{"id":60,"date":"2005-07-22T12:37:22","date_gmt":"2005-07-22T20:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/phlogma.com\/?p=60"},"modified":"2005-07-22T21:43:08","modified_gmt":"2005-07-23T05:43:08","slug":"beauty-and-utility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/nietzsche\/beauty-and-utility-60","title":{"rendered":"Beauty and utility"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nietzsche, <em>Twilight of the Idols<\/em>, 1889, Kaufmann translation, \u201cSkirmishes of an Untimely Man\u201d\u009d, sec. 22.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nI take a single case. Schopenhauer speaks of <em>beauty<\/em> with a melancholy fervor\t\u2014why, in the last resort? Because he sees in it a <em>bridge<\/em> on which one will go farther, or develop a thirst to go farther &#8230; It is for him a momentary redemption from the \u201cwill\u201d\u009d\t\u2014it lures on to redemption forever &#8230; Particularly, he praises beauty as the redeemer from \u201cthe focal point of the will,\u201d\u009d from sexuality\t\u2014in beauty he sees the <em>negation<\/em> of the drive toward procreation &#8230; Queer saint! Someone contradicts you; I fear it is nature. <em>To what end<\/em> is there beauty at all in tone, color, fragrance, or rhythmic movement in nature? What is it that beauty <em>evokes<\/em>?\t\u2014 Fortunately, a philosopher contradicts him too. No lesser authority than that of the divine Plato [<em>Symposium<\/em>, 206 b-d] (\t\u2014so Schopenhauer himself calls him) maintains a different proposition: that all beauty incites procreation,\t\u2014that just this is the <strong>proprium<\/strong> of its effect, from the most sensual up to the most spiritual &#8230; <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;and what does procreation incite? Not death? Decay? Allowed to stand too long, beauty ferments and becomes <em>sublime<\/em>, &#8230;undercuts itself. Nature has movement enough to squander on this, her most supreme end, for which procreation is only necessary&#8212;scarcely sufficient.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1889, Kaufmann translation, \u201cSkirmishes of an Untimely Man\u201d\u009d, sec. 22. I take a single case. Schopenhauer speaks of beauty with a melancholy fervor \u2014why, in the last resort? Because he sees in it a bridge on which one will go farther, or develop a thirst to go farther &#8230; It &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/nietzsche\/beauty-and-utility-60\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Beauty and utility&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aesthetics","category-nietzsche"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}