Existentialism and Aesthetics

Through Kierkegaard’s inspiration, the existentialist aesthetics of Sartre, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Camus presents two kinds of art – benighted and enlightened – varying in their definition according to the philosophers’ outlooks. For Sartre, with the exception of committed prose, the benighted condition is that of art itself as a consoling quest for organic unity in the face of the painful nausea of existential detail. For Heidegger, the benighted condition is a comfortably numbed, technologically fostered awareness along with the art that supports it, in contrast to art that discloses the truth of human being. For Nietzsche, the benighted condition is art that provides either a consoling metaphysical comfort or one that is on the side of weakness and decline in contrast to art that fosters health and strength. For Camus, the benighted condition is a nostalgic and consoling quest for unity as opposed to an attitude of revolt towards the world’s absurdity. As in Nietzsche, who urges us to embrace the existential reality of the ordinary world in all of its difficult detail, Camus prescribes an art of the absurd and urges us to face the world’s absurdity rather than retreat through some form of artistic analgesic.