Abstract

Friedrich Nietzsche is generally received as a clever critic of metaphysics who nevertheless remained hopelessly entangled in the metaphysical tradition he sought to challenge. As a consequence perhaps of Heidegger's influential designation of Nietzsche as the "last metaphysician of the West," scholars have for the most part treated Nietzsche's critique of metaphysics as provocative and entertaining, but ultimately unsuccessful. In his important study of 1987, Eric Blondel attempts to recuperate and defend Nietzsche's immanent critique of metaphysics. The key to Blondel's interpretation is his attention to the body as the central focus of Nietzsche's philosophy. For Blondel as for Nietzsche, the body stands for the "other" of metaphysics: flux, appearance, becoming, excess, incontinence, and difference. Any attempt to fix or define or stabilize the body necessarily involves its relapse into the procrustean bed of metaphysics. The central question of Nietzsche's philosophy thus becomes, How can we speak of the body without thereby violating it? According to Blondel, Nietzsche realized that a discursive account of the body is both necessary--lest philosophy degenerate into an idle exercise--and yet impossible to articulate without recourse to the suffocating categories of metaphysics.