Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Reflections: Thesis...Antithesis...

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In direct contradiction of the presentation of the Spirit of Philosophy, excerpted from Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy of in the previous post, is the position of Nietzsche as interpreted here by Martin Heidegger:

XXXAccording to Nietzsche’s interpretation the very first principle of morality, Of Christian religion, and of the philosophy determined by Plato reads as follows: This world is worth nothing; there must be a “better” world than this one, enmeshed as it is in sensuality; there must be a “true world” beyond, a supersensuous world; the world of the senses is but a world of appearances.
XXXIn such manner this world and this life are at bottom negated. If a “yes” apparently is uttered to the world, it is ultimately only in order to deny the world all the more decisively. But Nietzsche says that the “true world” of morality is a world of lies, that the true, the supersensuous, is an error. The sensuous world—which in Platonism means the world of semblance and errancy, the realm of error—is the true world. But the senuous, the sense-semblant, is the very element of art. So it is that art affirms what the supposition of the ostensibly true world denies. Nietzsche therefore says: “Art as the single superior counterforce against all will to negation of life, art as the anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, anti-Nihilist par excellence.”

While one wants to preserve Nietzsche’s idea of art as effectively enhancing the essential Being of the artist, one does not want to relinquish one’s belief in, and hope for, the Next World in order to do so. If ever a good strong dose of thesis-antithesis-synthesis were called for, it seems called for here.
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