Beauty as the highest good
On the axis: The highest good · a life
What if the highest good were beauty: making one's life a work of art, seeking the intensity of beautiful forms rather than pleasure, virtue, or serenity?
Justification
Nietzsche mocks the pleasure-happiness of the utilitarians as much as the morality of duty: the good is neither enjoyment nor disinterested virtue. It is the enhancement of life, the flourishing of power and self-overcoming, the great health of one who dares to create himself and to say yes to existence. A transvalued eudaimonism, where success is measured by strength and greatness, not by comfort.
Man does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that.Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows, 12
Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows · The Gay Science, IV-V · Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Justification
It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified: the thesis of subordinates the meaning of life to the aesthetic rather than the moral register. Art, not morality, is the truly metaphysical activity of man.
It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.The Birth of Tragedy, §5
The Birth of Tragedy, §5 and §24 · The Birth of Tragedy, "Attempt at a Self-Criticism", §5
Anchors: Wilde · Nietzsche
leads to: Beauty in life (Life as a work of art)