• philosophy
    67
    I read Nietzsche as essentially saying that objective truth is a (convenient) illusion and that there is no path to truth that is independent of a particular perspective, or interpretation.

    But this creates an obvious problem. Nietzsche presumably believes that not all perspectives are equal. For if all perspectives are equal then there would be no point in reading Nietzsche over, say, reading St. Paul. But this presupposes the existence of a criterion by means of which competing perspectives are judged. Now, this criterion is itself either perspectival or non-perspectival. If the former, then the criterion cannot really be used for its purpose; if the latter, then it follows that not all knowledge is really perspectival. Either way, Nietzsche's thesis is self-defeating.

    I'm sure Nietzsche would have been aware of this but it evidently did not trouble him. I assume he would point out that I am appealing to the very thing he is repudiating, namely, non-perspectival truth.

    Do you think Nietzsche's perspectivism is self-defeating?
  • Joshs
    5.2k
    NIetzsche's perpsectivalism is related to American pragmatism in its recognizing value as more important than truth. It is not that we cannot choose between valuative paths, but that the basis of our choice is pragmatic usefulness, and the criterion of usefulness is subject to change along with the changes in perspective. So we can form stable societies and stable moral systems and a stable basis for science, which is precisely what we do. Its just that we have to throw out the 'view from nowhere' , the God's truth', the idea of linear progress, and replace these notions with a more mobile idea of consensus.
  • Valentinus
    1.6k

    That dilemma appears often in Nietzsche's writings. It is a contradiction he did not appear interested in helping the reader to figure out. But he was pretty clear that "perspectivism" was not a thesis as such. The nature of argument is based upon establishing conditions as either one thing or an other and that is the first challenge thrown down in Beyond Good and Evil. He criticizes the metaphysicians thusly:

    Things of the highest value must have another, separate origin of their own, – they cannot be derived from this ephemeral, seductive, deceptive, lowly world, from this mad chaos of confusion and desire. Look instead to the lap of being, the everlasting, the hidden God, the ‘thing-in-itself’ – this is where their ground must be, and nowhere else!”
    BGE, 2, translated by Judith Norman

    This is not a take down of the "law of non-contradiction." The observation is that the either/or used to establish the necessity for a point of view can exclude experience in many ways. The practice of argument can also put a finger on the scale, as it were. Nietzsche delights in presenting philosophers in that light.

    Another element to consider is how much of the "objective" truth is supposed to be a result. Consider the distinction made here:

    But anyone who looks at people’s basic drives, to see how far they may have played their little game right here as inspiring geniuses (or daemons or sprites –), will find that they all practiced philosophy at some point, – and that every single one of them would be only too pleased to present itself as the ultimate purpose of existence and as rightful master of all the other drives. Because every drive craves mastery, and this leads it to try philosophizing. – Of course: with scholars, the truly scientific people, things might be different – “better” if you will –, with them, there might really be something like a drive for knowledge, some independent little clockwork mechanism that, once well wound, ticks bravely away without essentially involving the rest of the scholar’s drives. For this reason, the scholar’s real “interests” usually lie somewhere else entirely, with the family, or earning money, or in politics; in fact, it is almost a matter of indifference whether his little engine is put to work in this or that field of research, and every philosophy constitute the true living seed from which the whole plant has always grown. Actually, to explain how the strangest metaphysical claims of a philosopher really come about, it is always good (and wise) to begin by asking: what morality is it (is he –) getting at? Consequently, I do not believe that a “drive for knowledge” is the father of philosophy, but rather that another drive, here as elsewhere, used knowledge (and mis-knowledge!) merely as a tool. But anyone who looks at people’s basic drives, to see how far they may have played their little game right here as inspiring geniuses (or daemons or sprites –), will find that they all practiced philosophy at some point, – and that every single one of them would be only too pleased to present itself as the ultimate purpose of existence and as rightful master of all the other drives. Because every drive craves mastery, and this leads it to try philosophizing. – Of course: with scholars, the truly scientific people, things might be different – “better” if you will –, with them, there might really be something like a drive for knowledge, some independent little clockwork mechanism that, once well wound, ticks bravely away without essentially involving the rest of the scholar’s drives. For this reason, the scholar’s real “interests” usually lie somewhere else entirely, with the family, or earning money, or in politics; in fact, it is almost a matter of indifference whether his little engine is put to work in this or that field of research, and whether the “promising” young worker turns himself into a good philologist or fungus expert or chemist: – it doesn’t signify anything about him that he becomes one thing or the other. In contrast, there is absolutely nothing impersonal about the philosopher; and in particular his morals bear decided and decisive witness to who he is – which means, in what order of rank the innermost drives of his nature stand with respect to each other.
    BGE, 6, translated by Judith Norman

    So, you have a critic of "objectivity" making distinct claims about what exists. The easiest thing to do at this point is got off the highway and go somewhere else.
  • Joshs
    5.2k
    " But he was pretty clear that "perspectivism" was not a thesis as such."

