1 This, first of all, is a book about Nietzsche's philosophy of art, about his view of the genesis of art, of what makes good art good and bad art bad; about, above all, the relationship between art and life. Or rather, it is a book about Nietzsche's philosophies of art for, so runs a central thesis of the book, there is, in Nietzsche, no single view of art (or of very much else). Rather, his career divides up into different periods distinguished from each other by sharply contrasting attitudes to and about art. More specifically, I hold that Nietzsche's thought about art divides into four main periods. I also hold, however, that the fourth constitutes a return to the first. In the end, so I argue, the path described by Nietzsche's thought is a circular one.

Philosophy is distinguished by the fact that everything is connected with everything else. Of Nietzsche's philosophy this is even more true than usual. Thus this is not just a book about art. It is not just an essay in “aesthetics,” for it turns out that it is not possible to discuss the development of Nietzsche's aesthetics without trying to understand his metaphysics, his fluctuating beliefs concerning the scope of human knowledge, concerning the nature and value of science (roughly, the higher his valuation of science the lower his valuation of art and vice versa) and concerning pessimism (roughly, the more seriously he takes pessimism the more seriously he takes art and vice versa).