"The great reason". Nietzsche and the problem of the body in Also sprach Zarathustra

Nietzsche’s various observations about the body undoubtedly represent a fundamental hermeneutic crossroad in the area of the moral reflection on the topic of corporeity. At the same time, the reconstruction of his thought on this delicate subject constitutes a decisive testbed to critically rethink reason, seeking to review its position within the world of the human. The Leitmotif of the body firmly binds to one another Nietzsche’s harsh criticisms of the Western civilisation, which, from Socrates onward, saw the dominance of an abstract and calculating form of rationality, to the detriment of an incarnated and more human reason. From the early writings to the mature ones, from Zarathustra to the late polemical pamphlets, through the myriad posthumous fragments; scattered around almost all of his works and stretching over almost twenty years, Nietzsche’s interest in the corporeal dimension of the human never loses tension.