The present article is a reflection on the way how, in "Genealogy of Morals", Nietzsche rethinks "the aesthetic issue" based on the opposition between Kant's conception of beauty as a predicate of a "disinterested" judgment and the stendhaliana conception of beauty as the effect of a "crystallization" and a "promise of happiness". The key to the thought of Nietzsche's in this context resides on the concept of "intoxication" (Rausch) on the one hand, as a key-term to designate the "pre-physiological condition" of art, but on the other hand, as a process of spiritualisation of the instincts or of the drives, which internalizes and intensifies them. This spiritualization is distinguished from disinterested contemplation for it does not dis-affects us, and because it is by large a spiritualization of sexuality, without renouncing to imply a revaluation of the values and a widening on the horizon of the human. That is why art can be thought of as a "counter-movement" that affirms life and fights the "ascetic ideal" and the "European nihilism".
Art; aesthetic judgment; crystallization; spiritualization; nihilism