The similarities between the thought of Marx and Nietzsche might not at first be obvious. However, each saw art, and in particular, an artistic attitude, as crucial to a well lived life. Each thinker criticizes modernity in differing ways; Nietzsche, through philosophy and psychology, Marx, through economics. Yet, these infamous, historical heavyweights, share a utopian vision – be it psychological or societal – that very much centers around the affirmation of life through art, writes Jonas Čeika.

In the foreword to his first book, Friedrich Nietzsche called art “the highest task and the true metaphysical activity of this life”, [1] a claim which set the tone for his entire philosophical career. But the ambitiousness of this view of art was by no means out of place in the German philosophy of Nietzsche’s time, and Karl Marx, a thinker whose name is rarely associated with aesthetics, in fact shared this ambition. Both philosophers found aesthetic activity inseparable from a genuine human existence.