Nietzsche, Artistic Intoxication, and the Overcoming of Nihilism: the Body as an Ontology of Practice

satisfaction with the important changes operated on the categories of our culture. To understand this process, we must return to Nietzsche’s vision of tragic art as a synthesis between the beautiful codes and appearances of the Apollonian principle and the ecstatic and rapturous affirmations of the Dionysian principle. Nietzsche writes, “tragedy closes with a sound which could never come from the realm of Apollonian art. And thus the Apollonian illusion reveals itself as what it really is- the veiling during the performance of the tragedy of the real Dionysian effect; but the latter is so powerful that it ends by forcing the Apollonian drama itself into a sphere where it begins to speak with Dionysian wisdom and even denies itself and its Apollonian Visibility“ (BT 21). Through its codes and dream-like categories the Apollonian principle seeks to return the subject to the normality of social existence as an individual satisfied with the prevalent cultural order, but as Nietzsche notes Dionysian intoxication is powerful enough to upset the reigning codes. The body transformed into a symbol of affirmation, beauty, and joy remains a transfigured body, and if it is to be re-coded by the Apollonian perspective, for the sake of a return to social normality,# such re-coding must incorporate the Dionysian body as a unique, often non-conforming self, for the Apollonian force must speak “finally the language of Dionysus.” Like the masters of slave morality, the Apollonian order would show respect to the Dionysian force only if the latter expresses itself through a powerful force of affirmation. Having been impressed by the Dionysian-like self’s ability to convey its different practical needs, our Apollonian-like cultural conventions are likely

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