Monday, April 29, 2013

Architecture, Will to Power, Dionysian

Nietzsche's classification of Architecture, in #11 of the Expeditions section of Twilight of the Idols, as an expression of Will to Power, but of neither Dionysian nor Apollinian, has the merit of explaining the Sublimity of that Art, i. e. as a "victory over weight and gravity".  Furthermore, because, as he contends in #218 of Human, All to Human, Beauty is extrinsic to Architecture, its non-Apollinian status follows.  However, its non-Dionysian status leaves unexplained how Architecture, like every other Art, communicates.  For, Communication unites separate individuals, and one of the main theses of Birth of Tragedy is that the Dionysian is the principle of the unification of separate individuals, i. e. is the principle of Communication in any Art.  Since Twilight appears just prior to Nietzsche's permanent incapacitation, and to a conclusive articulation of his concept of Will to Power, the relation between the Dionysian and Will to Power that it presents can be conceived as provisional, subject to a revision that gets preempted.

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