… if not fully, characterized by our incessant chasing of excitation of nerve-endings. Everything we do is aimed at some sort of excitement of the nerves. To be human is to wish to excite oneself, to raise oneself to a state other than that of rest, not to bring oneself back to rest… there is no bigger fallacy than the view that permits of the human a constant state of excitation in which the state of rest, or equilibrium, is where the goal of the individual lays. To give a drive to becoming that is aimed at equilibrium is the biggest mistake in the interpretation of becoming, the very interpretation implies an error in the interpretive organ, or body. It is in the absence of excitation, they say, that we find ourselves and our ultimate goal, that we find happiness. But what is this if not death or a morbid state — a state of decay to the body? How much can such a theory hate the body; how far does this hate go?

This view is broken and indicative of a life of anxiety and torment as its natural state of being, as the being in becoming, or as its normal state; but is every life like that, or is it only the broken life, a particular life, that is like that? Indeed excitation implies both torment and exhiliration, but not all excitation is only one or the other. In no way is the natural state one of excitation whose qualification is torment, or the equilibrium, the bringing back to null of that qualification; exhiliration is then not even included in this picture. They (torment and exhiliration) are both excitations, and the normal state is indeed itself an excitation, but there are degrees of excitation, the normal state is that of a weak excitation of the nerves. The higher this rises in the appropriate places and in the appropriate way for the body, the more a certain qualification of an excitation is made apparent. There are only degrees of excitation and each harbours a qualification; the absence of excitation is either a stupid linguistic and formal anomaly, or what we call death, the decay of the body.

The body pushes for a higher degree of excitation, at every possible opportunity where its energies afford it. It does not however, wish to maintain that degree, on the contrary, it wishes to tend towards it, little by little, but not maintain it in its qualification. The body wishes its natural state to tend towards an excitation with every expounding of energy towards that excitation, but not maintain the peak of that excitation; rather it attempts to subtly alter its natural state. Those who hate the body thought that because excitations always go back to the natural state, it must be the natural state that is where pleasure to the body comes from. It is the dropping back to the natural state that made the body feel good, and the excitation just made it feel bad, the excitation was a torment, it is never the rising of the degree of excitation. Foolish thinkers and haters of the body. If the whole body is always in a degree of excitation, whence arises this feeling of pleasure at going back to that degree after deviating from it, and whence arises the constant and incessant movement towards a higher degree? The body doesn’t hate itself, it just wants more of itself, it wants to increase itself. The body is invested in itself and its rising in degrees of excitation, it shows it strength, vigour and good health. A health body is an active and excited body, not a numb and borderline comatose body.

These doctrines that preach the numbing of the nerves will make of humans nothing but simulacra of living things, it will make us machines. 

I reject a philosophy of death and numbness from the start. If your Philosophy smells of death, take it with you and be on your way.