Evening Twilight of Art: An Examination of Nietzsche's Critique of Art and Aesthetic Tradition

Since the earliest reception of his thought Nietzsche’s name has been consistently associated with a certain valorization of art that is taken to be central to his work and his overall concerns. Even a brief overview of Nietzsche literature will speak to the fact that Nietzsche is held in general to be the quintessential philosopher of art, the thinker who holds art to be a central aspect of life lived well and of culture ‘well turned out’. The broad aim of this study is to offer an alternative reading of Nietzsche’s thought on art that will suggest a need to re-examine this generally accepted consensus concerning Nietzsche’s philosophy; it is to recognize the deep suspicion and at times hostility that Nietzsche displays towards art and artists, to uncover philosophical argument and assumptions underlying this suspicion, to bring to surface his thoroughgoing and consistent attempt to uncover the power configurations and presupposition which, Nietzsche believed, underpinned not just a particular kind of art or work of art, but art in general, and finally to view this tendency as something deeply connected to other areas of his thought. While bringing to surface this much neglected aspect of Nietzsche’s treatment of art, I show that his critique may turn out to be quite radical and far reaching, inasmuch as Nietzsche goes perhaps further than Hegel in diagnosing the death of art, and because he systematically attempts to undermine, negate, and expose as self-defeating or life-denying not only the conception of art conceived by the aesthetic tradition, but also modern artistic practices and the consumption of art as a cultural good. Thus legitimate question that this thesis raises and attempts to answer is whether or not we could indeed attribute to Nietzsche a death of art thesis – a position which may seem unthinkable given the importance of art in his thought