In my last post, I drew an explicit correlation between the metaphysical views of a critics and their subsequent aesthetic views. Today I'm going proceed again from metaphysics, discussing the aesthetic formulation that Nietzsche gleans from his own intellectual exercises and suggesting that the necessary equilibrium apply to his anthropology as well. First off, I'll state quickly that I intend to demonstrate that Nietzsche is ultimately begging the question (i.e. practicing circular reasoning) in his assertion that truth is beyond us. While he denies the power of the intellect on one hand, he asserts that meaning might be found through an intuitive experience on the other. Amidst the ambiguities that surround language and its conceptual constructs, Nietzsche falls prey to his own temptation to create an academic distinction.

In all of his statements regarding the failure of words to represent things essentially, Nietzsche pays homage to his forebear Kant, though he only takes Kant's metaphysical project half way. Nietzsche agrees with Kant when he affirms that an impenetrable veil exists between our ideas and the world as it is. Applying this idea to structures of language, Nietzsche affirms also that our language does not objectively reflect any essential concept. Having come this far, he affirms that analytic philosophy and systematic theology are both failed projects. What we take to be truths are really only anthropomorphized metaphors used as a pragmatic mechanism to quell the herd. This 'truth' allows humanity to “ward off misfortune” by creating terms which have “the same validity and force everywhere” (766). Distorting complex reality into general terms, man humanizes nature in order to create the illusion of order.

Nietzsche emulates Kant, but only manages to make it half way. He is lost in the thick undergrowth of the noumenal world and rather than attempt to cut a way out, casts a feral man's hut in the middle of the jungle. The difference between the two is this: Kant believes in universals and Nietzsche does not. Kant operates off those general concepts of the human mind and creates a schema that allows for corporate action. He finds objective value within the subjective mind. Nietzsche denies this project, declaring the ambiguities too great to salvage any meaning from. The intellect is redirected towards creation through the intuition. Man is directed by feeling to perceive and interpret as he sees fit. In this approach, “the rule of art over life is established” (773).

So, Nietzsche makes a distinction between the man of reason and the man of intuition, saying that the former is guided wholly by “concepts and abstractions” and thereby wards of misfortune and compelling the abstractions to yield happiness. The man of intuition, on the other hand, receives a direct experience of “brightness, a lightening of the spirit, redemption, and release,” though he suffers more frequently without his safety net of concepts (773). This all occurs, Nietzsche claims, because man is restored to a natural relation to the universe. While the rational, Apollonian approach separates man from the universe through general concepts, the Dionysian approach reunifies man with nature through intuitive response. “Man is no longer an artist; he becomes a work of art” (777). After divorcing himself from analytical categories, Nietzsche creates a new artificial distinction.

Nietzsche is trying so hard to eradicate the rational method that he has uses this same power of reason to create an artificial and disingenuous distinction. He has reinterpreted mankind within the bounds of reason. Though failing to subdue reason, he does point out another possible foundation for truth. Despite Nietzshe's doubts, it seems to me that the intuitive approach and the analytic approach are not so contradictory. Perhaps imperfect universals are drawn from intuitive feeling and applied to rational concepts. Though these concepts be not perfect, they would seem to have some bearing in reality if man is truly united in some way to the universe. Ultimately, the weakness in Nietzsche's attack on truth is that he expects that we need certain truth. Though argument and reason seem to fail to supply perfect certainty, Nietzsche's own insights into other epistemic faculties give some platform for universal knowledge, even if it be more akin to water than stone foundations. Ultimately, Nietzsche's aesthetic claim that the Apollonian and Dionysian sides are both necessary in art holds true for the analytic and intuitive elements of the intellect as well.