Disciplines
Continental Philosophy | Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Feminist Philosophy | German Literature | History of Philosophy | Philosophy | Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies | Religion
Abstract
In just one aphorism in The Gay Science, Nietzsche arrays “The Problem of the Artist” in a complex, highly reticulated constellation. Addressing every member of the excluded grouping of disenfranchised “others,” Nietzsche turns to the destitution of a god of love keyed to the self- or inward-turning absorption of the human heart. His ultimate and irrecusably tragic project to restore the innocence of becoming requires the affirmation of the problem of suffering as the task of learning how to love. Nietzsche sees the eros of art as what can teach us how to make things beautiful, desirable, lovable in the routine truth of reality: “When they are not.” The stumbling block for those of us paralyzed by impotence and frozen in a technological age of anxiety, longing for being not becoming (eternal youth), is that one can never possess but can only win great health, again and again (like erotic desire), because one gives it away again and again as sacrifice or affirmation without reserve: that is to say, with erotic artistry.
Recommended Citation
Babich, Babette, "Nietzsche and Eros Between the Devil and God’s Deep Blue sea: The Problem of the Artist as Actor–Jew–woman" (2000). Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections. 40.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/phil_babich/40
Included in
Continental Philosophy Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Feminist Philosophy Commons, German Literature Commons, History of Philosophy Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons, Religion Commons
Comments
Please cite original publication details
Babich, "Nietzsche and Eros Between the Devil and God’s Deep Blue Sea: The Problem of the Artist as Actor–Jew–Woman," Continental Philosophy Review, 33 (2000): 159-188.