Nietzsche in Chantal Maillard: from the Theory of Metaphor to the Turin Horse

Abstract

This article addresses the multiple influence of the figure of Nietzsche on the thought and work of the poet and philosopher Chantal Maillard (Brussels, 1951), through three major aspects in her trajectory. Firstly, the philosophy of metaphor and the Nietzschean defense of metaphorical language over conceptual language, which Maillard discusses in her study on María Zambrano’s thought La creación por la metáfora (1992) and later in La razón estética (1998), in which she proposes an attitude of awareness of the metaphorical structure of concepts and values that underlie our society. Secondly, the legacy of the critique of Western metaphysics and the “inversion of Platonism” in Matar a Platón (2004), indebted to Gilles Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche in Logique du sens (1969). Finally, the famous motif of the German philosopher's embrace of a horse in Turin, a recurrent theme in Maillard's work, collected in texts such as the essay ¿Es posible un mundo sin violencia? (2018), or La mujer de pie (2015), understood as a symptom, not of madness but of sanity, and which serves the author as an epitome of the passage from a morality of resemblance to an ethics of compassion, in line with the Nietzschean genealogy of philosophical postmodernity highlighted by Teresa Oñate (2009), which defends the rights of differences and non-violence.