Metaphors: Dewey, Nietzsche, and Kant on Art

Dewey, Nietzsche, and Kant had different perspectives on art, but they share a common Romantic belief in its transformative power.

John Dewey – Art as Experience

For Dewey, art isn't just a product—it's a process. It weaves together our experiences, helping us make sense of life. It’s not about isolated selfhood but a living, changing self in relation to the world.

“The function of art is to make us see the world as a whole, with the interdependence of its parts.”

A metaphor that illustrates Dewey's view: Art is a river.

Claude Monet – The Seine at Vétheuil (1880)

A river flows through our lives, constantly changing as it interacts with the world around us. It shapes our path, and reveals the deeper flow of meaning beneath the mundane.

Friedrich Nietzsche – The Birth of Tragedy

Nietzsche saw art—especially Greek tragedy—as the highest form of expression, born from the clash between the Dionysian (chaos, emotion) and the Apollonian (order, reason). Great art balances the two.

“It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.”

Metaphor for Nietzsche's view: Fire & Ice

J.M.W. Turner – Snow Storm: (1812)

The Dionysian force represents the heat and passion of fire,

The Apollonian force represents the coolness and order of ice.

The combination of the two elements creates something new and powerful, like the steam that arises when fire meets ice.

For Nietzsche, this tension defines both great art and human existence.

Immanuel Kant – The Sublime and the Beautiful

Caspar David Friedrich - The Monk by the Sea 1809

Kant distinguished between the beautiful—harmonious, pleasing—and the sublime—vast, terrifying, awe-inspiring. Both stir the soul, but the sublime engages reason and stretches the mind toward the infinite.

“The sublime must of necessity be an object of the reason...”

Beauty is a serene garden. The sublime is a storm. Both are essential to understanding our emotional and intellectual lives.

Metaphor for Kant's beauty: The Calm Serenity of a Garden.

The Artist's Garden at Giverny by Claude Monet (1900)

The beautiful is the calm serenity of a well-tended garden—like walking through a peaceful oasis.

Metaphor for Kant's sublime: The Raw Power of Nature:

The Ninth Wave by Ivan Aivazovsky (1850)

The overwhelming force of the sublime is awe-inspiring and can even be terrifying.

An untamed landscape, Raw, unbridled, and uncontrollable, it leaves us feeling small and insignificant in its presence.

In the end, whether we follow Dewey’s river, Nietzsche’s fire and ice, or Kant’s garden or sublime storm, all three remind us that art isn’t just decoration—it’s how we process, and elevate the human experience.