In Spinoza: Practical Philosophy Gilles Deleuze emphasises three major resemblances between Spinoza and Nietzsche: the triple denunciation “of ‘consciousness’, of ‘values’ and of ‘sad passions’” (Deleuze 1988, 17). These practical aspects made Spinozism an object of scandal for his opponents, whilst Spinozists like Deleuze argued that Spinoza had to free us from these three aspects precisely because they stimulate a way of life governed by illusions of transcendence. Such illusions are dangerous, not only for Spinoza, but also for Nietzsche, because they devaluate the value of life itself by virtue of enforcing the regime of the “ascetic ideal” in which a nihilistic “will to nothingness” poisons our earthly existence. In On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche is very explicit about this.

According to this passage, the very foundation of a transcendent interpretation of life is based on a hidden aggression of living beings against life itself. Though the fact of a life which has started to hate life as such is self-paradoxical through and through for Nietzsche, there do exist human, or more precise, all too human reasons why somebody develops an aversion against life and its most fundamental presuppositions: Firstly, one has to embody a genuine “rancor against sensuality” and secondly one has to be attracted by the “ascetic ideal”; if both attributes are missing in a philosopher, “then—one can be sure of it—he is always only a ‘so-called’ philosopher” (Nietzsche 1989a, 106-107).

One crucial philosophical point in Nietzsche’s argumentation against the ascetic ideal lies in his assumption that the reason why somebody desires transcendent values is in fact not a matter of somebody’s intelligible but, on the contrary, of somebody’s empirical nature. Firstly, one has to embody a particular constellation of drives secretly operative in a person on an instinctual, pre-reflective level in order to be ready and willing to affirm a mode of being which commands a person to develop a peculiar self- and alter-destructive aversion against life itself in one’s life. The will to nothingness, which regularly pops up in the history of morals thus is nothing less than a matter of somebody’s choice; it is a physiological disposition in which the aversion against life as such became the basic instinct of a mode of being which finds its optimum way of life in the denial of our earthly existence.

The “conceptual persona” of the ascetic priest

Nietzsche finds the specific assemblage of drives (conatus), commanding a person to strive toward the ascetic ideal most explicitly expressed and embodied in the conceptual persona of the ascetic priest. Because “[o]nly now that we behold the ascetic priest do we seriously come to grips with our problem: what is the meaning of the ascetic ideal?” (Nietzsche 1989a, 116). The ascetic priest is the key figure in the struggle between an immanent versus transcendent interpretation of life, because he needs the ascetic ideal physiologically—given that this ideal is the only proper milieu which allows him to preserve his highly self-contradictory mode of being-in-the-world. For him, the question “What is the meaning of the ascetic ideal?” is not just a theoretical issue, it rather expresses the specific struggle for survival of the ascetic priest. His entire “right to exist stands or falls with that ideal: no wonder we encounter here a terrible antagonist—supposing we are antagonists of that ideal—one who fights for his existence against those who deny that ideal” (Nietzsche 1989a, 116).

Though an ascetic life is highly self-paradoxical in itself, insofar as it wants to master not only a part of life but neglects the entire empirical preconditions of life itself, the ascetic priest astonishingly comes into being, as Nietzsche emphasizes, in almost every age and in almost any culture over and over again. Obviously, and most surprisingly, this life-inimical form of life does not die out.

Nietzsche therefore concludes that this genuine mode of being must necessarily appear “in the interest of life itself ” (Nietzsche 1989a, 117). There must exist something like a “death-drive,” a self-contradictory “will to nothingness” within the very structure of life itself, which periodically produces this mode of being hostile to life itself. Under certain recurring circumstances it looks as if the desire to annihilate life would operate in the interest of life itself.

When Nietzsche asks the question what the ascetic ideal in fact means, it is precisely this paradox of a life, haunted by an uncanny wish to die, which is at stake.

A new species of philosophers—a new image of thought

Recollecting what has been said so far it comes as no surprise that Nietzsche claimed, already in Gay Science No 335, that the intellectual honesty of a new species of philosophers—philosophers of immanence, as I would like to denote them by now—calls them to study physics rather than meta-physics. Arguing that hitherto all valuations and ideals have been based on ignorance of physics or have been constructed precisely so as to contradict it, in his Gay Science Nietzsche proclaimed his new imperative in diametrical opposition to Kant: “[L]ong live physics! And even more so that which compels us to turn to physics—our honesty!” (Nietzsche 1974, 266).

