Abstract

The present essay offers a brief commentary on Paul Klee’s The Tightrope Walker. Klee’s painting is brought into connection with Nietzsche’s famous figure of the Seiltänzer in the prologue to Thus Spoke Zarathustra and to the recent film, Man on Wire. The general context of the essay, “descensional reflection,” is inspired by Heidegger’s remark that thinking in our time is “on the descent” from metaphysics