On Nietzsche’s Aestheticalization Of Human Body

During the evolution of aesthetics, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche is labeled as one of the aestheticians who freed the body discourse from the cultural mode of Christianity. Nietzsche’s body discourse leads to a shift in Western philosophical aesthetics from the conceptual or practical form of metaphysics to the body in reality, regarding body as the new measure of all values. Nietzsche imbues Dionysian, the natural impulse, into the body, and releases the instincts and desires from the drunk Dionysian. Both instincts and desires are manifested in the image of Apollo and return to “the Grandest One” in the termination of individual body. This is the notion of aestheticalization in Nietzsche’s theory of aesthetics, which changes the ugly and non-existing Dionysian into “the Grandest One”, a state of freedom and relief for the human nature. The process of aestheticalization indeed refers to Nietzsche’s tragic aesthetics. The later development of Nietzsche’s aesthetics rather than its early stage makes the aestheticalization perfect. Nietzsche reshapes the body of Dionysian into one with resolution and strong will, and embellishes and balances the principles of moral ethics. Thus, the aesthetics of body is improved to a new height.This study first of all points out the evilness of physical instincts in the cultural mode of Christianity, and explains the starting point of Nietzsche’s aesthetics of body which refers to a thorough rebellion of the notion of physical capacities in the cultural mode of Christianity. This can reflect the confirmation for Nietzsche’s consciousness of life, and recovers the perpetual enhancement and limited appearance of Nietzsche’s aestheticalization of body. Secondly, this study explores the exact connotation of Nietzsche’s aestheticalization of body, and analyzes the process of turning Dionysian characterized by being drunk and solace into Apollo, and the subsequent involution and carnival under the theory of individualism. Thirdly, this paper discusses Nietzsche’s aestheticalization’s transcendence of metaphysics, and digs out the ideal state of body aesthetics via the transcendence of soul, personality and ethics. This aesthetic ideal exerts an influence on the notion of “poetic dwelling” proposed by Heidegger.