Abstract
The modern medical science’s view of health as painlessness and absence of disease is perceived as a very narrow understanding of health. Its foundation shall be located in the Cartesian mechanical notion of the body as a mere extended matter. Its origin is traced back to the Platonic-Christian ascetic tradition, for which the value of human life lies in the happiness of the soul/self. It devalues the human body as a temporary place of residence for the soul. Different from the medical perspective of health, the paper calls for finding “great health” as an experience of joyfulness produced by the activation of the body. The joyfulness produced by the beauty of the world, love of the sexes, heroic actions, adventures, abundance, intoxication of dance, and musical moments enhances the body’s power to the optimum levels. But the modern civilization founded on European metaphysics perceives such experiences to be immoral and undesirable. However, contemporary phenomenological tradition sees the human being essentially to be her body. This perspective of the body empowers us to criticize the traditional perspective of health and redefine the purpose of living. Consequently, the paper, from the perspective of the thinking of Spinoza and Nietzsche, attempts to throw more light into the meaning of activation of life. Spinoza has shown how an assemblage of one body with another that agrees with its nature enhances its power to act. And Nietzsche has demonstrated the necessity of overcoming nihilism through affirmation of the body and earthly life. Combining their thoughts together, the paper asks to see health as the ability of the body to find positive compositions that lead to enhancement of life and illness as decomposition of the body caused by its wrong, negative assemblages.
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Notes
Husserl 1989; Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the lived body is also a very crucial reflection on the embodied nature of consciousness. He phenomenologically demonstrates how intentionality, will, and perception in the case of human being are emanated from one’s body rather than from the mind, in his work Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith, Motilal Banarsidas Publishers Private Limited, New Delhi, 1996.
Spinoza 2001. Gilles Deleuze further develops this notion in his work Spinoza: Practical Philosophy.
Spinoza’s view of “Conatus” and Nietzsche’s ideal of “the Will to Power” endorses this position.
For instance, though sports persons, dancers, film actors, warriors, etc., perform great actions, such actions are never treated as good actions and these do not make them good persons. Actions of social service alone are treated as good.
Inscriptions are cultural markings imprinted on a neutral body to shape its character. Michel Foucault, in his Discipline and Punish explains how subjectivity for a human being is formed through making inscriptions on his body. Judith Butler in Gender Trouble develops this notion further and shows how human nature and behavior are created through inscriptions on the body by the prevailing culture in each historical period.
Gilles Deleuze in his interpretation of Spinoza (Spinoza: Practical Philosophy) explains that all bodies are compositions of multiple types of particles. The dominant particles in a body determines the nature of that body (thereby the nature of that particular organism). When a body is exposed before the particles and forces opposed to its nature, it loses its cohesion. The body may be even decomposed when it is confronted by the forces which are totally in disagreement with its nature.
Deleuze initially develops the idea of body assemblage based on Spinoza’s notion of bodily affections explained in the third part of Ethics. Later, in his work Anti-Oedipus, this notion is extended to explain the passage of desire between bodies in their machine-like coupling, according to which any two bodies can be coupled or joined together to form a new body. When joined together, their power to act is increased. A bicycle attached to a man is such a combination. Body connectivity, by which there is a flow of energy or desire from one body to the other, is a persisting theme in his later writings.
This is reflected by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics.
Michel Foucault’s book, The Use of Pleasure, throws light into the ancient Greek people’s positive attitude to their body and pleasure. He contrasts it with the ascetic attitude of the people of the present.
Ibid, p. 55
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, p. 120
Understanding of Spinoza’s philosophy as a treatise on body is a recent trend that comes about with the publication of the two volumes on Spinoza by Gilles Deleuze. Earlier, Spinoza’s thought has been looked at primarily as a rationalistic discourse on the mind–body problem where reason playing a pivotal role in bringing about human freedom. This paper basically follows the Deleuezean interpretation of Spinoza.
Spinoza, Ethics, p. 100.
Ibid, p. 99
Ibid.
Conatus, according to Spinoza, is the drive present in all living and non-living things to persist in existence and grow higher.
Spinoza, Ibid, p. 75
Deleuze, Ibid, p. 22.
Asceticism in the opinion of Nietzsche is not merely the attitude of the ascetics and priests who reject the pleasures of the body. Asceticism, in his opinion, rather is the hallmark of the entire modern civilization. In the third essay of On the Genealogy of Morals, he demonstrates in detail how modern science, philosophy, and culture are woven with the anti-life strands that suspect the worldly happiness, sensuous pleasures, and the body.
Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, p. 121
Ibid, p. 452
Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, p. 33
Nietzsche, The Will to Power, p. 420
Ibid, p. 424
ibid, p. 426
Ibid p. 427
Ibid, p. 434
On the Genealogy of Morals, p. 118
Ibid, p. 120
Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic, p. 197
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 97
Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, pp. 25–26
Ibid, pp. 117–18
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Koshy, A. On Composition and Decomposition of the Body: Rethinking Health and Illness. J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. 32, 93–108 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-015-0008-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-015-0008-8