Sketchbooks of Genius

Abstract Building on a passing remark in Human, All Too Human, in which Nietzsche appears to run philosophy together with art, the author argues (a) that it matters, for metaphysical reasons, which of the arts he has in mind, (b) that once the right art has been identified, the running together can only go so far (on broadly Kantian grounds), and (c) that, even once all of the above is taken into account, the light that any of it sheds on the proper use of Nietzsche’s own Nachlass is equivocal at best—an outcome that is so unsurprising, in light of his general elusiveness, as to feel more or less inevitable.