    Heidegger argues that "The will to power is the ground of the necessity of
    value-positing and of the origin of the possibility of value judgment.. Moving out beyond itself,
    the opening up and supplementing of possibilities belongs to the essence of the Will to Power."
    "The revaluation of values via the thinking of Will to Power "does not merely
    replace the old values with new. Revaluing becomes the overturning of the nature and manner of valuing."

    In other words, for Heidegger (and Derrida, Deleuze and a host of other interpreters),
    the Will to Power is a principle that determines that particular valuations(theories, schemes, perspectives) are always contingent and temporary, and eventually lead to their own overcoming and transformation into different valuative perspectives ad infinitum. There is never an overarching scheme that can enclose them, other than the Will to Power itself as the principle of self-overcoming. (This doesn't affect the legitimacy of the logic contained within any particular perspective).
  • Valentinus
    1.6k

    There is much disagreement between different interpretations regarding the role of the will to power in Nietzsche's writings. The central place you give it has been done by others. Perhaps you could point to some kind of consensus through citation.

    My saying "perspectivism is not a thesis" is a challenge to the idea that a system of the kind you describe was the intention of the writing. It is not a lot of text. Present a case from those texts to show it was his intention.
  • Joshs
    5.2k
    "Present a case from those texts to show it was his intention."

    I'll start with Heidegger.
    1)The Word of Nietzsche:" God Is Dead" in The Question Concerning Technology.
    2)Heidegger:Nietzsche Vol 1 and 2,
    3)Heidegger-Nietzsche vol 3 and 4

    4)Deleuze:Desert Islands and Other Texts p.117 Conclusions on the Will to Power and the Eternal Return, p.135 On Nietzsche and the Image of Thought
    5)Deleuze:Nietzsche and Philosophy 1962

    My summary was from Heidegger's "The Word of Nietzsche:" God Is Dead", Deleuze's is similar. If you want it fleshed out I'd recommend the above reading.

    Oh Hell :here's an exerpt from the piece:

    The Word of Nietzsche:
    " God Is Dead"

    Therefore, let us now ask Nietzsche himself what he understands
    by nihilism, and let us leave it open at first whether with this
    understanding Nietzsche after all touches on or can touch nihilism's
    essence.
    In a note from the year 1887 Nietzsche poses the question,
    "What does nihilism mean?" (Will to Power, Aph. 2). He answers
    : "That the highest values are devaluing themselves."
    This answer is underlined and is furnished with the explanatory
    amplification : "The aim is lacking; 'Why?' finds no answer."
    According to this note Nietzsche understands nihilism as an
    ongoing historical event. He interprets that event as the devaluing
    of the highest values up to now. God, the supra sensory world
    as the world that truly is and determines all, ideals and Ideas,
    the purposes and grounds that determine and support everything
    that is and human life in particular-all this is here represented
    as meaning the highest values. In conformity with the opinion
    that is even now still current, we understand by this the true,
    the good, and the beautiful; the true, i.e., that which really is ;
    the good, i.e., that upon which everything everywhere depends ;
    the beautiful, i.e., the order and unity of that which is in its
    entirety. And yet the highest values are already devaluing themselves
    through the emerging of the insight that the ideal world
    is not and is never to be realized within the real world. The
    obligatory character of the highest values begins to totter. The
    question arises : Of what avail are these highest values if they
    do not simultaneously render secure the warrant and the ways
    and means for a realization of the goals posited in them?

    If, however, we were to insist on understanding Nietzsche's
    definition of the essence of nihilism in so many words as the becoming valueless o f the highest values, then we would have
    that conception of the essence of nihilism that has meanwhile become
    current and whose currency is undoubtedly strengthened
    through its being labeled "nihilism" : to wit, that the devaluing
    of the highest values obviously means decay and ruin. Yet for
    Nietzsche nihilism is not in any way simply a phenomenon of
    decay ; rather nihilism is, as the fundamental event of Western
    history, simultaneously and above all the intrinsic law of that
    history. For that reason, in his observations about nihilism
    Nietzsche gives scant attention to depicting historiographically
    the ongoing movement of the event of the devaluing of the highest
    values and to discovering definitively from this, through
    calculation, the downfall of the West; rather Nietzsche thinks
    nihilism as the "inner logic" of Western history.

