Abstract

This book explores the imaginative possibilities for philosophy created by Nietzsche's sustained reflection on the phenomenon of ecstasy. From The Birth of Tragedy to his experimental "physiology of art," Nietzsche examines the aesthetic, erotic, and sacred dimensions of rapture, hinting at how an ecstatic philosophy is realized in his elusive doctrine of Eternal Return. Jill Marsden pursues the implications of this legacy for contemporary Continental thought via analyses of such voyages in ecstasy as Kant, Schopenhauer, Schreber, and Bataille.