TO KNOW AND TO FEEL IN NIETZSCHE<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.7443/problemata.v2i2.11056"><i> <b>[doi: 10.7443/problemata.v2i2.11056]</b></i></a>

Abstract

Nietzsche maintains that the field of knowledge is tightly related to the world of vital instincts. A paramount consequence is the well known deconstruction of the ideas of subject and conscience. This thesis is however developed in different ways in the several phases of Nietzsche’s thought. In the so-called Enlightenment period (spanning from Human, all too human to The gay science) this interpretation carries a decidedly naturalistic meaning. It considers the products of abstract thinking itself as the consequence of the self-conserving function of physical impulses, according to the patterns of the positivistic science of the time. From The gay science onwards, instead, the bound between thinking and physical drive leads to a re-evaluation of the Einverleibung, i.e. of the need to express thinking itself into emotional biases, which are entangled with the bodily life. These tight unity of thinking and corporality is easy to understand within the traditional interpretation of Nietzsche’s thought as an expression of philosophical vitalism. Yet it arises some difficulties, if Nietzsche is on the contrary considered as a possible theoretical model for a contemporary re-interpretation of the intercourse between mental and physical activity.