    With this, Nietzsche recognizes that despite the devaluing for
    the world of the highest values hitherto, the world itself remains ;
    and he recognizes that, above all, the world, become value-less,
    presses inevitably on toward a new positing of values. After the
    former values have become untenable, the new positing of values
    changes, in respect to those former values, into a "revaluing of
    all values." The no to the values hitherto comes out of a yes to
    the new positing of values. Because in this yes, according to
    Nietzsche's view, there is no accommodation to or compromise
    with the former values, the absolute no belongs within this yes
    to the new value-positing. In order to secure the unconditionality
    of the new yes against falling back toward the previous values,
    i.e., in order to provide a foundation for the new positing of
    values as a countermovement, Nietzsche even designates the
    new positing of values as "nihilism," namely, as that nihilism
    through which the devaluing to a new positing of values that is
    alone definitive completes and consummates itself. This definitive
    phase of nihilism Nietzsche calls " completed," i.e., classical,
    nihilism. Nietzsche understands by nihilism the devaluing of
    the highest values up to now. But at the same time he takes an
    affirmative stand toward nihilism in the sense of a "revaluing
    of all previous values."

    Hence the name "nihilism" remains
    ambiguous, and seen in terms of its two extremes, always has
    first of all a double meaning, inasmuch as, on the one hand, it
    designates the mere devaluing of the highest values up to now, but on the other hand it also means at the same time the unconditional
    countermovement to devaluing. Pessimism, which
    Nietzsche sees as the prefiguration of nihilism, is already twofold
    also, in the same sense. According to Schopenhauer, pessimism
    is the belief that in this worst of worlds life is not worth
    being lived and affirmed. According to this doctrine, life, and
    that means at the same time all existence as such, is to be denied.
    This pessimism is, according to Nietzsche, the "pessimism of
    weakness." It sees everywhere only gloom, finds in everything
    a ground for failure, and claims to know how everything will
    turn out, in the sense of a thoroughgoing disaster. Over against
    this, the pessimism of strength as strength is under no illusion,
    perceives what is dangerous, wants no covering up and glossing
    over. It sees to the heart of the ominousness of mere impatient
    waiting for the return of what has been heretofore. It penetrates
    analytically into phenomena and demands consciousness of the
    conditions and forces that, despite everything, guarantee mastery
    over the historical situation.

    A more essential reflection could show how in what Nietzsche
    calls the pessimism of strength there is accomplished the rising
    up of modern humanity into the unconditional dominion of subjectivity
    within the subjectness of what is.9 Through pessimism in its twofold form, extremes become manifest. Those extremes
    as such maintain the ascendancy. There thus arises a situation
    in which everything is brought to a head in the absoluteness of
    an "either-or." An "in-between situation" comes to prevail in
    which it becomes evident that, on the one hand, the realization
    of the highest values hitherto is not being accomplished. The
    world appears value-less. On the other hand, through this making
    conscious, the inquiring gaze is directed toward the source
    of the new positing of values, but without the world's regaining
    its value at all in the process.

    To be sure, something else can still be attempted in face of
    the tottering of the dominion of prior values. That is, if God in
    the sense of the Christian god has disappeared from his authoritative
    position in the suprasensory world, then this authoritative
    place itself is still always preserved, even though as that
    which has become empty. The now-empty authoritative realm
    of the suprasensory and the ideal world can still be adhered to.
    What is more, the empty place demands to be occupied anew
    and to have the god now vanished from it replaced by something
    else. New ideals are set up. That happens, according to
    Nietzsche's conception (Will to Power, Aph. 1021, 1887), through
    doctrines regarding world happiness, through socialism, and
    equally through Wagnerian music, i.e., everywhere where "dogmatic
    Christendom" has "become bankrupt." Thus does "incomplete
    nihilism" come to prevail. Nietzsche says about the latter :
    "Incomplete nihilism : its forms : we live in the midst of it.
    Attempts to escape nihilism without revaluing our values so far :
    they produce the opposite, make the problem more acute" (Will
    to Power, Aph. 28, 1 887) .

