Nietzsche y María Zambrano: nihilismo y creación

Abstract

The present paper aims at demonstrating that Zambrano proposed a psychological and critical interpretation of Nietzsche’s nihilism based on the alleged intimate connection between man and the sacred.
On the grounds of specific text readings, it is shown how the system of poetic reason, which pretends being a means to dialectically overcome Nietzsche’s nihilism, is used by Zambrano to establish how Nietzsche attempted a change of paradigm, and how the doctrine of «eternal recurrence» is in fact the expression of a «positive and active nihilism» superseding the negative cognitivism that announced «the death of God».
Finally, it is shown how Nietzsche and Zambrano resort to different strategies in view of overcoming the nihilism inherent in modernity. While the former inten- ded to eradicate the specious dualism between existence and transcendence, the latter elaborated a metaphysical system where Nothingness is the radical and central category from which emerges the transcendent meaning of existence.