Who or what denies it, then? To say that it’s anything other than the will to power is already a denial of the will to power. Nihilism is self-denial on the part of the will to power.
The implicit self-denial of the will to power is not usually called nihilism. It’s usually called morality, virtue, goodness, etc. Only when it’s explicit is it commonly called nihilism, for only then is it understood to be the will not to will–the will to nothingness.
How is the will not to will the will to nothingness? By virtue of the fact that the world is the will to power and nothing besides, and the absence of the will is therefore tantamount to nothingness.
The self-affirmation of the will to power is the bane of nihilism.
Yes. Again and again and again. The Eternal Recurrence.
Any. But I suppose you want a particular example. Well, here you are! It’s your will to power that brought you here, to challenge me. This context, these circumstances. Can’t get more concrete than that!
Mine, obviously. But any view of the world is an interpretation and thereby an act of the will to power. This view is both an interpretation and the most fundamental fact.
He already did. So did I. But there are things that want to be repeated, revisited, rethought. This is one of those things–perhaps the most important one. Your “challenge” is a case in point. You are, after all, a miserable wretch about nihilism.
In the case of the self-denial of X, X is both the “self” in denial and the one being denied. In this case, X is the will to power–any will to power, in any particular world. Not, however, as understood from any particular vantage point. As I said, in the case of implicit nihilism, the nihilist does not understand that he is a nihilist.–
The OP leaves it to the reader–whom it expects to be philosophically inclined–to apply what it says to his or her particular world. But apparently, you are not capable of that. I have therefore now done it for you. How will your will to power drive you to respond to it?
Instincts pertain to the machine, to be driven by that is to be like an existential robot!
now I like to observe e.g. clockwork, and old steam engines, but the whole thing we are, is the very thing that the machine doesn’t have. So when I see people acting by instinct, I am visualising the machine and wondering why they attribute inherited things as denoting self. Even though the machine is the means to our existence, we are subjective consciousnesses in a continually changing schemata, …see this;
value ontology is an observation where those instincts ~ the machine, are values which we take with us and bring back into existence, making us who we are. So if you are Hitler, then the values which make that machine denote that he was to rise to power ect [his instincts are the values denoting who he is], and that e.g. a less successful, perceptive or intelligent VO schemata [machine] person is lesser. Naturally there is a slope to this like on a graph, and eventually we inevitably arrive at degenerate persons.
Regardless of whether this is true, where did I speak specifically of instincts?
This is precisely what makes me wary of the thought of Parodites and Capable (a.k.a. Mechanical Monster): the notion that there be an emergence that signifies a clean break with that from which human consciousness emerges. If, unlike Jakob, they do not view it as an elaboration of the will to power but look down on the latter, as they seem to do, that too is nihilism: like a Heaven or True World between which and “this world” there is a clean break–a deliverance from the “crudeness” and “filth” of the latter.
Here’s an unavoidable dilemma involved in talking about what ‘instinct’ means philosophically. If someone acts in a way that they had thought about, deliberately choosing to act that way, no part of that behavior can be said to be ‘instinctual’, but not because there aren’t instinctive behaviors. Rather, the behaviors we call instinctual (regarding humans) are limited to actions that are strictly and purely reflexive and involuntary and occur without deliberation. If instead someone ‘decides’ to act a certain way they have reasoned to do so, but if they’ve reasoned to do so, they could of just as easily reasoned not to do so. The final decision, then, cannot be called the instinctual choice, since anything instinctual is without thought. A little circular logic there but you see what I mean.
Look at how the word is used: “his desire to mate was instinctual”. Stop. He got horny once in a while, but getting horny is not a behavior… it is a feeling. Instincts only describe behaviors, not mental content, not feelings, not qualia (his particular experience of feeling horny). And yet at the same time if someone acts deliberately… even if it is mating or eating or running or anything else all animals do… we can’t say his behavior is instinctual. If we did, we’d have to explain why then the person could have chosen to do otherwise.
If you take a reductionist position and just say “but every decision is determined by mechanisms that we don’t control and is therefore an expression of instinct”, I would remind you again that mechanisms do not behave… animals behave. The presence of the hormone that causes hunger is not acting… it is simply an inert physiological process. By itself it cannot be called something that is being ‘instinctual’.
Another problem: if instincts can be reduced to these inert processes, we’d have to call the religious nut’s decision to fast also a result of such inert processes (or else how could he have thought and acted as he did?), and therefore instinctual.
This is a set up. You would like nothing more than to see me type up half a post to answer your question and then watch Saully come in, give a perfectly organized marginalized typo free full seminar on it in three different languages with six different links to threads about it across the internet at five different forums.
Forget it. I’m sitting this one out… for now. Nice try though.
He defines nihilism by invoking another concept that needs to be defined and he never defines that concept. What is “Will to Power”?
Watch him struggle to define it.
They never define anything. They over-complicate. They are master over-complicators. And not only him, but pretty much everyone related to Nietzsche in one way or another.
Great response. You shouldn’t define your main concept at all, simply because I am trolling. You should also refrain from making further posts, simply because I want you to keep posting.
You have to give up on the idea of “WTP” because not only does not everyone strive for power, it is ignoble to do so. If you just keep insisting that everyone does so or that everyone should because it is noble to do so and ignoble not to do so, then you are setting yourself as an enemy that I have to fight.
You also need to simplify your thoughts because only simple thoughts can be politically effective. And politics should come before philosophy. What is the worth of philosophizing if you are surrounded by your enemies? First, you need to eliminate your enemies, then, once you have the necessary peace, you can philosophize all you want.
Simple terms unite people, complicated terms alienate them. You can never be a politician if you refuse to simplify your terms. And unity is necessary because it is the only way to fight enemies.
I do not associate myself with KT. Not anymore. I used to because we had some things in common, but at the same time, I was disgusted by many of their activities. I kept denying this until it eventually exploded, forcing me to leave.
They are a bunch of asocial weak-willed egoists. Jews who make fun of other people being Jews.
Wouldn’t it also (or first be) a distortion? A partial expression of self. A choice to pretend one heuristic or one value gets/achieves all that one wants (and values). A self-betrayal but not on a value level, though that also, but first as a betrayal of the life in one.
I understand that many Nians will say that I am (and perhaps we) are thinking of power in a limited sense, but I am interested here specifically in how you see it.
I don’t care whether their concept is broad or narrow, the fact is that their thought is unnecessarily complicated.
It’s pretty clear what striving for power means. It means to become the most powerful being in the world – to dominate everyone and everything in the world and to do so indefinitely. That’s not the same as striving for order.
In simpler terms: power relies on slavery, whereas order is a fight against slavery.
Let’s say you are correct that the conclusion is to become the most powerful thing in the world. The process of getting there and the state of being there would entail not getting to have and do other things one, as a full human, would want to do, be relate as. It is just as narrow as someone whose only goal is to cut grass. They end up alone, starved, filthy, likely cold, then not too many months in dead. If they see all other activities as means to getting to cut grass more, then may live longer, but then they have no joy in anything but there moments out cutting grass. Nor fulfillment. No satisfaction elsewhere. Not even people with severely constrained Aspberger’s are that focused. So anyone focusing only on power or grass or whatever, is denying portions of themselves.