Music as applied physiology: considerations from the late Nietzsche

Abstract

The purpose of this study consists on presenting an interdependent relation between music and physiology in later Nietzsche. The productivity of such pretension lies on investigating the statute of physiology as a founding philosophical category of the art experience, in the specific case of music. We will focus on the reconstruction of the interpretation of some problems presented by Nietzsche against Wagner. After a hermeneutic effort, we will point the resulting philosophical outcome, capable of contributing to the core thesis in this essay: music is physiology applied to later Nietzsche, and this rule is established as a category for the criticism against Wagner’s music, integrating the broadest logic of criticism into modernity and traditional metaphysics.