Twice Removed or Twice Redeemed? Plato, Nietzsche, and the Fate of Art

Nietzsche in Athens. AI art

Introduction

In the history of Western thought, few themes have attracted as much admiration and suspicion as art. Both Plato and Nietzsche engage it deeply, placing it in relation to truth, illusion, and the human condition. Curiously, both agree on a structural diagnosis: art stands at a remove from reality. And yet, they draw opposing conclusions. Where Plato sees deception and moral danger, Nietzsche sees affirmation and aesthetic salvation. The purpose of this essay is to explore this divergence by comparing their metaphysical assumptions, psychological models, and ethical valuations of illusion.

Metaphysical Background: The World Behind and Beneath

Plato’s distrust of art begins with his Theory of Forms. In this framework, genuine reality consists in immutable Ideas—such as Beauty, Justice, or the Good. The visible world is merely a derivative copy, full of imperfection and flux. Things we see—a tree, a chair, a body—participate in their respective Forms only imperfectly. Reality, therefore, lies beyond the empirical world, in a realm accessible only through reason.

Nietzsche, in contrast, in The Birth of Tragedy, articulates a tragic metaphysics influenced by Schopenhauer’s concept of the Will and Kant’s phenomenon/noumenon distinction. Beneath appearances lies a chaotic, primal ground of being: the Ur-Eine, or “Primordial Unity.” This metaphysical One is eternally suffering and self-contradictory, a force that seeks, in Nietzsche’s own words, “redemption through appearance” (Nietzsche, 1993, pp. 20–21). While Plato encourages ascent to the true, Nietzsche insists on the necessity of a veil that makes truth bearable.

Copy of a Copy vs. Appearance of Appearance

Plato’s most famous critique of art appears in The Republic Book X. He explains that an artisan (like a carpenter) makes a physical object—a bed—based on the Idea of the Bed, which exists in the world of Forms. The painter, however, does not imitate the Idea, but merely the artisan’s product. Hence, artistic representations are copies of copies—twice removed from the truth.

As Michael Hauskeller summarizes: “The artist does not imitate being, but only appearance,” producing “the image of an image” (Hauskeller, 2015, p. 11). Because of this removal, Plato holds that art not only lacks epistemic value, but also risks seducing the soul away from truth.

Nietzsche adopts a structurally similar schema, only to invert its meaning. In §§3–4 of The Birth of Tragedy, he outlines a metaphysical hierarchy in which each level builds on an illusion.

In this order, what we call reality—our waking, everyday experience—is already an appearance, not the thing-in-itself. Art, in turn, represents this surface reality, offering a crafted version of what is already illusion. Naïve art and dream-life go even further: they represent not the world directly, but the already mediated representations provided by art or perception. These are illusions of illusions—yet for Nietzsche, their distance from empirical reality grants them greater metaphysical and existential depth.

In this view, art does not merely depict the world; it stages a second-order illusion that reframes reality rather than simply mirroring it. For Nietzsche, the more distant an image is from the raw surface of life, the more it can transfigure suffering into beauty. Where Plato sees danger in duplication, Nietzsche sees redemptive power in aesthetic distance. Homer, as the archetype of the naïve artist, does not reflect reality but constructs a livable world—a dream-image so vivid that it redeems the unbearable weight of existence.

The Soul: Corruption or Consolation?

Plato’s aesthetic ethics derive from his tripartite model of the soul: reason (logistikon) should govern the whole, assisted by spirit (thymos), while appetite (epithymia) must remain subordinate. Art, he argues, stimulates the lower parts of the soul, especially emotion and desire, disrupting rational order. As he warns in Republic 605d, art “feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up.” The mimetic poet, by inflaming irrational impulses, threatens the harmony of the just soul.

Nietzsche does not provide a comparable division of psychic faculties, but his theory of the Apollonian and Dionysian drives functions as a kind of aesthetic psychology. The Apollonian creates form, order, and beauty; the Dionysian embodies ecstasy, dissolution, and suffering. Art arises as a delicate balance between the two. Rather than suppressing irrationality, Nietzsche views aesthetic form as a way to make Dionysian chaos visible and bearable. Art does not mislead the soul—it consoles and strengthens it.

As Nietzsche writes in §3 of The Birth of Tragedy: the “naïve” artist triumphs through illusion, creating dazzling representations that veil the depth of world-suffering. This is not cowardice, but a life-affirming power. The soul, in Nietzsche’s view, survives not in spite of illusion, but precisely through it.

Beauty: Ascent or Veil?

Beauty holds a privileged position for both thinkers, yet with radically different implications. For Plato, beauty arouses eros, the longing that begins in sensual attraction but may culminate in philosophical contemplation of the Form of Beauty (Symposium, Phaedrus). Beauty is therefore not deceptive, but dangerously ambivalent—it can lead us upward or pull us downward into sensual distraction. Its legitimacy hinges on its guiding function toward the Good.

Nietzsche, however, rejects the teleological ladder. For him, beauty is not a bridge to a metaphysical beyond, but the very surface we must learn to love. As he famously declares in his later notebooks:

“We have art in order not to die of the truth.” (The Will to Power, §822)

The Apollonian illusion is not an escape from reality, but a way to face it indirectly, filtered through images that make life aesthetically tolerable. Illusion becomes not the enemy of truth, but its necessary medium.

Derrida’s Critique: Did Nietzsche Escape Metaphysics?

Despite Nietzsche’s bold revaluation of illusion, Jacques Derrida questions whether he truly escapes the metaphysics of presence. In Of Grammatology, Derrida argues that Nietzsche still posits a metaphysical ground—the Ur-Eine—that lies behind all appearances. Even if Nietzsche values illusion over essence, he still retains the structure of origin and representation. Thus, he inverts Plato’s value system but remains inside its architecture.

According to Derrida, a full deconstruction would not reverse the hierarchy, but dismantle the very logic of presence, origin, and depth. In this view, Nietzsche remains halfway liberated, still shadowed by the system he seeks to overturn.

Conclusion

Plato and Nietzsche offer two philosophies of art that are structurally symmetrical and ethically inverse. Both agree that art is removed from reality, that it deals in images rather than truths. But for Plato, this removal is a fall—a move away from Being; for Nietzsche, it is a flight—a move toward bearable existence. The former banishes the poet; the latter celebrates him as the dream-artist of culture.

In Plato’s metaphysics, truth lies behind the veil of appearances; in Nietzsche’s aesthetics, truth requires the veil to be endured. Illusion is either a moral threat or an existential necessity. Ultimately, the fate of art—and our stance toward it—depends on how we answer the question: must life conform to truth, or must truth be reshaped for life?

References

Derrida, J. (1974). Of Grammatology (G. C. Spivak, Trans.). Johns Hopkins University Press.

Hauskeller, M. (2015). Was ist Kunst? Positionen der Ästhetik von Platon bis Danto. C.H. Beck.

Nietzsche, F. (1993). The Birth of Tragedy (D. Smith, Trans.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1872)

Nietzsche, F. (1968). The Will to Power (W. Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). Vintage.

Plato. (2008). The Republic (R. Waterfield, Trans.). Oxford University Press. (Original work ca. 380 BCE)