Nietzsche’s early concept of culture

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze and elucidate Nietzsche’s early definition of culture in Untimely Meditations. In Nietzsche’s early work the concept of culture refers to a shared world, and his idea of culture is concerned with the question of how the shared world is formed. I argue that in his early ideas in relation to this question, Nietzsche believes language and art are significant as the basis for a shared world, and this is reflected in his definition of culture as ‘unity of artistic style in all the expressions of the life of a people’. It is my argument that language is the common basis for a shared world of a people, and art is what shapes the shared world, giving it form or style, and making it richer.