INTRODUCING THE PHILOSOPHERS Nietzsche's Aesthetics

This meetup will demand patience as we struggle to make sense of concepts not easy to understand. However, in trying to decipher Nietzsche's views on art we will at the same time be trying to define art.

There are a number of questions in the first introductory paragraph of the link raised in Nietzsche's works. However interesting these may be, it is not possible to address them in one meetup, though we may touch on them during the discussion. Also, the second introductory paragraph states the importance of The Birth of Tragedy in the development of Nietzsche's treatment of aesthetic questions. Again, a discussion of this book requires a meetup of its own. The themes we will focus on are central to art and can be discussed on their own merit. Of main interest will be the themes themselves, rather than Nietzsche's views, which will nevertheless help to illuminate them.

Decide if under 'Art' you include painting only, or also sculpture, literature, poetry, music.

The link Nietzsche's Aesthetics from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is quite long and attendees are not asked to read all of it. We will focus on two chapters. The excerpts in italics below, followed by my questions, are from these chapters
3. Art and Illusion
4. Beauty, Disinterestedness, and Creativity
Note: I think more than one reading of these chapters will be required for meanings to start becoming clear.
Nietzsche’s Aesthetics - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

1. Much later in his career, he continues to speak approvingly of art as a “cult of the untrue” and “the good will to semblance” (GS 107), in which “the lie sanctifies itself, in which the will to illusion [Täuschung] has the good conscience on its side” (GM III.25).
Which bits in this sentence do you think you understand? Or do you agree with?

2. And in notes from his final productive year, he writes: “the truth is ugly: we have art so that we do not perish from the truth” (NF 1888: 16[40]). Nietzsche is opposed, in short, both to Plato’s condemnation of artistic illusion, and to theories, like Schopenhauer’s or Schelling’s, that try to make art into the source of some deep, metaphysical truth. Art is false, and it is valuable (at least in part) because of its falsity.
Are you with Nietzsche, Plato or Schopenhauer/Schelling?

3. Do you think Nietzsche believes that art should represent beautiful things or represent things beautifully in order to make life bearable? Refer to works of art to illustrate your view.
How do you reconcile the beauty in the above with the fact that Nietzsche also says “art also brings much that is ugly, hard, and questionable about life to appearance” ? Again, refer to works of art.

4. 'art is permitted to misrepresent, but only those aspects of life that we cannot change or otherwise accept'.
Do you see any difficulties with any of the points made in this possible interpretation of Nietzsche's thought?

5. What do you understand by 'aesthetic disinterestedness'? How possible or desirable is it?
an intriguing, albeit obscure, criticism of aestheticians—Kant and Schopenhauer are singled out in particular—who take their cue “purely from the standpoint of the ‘spectator’
his (Nietzsche's) apparent preference for an aesthetics that focuses on “the experiences of the artist (the creator)” rather than on those of the spectator?
what precisely would we be looking at in considering “the experiences of the artist?” Artists’ own judgments of what is beautiful/aesthetically valuable? The nature of the creative process? Something else entirely? Nietzsche faults Kant and Schopenhauer for “envisioning the aesthetic problem” from the spectator’s point of view. What is this “aesthetic problem?” It is plausible to suppose that he has in mind the question of the nature of the beautiful (Ridley 2011), but Nietzsche does not explicitly say.
So, disinterestedness from the point of view of the spectator or the artist?

6. Refer to the paragraphs starting ....... Zangwill (2013) provides ..... and ..... Note that Zangwill's approach ...... Raise any points in these two paragraphs you find interesting. Here are two raised by me
Nietzsche’s objection to Kantian aesthetics concerns more its emphasis on the universality of judgements of taste than their disinterestedness (though, of course, the two issues are not unrelated for Kant).
“the significance of art is to be found less in its products than in the creative activity by which they are produced”