    We can grasp Nietzsche's thoughts on incomplete nihilism
    more explicitly and exactly by saying : Incomplete nihilism does
    indeed replace the former values with others, but it still posits
    the latter always in the old position of authority that is, as it
    were, gratuitously maintained as the ideal realm of the suprasensory.
    Completed nihilism, however, must in addition do away
    even with the place of value itself, with the suprasensory as a
    realm, and accordingly must posit and revalue values differently.
    From this it becomes clear that the "revaluing of all previous
    values" does indeed belong to complete, consummated, and therefore classical nihilism, but the revaluing does not merely
    replace the old values with new. Revaluing becomes the overturning
    of the nature and manner of valuing. The positing of
    values requires a new principle, i.e., a new principle from which
    it may proceed and within which it may maintain itself. The
    positing of values requires another realm. The principle can no
    longer be the world of the suprasensory become lifeless. Therefore
    nihilism, aiming at a revaluing understood in this way, will
    seek out what is most alive. Nihilism itself is thus transformed
    into "the ideal of superabundant life" (Will to Power, Aph. 14,
    1887) . In this new highest value there is concealed another appraisal
    of life, i.e., of that wherein lies the determining essence
    of everything living. Therefore it remains to ask what Nietzsche
    understands by life.

    The allusion to the various levels and forms of nihilism shows
    that nihilism according to Nietzsche's interpretation is, throughout,
    a history in which it is a question of values-the establishing
    of values, the devaluing of values, the revaluing of values ; it is a
    question of the positing of values anew and, ultimately and
    intrinsically, a question of the positing of the principle of all
    value-positing-a positing that values differently. The highest
    purposes, the grounds and principles of whatever is, ideals and
    the suprasensory, God and the gods-all this is conceived in
    advance as value. Hence we grasp Nietzsche's concept of nihilism
    adequately only when we know what Nietzsche understands by
    value. It is from here that we understand the pronouncement
    "God is dead" for the first time in the way in which it is thought.
    A sufficiently clear exposition of what Nietzsche thinks in the
    word "value" is the key to an understanding of his metaphysics.
    It was in the nineteenth century that talk of values became
    current and thinking in terms of values became customary.

    But only after the dissemination of the writings of Nietzsche did
    talk of values become popular. We speak of the values of life,
    of cultural values, of eternal values, of the hierarchy of values,
    of spiritual values, which we believe we find in the ancients,
    for example. Through scholarly preoccupation with philosophy
    and through the reconstructions of Neo-Kantianism, we arrive
    at value-philosophy. We build systems of values and pursue in
    ethics classifications of values.
  • Joshs
    5.2k


    Nietzsche on Will to Power:

    Value is, according to Nietzsche's words, the "point-of-view
    constituting the preservation-enhancement conditions with respect
    to complex forms of relative duration of life within becoming."
    Here and in the conceptual language of Nietzsche's
    metaphysics generally, the stark and indefinite word "becoming"
    does not mean some flowing together of all things or a
    mere change of circumstances; nor does it mean just any development
    or unspecified unfolding. "Becoming" means the passing
    over from something to something, that moving and being moved which Leibniz calls in
    the Monadology (chap. 11) the changements
    naturels, which rule completely the ens qua ens, i.e., the
    ens percipiens et appetens [perceptive and appetitive being] .
    Nietzsche considers that which thus rules to be the fundamental
    characteristic of everything reat i.e., of everything that is, in
    the widest sense.

    He conceives as the "will to power" that which
    thus determines in its essentia whatever is.
    When Nietzsche concludes his characterization of the essence
    of value with the word "becoming," then this closing word gives
    the clue to the fundamental realm within which alone values
    and value-positing properly belong. "Becoming" is, for Nietzsche,
    the "will to power." The "will to power" is thus the fundamental
    characteristic of "life," which word Nietzsche often uses also in
    the broad sense according to which, within metaphysics (cE.
    Hegel), it has been equated with "becoming." "Will to power,"
    "becoming," "life," and "Being" in the broadest sense-these
    mean, in Nietzsche's language, the Same (Will to Power, Aph.
    582, 1885-86, and Aph. 689, 1888) . Within becoming, life-L e.,
    aliveness-shapes itself into centers of the will to power particularized
    in time. These centers are, accordingly, ruling configurations.

    Such Nietzsche understands art, the state, religion,
    science, society, to be. Therefore Nietzsche can also say : "Value
    is essentially the point-of-view for the increasing or decreasing
    of these dominating centers" (that is, with regard to their ruling
    character) (Will to Power, Aph. 715, 1887-88).
    Inasmuch as Nietzsche, in the above-mentioned defining of
    the essence of value, understands value as the condition-having
    the character of point-of-view-of the preservation and enhancement
    of life, and also sees life grounded in becoming as the will
    to power, the will to power is revealed as that which posits
    that point-of-view. The will to power is that which, out of its
    "internal principle" (Leibniz) as the nisus esse of the ens, judges
    and esteems in terms of values. The will to power is the ground
    of the necessity of value-positing and of the origin of the possibility
    of value judgment. Thus Nietzsche says : "Values and
    their changes are related to the increase in power of that which
    posits them" (Will to Power, Aph. 14, 1 887) . Here it is clear : values are the conditions
    of itself posited by
    the will to power.

