PHILOSOPHY OF HEALTH

NIETZSCHE’S HUMANISM ON HEALTH AND ON THE AESTHETIC ACTS OF THE HUMAN BEING

Marina Silenzi

The following work takes into consideration Nietzsche’s late conception of health positioning him as a humanist philosopher and approaching a definition of illness and health from the analytical interweaving of the prefaces from 1886/1887, as well as from certain posthumous fragments from 1887 to Twilight of the Idols’ Skirmishes 8 and 9. It will be shown that health is at the core of all gnoseological processes in which the individual projects their particular vision of the world, mirroring their inner state. The idealisation of the gnoseological processes – or aesthetic processes – will be characterised by the Nietzschean interpretation of the artist, who transforms reality from their fullness of health. Such an ability will be presented as a model of health, since health itself will not be understood as a finished state, but rather as a continuous process that can show the diversity of human beings, as well as the existing diversity in recognising and classifying what is harmful to themselves, what makes them ill, and what is ultimately beneficial and strengthens their individual health. This model will be defined then on the basis of the transfiguration capacity of human beings to see in illness an opportunity to increase strength and to turn it into something positive by understanding it as intrinsically contained in health itself.