Nietzsche, Love and Sex
“nothing is more common, in the love of the sexes as well as of that duality which is called “I,” than contempt for what one loves: -fatalism in love” –The Will to Power, aphorism 919.
On behalf of the editorial staff of The Agonist, we invite you to submit research reflecting Nietzsche’s multitudinous definitions of love and/or sex in his larger corpus. Nietzsche does not exactly conjure up the character of a late nineteenth century lothario or flaneur, to say nothing of his own questionable, amorous experience. And while he does not outline something like an exhaustive theory of love à la the philosophical erotics of Plato’s Symposium, Nietzsche’s writings on love and sex certainly continue to seduce new readers. What love has to do with it depends of course, on the context. Self-love, filial love, platonic love, romantic love, altruism, and lust are all scrutinized according to his transvaluation of values: from his discussion of the satyr’s sexual potency and Dionysian ecstasy in The Birth of Tragedy to more capricious, and quaintly misogynistic notions of marriage in The Gay Science—from his disgust with Christian and utilitarian conceptions of love and compassion, to harnessing the creative strength of the orgiastic at the conclusion of the Twilight of the Idols. Moreover, he exposed the problems of ‘internalization’ of instincts, what is called ‘repression’ in psychoanalysis, and ‘ascetic idealism’ in On the Genealogy of Morals. We welcome submissions from different disciplines.
Please see The Agonist Submission Guidelines at:
https://agonist.nietzschecircle.com/wp/submission-policy/
Please submit your abstract and your paper when it is ready on the following link:
https://journals.tplondon.com/agonist. You will have to create an account on the publisher’s site.
Abstract deadline: December 1st, 2022; Essay submission deadline: March 1st, 2023.