    Only where the will to power, as the fundamental
    characteristic of everything real, comes to appearance,
    i.e., becomes true, and accordingly is grasped as the reality of
    everything real, does it become evident from whence values
    originate and through what all assessing of value is supported
    and directed. The principle of value-positing has now been recognized.
    Henceforth value-positing becomes achievable "in principle,"
    i.e., from out of Being as the ground of whatever is.
    Hence the will to power is, as this recognized, i.e., willed,
    principle, simultaneously the principle of a value-positing that
    is new. It is new because for the first time it takes place consciously
    out of the knowledge of its principle. This value-positing
    is new because it itself makes secure to itself its principle and
    simultaneously adheres to this securing as a value posited out
    of its own principle. As the principle of the new value-positing,
    however, the will to power is, in relation to previous values, at
    the same time the principle of the revaluing of all such values.

    Yet, because the highest values hitherto ruled over the sensory
    from the height of the suprasensory, and because the structuring
    of this dominance was metaphysics, with the positing of the
    new principle of the revaluing of all values there takes place the
    overturning of all metaphysics. Nietzsche holds this overturning
    of metaphysics to be the overcoming of metaphysics. But every
    overturning of this kind remains only a self-deluding entanglement
    in the Same that has become unknowable.
    Inasmuch as Nietzsche understands nihilism as the intrinsic
    law of the history of the devaluing of the highest values hitherto,
    but explains that devaluing as a revaluing of all values, nihilism
    lies, according to Nietzsche's interpretation, in the dominance
    and in the decay of values, and hence in the possibility of valuepositing
    generally. Value-positing itself is grounded in the will
    to power. Therefore Nietzsche's concept of nihilism and the
    pronouncement "God is dead" can be thought adequately only
    from out of the essence of the will to power. Thus we will complete
    the last step in the clarifying of that pronouncement when
    we explain what Nietzsche thinks in the name coined by him,
    "the will to power."

    The name "will to power" is considered to be so obvious in meaning that
    it is beyond comprehension why anyone would
    be at pains specifically to comment on this combination of words.
    For anyone can experience for himself at any time what "will"
    means. To will is to strive after something. Everyone today
    knows, from everyday experience, what power means as the
    exercise of rule and authority. Will "to" power is, then, clearly
    the striving to come into power.
    According to this opinion the appellation "will to power" presupposes
    two disparate factors and puts them together into a
    subsequent relation, with "willing" on one side and "power" on
    the other. If we ask, finally, concerning the ground of the will
    to power, not .in order merely to express it in other words but
    also simultaneously to explain it, then what we are shown is that
    it obviously originates out of a feeling of lack, as a striving
    after that which is not yet a possession. Striving, the exercise
    of authority, feeling of lack, are ways of conceiving and are
    states (psychic capacities) that we comprehend through psychological
    knowledge. Therefore the elucidation of the essence of
    the will to power belongs within psychology.

    The view that has just been presented concerning the will
    to power and its comprehensibility is indeed enlightening, but
    it is a thinking that in every respect misses both what Nietzsche
    thinks in the word "will to power" and the manner in which he
    thinks it. The name "will to power" is a fundamental term in
    the fully developed philosophy of Nietzsche. Hence this philosophy
    can be called the metaphysics of the will to power. We will
    never understand what "will to power" in Nietzsche's sense
    means with the aid of just any popular conception regarding
    willing and power; rather we will understand only on the way
    that is a reflection beyond metaphysical thinking, and that means
    at the same time beyond the whole of the history of Western
    metaphysics.

    The following elucidation of the essence of the will to power
    thinks out of these contexts. But it must at the same time, even
    while adhering to Nietzsche's own statements, also grasp these
    more clearly than Nietzsche himself could immediately utter
    them. However, it is always only what already has become more
    meaningful for us that becomes clearer to us. What is meaningful
    is that which draws closer to us in its essence. Everywhere here, in what has preceded and in what follows, everything is
    thought from out of the essence of metaphysics and not merely
    from out of one of its phases.
    In the second part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which appeared
    the year after the work The Gay Science (1883), Nietzsche for
    the first time names the "will to power" in the context out of
    which it must be understood : "Where I found the living, there
    I found will to power; and even in the will of those who serve I
    found the will to be master."

