Nietzsche, Aesthetics and Modernity

Nietzsche, Aesthetics and Modernity analyses Nietzsche's response to the aesthetic tradition.

Matthew Rampley (Author)

9780521651554, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 November 1999

300 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.56 kg

"A full and persuasive reassessment of Nietzsche's thinking on the aesthetic." CAA Reviews

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 Drawing on the full range of his published and unpublished writings, together with his comments on figures as diverse as Wagner, Zola, Delacroix and Laurence Sterne, it highlights the extent to which Nietzsche counters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.

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.

Subject Areas: Theory of art [ABA]