Nec docere neque delectare sed sublimare. On the metaphor of literature as sublimation in Freud and Nietzsche

Abstract

The article inquires into the distances or proximities among literature, philosophy and psychoanalysts by studying the metaphor of sublimation. In the first place, it outlines the links of both Nietzsche and Freud with Aristotles Rhetoric, ie. it shows them as debtors of the literary and rhetorical tradition that, according to Aristotle, uses a discourse kindred to those human matters dealing with possibility and deliberation rather than necessity and demonstration. In the second place it specifies how, according to Nietzsche and Freud, literature can no longer be understood under the paradigm that Aristotle himself holds, i.e. the idea that literature educates or delights. For both Nietzsche and Freud, literature is a way of sublimation not a discourse that can be seen from the point of view of traditional models of moral education or the restrictedfield of esthetic delight. However, since both thinkers use this metophor to account for the process carried out by literature, they radicalize, in a different way, a modern experience the consciousness of the gradual production of cultural constructions. They also understand that these constructions presumed a complex transformation process of certain elements more specified and outlined in Freud, more open and ductile in Nietzsche. There is an outstanding agreement with Aristotle concerning the way literature is seen as a discourse kindred to human actions, but modern experience entails a meaningful turnabout since the chosen metaphor highlights the understanding of the human sphere through the sign of transformation