Nietzsche e Espinosa: fundamentos para uma terapêutica dos afetos

In this article, from the analysis of the concepts of body and power present in Spinoza’s and Nietzsche’s philosophies, we aim to show that both philosophers criticize transcendent values, affirming the necessity of creating new values. They show that, in order to make possible an affirmative ethical life, one has, above all, to increase the potency of the whole body/mind, obtained through a therapeutics based on the affective dynamics. Considering that both, Nietzsche and Spinoza, had used the same affection, the joy, to cure powerlessness and that both offer a strictly personal therapy, refusing the creation of a normative ethics, we conclude that a therapy which truly proposes to bring health should be an essentially affective process, based on healthy choices and acts that people should take of their own, instead of a moralization of everyday acts, operated by behavioral psychology manuals and collective hygiene.