‘The Monument to a Crisis’

Abstract

Friedrich Nietzsche describes Human, All Too Human, his third book to be published within his own lifetime, as a work of liberation: one that seeks to strip away the increasingly malignant influences – of Richard Wagner and Arthur Schopenhauer particularly – that he perceives as infecting his work. In this article, the author argues that it is more than just a rejection of these individual thinkers however, but instead represents a broad critique of the relationship between bourgeois art, Romantic conceptions of creativity and the modernizing demand for productivity. Realizing that the role of the artist increasingly mimics the oppressive, dispiriting temporality of industrialized labour, the author contends that Nietzsche attempts to develop a more moderate conception of artistic culture built in large part upon the philosophy of Epicurus, seeking to identify a mode of creative practice that is not degraded by the exigencies of the industrial tempo of work, and displaying a surprising sympathy toward the working masses incongruous with his output as a whole.