In Art as in Life

Ilario Colli's bold first work, In Art As in Life, ventures into territory few modern culture theorists dare to cover. Setting forth a brash new conception of aesthetics, the author argues that the prevailing artistic trends of any given epoch are a direct by-product of the metaphysical undercurrents that gave rise to them. In the god-fearing Middle Ages, man created an equally god-glorifying music and literature. In the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, as the focus began slowly to move from god to man, the arts followed suit, slowly gaining a self-confident humanism it had lacked.This "anchoring" of the arts in metaphysics has been the case throughout history and our era is no exception. We live in the wake of Nietzsche's famous nihilistic proclamation, "God is Dead," in a paradigm in which there is no one "truth," no all-encompassing "'Meaning." All philosophical propositions are equally valid to us and therefore, equally void of universality and usefulness. The artist is left in t