Nietzsche and the Fate of Art

Questioning the accepted orthodoxy on Nietzsche's views on art, this text seeks both to challenge and to establish a set of concerns as far as discourses on Nietzsche's thoughts on aesthetics are concerned, whilst at the same time using such insights to illuminate more central concerns of Nietzsche scholarship, such as the will to power, the illusion/truth question, the eternal return, the death of God, tragedy and Wagner. Following the development of Nietzsche's thoughts on art from his earliest writings to his last, Philip Pothen counters traditionally accepted interpretations by suggesting a need to recognize the deep suspicion and at times hostility that Nietzsche displays towards art and the artist throughout his text by emphasizing the philosophical arguments underlying this deep suspicion, and by viewing this tendency as something deeply connected to the other areas of his thought.