Illness and Civilization: Nietzsche, Platonism, Christianity and Darwinism

Abstract

This article seeks to account for how the deployment of Western history —of which Nietzsche takes Platonism, Christianity and Darwinism (the latter as a representative of his contemporary vital perspective) as high points— results in Nietzsche a civilizing historical process —that is, it implies a succession that progressively leads to décadence— in which Nietzsche himself is immersed, as a part of and as an overcoming of it. To do this, the notion of disease is used as an analytical prism. Secondly, it seeks to realize that the process in question supposes a specific dynamic, namely, the elimination of a specific type of change, the one that points to creation —and that this is produced through the reflexive erasure of the historically active character—; if Nietzsche thinks of himself as overcoming said process ¾and, from there, as a potential opening to the conformation of Kultur¾ it is —we sustain— precisely insofar as he manages to invert the logic of said erasure, making it explicit.