of aestheticism
the early Nietzsche writes, with a lighthearted innocence that progressively dims in his œuvre, these words that would go on to lead so famous a career as the banner held up by generations of aesthetes:
wohl aber dürfen wir von uns selbst annehmen, daß wir für den wahren Schöpfer derselben schon Bilder und künstlerische Projektionen sind und in der Bedeutung von Kunstwerken unsre höchste Würde haben – denn nur als ästhetisches Phänomen ist das Dasein und die Welt ewig gerechtfertigt: – während freilich unser Bewußtsein über diese unsre Bedeutung kaum ein andres ist, als es die auf Leinwand gemalten Krieger von der auf ihr dargestellten Schlacht haben (Die Geburt der Tragödie, 5).[1]
these are the words of a Nietzsche who has not yet fully parted ways with platonism. he later disowns much of his early work, and on this topic in particular adopts a more chastened tone:
Wodurch das Metrum verschönert. – Das Metrum legt Flor über die Realität; es veranlaßt einige Künstlichkeit des Geredes und Unreinheit des Denkens; durch den Schatten, den es auf den Gedanken wirft, verdeckt es bald, bald hebt es hervor. Wie Schatten nötig ist, um zu verschönern, so ist das »Dumpfe« nötig, um zu verdeutlichen. – Die Kunst macht den Anblick des Lebens erträglich, dadurch daß sie den Flor des unreinen Denkens über dasselbe legt (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, 151).[2]
now aesthetics no longer justify existence, but instead make it bearable by dressing it in a pleasurable form. this is an example of the debate, still alive and well in philosophy today, between platonists and naturalists. the former — despite the hapless moniker, not to be confused with capital-P Platonists, who are a subset of little-p platonists with little force today — assert that abstract objects, like numbers and norms (both ethical and aesthetic), exist independently of the mind. the latter contest that such abstracta are generated by rational minds and have no standalone existence in nature. the sunset, so say the naturalists, long predates man; but it was never beautiful until the first man came along and thought it so.
in intellectual history, Nietzsche belonged to the pioneers of the naturalist stance. he took the stance more or less for granted, and dedicated himself to addressing the problem of nihilism that he believed it to ensnare us in. if God and the Good are illusions of the mind, then how should I live? should I live at all? reflection on these matters easily leads one to despair (an affect incidentally studied at length and from an informatively different angle by Kierkegaard). one major solution that the mature Nietzsche lands on is that a strong temperament offers the best inoculation against despair. he has, in this, largely been vindicated by empirical science: it turns out that happiness is mostly a function of one's biological setpoint, not one's beliefs, and that in essence past discourse has mistakenly reversed the causal arrow between these two.
one of the most fortunate temperaments to be endowed with is that which can be moved and impassioned by beauty. if you are attuned to beauty, then you have at your disposal an inexhaustible well of passion from which to draw the motive to get out of bed every day. the precise passion that beauty stirs is eros, and it takes on such diverse forms as erotic love, art connoisseurship, painting and poetry, &c. rich in diversity is the country of kalophiles.
my current position on the meta-normative question is actually not Nietzsche's naturalism but a very recent variant on platonism called plenitudinous platonism. I won't develop this topic at length here, but suffice it to say that this position argues that norms and values are real, yet also are plural. in a sense, it buys the reality of values at the price of making the selection of the "master" vector of values underdetermined by data currently available and possibly in principle. hence it remains the case that we are, as Nietzsche claimed, responsible for choosing the values that we shall live by. Beauty is the god that compels me, and I allow myself to be so compelled rather than to question endlessly and fruitlessly; I own and make myself accountable for the choice of altar.
the life consecrated to beauty is not one of idle hedonism. in Sade's work La Philosophie dans le boudoir, the initiative instruction in libertinism that Dolmancé gives Eugénie is likened in its rigor and systematicity to those of the Church and the Lycaeum (dialogue 3). Dolmancé himself is, by delicious and whispered allusion, likened to Archbishop Fénelon, a formidable French prose stylist and exponent of Catholic doctrine. such is the seriousness with which I approach the aesthetic-erotic life. I work to shape my body, by all available resources, into the most beautiful and desirable form its material will support. I similarly discipline my mind by study of arts, especially language and mathematics. as concerns interpersonal communion, which is vital if one would avoid the solipsism that is aestheticism's standing hazard (e.g. Dorian Gray), I hope to find eventually a master with whom I can realize the sadomasochistic dimension. in all, I find this a happy and fulfilling way to live — a judgment that is itself the acquired perspective of someone who spent almost two decades tormented by the question of how to live, only to realize that throughout that time the compass of my passions never wavered in the direction that it advised.
this blog displays a subset of the icons of my aesthetic-erotic religio. I hold the human body to be the foremost beauty. I love both the male and the female forms, but being a classicist in my tastes, my sexuality organizes itself around the dominant themes of hierarchical, ecstatic submission to men and symmetric, sapphic tenderness with women. such, then, are the major topoi of the images I gather here.[3]
1: "Conversely, however, we may very well assume we are already images and artistic projections for the true creator of art, and that our highest dignity lies in our significance as works of art — for only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified — although, of course, our awareness of our significance in this respect hardly differs from the awareness which painted soldiers have of the battle depicted on the same canvas" (Speirs). 2: "How meter beautifies. Meter lays a gauze over reality; it occasions some artificiality of speech and impurity of thinking; through the shadow that it throws over thought, it sometimes conceals, sometimes emphasizes. As shadow is necessary to beautify, so “muffling” is necessary in order to make clearer. Art renders the sight of life bearable by laying over it the gauze of impure thinking" (Faber). 3: the race theme, which occasionally appears, is purely incidental: I am race-neutral in my own tastes and simply appreciate that genre for its titillating expression of hierarchical themes.
