Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse 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.