Nietzsche and the metaphysics of the artiste

appropriations of Kantian, Schopenhauerian and Pre-Socratic formulations in The Birth of Tragedy

Abstract

In his debut book, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche presents what he understands as a metaphysics of art or metaphysics of the artiste. As it becomes clear throughout the argument developed in the work, his aim is to favor a justification of the world and of existence as an aesthetic phenomenon. The path to his metaphysics passes through the interaction with Kantian and, mostly, Schopenhauerian formulations, and through a deep dialogue with Greek culture in general and, indirectly, with Pre-Socratic thought. The objective of this article is to delimit the retentions and displacements of the critical tradition in his book from 1872, and highlight the importance of the interlocution with the Greek cultural repertoire in the conformation of his metaphysics of the artiste. In particular, the working hypothesis is that Nietzsche, in these approaches and appropriations of critical and archaic philosophical tradition, find the possibility of an immanent metaphysics in the post-Kantian context, conceived as a physiology (in the antique sense) with aesthetic bias.