Nietzsche's “War Praxis," Violence, and the Instinct for Healing

This paper explores Nietzsche’s conceptualization of violence as a physiological concept, manifested in degrees of “defense and attack.” This paper situates itself between three areas: Nietzsche’s conceptions of health and sickness, literature on violence within a Nietzschean framework, and broader discussions of health, sickness, religion, and violence. I argue that Nietzsche views the “instinct for violence” as a measure of health, but with certain conditions. By offering an interpretation of Nietzsche’s four-point “war praxis,” and by exploring the counterintuitive proposition that healing requires an instinct for “war,” it argues that disease, for Nietzsche, is not an abnormality but a distorted relationality to reality, rectified by regaining the capacity for war.