Nietzsche and Schiller on Aesthetic Semblance

The Monist, 2019, 102, 331–348 doi: 10.1093/monist/onz013 Article Nietzsche and Schiller on Aesthetic Semblance ABSTRACT Nietzsche consistently valorizes artistic falsehoods. On standard interpretations, this is because art provides deceptive yet salutary fictions that help us affirm life. This reading conflicts, however, with Nietzsche’s insistence that life affirmation requires untrammeled honesty. I present an alternative interpretation which navigates the interpretive impasse. With special attention to the influence of Friedrich Schiller, the paper argues for three claims: (1) Nietzsche does not hold that art is false because it “beautifies,” but because it produces mere semblances of, its objects; (2) these semblances are essentially nondeceptive; (3) he values artistic illusions because they dispose us positively to illusion more generally. Such ‘evaluative reorientation,’ I argue, is not merely consistent with, but integral to, achieving Nietzsche’s ideal of honesty. 1. INTRODUCTION Plato notoriously charges art with trading in nothing but mere imitations and illusions, void of cognitive import, and positively injurious to those who enjoy them (Republic 595a–608b). Nietzsche’s writings consistently reject this verdict, instead presenting aesthetic appreciation as a crucial component of the flourishing life. In itself, this fact is unremarkable—aestheticians from Aristotle to Hegel would have agreed that Plato’s indictment of the poets was premature. What is remarkable is that Nietzsche locates art’s distinctive value in precisely that feature which drew Plato’s censure: art is valuable, Nietzsche contends, not merely in spite of, but because of the fact that it is false (GS 107; ASC 5; GM III.25; NF 1870–71: 7[156], 1888: 16[40]).1 As such, Nietzsche’s valorization of the arts forms an important part of his general campaign against the view that the value of truth is supreme and unimpeachable. Despite its obvious importance for his broader philosophical goals, Nietzsche’s account of the nature and value of artistic falsity has yet to meet with a satisfactory interpretation. According to a now-standard reading, the view follows from his thesis that it is often useful to hold false beliefs (BGE 4), together with the contention that art engenders precisely such beliefs. Nietzsche, it is alleged, advocates a kind of aesthetic whitewashing of the world: art presents us with a sort of simulacrum of life, purged of those properties that might support a less than positive estimate of its value.2 So construed, however, Nietzsche’s position appears deeply unstable. For he *Franklin and Marshall College Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the The Hegeler Institute 2019. This work is written by a US Government employee and is in the public domain in the US.  331 Timothy Stoll* 332  Nietzsche and Schiller on Aesthetic Semblance 2 . A R T A N D TW O K I ND S O F LI E S Before turning directly to an examination of Nietzsche’s views on artistic falsity and their historical antecedents, it will be important to draw a basic distinction between two ways in which art may be considered “false.” First, we may say that a work of art is false if it distorts its object. Dürer’s Rhinoceros, to take a simple case of visual distortion, is equipped with plated armor and the scaly legs of a dragon. In such cases, the work of art is “false” in virtue of attributing properties or predicates to an object that that object does not possess, or by leaving out of its representation properties that the object does possess. Call this ‘representational falsehood’. Commentators have tended to proceed from the assumption that Nietzsche’s valorizations of artistic falsehood reduce to claims about representational falsehood.7 This assumption appears suspect once we recall that the Platonic criticism of the arts—to which Nietzsche takes himself to be responding—was framed squarely in clearly maintains that art has a crucial role to play in the general project of life affirmation. The conception of affirmation here is extremely demanding, requiring us to honestly love life exactly as it is, without subtraction or alteration (EH “Clever,” 10). Nietzsche accordingly styles himself a standard bearer of the “intellectual conscience” (HH I.109; D 270; GS 2, 335; A 25), and declares that “strength”—his general normative standard3—is inversely correlated to the need for things “to be thinned out, disguised, sweetened, blunted, falsified” (BGE 39; cf. A 50; EH P 3). Yet, according to the above interpretation, the salutary effect of art lies precisely in concealing, disguising, or “falsifying” those aspects of existence we cannot bear.4 In light of this tension, it is necessary to reconsider both Nietzsche’s conception of artistic falsity and his reasons for commending it. Towards this end, it will be helpful to situate his view within the broader context of nineteenth-century German aesthetics. In particular, the paper focuses on Nietzsche’s debt to Friedrich Schiller’s5 influential theory of “aesthetic semblance.”6 Prior to Nietzsche, it was above all Schiller who aimed to accord artistic illusions a distinctive kind of value, thus securing them from the Platonic challenge. Attention to this historical context will set the stage for an interpretation of Nietzsche’s aesthetics that navigates the interpretive impasse facing the standard reading. The paper argues for three overriding claims. First, Nietzsche does not hold that art is false because it distorts or “beautifies” its objects; it is false because it produces mere imitations or semblances of what it depicts. Second, following Schiller, Nietzsche maintains that such imitations should not deceive us, but should rather be enjoyed precisely because they are semblances. These two conclusions reveal that Nietzsche’s valorization of artistic falsity is not rooted in the claim that art produces deceptive yet ameliorative distortions, and so is compatible with his demand that such distortion play no role in genuine affirmation. Finally, the paper argues for a novel account of the positive purpose aesthetic appreciation serves within the general project of life affirmation. This purpose is found to lie not in the production of useful deceptions, but in the ability to dispose us positively towards illusion more generally. Such ‘evaluative reorientation,’ as I shall call it, will emerge as not merely consistent with, but integral to, achieving Nietzsche’s ideal of honesty. Nietzsche and Schiller on Aesthetic Semblance  333 3 . S C HI L LE R ’ S C O N C E P T OF A E S T H ET IC S EM B LA N C E Schiller’s seminal philosophical treatise On the Aesthetic Education of Man is a protracted defense of the claim that art and aesthetic appreciation are indispensable, if indirect, means of cultivating morality, and, as such, essential components of a just social order.12 It is no surprise, then, that the work’s penultimate letter finds Schiller att (...truncated)