Nietzsche\u27s Critique of Absolute Music

In Human, All-Too-Human, Nietzsche initiates an unexpected criticism of art, specifically a criticism of its ability to help humans justify life in a world full of suffering. Nietzsche sets his sights on absolute music, music that perpetuates religious values inherited from Christianity and renders the modern listener unable to affirm life. Drawing from various sources in nineteenth-century Germany, including his former friend Richard Wagner, Nietzsche demonstrates that rather than relying on absolute music to help us come to terms with suffering, we must abandon it in order to overcome the life-negating values it perpetuates