ABSTRACT
No higher significance could be assigned to art than that which Nietzsche assigns to it in the opening section of The Birth of Tragedy: ‘The arts generally’ are said to ‘make life possible and worth living’ (BT 1). Art is never far from his mind, even when he is dealing with matters seemingly far removed from it. Thus, for example, as was earlier observed, he later characterized his ‘view of the world’ not only as ‘anti-metaphysical’ but also as ‘an artistic one’ (WP 1048), and suggested the world to be something on the order of ‘a work of art which gives birth to itself (WP 796). He also includes a number of artists among the ‘higher men’ whom he takes to stand out from the greater part of mankind hitherto, and likens to artists both the ‘philosophers of the future’ he envisions and the Übermensch he declares to be ‘the meaning of the earth.’ Indeed, he even aspired to art himself, investing much effort and a good deal of himself in poetic (and, in his early years, also musical) composition.
