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

mediocrity, wretchedness, dishonesty, etc. Nationalism. Anarchism, etc. Punishment” (WP 1). Behind the emotional and spiritual appeal of modern ideological systems, there subsists a will to dissimulate the reality of the collapse of value systems that claim objectivity and that give the modern personality a sense of moral comfort and stability.

Nietzsche’s metaphor for the nihilistic individual who makes value a matter of his own will is the “ugliest man,” # who operates the “death of God,” that is, the collapse of so-called objective metaphysical and secular ideals. We learn that the ugliest man (a figure of the morally self conscious modern subject) has grown tired of God’s pity, that is, God’s ability to transparently see through the horrible character of an existence (that of the ugliest man) that pretends to simulate ideal models. As a result, the ugliest man can no longer “endure” a God that witnessed “unblinking and through and through” his (the ugliest man’s) hypocritical, violent, hateful, and irreverent attitude toward life. “Where I have gone,” declares the ugliest man, “the way is bad. I tread all roads to death and destruction” (Z, IV, “The Ugliest Man.”). So God has to be murdered because His pity is too great and revealing.

The ugliest man tells us that God “looked with eyes that saw everything- he saw the depths and abysses of man, all man’s hidden disgrace and ugliness” (Ibid). The ugliest man, being self-conscious of the ugly nature of his life and experiencing a great deal of guilt since the presence of the highest ideals proves to be a mirror that constantly reflects back his life as a great lie, resolves to abandon his own identification with traditional,

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