After Nietzsche

This text 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.