The Eroticization of Distance: Nietzsche, Blanchot, and the Legacy of Courtly Love

In this book, Joseph Kuzma explores the significance of courtly erotic themes in Friedrich Nietzsche s mature philosophy and Maurice Blanchot s writings of the 1940s and early 1950s. Rather than offering an account of erotic relationality that prioritizes reconciliation, fulfilment, or release, Nietzsche attempts to formulate a non-teleological eroticism that aims at nothing but the perpetual intensification of desire. This book 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."