: : ? 27 an uncontrolled and frivolous activity that certainly has nothing to do with thinking? The incredulity of some of the seminar participants towards my reading of Nietzsche belies, I think, a particular dualist view of the human being in general, and of the philosopher specifically. Human being, in this view, is a logical and rational mind, trapped in a base and instinctual body – a body that needs to be overcome and controlled. What is revolutionary about Nietzsche’s understanding of the human being is that it stands in stark contradistinction to what could be characterised as a kind of closet Cartesianism. Human being just is for Nietzsche a body – a multiplicity of changing desires, instincts and sensations (HAH 39, 106). She is not a duality comprising an invisible and indivisible mind that thinks, and exists separately from a mechanical, physical body that dances. She is, for Nietzsche, also certainly not “an aeterna veritas, […] a thing that remains constant in the midst of all turbulence, […] a sure standard of things.” (HAH 2), as many philosophers would have it. For Nietzsche, our thoughts and convictions are then simply “judgements of our muscles” (WP 314, BGE 36). This also then means that, for Nietzsche: [M]oral evaluation is an interpretation, a way of Left :: Ballet/Dance Class at UJ Arts Centre Photo :: Nidaa Husain (c) Coffee Barre 2018 continued >>