    To will is to will-to-be-master. Will so understood is also even
    in the will of him who serves. Not, to be sure, in the sense that
    the servant could aspire to leave his role of subordinate to become
    himself a master. Rather the subordinate as subordinate,
    the servant as servant, always wills to have something else under
    him, which he commands in the midst of his own serving and of
    which he makes use. Thus is he as subordinate yet a master.
    Even to be a slave is to will-to-be-master.
    The will is not a desiring, and not a mere striving after something,
    but rather, willing is in itself a commanding (cE. Thus
    Spoke Zarathustra, parts I and II ; see also Will to Power, Aph.
    668, 1 888) . Commanding has its essence in the fact that the
    master who commands has conscious disposal over the possibilities
    for effective action. What is commanded in the command
    is the accomplishing of that disposal. In the command, the one
    who commands (not only the one who executes) is obedient to
    that disposing and to that being able to dispose, and in that
    way obeys himself. Accordingly, the one who commands proves
    superior to himself in that he ventures even his own self. Commanding,
    which is to be sharply distinguished from the mere
    ordering about of others, is self-conquest and is more difficult
    than obeying.

    Will is gathering oneself together for the given
    task. Only he who cannot obey himself must still be expressly
    commanded. What the will wills it does not merely strive after
    as something it does not yet have. What the will wills it has
    already. for the will wills its will. Its will is what it has willed.
    The will wills itself. It mounts beyond itself. Accordingly, the
    will as will wills out beyond itself and must at the same time
    in that way bring itself behind itself and beneath itself. Therefore
    Nietzsche can say : "To will at all is the same thing as to will to become stronger, to will to grow . . . " (Will to Power,
    Aph. 675, 1887-88) .13 "Stronger" means here "more power,"
    and that means : only power. For the essence of power lies in
    being master over the level of power attained at any time. Power
    is power only when and only so long as it remains power enhancement
    and commands for itself "more power."

    Even a
    mere pause in power-enhancement, even a mere remaining at a
    standstill at a level of power, is already the beginning of the
    decline of power. To the essence of power belongs the overpowering
    of itself. Such overpowering belongs to and springs
    from power itself, in that power is command and as command
    empowers itself for the overpowering of its particular level of
    power at any given time. Thus power is indeed constantly on
    the way to itself, but not as a will, ready at hand somewhere for
    itself, which, in the sense of a striving, seeks to come to power.
    Moreover; power does not merely empower itself for the overpowering
    of its level of power at any given time, for the sake of
    reaching the next level ; but rather it empowers itself for this
    reason alone : to attain power over itself in the unconditionality
    belonging to its essence. Willing is, according to this defining of
    its essence, so little a striving that, rather, all striving is only
    a vestigial or an embryonic form of willing.

    In the name "will to power" the word "power" connotes
    nothing less than the essence of the way in which the will wills
    itself inasmuch as it is a commanding. As a commanding the
    will unites itself to itself, i.e., it unites itself to what it wills. This
    gathering itself together is itself power's assertion of power. Will
    for itself does not exist any more than does power for itself.
    Hence, also, will and power are, in the will to power, not merely
    linked together; but rather the will, as the will to will,14 is itself
    the will to power in the sense of the empowering to power. But
    power has its essence in the fact that it stands to the will as the
    will standing within that will. The will to power is the essence of power. It manifests the unconditional essence of the wilt
    which as pure will wills itself.

    Hence the will to power also cannot be cast aside in exchange
    for the will to something else, e.g., for the "will to Nothing" ;
    for this latter will also i s still the will t o will, s o that Nietzsche
    can say, "It (the will) will rather will Nothing, than n o t will"
    (Genealogy of Morals, 3, Section I, 1887}.15
    "Willing Nothing" does not in the least mean willing the mere
    absence of everything real; rather it means precisely willing the
    real, yet willing the latter always and everywhere as a nullity
    and, through this, willing only annihilation. In such willing,
    power always further secures to itself the possibility of command
    and the ability-to-be-master.

    The essence of the will to power is, as the essence of will, the
    fundamental trait of everything real. Nietzsche says : The will
    to power is "the innermost essence of Being" (Will to Power,
    Aph. 693, 1888) . "Being" means here, in keeping with the language
    of metaphysics, that which is as a whole. The essence of
    the will to power and the will to power itself, as the fundamental
    character of whatever is, therefore cannot be identified through
    psychological observations ; but on the contrary psychology itself
    first receives its essence, i.e., the positability and know ability
    of its object, through the will to power. Hence Nietzsche does
    not understand the will to power psychologically, but rather,
    conversely, he defines psychology anew as the "morphology and
    the doctrine of the development of the will to power" (Beyond
    Good and Evil, Aph. 23}.16 Morphology is the ontology of on
    whose morphe, transformed through the change of eidos to
    perceptio, appears, in the appetitus of perceptio, as the will to
    power. The fact that metaphysics-which from ancient times
    thinks that which is, in respect to its Being, as the hypokeimenon,
    sub-iectum-is transformed into the psychology thus defined
    only testifies, as a consequent phenomenon, to the essential event,
    which consists in a change in the beingness of what is.

