TY - JOUR
T1 - Nietzsche's Don Quixote between Zarathustra and Christ
T2 - Laughter, Ressentiment, and Transcendental Pain
AU - Slama, Paul
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston.
PY - 2022/11/1
Y1 - 2022/11/1
N2 - This article describes the role Don Quixote plays as a character and as a novel in Nietzsche's work. Against the background of German romanticism's reception of the novel, and by identifying the status of the novel, its characters, its author (in his duplicity) and its reader, I argue that Don Quixote plays a problematic role in Nietzsche's writings: his character is at once the paradigm of the metaphysical individual caught in metaphysical illusions, the mocked receptacle of the ressentiment of readers and of Cervantes himself, but Don Quixote also represents the experience of a deep suffering (which I call "transcendental"), revealing the world outside the simulacra of metaphysics. This investigation leads us to draw parallels between Don Quixote and Christ, but also Zarathustra, and to rehabilitate a certain form of suffering, inherited from a certain understanding of Christ, in the work of Nietzsche.
AB - This article describes the role Don Quixote plays as a character and as a novel in Nietzsche's work. Against the background of German romanticism's reception of the novel, and by identifying the status of the novel, its characters, its author (in his duplicity) and its reader, I argue that Don Quixote plays a problematic role in Nietzsche's writings: his character is at once the paradigm of the metaphysical individual caught in metaphysical illusions, the mocked receptacle of the ressentiment of readers and of Cervantes himself, but Don Quixote also represents the experience of a deep suffering (which I call "transcendental"), revealing the world outside the simulacra of metaphysics. This investigation leads us to draw parallels between Don Quixote and Christ, but also Zarathustra, and to rehabilitate a certain form of suffering, inherited from a certain understanding of Christ, in the work of Nietzsche.
KW - Literature
KW - Metaphysics
KW - Phenomenology
KW - Theology
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85129295386&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1515/nietzstu-2021-0054
DO - 10.1515/nietzstu-2021-0054
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85129295386
SN - 0342-1422
VL - 51
SP - 218
EP - 250
JO - Nietzsche-Studien
JF - Nietzsche-Studien
IS - 1
ER -