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

and has developed, for whose sake it is worth while to live on earth; for example, virtue, art, music, dance, reason, spirituality- something transfiguring, subtle, mad, and divine” (Ibid). The disparate physiological and psychological structure of the will must be released, though in a regulated fashion if anything valuable is to take root in our culture. Nietzsche has in mind something akin to the great Romantic poets‘ notion of creativity as “controlled emotion.” # By referring to the “chaos” in the self, Nietzsche means to draw attention to the need to sublimate the multiplicity in the structure of the will.

Numerous practical issues and challenges structure our lives, so that we often do not seek to provide complete solutions to all of them. The only avenue we have to making something out of such practical chaos is to assume some level of self-discipline, so that we can prioritize our practical needs and make constructive choices. That Nietzsche underscores the chaos that exists in the self should be seen as his way of reminding us that we owe our cultural achievements to our ability to exert violence on the practical aspects of life that define us. For Nietzsche self-mastery involves a process whereby “an irreplaceable amount of strength and spirit had to be crushed, stifled, and ruined (for here, as everywhere, “nature” manifests herself as she is, in all her prodigal and indifferent magnificence which is outrageous but noble)” (Ibid). The flurry of practical-bodily issues that plague our lives demands a “narrowing of our perspective,” if we are to turn practical challenges into aesthetically and morally satisfying practices and value.

We also learn that that the multiplicity of the bodily

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