The philosophers to come, namely “those whose taste and inclination are almost the reverse of their predecessors’” (Nietzsche 1998, 6), are precisely those philosophers, who are finally able to accept that “the lived-body is more surprising and thought-provoking than the old [concept of the] ‘soul’” (Nietzsche 1999, KSA 11, 565 [Group 36, No. 35]).^[2]

This proposition is not just one argument among others against the meta-physical, that is to say, ascetic image of thought for Nietzsche. It is rather the expression of the new image of thought he has started to invent at first in the history of philosophy. Making the body the new model of thinking, Nietzsche counters the moral image of thought which asks us to voluntarily dominate, control and discipline our bodies. Up to then philosophers were standing amazed before phenomena like consciousness, will, reason or language, they discovered a thousand ways of moving the body, of dominating the body and the passions, but they missed to have a close look at the body and to ask themselves in line with Spinoza what a body can do without being disciplined and determined consciously by our mind (cf. Spinoza 2000, 167).

Avoiding a close look at instinctual life, secretly operative in the cellar regions of a lived-body, and instead privileging the analysis of the free, self-conscious, decision-making will is precisely Nietzsche’s new definition of what constitutes a meta-physical interpretation of the world, governed by illusions of transcendence. Having no eye for fleshly matters is therefore by no way arbitrary for the species of classical thinkers. It is precisely their specific mode of being, their special mode of desiring: “la bête philosophe”, that is to say, the pre-reflective life secretly operative in the body of a philosopher that strives, instinctively, toward the optimum of favorable conditions which allow philosophers to achieve the maximum power they are able to perform.

Repose in all cellar regions

But what is it exactly, the conatus of a philosopher is typically striving for according to Nietzsche? “Repose in all cellar regions” (Nietzsche 1989a, 108), „Ruhe in allen Souterrains“ (Nietzsche 1999, KSA 5, 352)—this is what the bodies of philosophers for him are basically longing for. This instinct has even defined their concept of thinking: They experienced thinking to be a releasing life-practice that liberated themselves from the noise of that part of their lived-bodies which unconsciously functions in the basement of their body. Feeling comfortable while thinking detached from their earthly, bodily existence, they finally wanted thinking to be a realm that should operate entirely independently of their desiring machines in a pure mental, disembodied space.

It is not at all remarkable according to Nietzsche that, after so many centuries, philosophers have indeed learned to isolate and detach thinking from their “souterrains”. They wanted to make the cogito, the subject that thinks, the dominant, the ruling, the most powerful drive in the entire fabric of drives they actually embody. And finally they succeeded. Thinking became indeed something disinterested; something “objective;” something, which functions, at least up to a certain degree, indeed separately from the pre-reflective life operative in the lived-body of a philosopher. In detaching oneself from instinctual life, a philosopher consequently does not at all deny his existence according to Nietzsche, “he rather affirms his existence and only his existence” (Nietzsche 1989a, 108).

The performance of thinking, one can resume with Nietzsche, is just the optimum condition a philosopher’s body is characteristically striving for in order to achieve the maximal power his or her conatus is instinctively longing for in the performance of a life.

Schopenhauer’s interpretation of beauty—as a temporary form of silencing all our desires—is only the most telling example for Nietzsche of what it meant for a classical metaphysician like him to realize his optimum. Schopenhauer wanted to get rid of his desiring machine and instead enter exactly that particular state of being in which his cogito is no more disturbed, probably even tortured by the noise of desires, operative primarily in the cellar regions of his lived-body.

