Nietzsche, Aesthetics and Modernity

Nietzsche, Aesthetics and Modernity analyses Nietzsche’s response to the aesthetic tradition, tracing in particular the complex relationship between the work and thought of Nietzsche, Kant and Hegel. Focusing in particular on the critical role of negation and sublimity in Nietzsche’s account of art, it explores his confrontation with modernity and his attempt to posit a revitalized artistic practice as the counter-movement to modern nihilism. Drawing on the full range of his published and unpublished writings, together with his comments on figures as diverse as Wagner, Zola, Delacroix and Laurence Sterne, it highlights the extent to which Nietzsche counters the culture of his own time with a dialectical notion of aesthetic interpretation and practice. As such, Nietzsche the dialectician articulates a position that proves to be intimately connected to the negative dialects of Theodor Adorno.

• Offers an unorthodox interpretation of Nietzsche, emphasizing the dialectical aspects of his thought • Examines frequently overlooked comments by Nietzsche on a wide range of composers, artists and writers, such as Brahms, Schumann, Raphael, Delacroix, Flaubert, Cervantes and Dostoyevsky • Strong cross-over interest between art and philosophy

List of abbreviations; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Truth, interpretation and the dialectic of nihilism; 2. Nietzsche’s subject: retrieving the repressed; 3. Laughter and sublimity: reading The Birth of Tragedy; 4. Wagner, modernity and the problem of transcendence; 5. Memory, history and eternal recurrence: the aesthetics of time; 6. Towards a physiological aesthetic; 7. Art, truth and woman: the raging discordance; 8. Overcoming nihilism: art, modernity and beyond; Notes; References; Index.