Living on fictions
On the axis: The value of truth · a fiction known to be false
An ideal, a work of art, an "as if" we know to be fictions deceive no one: do such avowed fictions do the vital work we credit illusions with, without the price of falsehood, or are they just an illusion unaware of itself?
Justification
He is the first to turn the question around: whence our willing the true rather than illusion, and what if this will to truth were itself an inherited faith, the last avatar of the ascetic ideal? Life requires perspectives, fictions, art; not that Nietzsche preaches the comfortable lie: his probity is pitiless, but it is exercised in the service of life, which remains the evaluating instance.
We have art so that we do not perish of the truth.Posthumous fragments, spring 1888, 16 [40]
Beyond Good and Evil, §1 (1886) · On the Genealogy of Morality, III (1887)
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: Nietzsche · Vaihinger
leads to: Beauty in life (Does beauty save?)