Don’t come to me with science

Insofar as philosophers wanted thinking to be a realm that functions entirely independent of their instinctual lives, strivings and desires, they are obviously not the best candidates to counter the ascetic ideal for Nietzsche. But the same is true for scientists and the sciences, says Nietzsche: “Don’t come to me with science when I ask for the natural antagonists of the ascetic ideal, when I demand: ‘where is the opposing will expressing the opposing ideal?’” (Nietzsche 1989a, 153). Science too does not really qualify for a natural antagonist of the ascetic ideal because, like meta-physicians, scientists are still interested in a disinterested eye; in an objective, detached, neutral and context free observer. They cannot full-heartedly affirm the perspectivism constitutive for any living being. Nietzsche’s point of view is resolute: Science is just the modern version of the ascetic ideal because, physiologically spoken, “science rests on the same foundation as the ascetic ideal: a certain impoverishment of life is a presupposition of both of them—the affects grown cool, the tempo of life slowed down, dialectics in place of instinct, seriousness imprinted on faces and gestures” (Nietzsche 1989a, 154). The conatus of scientists strives obviously for the same as the conatus of ancient philosophers did. This is the reason why Nietzsche claimed that modern science, from a physiological viewpoint, “is the best ally the ascetic ideal has at present, and precisely because it is the most unconscious, involuntary, hidden, and subterranean ally!” (Nietzsche 1989a, 155)

There exists an unconscious of science, secretly at work in the basements of the lived-bodies, engaged in doing science. It is this hidden condition, a certain type of the social construct of drives and emotions, of a Socratic kind of soberness, that has not yet been laid open in the history of science as a secretly operative affective precondition of science.

Wanderings in the forbidden

Only in the course of long wanderings in the forbidden (cf. Nietzsche 1989b, 218), that is to say, only after having practiced thinking in an almost psycho-analytical manner over years, Nietzsche was able to confess to himself that “the largest part of conscious thinking has to be considered an instinctual activity, even in the case of philosophical thinking” (Nietzsche 1998, 7).

In this proposition we probably do find the most explicit formulation of Nietzsche’s new image of thought. Having the courage to read between the lines of philosophers and having a close look “at their fingers”, namely at the body-part physically engaged in the process of writing, Nietzsche himself finally became capable of unmasking the hidden words and the forbidden truths showing up, silently, in the middle of what philosophers explicitly say and write. Displaced truths like the one that the realm of thinking is grounded in “physiological demands for the preservation of a particular kind of life” (Nietzsche 1998, 7).

Declaring that “‘consciousness’ is scarcely opposite to the instincts in any decisive sense” (Nietzsche 1998, 7), Nietzsche raised a new level concerning the question “What is called thinking?” by assuming that “most of a philosopher’s conscious thinking is secretly guided and channelled into particular tracks by his instincts”. Probably this assumption is the most shocking aspect of his new image of thought for classical philosophers.

Are we meanwhile ready to receive the thought-provoking hit that comes along with this new mode of thinking? Of thinking almost in an artistic manner: not against the flesh, but with it, probably even for the sake of it?

Where is the counter-ideal?

Since philosophers and scientists are not really qualified candidates willing to resist the ascetic ideal by actually inaugurating a counter-ideal—“The ascetic ideal expresses a will: where is the opposing will that might express an opposing ideal?” (Nietzsche 1989a, 146, cf. 153)—Nietzsche was finally forced to call Zarathustra into being: as the long-desired inventor of a counter-ideal to the ascetic ideal.

Being the teacher of an immanent conception of life, whose pride calls on human beings “no longer to bury one’s head in the sand of heavenly things, but to carry it freely, an earthen head that creates a sense of the earth!” (Nietzsche 2005, 28), Zarathustra at first started to distinguish strictly between the “despisers of the body”, who are “angry with life and earth” (Nietzsche 2005, 30-31) and therefore ready to affirm a mode of living governed by illusions of transcendence and, on the other hand, those who “stay true to the earth and do not believe those who talk of over-earthly hopes!” (Nietzsche 2005, 12) Two modes of being, which could not be more contradictory.

But where are Zarathustra’s allies in this struggle between an immanent versus transcendent interpretation of life?

Unmasking the glory of the ascetic priest as a will to nothingness, that makes people believe in a (transcendent) World-Behind (Hinterwelt), Zarathustra actually started to resist the conceptual persona of the ascetic priest in deed. Knowing that he will face “a terrible antagonist” in this combat of somebody “who fights for his existence against those who deny that ideal” (Nietzsche 1989a, 116).

