Nietzschean Philosophy: Body, Becoming, and the Dionysian

Nietzsche on the Body

According to traditional philosophers, human beings have a body, but are not a body. Plato or Descartes' concept of the "soul" subsumes all human reality. This is a consequence of their way of valuing: the senses deceive us (by showing becoming as real) and, consequently, everything sensible, like the body, acquires a negative connotation.

On the other hand, the body is related to the passions, to the irrational, and to pleasure—that is, to all those vital values to which the Western tradition has declared hostility.

For Nietzsche, radically opposing such a decadent way of assessing and interpreting the ontological structure of man, man is none other than a living body. The body is the being of man, his own integrity:

"I am body entirely, and nothing else; and soul is only a word for something in the body."

And also:

"Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, is a powerful sovereign, an unknown sage—it is called Self. In your body he dwells; he is your body."

Finally:

"There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom."

The Concept of Becoming

Reality is a process or change. Traditional metaphysics treats it as mere appearance, like unreal smoke, while "being" is characterized by its permanence, unity, and immutability.

To communicate, man needs to fix, petrify (and thus distort) the changing multiplicity of reality. Without this, it would otherwise be impossible to recognize and share experiences with other human beings. Nor could we successfully apply concepts to reality. When we apply a concept such as "cause"—where one phenomenon precedes another—we are placing an order on the things we face, which is very useful for survival.

Here is the metaphorical origin of words and concepts. The problem arises if we forget this pragmatic origin and begin to believe that they express objective realities. What follows is dividing the world into "apparent" and "real", which means denying life. Herein lies the bio-pathological aspect of metaphysics.

The Apollonian and the Dionysian

The division between the "Apollonian" and the "Dionysian" as two basic attitudes toward reality is a constant in the thinking of Nietzsche from his first book. They pay tribute, respectively, to Apollo—the sun god of order, measure, proportion, and moderation—and Dionysus—the god of intoxication, chaos, and the irrational.

Apollo loves definition, shape, form, balance, and measure. For this reason, he is recognizable in the plastic arts. On the contrary, Dionysus expresses the experience of immersion in the chaotic and excessive evolution of life, which breaks through intoxication and goes beyond all measure, shape, or figure. Dionysus starts from understanding the lack of foundation of things, their lack of depth. He continuously feels under his feet the ocean of joy and horror that is life. His art is music.

According to Nietzsche, everything has an Apollonian and Dionysian background. It is precisely the neglect of this Dionysian support—which explodes any form from every thought in life—that has caused the decline marking the beginning of the Western tradition. This decline is attributed to the rationalizing spirit of Socrates and Euripides.