Judaism, which has been incorporated into European thinking through Christianity, and notes that the words of the Old Testament are (perhaps paradoxically) more accessible to us than the ancient Greeks and Romans. He repeatedly describes morality as Asian – i.e. derived from the Semitic people of the Near East – and finds it unfitting for Europeans; he also adds that considers Stoicism Semitic. Valuations determine both our personal responses, interpersonal relations and society as a whole; if moral valuations can be altered, or the whole system abolished, then human capacity is freed. Nietzsche is no Panglossian optimist but he sees human capacity as much greater than what the constriction of morals and customs of his day permitted. Incorrect valuations wage war against each other, distracting and confusing – these conflicts demonstrate the faulty foundations of morality and must be seen clearly.
As covered in a previous article, in his pensées Nietzsche devotes time to the role of the artist. “Eventually the art of artists must be subsumed in the human need for festivals: the hermetic artists exhibiting their work will have disappeared: they will then stand in the front row among those who are creative with regard to pleasures and festivals.”[iii] He does not judge such a situation; merely explaining that artists will take on a different position and the activities (and reception) will be according be adjusted. The purist might distain the loss of artistic independence and liberty, while the socially conscious might praise the greater influence of art on the public space. (There is the further problem of the trivialisation and excessive instrumentalization of the arts.) Nietzsche himself had spoken in disparaging terms of arts becoming decadent due to the imitation of other art forms, specifically with an implicit criticism of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk, which Nietzsche (a former champion) had by this time roundly condemned. (“Dramatic music […] wants to convince of something external to it, it belongs to rhetoric.”[iv]) Elsewhere, Nietzsche ruminates on art’s power. “Art’s dangerousness consists in habituating us to imaginary things, indeed ascribing to them a higher valuation […] in letting the brilliance and effect of things stand as proof of their quality. […] Art’s value is that here for once we let the upside-down world be right side up, untrue true.”[v]
Nietzsche is alive to the important vitalist essence of art above any stylistic or ideological function of art, which he equates with probity. “Realism in art a deception. […] Every good art has imagined being realistic!”[vi] “Honesty in art – nothing to do with realism! Essentially artists’ honesty with respect to their abilities: they do not want to lie to themselves, nor to intoxicate themselves – to create no effect on themselves, but to imitate the experience (the real effect).”[vii] This comes close to Paul Valery, whom Francis Bacon quoted as describing art of the highest level “giving sensation without the boredom of its conveyance.” (If anyone could (in the comments) source me Valery’s words (original or translated) that would be welcome.) Transmission of sensation, emotion and essence is more important than verisimilitude, according to these aesthetics. Nietzsche struggles to square a desire for aesthetics that allow for greater self-knowledge without domination or obliteration of the self with the sentiment that tyrannising lesser people is a necessity for great men (i.e. artists of the highest level) through their work.
Nietzsche is ever aware of the need for geniuses; these exceptional men will lead, instruct and inspire. “To use and recognize chance is called genius. To use the expedient and familiar – morality?”[viii] He assesses the possibility of describing “an extra-moral view of the world” that is “an aesthetic one (veneration of genius)”. Tantalisingly, the fragment breaks off there. He is aware of the bad character and suffering great men cause and admits that “veneration of genius has often been unconscious devil worship.”[ix] “[A]rtists are usually intolerable as persons, and this should be subtracted from what is gained from their works.”[x]
The style is brusque, the diction non-technical, with entries compressed to the extreme. Yet, he allows himself digressions and occasional exclamations. As the translator explains, this directness actually generates difficulties. Unlike his published works, which are models of clear prose and precise argumentation, the notes are littered with general words that have bear several specific meanings, introducing a degree of ambiguity that the translator must adjudicate. Many of these points were never subsequently taken up again by the author, so it is hard to know which meaning he had in mind.
Nietzsche’s notebooks provide more insights into the role of the arts and the nature of aesthetics, which (apart from discussion of Attic tragedy) the philosopher did not address at length in his published writings.
Friedrich Nietzsche, J.M. Baker Jr, Christiane Hertel (trans.), Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Dawn (Winter 1879/80-Spring 1881), Stanford University Press, December 2023, paperback, 530pp, $28, ISBN 978 1 5036 3698 9
[i] P. 5
[ii] P. 262
[iii] P. 17
[iv] P. 30
[v] P. 160
[vi] P. 284
[vii] P. 228
[viii] P. 18
[ix] P. 47
[x] P. 95
[xi] P. 6
[xii] P. 163