Del alma fuerte al superhombreDescartes y Nietzsche : dos versiones del sujeto moderno

Abstract

This doctoral thesis tackels the conceptions of the self defended by Descartes and Nietzsche. It is a question of reconsidering the complex and ambiguous relationship between these two thinkers about such a problem. An important pretext to carry out this programme can be found in Nietzsche¿s own words, that may be useful for reading Cartesian philosophy from two different points of view: the point of view of aristocraty and the point of view of ingenuousness. The latter criticizes the excessive optimism of the Cartesian epistemology whereas the former, nevertheless, coincides with the moral project thought by Nietzsche for the Übermensch, which lets hazard a certain complicity between both authors in spite of the description of ingenuousness. The comparison between Descartes¿ and Nietzsche¿s conceptions of the self takes place thus in two different contexts: an epistemological context, in which the famous æand ingenuousæ ego cogito becomes the object of the psychological and genealogical review put forward by Nietzsche; and a moral context, in which the identity of the not so well-known Cartesian vrai homme becomes corporal in the same way as Nietzsche¿s alternative to the consciousness, the Selbst, does. The âme forte and the Übermensch, that represent the most excellent existential possibilities of the vrai homme and the Selbst, discuss in this context their aristocratic affinities in the name of two individualistic and elitist ethical ideals. These ideals, nevertheless, are supported respectively by two different passions, generosity and egoism, that guide human coexistence into the divergent channels of tolerance and hierarchy.