La forme d’une vie. Nietzsche et la littérature

Abstract

At the core of Nietzsche's philosophical quest lies the problem of truth. This problem, however, is extremely difficult. An insufficiently thorough reading of this work stops at the idea that truth is a value that opposes life. Nietzsche would thus be the father of twentieth-century philosophies of the irrational, in the wake of Klages. On the contrary, I try to show that a higher conception of truth as an opening to the World constitutes the heart of Nietzschean thought, as we find it in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This forces us, so to speak, to consider in a new way the relationship between philosophy and literature and to think of truth from the point of view in which the latter now constitutes the source of the former. This thought does not turn its back on reason. It is that of another reason, which leaves the initiative to the image, to the metaphor, as it is highlighted in literature and poetry. Art, thus envisaged, is not an end in itself; through it human existence receives its own form.

Keywords: Nietzsche, truth, life, individual existence, value, literature, poetry