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

values.

In ways unforeseen by the modern subject, the body proves to be a powerful force in our ability to transform and reinterpret the aspects of becoming that we find objectionable. Nietzsche, we already noted, wants us to remember, “in all willing there is, first, a plurality of sensations, namely, the sensation of the state ‘away from which,’ the sensation of the state ‘towards which,’ the sensation of this ‘from’ and ‘towards’ themselves, and then also an accompanying muscular sensation, which even without our putting into motion ‘arms and legs,’ begins its action by force of habit as soon as we ’will’ anything” (BGE 19). Qualities in the disposition of the body directly affect the nature of the becoming around us because both the body and becoming constitute a continual matrix of forces, and whether we subsist in nihilism or achieve an emancipated world depends on the nature of the pertinent direction these forces take. Nietzsche notes, “I tell you: one must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in you” (Z, Ibid, 5). Nietzsche sees the will itself as an excessive force, and the forces whose excess the will configures are overwhelmingly those of the body, as opposed to purely cognitive and psychological elements, for only in the will as a bodily balance of forces can we understand Nietzsche’s claim that value depends on our ability to organize the chaos that structures the modern self. Nietzsche notes, “what is essential ‘in heaven and on earth’ seems to be, to say it once more, that there should be obedience over a long period of time and in a single direction: given that, something always develops,

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