    The
    ousia (beingness) of the subiectum changes into the subjectness of
    self-assertive self-consciousness, which now manifests its essence
    as the will to will.17 The will is, as the will to power, the
    command to more power. In order that the will in its overpowering
    of itself may surpass its particular level at any given time,
    that level, once reached, must be made secure and held fast.
    The making secure of a particular level of power is the necessary
    condition for the heightening of power. But this necessary condition
    is not suHicient for the fact that the will is able to will
    itself, for the fact, that is, that a willing-to-be-stronger, an enhancement
    of power, is. The will must cast its gaze into a field
    of vision and first open it up so that, from out of this, possibilities
    may first of all become apparent that will point the way
    to an enhancement of power. The will must in this way posit a
    condition for a willing-out-beyond-itself. The will to power
    must, above all, posit conditions for power-preservation and
    power-enhancement. To the will belongs the positing of these
    conditions that belong intrinsically together.

    " T0 will at all is the same thing as to will to become stronger,
    to will to grow-and, in addition, to will the m eans thereto"
    (Will to Power, Aph. 675, 1887-88) .18
    The essential means are the conditions of itself posited by the
    will to power itself. These conditions Nietzsche calls values. He
    says, "In all will there is valuing . . . " (XIII, Aph. 395, 1884) .19
    To value means to constitute and establish worth. The will to
    power values inasmuch as it constitutes the conditions of enhancement
    and fixes the conditions of preservation. The will to power is, in its essence, the value-positing will. Values are the preservation-enhancement conditions within the Being of whatever
    is. The will to power is, as soon as it comes expressly to
    appearance in its pure essence, itself the foundation and the
    realm of value-positing. The will to power does not have its
    ground in a feeling of lack ; rather it itself is the ground of
    superabundant life. Here life means the will to will.

    "Living :that already means 'to ascribe worth' " (lac. cit. ) .
    Inasmuch a s the will wills the overpowering o f itself, i t i s not
    satisfied with any abundance of life. It asserts power in overreaching-
    i.e., in the overreaching of its own will. In this way
    it continually comes as the selfsame back upon itself as the
    same.20 The way in which that which is, in its entirety-whose
    essentia is the will to power-exists, i.e., its existentia, is "the
    eternal returning of the same."21 The two fundamental terms of Nietzsche's metaphysics, "will to power" and "eternal returning
    of the same," define whatever is, in its Being-ens qua ens in
    the sense of essentia and existentia-in accordance with the views
    that have continually guided metaphysics from ancient times.
    The essential relationship that is to be thought in this way,
    between the "will to power" and the "eternal returning of the
    same," cannot as yet be directly presented here, because metaphysics
    has neither thought upon nor even merely inquired after
    the origin of the distinction between essen tia and exis tentia.
    When metaphysics thinks whatever is, in its Being, as the
    will to power, then it necessarily thinks it as value-positing.

    It thinks everything within the sphere of values, of the authoritative
    force of value, of devaluing and revaluing. The metaphysics
    of the modern age begins with and has its essence in
    the fact that it seeks the unconditionally indubitable, the certain
    and assured [das Gewisse] , certainty.2:! It is a matter, according
    to the words of Descartes, of firmum et mansurum quid s tabi/ire,
    of bringing to a stand something that is firmly fixed and that
    remains. This standing established as object is adequate to the essence, ruling from of old, of what is as the constantly presencing, which everywhere already lies before (hypokeimenon, subiectum)
    . Descartes also asks, as does Aristotle, concerning the
    hypokeimenon. Inasmuch as Descartes seeks this subiectum
    along the path previously marked out by metaphysics, he, thinking
    truth as certainty, finds the ego cogito to be that which presences
    as fixed and constant. In this way, the ego sum is
    transformed into the su biectum, i.e., the subject becomes selfconsciousness.
    The subjectness of the subject is determined out
    of the sureness, the certainty, of that consciousness.

    The will to power, in that it posits the preservation, i.e., the
    securing, of its own constancy and stability as a necessary value,
    at the same time justifies the necessity of such securing in everyfhing
    that is which, as something that by virtue of its very
    essence represents-sets in place before-is something that
    also always holds-to-be-true. The making secure that constitutes
    this holding-to-be-true is called certainty. Thus, according to
    Nietzsche's judgment, certainty as the principle of modern metaphysics
    is grounded, as regards its truth, solely in the will to
    power, provided of course that truth is a necessary value and
    certainty is the modern form of truth. This makes clear in what
    respect the modern metaphysics of subjectness is consummated
    in Nietzsche's doctrine of the will to power as the "essence" of
    everything real.

