The Eroticization of Distance

Nietzsche, Blanchot, and the Legacy of Courtly Love

Joseph D. Kuzma

In The Eroticization of Distance: Nietzsche, Blanchot and the Legacy of Courtly Love, Joseph D. Kuzma explores the significance of courtly erotic themes in Friedrich Nietzsche’s mature philosophy and in Maurice Blanchot’s writings of the 1940s and early 1950s. Rather than offering an account of erotic relationality that prioritizes reconciliation, fulfillment, or release, Nietzsche attempts to formulate a nonteleological eroticism that aims at nothing but the perpetual intensification of desire. Kuzma suggests that it is Blanchot who carries Nietzsche’s courtly erotic tendencies to their most provocative point, by highlighting potentials for intimate relationality that might be established through a shared experience of dispossession and loss. This first monograph to engage specifically with the theme of eroticism in Blanchot’s writings will be of interest not only to students and scholars of Nietzsche, Blanchot, or French philosophy, but also anyone interested in the philosophy of sexuality, the history of love, theories of the emotions, or nineteenth and twentieth-century European thought more generally.

Lexington Books

Pages: 168 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-4985-2438-4 • Hardback • July 2016 • $84.00 • (£65.00)

978-1-4985-2439-1 • eBook • July 2016 • $79.50 • (£61.00)

Subjects: Philosophy / Individual Philosophers, Philosophy / General, Philosophy / Continental Philosophy, Philosophy / Philosophy of Love and Sex

The Eroticization of Distance

Nietzsche, Blanchot, and the Legacy of Courtly Love

Hardback

eBook

Summary

In The Eroticization of Distance: Nietzsche, Blanchot and the Legacy of Courtly Love, Joseph D. Kuzma explores the significance of courtly erotic themes in Friedrich Nietzsche’s mature philosophy and in Maurice Blanchot’s writings of the 1940s and early 1950s. Rather than offering an account of erotic relationality that prioritizes reconciliation, fulfillment, or release, Nietzsche attempts to formulate a nonteleological eroticism that aims at nothing but the perpetual intensification of desire. Kuzma suggests that it is Blanchot who carries Nietzsche’s courtly erotic tendencies to their most provocative point, by highlighting potentials for intimate relationality that might be established through a shared experience of dispossession and loss. This first monograph to engage specifically with the theme of eroticism in Blanchot’s writings will be of interest not only to students and scholars of Nietzsche, Blanchot, or French philosophy, but also anyone interested in the philosophy of sexuality, the history of love, theories of the emotions, or nineteenth and twentieth-century European thought more generally.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 168 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-4985-2438-4 • Hardback • July 2016 • $84.00 • (£65.00)

978-1-4985-2439-1 • eBook • July 2016 • $79.50 • (£61.00)

Subjects: Philosophy / Individual Philosophers, Philosophy / General, Philosophy / Continental Philosophy, Philosophy / Philosophy of Love and Sex

Author

Joseph D. Kuzma is instructor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1: Courtship and Despondency
Chapter 2: Nietzsche and the Ecstasy of Transmogrification
Chapter 3: Nietzsche’s Rehabilitation of Erotic Distance
Chapter 4: Blanchot’s Eroticization of Distance
Chapter 5: Déchirement, Sacrifice, and Refusal
Chapter 6: Impersonal Intimacy and the Ruins of Shattered Time
Conclusion: “This Beating of a Hesitant Heart”

The Eroticization of Distance

Nietzsche, Blanchot, and the Legacy of Courtly Love

Joseph D. Kuzma

The Eroticization of Distance

Nietzsche, Blanchot, and the Legacy of Courtly Love

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