for the grounding of history, and that its essence consists in such significance. Thus the creator, the artist, must be fixed in view. Nietzsche expresses the historical essence of art early on in the following words: "Culture can proceed only on the basis of the centralizing significance of an art or an artwork" (X, 188).
The third statement says: art is the basic occurrence within beings as a whole. On the basis of what has gone before, this statement is the least transparent and least grounded of all, that is, within and on the basis of Nietzsche's metaphysics. Whether, and to what extent, beings are most in being in art can be decided only when we have answered two questions. First, in what does the beingness of beings consist? What is the being itself in truth? Second, to what extent can art, among beings, be more in being than the others?
The second question is not altogether foreign to us, since in the fifth statement something is asserted of art which ascribes to it a peculiar precedence. The fifth statement says: art is worth more than truth. "Truth" here means the true, in the sense of true beings; more precisely, beings that may be considered true being, being-in-itself. Since Plato, being-in-itself has been taken to be the supersensuous, which is removed and rescued from the transiency of the sensuous. I n Nietzsche's view the value of a thing is measured by what it contributes to the enhancement of the actuality of beings. That art is of more value than truth means that art, as "sensuous," is more in being than the supersensuous. Granted that supersensuous being served heretofore as what is highest, if art is more in being, then it proves to be the being most in being, the basic occurrence within beings as a whole.
Yet what does "Being" mean, if the sensuous can be said to be more in being? What does "sensuous" mean here? What does it have to do with "truth"? How can it be even higher in value than truth? What does "truth" mean here? How does Nietzsche define its essence? At present all this is obscure. We do not see any way in which the fifth statement might be sufficiently grounded; we do not see how the statement can be grounded.
Such questionableness radiates over all the other statements, above all, the third, which obviously can be decided and grounded only when