Book contents
- Nietzsche and Literary Studies
- Cambridge Studies in Literature and Philosophy
- Nietzsche and Literary Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Heraclitus’ Clarity
- 2 Ariadne, or the Mediation of the Image
- 3 Nietzsche’s Centaurs
- 4 Nietzsche on the Task of the Poets in His Middle Writings
- 5 Some Images in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
- 6 Nietzsche Ludens
- 7 Nietzsche and French Literature from the End of the Nineteenth Century to 1914
- 8 Ecce Mann
- 9 Plant Imaginaries and Human Existence in Nietzsche and Sartre
- 10 The Resources of the Figure
- 11 Nietzsche and Jewish Survival between Sarah Kofman and Jacques Derrida
- Editions and Translations of Nietzsche’s Works
- References
- Index
3 - Nietzsche’s Centaurs
Synthesizing Philosophy, Science, and Art
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2024
- Nietzsche and Literary Studies
- Cambridge Studies in Literature and Philosophy
- Nietzsche and Literary Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Heraclitus’ Clarity
- 2 Ariadne, or the Mediation of the Image
- 3 Nietzsche’s Centaurs
- 4 Nietzsche on the Task of the Poets in His Middle Writings
- 5 Some Images in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
- 6 Nietzsche Ludens
- 7 Nietzsche and French Literature from the End of the Nineteenth Century to 1914
- 8 Ecce Mann
- 9 Plant Imaginaries and Human Existence in Nietzsche and Sartre
- 10 The Resources of the Figure
- 11 Nietzsche and Jewish Survival between Sarah Kofman and Jacques Derrida
- Editions and Translations of Nietzsche’s Works
- References
- Index
Summary
Nietzsche wrote in 1870 while preparing The Birth of Tragedy (1872), “Science, art, and philosophy are now growing into one another so much in me that I shall in any case give birth to a centaur one day.” The project of synthesizing philosophy, science, and art Nietzsche adumbrates here actually gets realized in The Birth of Tragedy, explaining the work’s distinctive character. It is a project whose origins lay with Friedrich Schlegel, the leading German Romantic philosopher, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Schlegel had warded off the obvious objection to incorporating art into philosophy/science that this would falsify the latter by championing a radical general skepticism about the veracity of cognition. Nietzsche takes over this aspect of Schlegel’s project as well. Moreover, this whole project of synthesizing philosophy, science, and art in light of a radical general skepticism survives after The Birth of Tragedy to reappear in different, more refined permutations throughout Nietzsche’s later works, constituting an indispensable key both to their character – in particular, their metaphysical-epistemological framework – and to their development. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the viability of the project, especially concerning the question of whether or not the radical general skepticism on which it rests is coherent.
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- Nietzsche and Literary Studies , pp. 59 - 90Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024