Rapture and drunkenness: the feeling of fullness.
Adilson Felício Feiler
Estudios Nietzsche July 7, 2023 DOI: 10.24310/estudiosnieten.vi23.15678 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Rapture Feeling Aesthetics Psychoanalysis Literature |
| Key points | Argues that Teresa of Avila's mystical rapture and Nietzsche's Dionysian intoxication both involve a paradoxical experience of fullness that includes absence and emptiness, suggesting possible overlaps or identities between the two. |
Abstract
Abstract: Teresa of Avila presents the mystical rapture, the supreme expression of ecstasy, as the absence of the exterior senses, and, with it, of all disturbance. This spiritual experience results from a clairvoyant truth, acquired beyond the understanding as a unique and singular moment. Therefore, it is the experience that takes place in an instant of fullness, in an instant that is, at the same time, full and empty. On the paths of the experience of fullness, Nietzsche expresses it as intoxications, as that moment of culmination, of instinctual increase. However, while it consists of an experience of a maximum increase of instincts, it reveals itself as an absence, like nothing, with no goal to reach. In this sense, both in the mystical rapture and the Dionysian intoxication there is a feeling of fullness that is expressed, at the same time that it gains fulfillment, an increase as well as loss, absence, and emptiness. So, to what extent is it possible to observe, in addition to distances to rapture and drunkenness, also overlaps and even identities? Is the experience of fullness something common around Teresa of Avila’s rapture and Nietzsche’s drunkenness?