In Praise of the Backside. Hans-Jürgen Döpp
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the digital age, the body completely loses its substantial meaning. Volkssport and swinger clubs represent an attempt to revive the estranged body.
In the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, the first modern philosopher of the body, that which had been despised previously was brought to the foreground.
Portrait of Carlotta Chabert (Venus playing with two doves)
Francesco Hayez, 1830
Oil on canvas, 183 × 137 cm
Cassa di Risparmio di Trento e Rovereto, Trento
As he first observed, the destruction of humanity in the age of capitalism began with the destruction of the body. He praised the living body as the sole carrier of happiness, joy, and self-elevation, and heavily criticised the view of the body that was characteristic of Christian morality. Christianity taught that “all flesh is sinful,”, and while it praised work, it reduced the flesh to being the source of all evil.
The Roman Odalisque (Marietta)
Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, 1843
Oil and pencil on paper, 26 × 42 cm
Petit Palais – Musée des beaux-arts de la ville de Paris, Paris
The sinful flesh had to be subjected to the ascetic spirit. Christianity was for him “the hatred of the senses, of joy in the senses, of joy itself”.
He replied to the “despisers of the body”: “There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom”. Here the spirit would be inclined to interpret itself falsely, advises Nietzsche, to escape from the body and “use it as guide… Faith in the body is better manifested than faith in the spirit,” a thesis that today is being confirmed through psychosomatic research.
Reclining Female Nude
Jean-François Millet, c. 1844–1845
Oil on canvas, 33 × 41 cm
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Nietzsche anticipates the psychoanalytical insight that everything having to do with soul and spirit is rooted in physical experience: “ ‘I’ says you, and you are proud of this word.
Woman Bitten by a Snake
Auguste Clésinger, 1847
Marble, 56 × 180 × 70 cm
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
But the greater thing – in which you are not willing to believe – is your body with its great wisdom; it does not say ‘I,’ but does it”.
One needs to be wary of misunderstanding when interpreting Nietzsche, especially in the face of fascist ideology which justified its barbaric conception of man through references to his writings.
The Bathers
Gustave Courbet, 1853
Oil on canvas, 227 × 193 cm
Musée Fabre, Montpellier
“Today we are tired of civilisation”: fascism used this complaint voiced by Nietzsche to support naked violence. Such violence is exactly what the progress of civilisation that Nietzsche criticises was based on from the very beginning. The liberation of people is based not on an excess of reason and enlightenment, but, rather, on its shortage, bodily reason notwithstanding.
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