Nietzsche on art as the good will to appearance
Nietzsche on art as the good will to appearance
Nietzsche makes a number of remarks that suggest that he thinks that art and truth are antithetical – indeed that he thinks that the value of art lies in its falsification of aspects of the world that would otherwise prove unbearable. ‘Truth is ugly,’ he says: ‘We possess art lest we perish of the truth.’ But the argument of the present paper is that the falsification reading is unsustainable, and that if we attend to the notion of ‘appearance’ rather more attentively than Nietzsche himself always did, we can (a) read him as defending a plausible account of the relation between art and truth, rather than an unsustainable one, (b) recast the passages that have encouraged the falsification reading so that they lend support to the reading suggested here, and (c) show how the resultant account squares with, and indeed reinforces, Nietzsche's perspectivism.
1071-1082
Ridley, Aaron
64d82169-aa92-4352-975d-2ef8bb3f2cc7
19 May 2025
Ridley, Aaron
64d82169-aa92-4352-975d-2ef8bb3f2cc7
Ridley, Aaron
(2025)
Nietzsche on art as the good will to appearance.
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 110 (3), .
(doi:10.1111/phpr.70004).
Abstract
Nietzsche makes a number of remarks that suggest that he thinks that art and truth are antithetical – indeed that he thinks that the value of art lies in its falsification of aspects of the world that would otherwise prove unbearable. ‘Truth is ugly,’ he says: ‘We possess art lest we perish of the truth.’ But the argument of the present paper is that the falsification reading is unsustainable, and that if we attend to the notion of ‘appearance’ rather more attentively than Nietzsche himself always did, we can (a) read him as defending a plausible account of the relation between art and truth, rather than an unsustainable one, (b) recast the passages that have encouraged the falsification reading so that they lend support to the reading suggested here, and (c) show how the resultant account squares with, and indeed reinforces, Nietzsche's perspectivism.
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Nietzsche on Art as the Good Will to Appearance
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Philos Phenomenol Research - 2025 - Ridley - Nietzsche on art as the good will to appearance
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Accepted/In Press date: 3 March 2025
e-pub ahead of print date: 18 March 2025
Published date: 19 May 2025
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Local EPrints ID: 499823
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/499823
ISSN: 0031-8205
PURE UUID: 82f809f0-7917-4f51-93ab-8cebde088063
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Date deposited: 07 Apr 2025 16:35
Last modified: 21 Aug 2025 03:59
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