At the Contours of Corporeality: Critique as Will to Power

Abstract

Foucault gives an account of the contrast between Kantian and post-Kantian critique, which can be summarized as a shift from universality to historicity. This shift to historicity and contingency, for Foucault, opens up the possibility of transgressive critical engagement whereby social transformation can take place. In this essay, it is argued that Nietzsche's work constitutes an example of post-Kantian critique insofar as Nietzsche undertakes critique in the form of revaluation of values through which the historico-corporeal limits are exposed and ways to overcome them are delineated. In this way, Nietzschean critique is an instance of will to power inasmuch as it refers to an endless movement of overcoming. Nietzsche thereby offers critique as a kind of symptomatology that is tied to the corporeality of philosophy.