The main objective of the project is to promote internationally relevant research on Nietzsche’s conception of nihilism and the way in which his view of the value of art and the relationship between art and life remains crucial today. Nietzsche’s view of art is characterised precisely by the fact that it focuses on the “value” of art and subordinates the questions of Aesthetics to critical reflection on values and the crisis of nihilism in modernity. As regards the concept of nihilism, the project assumes that this continues to be a keyconcept for the intepretation of the values that predominate in conemporary culture, and it assumes that, in spite of the fact that Nietzsche’s conception of nihilism is at the origin of all subsequent conceptions of nihilism, it still lacks a comprehensive clarification, from both the philological and the philosophical point of view. In part, this is due to Heidegger’s errors of interpretation, which remain influential. His errors, as wel as the errors of other early influential readers of Nietzsche, have only began to be cricised and debunked by the Nietzsche research in the last 20 years. And this task is not yet complete. The project aims to show that this clarification of the concept of nihilism is crucial for the research on the value of art, particulary for the research on the Nietzschean claim that the value of art resides in the “affirmation of life” and that art is a decisive “counter-movement” for the “battle against nihilism”.

All team members of the project are experts on one or more crucial aspects of the project. The core of the team is an international Nietzsche research group. This group, previously designated “Nietzsche International Lab” (NIL) and recentely rebaptised as “Lisbon Nietzsche Group”, exists since 2009, and it integrates 6 appointed research fellows working on Nietzsche at the Nova Institute of Philosophy. Since 2010, it has been awarded two FCT research projects and one project financed by the FCT and the DAAD. The proposed research project will involve coordination and networking between the Lisbon Nietzsche Group and some of the most important European Nietzsche research groups.