Sebastian Gardner cites the issues of aesthetic experience and aesthetic judgment in terms of the theories of Hume and Kant, but he also notes many of the other philosophers who addressed issues of aesthetics. He says of Nietzsche, for instance, that he makes a fundamental distinction between the Dionysian and the Apolline, with the first concerned with immersion in the oneness of the world while the latter is concerned with the realm of appearances:
This distinction has proved inspirational for artists and writers on art, but remains philosophically obscure: it has been much discussed whether Nietzsche intends the distinction to be one between different forms of experience, different kinds of art, or different but equally necessary aspects of all works of art (Gardner 621).
Nietzsche's view is actually tied closely with his ideas of history and with his deeper concerns about the soundness of his own society.
Nietzsche as a young man viewed the purpose of the philosopher in much the same light as did Plato--he saw the philosopher as the physician of a culture, identifying and curing its ills (Strauss and Cropsey 829). Nietzsche's mode of discourse was lofty and ennobling but also difficult for many to understand, and some see his works as evidence of the moribund nature of late romanticism in the nineteenth century. Most readers tend to place Nietzsche within the terms of traditional thought, finding that he is fully bound by the tradition he attacks, meaning "by what has now come to be called the language and thought of onto-theology, what Nietzsche himself simply called God" (Allison xi).
In pursuing his view, Nietzsche made a very critical analysis of the German culture of his time in several of his works, beginning with his assessment of history and culture in The Birth of Tragedy. Nietzsche makes a comparison between historical knowledge about past cultures and culture itself. He sees true culture as a unity of ...