Part II Philosophy On Stage: Nietzsche et cetera

Ex-position

This statement, in which Nietzsche considers art to be much more fundamentally opposed to the ascetic ideal than is science can be grasped a guiding theme of the research-festival Philosophy On Stage#4, Nietzsche et cetera, realized at Tanzquartier Wien in the context of the research project “Artist-Philosophers. Philosophy AS Arts-based Research” (AR275-G21), funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). The basic intention of the research-festival was to stimulate an artistic-philosophical confrontation with Nietzsche’s art-like way of thinking by experimentally testing modes of arts-based philosophy, able and willing to counter in practice the ascetic image of thought.

In preparation of the festival, which finally took place from 26 ^th–29^th November 2015, more than 60 philosophers, artists and scientists were invited to create research contributions for the festival, addressing the following research questions:

At the Philosophy On Stage#4 research festival, finally a total of 43 research contributions were presented—lectures, lecture-performances, interventions, morning and evening readings—in the context of which philosophers established research alliances with artists, in order of generating arts-based images of thought supposed to give back to philosophy its corporeality, materiality and sensibility. Assuming, methodologically, that once philosophers and scientists are asked to generate their ideas on stage, and for the stage, they automatically will develop arts-based-research practices sensitive to and mindful of thematerial conditions in which they actually think and by means of which their way of thinking is in fact subterraneously channelled. Suddenly bodies do matter for them, which usually do not matter for “serious” philosophers and “serious” scientists, whereas they have always mattered for the arts and will necessarily matter for the artist-philosophers to arrive: The light in the room // the mode in which one makes use of one’s body while thinking // the sound and timbre of somebody’s voice // the architecture of the building in which the presentation of a lecture, a lecture-performance, performance or performative intervention takes place // the spatial setting of the audience // the dress code // the way one exposes oneself to others // et cetera.

Philosophy On Stage thus defined artist-philosophers as philosophers who have learned to think like artists, insofar as they are no longer concerned with the conceptualization of general ideas only but also with the concrete spatio-temporal design of material conditions that allow a concept to arrive.

Preludes

The visitors of Philosophy on Stage—most of all students of philosophy, of theatre, film and media studies at the University of Vienna and of the University of Applied Arts Vienna—were over one entire semester topically prepared for Philosophy On Stage, Nietzsche et cetera, whereas three art labs were realised for the artists, philosophers and scientists ready to stage philosophy where they could collectively develop research contributions to be presented at the Philosophy on Stage#4 event.

Art-Lab#1: Inverting Platonism

The first art-lab, realised from 16^th–18^th January 2015 at Studio Tanzquartier Wien was about differentiating Nietzsche’s image of thought from other images of thought which, as Wittgenstein writes in his Philosophical Investigations, hold us in cultural-historical captivity. ^[3]

For Nietzsche, a trained classical philologist, it was evident that the art inimical instincts of Plato, “the greatest enemy of art Europe has yet produced” (Nietzsche 1989a, 154), is still key for defining today’s common image of thought in particular concerning the usual interpretation of the relation between philosophy, the sciences and the arts. Who is under the spell of our European history of mind need not have read or studied Plato to think like Plato. Nietzsche rather assumes that one thinks like he did because over a period of more than 2,500 years the (idealistic) image of thought he created has been cultural-historically implanted so deep that on the contrary we are hardly able anymore to think differently from him: namely post-Plato, that is beyond the disciplining constraints enforced on us by his image of thought. Inevitably. Automatically. Almost mechanically. Quasi instinctively.

In the course of Art-Lab#1, in the context of lectures, the antagonistic images of thought of Plato and Nietzsche were analysed in detail and discussed. Always regarding our goal to deconstruct those images of thought which historically hold us captive, not only in theory but also when it comes to the methodological consequences for the practice of thought.

Art-Lab#2: Performing arts-based philosophy

In the course of Art-Lab#2, realised from 1^st–3 ^rd May 2015, finally the focus of our questioning started shifting towards the ways of presenting and expressing thought.

Now the time had come for starting concrete ways of an inter- and trans-disciplinary cooperation of artists and philosophers.

In several reading circles we read Nietzsche texts together and started to develop concrete research contributions for Philosophy On Stage#4: