Nietzsche on Language

Laocoön and his Sons   Introduction Twisted bodies, silent screams, and serpents entwining around doomed limbs— Laocoön and His Sons is among the most striking sculptures of antiquity. Yet, despite its subject—agony unto death—the work radiates a sublime composure. How can pain appear beautiful? This paradox has preoccupied thinkers since antiquity, but in the modern period, it resurfaces with renewed urgency in the works of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Friedrich Nietzsche, both of whom, directly or obliquely, read Laocoön as a cipher for the aspirations and limitations of art. Beneath their reflections lies the metaphysical structure of Arthur Schopenhauer, whose dual concepts of Will and Representation furnish a subterranean grammar for the dialectic of form and chaos, illusion and truth. Lessing and the Limits of Expression In his 1766 treatise Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry , Lessing articulates a now-classic thesis: different artistic media ...