Schopenhauer and the Will to Style 49much by the "no" in this mysticism of negation as by the power of a will
that turns against itself, against its usual impulses. Later, in the third
Untimely Meditation, on Schopenhauer—from which we can quote in this
context because Nietzsche himself explained that this 1874 text harked
back to ideas from his student days—Nietzsche designated the ultimate
elevation of the will to the point at which it turns against itself as an
emancipation from "animal existence." The "no-longer-animals" suc-
ceed in this process, namely the "philosophers, artists, and saints"
(1,380; SE § 5). The egos of the latter are "completely melted away, and
their life of suffering is felt as no longer, or scarcely any longer, individ-
ual, but as a most profound sensation of identity, compassion, and unity
with all living things: the saint in whom that miracle of transformation
takes place, which the game of becoming never hits upon, that ultimate
and supreme becoming human to which all of nature presses and drives
to its redemption" (1,382; SE § 5).
Nietzsche later construed this inversion of the will as ascetism and as
the triumph of a will that prefers nothingness to not wanting. He then
regarded this "nothingness" as a negation of practical, serviceable atti-
tudes fixated on self-assertion. Joie de vivre was replaced with overexer-
tion, domination with surrender, reining in with broadening out, and
individuation with mystical union. Nietzsche took up Schopenhauer's
thought at the very point at which his own philosophy was agitating for
a transformed life.
As is well known, Schopenhauer had made only passing reference to
illumination and transformation. He was himself no saint or "Buddha
of Frankfurt." He rose "only" as far as philosophy and the love of art.
For Schopenhauer, philosophy and art lay halfway along the path to
redemption by creating a distance from the world through contempla-
tion. His was an aesthetic stance. His philosophy was a metaphysics of
aesthetic distancing, and Nietzsche used it in this sense for his own
visions. In contrast to traditional metaphysics, the liberating aspect of
Schopenhauer's aesthetic metaphysics is not located in the content of
what is discovered as "essence" behind the world of appearances. In tra-