Nietzsche: Volumes One and Two

Heidegger, Martin

Nietzsche: Volumes One and Two

by Heidegger, Martin (1991)

Abstract

A landmark discussion between two great thinkers, vital to an understanding of twentieth-century philosophy and intellectual history.

Key Passage

Three good things are proper to art: elegance, logic, beauty; along with something even better: the grand style. When Nietzsche says that these remain foreign to the "masses," he does not mean the class concept of the "lower strata" of the population. He means "educated" people, in the sense of mediocre cultural Philistines, the kind of people who promoted and sustained the Wagner cult. The farmer and the worker who is really caught up in his machine world remain entirely unmoved by swaggering heroics. These are craved only by the frenetic petit bourgeois. His world-rather, his void-is the genuine obstacle that prevents the expansion and growth of what Nietzsche calls the grand style. (p.124)