The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV

by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Art is the only superior counter-agent to all will to the denial of life; it is par excellence the anti-Christian, the anti-Buddhistic, the anti-Nihilistic force.

Art is the alleviation of the seeker after knowledge,—of him who recognises the terrible and questionable character Of existence, and who will recognise it,—of the tragic seeker after knowledge.

Art is the alleviation of the man of action,—of him who not only sees the terrible and questionable character of existence, but also lives it, will live it,—of the tragic and warlike man, the hero. Art is the alleviation of the sufferer,—as the way to states in which pain is willed, is transfigured, is deified, where suffering is a form of great ecstasy.

III.

It is clear that in this book pessimism, or, better still, Nihilism, stands for "truth." But truth is not postulated as the highest measure of value, and still less as the highest power. The will to appearance, to illusion, to deception, to becoming, and to change (to objective deception), is here regarded as more profound, as more primeval, as more metaphysical than the will to truth, to reality, to appearance: the latter is merely a form of the will to illusion. Happiness is likewise conceived as more primeval than pain: and pain is considered as conditioned, as a consequence Of the will to happiness (of the will to Becoming, to growth, to forming, i.e. to creating; in creating, however, destruction is included). The highest state of Yea-saying to existence is conceived as one from which the greatest pain may not be excluded: the tragico-Dionysian state.

IV.

In this way this book is even anti-pessimistic, namely, in the sense that it teaches something which is stronger than pessimism and which is more "divine" than truth: Art. Nobody, it would seem, would be more ready seriously to utter a radical denial of life, an actual denial of action even more than a denial of life, than the author of this book. Except that he knows—for he has experienced it, and perhaps experienced little else!—that art is of more value than truth.

Even in the preface, in which Richard Wagner is, as it were, invited to join with him in conversation, the author expresses this article of faith, this gospel for artists; "Art is the only task of life, art is the metaphysical activity of life...."