Nietzsche and the philosophical gesture of tasting

Abstract

In the 1870s, Nietzsche distinguished between science and philosophy, highlighting the philosopher as the unquestionable point of his system. The centrality given to the philosopher relates to the gesture that characterizes him: the transposition of an intuition into a philosophical image. The value of philosophy would be in the ability of expressing particular intuitions in supposedly universal images, but neither in a fantastic nor demonstrable way. Such transposition requires a peculiar ability: refined taste, witch is pointed out as the key capacity of philosophical practice. Taste is thought of as a perspicacity to evaluate and retain, a discernment that is characteristic of the philosopher to elect the difficult as divine. This taste would limit the instinct for knowledge, an impulse typical of the scientific spirit, and would allow the philosopher to select a limited number of things to be known. This regulatory characteristic of taste is one of the main markers of what differentiates philosophy from science, without transforming it into art.