    Therefore Nietzsche can say : "The question of value is more
    fundamental than the ques tion of certainty : the latter becomes
    serious only by presupposing that the value question has already
    been answered" (Will to Power, Aph. 588, 1887-88) .
    However, when once the will to power is recognized as the
    principle of value-positing, the inquiry into value must immediately
    ponder what the highest value is that necessarily follows
    from this principle and that is in conformity with it. Inasmuch
    as the essence of value proves itself to be the preservationenhancement
    condition posited in the will to power, the perspective
    for a characterization of the normative structuring of value
    has been opened up.

    The preservation of the level of power belonging to the will
    reached at any given time consists in the will's surrounding
    itself with an encircling sphere of that which it can reliably grasp at, each time, as something behind itself, in order on the
    basis of it to contend for its own security. That encircling sphere
    bounds off the constant reserve of what presences (ousia, in the
    everyday meaning of this term for the Greeks) that is immediately
    at the disposal of the will.23 This that is steadily constant,
    however, is transformed into the fixedly constant, i.e., becomes
    that which stands steadily at something's disposal, only in being
    brought to a stand through a setting in place. That setting in
    place has the character of a producing that sets before. U That
    which is steadily constant in this way is that which remains.
    True to the essence of Being (Being = enduring presence) holding
    sway in the history of metaphysics, Nietzsche calls this that
    is steadily constant "that which is in being."

    Often he calls that
    which is steadily constant-again remaining true to the manner
    of speaking of metaphysical thinking-"Being." Since the beginning
    of Western thinking, that which is has been considered to
    be the true and truth, while yet, in connection with this, the
    meaning of "being" and "true" has changed in manifold ways.
    Despite all his overturnings and revaluings of metaphysics,
    Nietzsche remains in the unbroken line of the metaphysical tradition
    when he calls that which is established and made fast in the
    will to power for its own preservation purely and simply Being,
    or what is in being, or truth. Accordingly, truth is a condition
    posited in the essence of the will to power, namely, the condition
    of the preservation of power. Truth is, as this condition, a value. But because the will can will only from out of its disposal over
    something steadily constant, truth is a necessary value precisely
    from out of the essence of the will to power, for that will. The
    word "truth" means now neither the unconcealment of what is
    in being, nor the agreement of a judgment with its object, nor
    certainty as the intuitive isolating and guaranteeing of what is
    represented. Truth is now, and indeed through an essentially
    historical origin out of the modes of its essence just mentioned,
    that which-making stably constant-makes secure the constant
    reserve, belonging to the sphere from out of which the will to
    power wills itself.

    With respect to the making secure of the level of power that
    has been reached at any given time, truth is the necessary value.
    But it does not suffice for the reaching of a level of powerj for
    that which is stably constant, taken alone, is never able to provide
    what the will requires before everything else in order to
    move out beyond itself, and that means to enter for the first
    time into the possibilities of command. These possibilities are
    given only through a penetrating forward look that belongs to
    the essence of the will to powerj for, as the will to more power,
    it is, in itself, perspectively directed toward possibilities. The
    opening up and supplementing of such possibilities is that condition
    for the essence of the will to power which-as that which
    in the literal sense goes before-overtops and extends beyond
    the condition just mentioned.

    Therefore Nietzsche says : "But
    truth does not count as the supreme standard of value, even less
    as the supreme power" (Will to Power, Aph. 853, 1887-88).
    The creating of possibilities for the will on the basis of which
    the will to power first frees itself to itself is for Nietzsche the
    essence of art. In keeping with this metaphysical concept,
    Nietzsche does not think under the heading "art" solely or even
    primarily of the aesthetic realm of the artist. Art is the essence
    of all willing that opens up perspectives and takes possession of
    them : "The work of art, where it appears without an artist,
    e.g., as body, as organization (Prussian officer corps, Jesuit
    Order) . To what extent the artist is only a preliminary stage.
    The world as a work of art that gives birth to itself" (Will to
    Power, Aph. 796, 1885-86) .:
  • Marchesk
    4.6k
    Its just that we have to throw out the 'view from nowhere' , the God's truth', the idea of linear progress, and replace these notions with a more mobile idea of consensus.Joshs

    But we don't have to, if we don't agree with Nietzsche's perspective, particularly on science.
  • Valentinus
    1.6k

    By presenting a case from his text, I meant those written by Nietzsche himself.

    But I also asked for citations from his interpreters. I will respond to the two samples given. I need to mull over it a bit first.
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