Nietzsche and Aesthetics

ELCS6102 Aspects of European Thought

Lecture structure
• Schopenhauer
• Second treatise: ‘“Guilt”, “bad conscience” and related matters’
• Third treatise: ‘What do ascetic ideals mean?’
Arthur Schopenhauer
Optimism, pessimism and nihilism
What is the difference between
optimism, pessimism and
nihilism?
optimism: the doctrine, especially as set forth by Leibniz, that this
world is the best of all possible worlds (cf. Voltaire, Candide)

pessimism: a belief that this world is as bad as it could be or that evil

will ultimately prevail over good

nihilism: the belief that nothing in the world has a real existence
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and
Representation (1818-1819; 1844; 1859)

• The world as struggle of the will (cf. Buddhism)

• Liberation through aesthetic appreciation (cf. Kant)

• Nietzsche credits Schopenhauer as a primary

influence in ‘Schopenhauer as educator’ (1874), the
second of his Untimely Mediations
• Nietzsche on pessimism
Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of
Morality (1887)
Second treatise: ‘“Guilt”, “bad conscience”
and related matters’
• Man as animal that is able to comprehend the
future (cf. Kant and Marx): promising, forgetting
and memory
• Link between guilt and debt through German
Schuld
• Guilt: the weak fear punishment for not fulfilling
their promises
• Bad conscience: the strong sense a limit on their
instinct for freedom
• Will to power
Third treatise: ‘What do ascetic ideals mean?’
• Asceticism, ideals and meaning
• Relationship of ascetic ideals to truth: artists,
philosophers and priests; will to truth as will to
power
• Innocent and guilty ascetic ideals: anaesthetisation
of suffering vs. overwhelming emotion
• Contemporary solutions: modern science, history
and the contemplatives
• Nietzsche’s solution: a critique of the value of truth
What do ascetic ideals mean? – With artists, nothing, or too many different things; with
philosophers and scholars, something like a nose and sense for the most favourable
conditions of higher intellectuality [Geistigkeit]; with women, at most, one more seductive
charm, a little morbidezza on fair flesh, the angelic expression on a pretty, fat animal; with
physiological causalities and the disgruntled (with the majority of mortals), an attempt to
see themselves as ‘too good’ for this world, a saintly form of debauchery, their chief
weapon in the battle against long-drawn-out pain and boredom; with priests, the actual
priestly faith, their best instrument of power and also the ‘ultimate’ sanction of their
power; with saints, an excuse to hibernate at last, their novissima gloria cupido, their rest
in nothingness (‘God’), their form of madness. That the ascetic ideal has meant so much to
man reveals a basic fact of human will, its horror vacui; it needs an aim –, and it prefers to
will nothingness rather than not will. – Do I make myself understood? . . . Have I made
myself understood?. . ‘Absolutely not, sir!’ – So let us start at the beginning.

Nietzsche, ‘What do ascetic ideals mean?’, trans. by Carol Diethe

How does the relationship to
truth of artists, philosophers and
priests differ?
Seminar questions
In Nietzsche’s third treatise, ‘What do ascetic ideals mean?’:
• How does Nietzsche approach and define ascetic ideals? What does
he exclude?
• How does the meaning of ascetic ideals change for different groups of
people? What remains the same?
• What role do the body and language play in Nietzsche’s conception of
ascetic ideals?
• Why does Nietzsche value sensation and rule out emotion?
• What authority does Nietzsche challenge? What authority, if any,
does Nietzsche reclaim?