(2013). Nietzsche, Einverleibung and the Politics of Immunity. International Journal of Philosophical Studies: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 3-19. doi: 10.1080/09672559.2012.746271.

In this essay, I examine Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche, focusing centrally on his understanding of the Nietzschean “body.” Nietzsche’s status as the culminating figure of Western metaphysics depends on the notion that the body, in Nietzsche’s thought, is the last Western subject. I confirm Heidegger’s sense of the importance of the Nietzschean body, and, in particular, the centrality of the word “incorporation”, to a proper understanding of Nietzsche. I argue, however, through a critique of Heidegger’s own understanding of “incorporation” in (...) Nietzsche’s work, that an investigation of the body in Nietzsche does not reveal him to be an unwilling participant in the metaphysical tradition beyond which Heidegger seeks to move; rather, we should see in the Nietzschean body a human finitude that has more resonances in Heidegger’s own thought than Heidegger would care to admit. Ultimately, I show, an investigation of the actual dynamics of the Nietzschean body, as read through the careful tracing of the word “incorporation” to which Heidegger invites us, yields a fundamentally delimited body that operates according to what we might call a kind of physiological asceticism. (shrink)

“God is dead!” This is one of the most famous claims in Nietzsche’s philosophy, difficult to fully affirm. While the higher men fail to overcome the ghost of God, Zarathustra joyfully affirms God’s death. This affirmation deconstructs the metaphysical and moral concept of “divinity,” turning it into a metaphor. The new metaphor of the divine, mainly developed through the figure of Dionysius, expresses the capacity of affirming life beyond the old values, related to the dead God. It also involves the (...) creation of a higher body beyond the body of despair, associated with these values. The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between the death of God and the body in Nietzsche’s account by analyzing the meanings of this death for the higher men, the question of the divine in Zarathustra’s account, and the status of the Dionysian body. (shrink)