Organizing the Chaos Within: Nietzsche's Demand That We Dance

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Nietzsche's writings provide a brilliant account of obstacles to human greatness. This paper will begin by exposing those cultural forces that weaken the modern personality as detailed in Nietzsche's Untimely Meditations. However, the focus of the paper is not on cultural diagnosis or even prognosis but on dancing as a cure for spiritually afflicted humanity. The purpose of humanistic studies is to cultivate better humans. Looking at passages in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and On the Genealogy of Morals, this paper will focus on Nietzsche's proposal that dancing is a preferred remedy to spiritually diseased humanity in the modern world. The purpose of humanistic studies is to promote better human beings. Nietzsche argues that dancing must supplement reading and writing in order to fight the debilitating mulitiplicity of passions operating within each of us.

Stream: Aesthetics, Design , Philosophy, Ethics, Consciousness

Paper: Organizing the Chaos Within

I was born in upper state New York in 1959 and broke my neck playing football in 1975. My interest in sports was redirected into philosophy. I majored in philosophy at Wheaton College and studied the history of philosophy with Arthur Holmes and the writings of Kierkegaard with C. Stephen Evans. After studying systematic theology in graduate school under the guidance of Walter A. Elwell, I enrolled in a Great Books doctoral progam at a Catholic university in Texas. Robert E. Wood and Dennis Sepper were two strong intellectual influences at the University of Dallas. My disseration centered on Nietzsche's account of human suffering. I have presented papers as a member of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society at Warwick University, Cambridge and the University of Glasgow. Currently I teach humanities and philosophy at Palm Beach Atlantic University in south Florida.