Nietzsche and the evolution of postmodern art and aesthetics (abstract)
Elaine P. Miller
As one of the first philosophers to take all five senses seriously in their
contribution to both aesthetic and conceptual experience, Nietzsche belongs to aesthetic
theory not just as the advocate of Dionysian (and later, Apollinian) ecstasy, and of the
fashioning of life as a work of art, but also as a theoretical precursor of postmodern art
and aesthetic theory through his discussion of sensuality within the context of the will to
power as art. Nietzsche’s speculation about the natural and social evolution of the senses
and their development through the mutual influence of conditions for survival and artistic
expression found its way into the aesthetico-political writings of Marx, Benjamin, and
Adorno, and through them, into Frederic Jameson’s musings about postmodernist art. In
this paper I will discuss what Heidegger calls Nietzsche’s “blossoming bodying forth”
with specific reference to full bodily sensuality and its development and expression in art,
contrast this phenomenon to Hegel’s articulation of the role of the senses in aesthetic
theory, and take up the legacy of Nietzsche’s aesthetics in the political theory of Marx
and the aesthetic theory of Adorno, Benjamin, and Jameson. In conclusion I will argue
that Nietzsche’s aesthetic theory can be most clearly exemplified in some forms of
postmodern art, particularly those that explicitly or performatively contest the grand
narrative of purity characteristic of modern art. Nietzsche would appreciate such works
both for their appeal to the less “theoretical” senses (as Hegel calls them) of touch, smell,
and taste, and for putting into question the sharp distinction of modernism between selfconscious reflection on the means and methods of representation in art and anything that
lay outside this sphere.
Heidegger connects Nietzsche’s use of chaos to the characterization of life as
“bodying-forth”: “Through this life flows a stream of life of which we feel but a small
and fleeting portion, in accordance with the receptivity of the momentary state of the
body” (NI, 565-566). Heidegger is referring, among other passages, to Nietzsche’s
description of art in The Will to Power as “an excess and overflow of blossoming bodily
being into the world of images and desires” (WTP, 802). Nietzsche’s critique of
immaculate perception in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, together with explicit statements made
in Beyond Good and Evil, allow us to rather easily construct a critique of the modern
credo of “art for art’s sake,” and in particular of Kant’s distinterestedness as the primary
modern criterion for discerning beauty. But it is Nietzsche’s discussion of the historical
evolution of the senses in response to natural and cultural demands put on them, as well
as the relation of this development to conceptual articulation and expression, argued most
eloquently in The Gay Science and contemporary notes and in The Will to Power, that
aligns him in a more compelling way with the Marxist critique of the end of art’s
revolutionary possibilities in Hegel, and finally with postmodern aesthetic theory and art.