Truth, Art, and the “New Sensuousness”: Understanding Heidegger’s Metaphysical Reading of Nietzsche

In the first of four lectures on Nietzsche’s philosophy, “The Will to Poweras Art” (1936-37), Heidegger argues that the unique and importantrelationship between truth and art, which Nietzsche suggests, must beunderstood “with a view to the conquest of nihilism,” i.e., within the historical context of a radically novel interpretation of sensuous reality. Beginning with the project of overturning Platonism as the active countermovement to nihilism, this essay interprets Heidegger’s difficult notion of the discordant relationship between truth (the fixation of semblance) and art (the transfiguration of semblance) in Nietzsche’s philosophy, emphasizing the supreme importance of art as life’s greatest enhancing force. The analysis is conducted within the context of Nietzsche’s metaphysics as presented by Heidegger, who claims thatas a metaphysical thinker, Nietzsche could not explain such topics as “truth,” “Being,” and “Becoming” in terms beyond the conceptualization of Western philosophy. In spite of that, his thought intimates a movement beyond the constraints of the tradition within which he was entrenched. In addition to providing a detailed exegesis of Heidegger’s lecture course, the problems associated with Heidegger’s metaphysical interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy will be discussed, problems that commentators such as Alan Schrift (Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation) believe stem from Heidegger’s stringent and restrictive methodological choices for approaching the reading of Nietzsche.