ILP thread on value-ontology (starting with Nietzsche, WTP)

I see that aletheia has done the work of explaining this. I would only be repeating him.
This is the origin:

“Willing to power fails to adequately capture self-referential value, subjectivity, firstly because this willing leaves insufficiently developed the that which wills.”

And by explaining the “that which wills”, also the how of the willing is further explained.

The will to power describes the activity of self-valuing entities (forms / forces) when they come into contact with each other. These entities can be either atoms or humans, or anything in between. Neither self-valuing nor willing-to-power needs to be conscious. In fact I believe that consciousness has been usefully redefined (made less spectacular, strange) by interpreting it as simply a more complex self-valuing / valuing in terms of self-value / willing to power/increase in self-value.

Let me be clear: I am not greater than Nietzsche, but I do reach higher. I stand on his shoulders. My thoughts could not exist without his. I have surpassed the limits of his thoughts, yes. By means of the very thoughts which before had these limits.

I think and write with the purpose furthering philosophy, not to appear greater than someone else to someone else. Having stressed that the above is an argument by your hand, not mine, I compliment you on your following ‘defense of Nietzsche’ if I may call it that. I will use your work here for my real purpose, which is not to prove myself greater than Nietzsche, but to build onward with what he made possible.

Rather, it is in the statement(s) he did not make, conclusions he did not explicitly draw from his thoughts, which are in my eyes all correct and necessary.

Nietzsche leaves this unaddressed: what is doing the valuing? How can valuing occur at all? What is subjectivity?
Let me translate from his notebooks a passage that illustrates how Nietzsche reaches for, points to, a value-ontology without yet being able to make it explicit.

“The powerful organic principle impresses me so, precisely due to the ease with which it assimilates inorganic substances in itself. I do not know how this purposefulness is explainable simply by increase. I would sooner believe that there always have been organic entities. -” ( 1883 12 [39] )

As you may see, value-ontology explains away the need for organic entities at the basis of all willing to power, and explains (makes understandable) also this “impressive” assimilating behavior as it exists in the in-organic.

Yes, I noticed that. I had assumed it was an error.

Both are quite dramatic errors, this one possibly worse than the last. I had already automatically corrected this in my mind while reading it.

Interesting indeed. For how can one combine the concepts chaos and sensation? A sensation implies a subject, there would have to be a chaos of subjects – but a subject already implies an order, a mechanism, a form-in-time – a self-referential circuit.

This is precisely where my proposed mechanism of self-valuing provides further insight.

It is indeed, but thereby this positing is not yet explained. How can something posit something, if it has not posited itself first – as a positing ? And how can something posit anything, except by a standard-value? How can a standard-value arise, in the most fundamental case, chaos ?

It is to make this answerable that I posit the mechanism [self-valuing / valuing in terms of self-value], as emerging spontaneously out of chaos / no-thingness – possible simply by the lack of its impossibility.

Very good. Two comments:

  • The will to power is not the most fundamental activity, as it is based on the existence of subjectivity, which still had to be explained.

  • Nietzsche did indeed aim to abolish the distinction between true and apparent. I have continued this work, and succeeded – e.g. by showing that whatever is apparent to a subject must be true to its terms, where it was already clear that whatever is true to a subject does so by virtue of its appearance to it.

aletheia, I’m still waiting for you to respond to this challenge—unless you are for all practical purposes, at least, interchangeable with Fixed Cross, in which case I refer you to my last post from November 6.

I contend that valuation is interpretation: interpretation of something (and be it oneself) as valuable to something (someone!) else. (To say that something is valuable to itself is nonsense, by the way.) In fact, valuation is probably identical with interpretation: inasmuch as interpretation is always valuation, is always interpretation in terms of value (e.g., an interpreter who translates a word from a foreign language into a word his employer may understand: in which context understanding is considered valuable). As such, valuation is will to power, an act of the will to power—as I already argued 1.5 years ago here: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100412100113AAQSots.

First of all ontology is a “branch of metaphysics”. What has that to do with Nietzsche?

Are you not talking in this thread about value as a thing in itself?

I haven’t seen a single personal experience from your self anyway!

The source of your “self-value” is most probably in religion!

I am waiting for almost a decade to see Sauwelios and Jakob taking responsibility for their acts and words, but until now without success.

It seems always someone else to be responsible…

But as you may see, this note is from 1883. The “subjects” he mentions in that second quote from 1887, for example, need not be organic.

But on page 1 of this thread, you said:

There are only two alternatives: either something was always there, or it came from nothing (which is technically saying the same thing, by the way). You simply replace a God That has always existed with a God That “created Himself from nothing”…

Well, first off, I don’t think it can be explained (to say that it emerged out of nothing is no more an explanation than to say that it always existed—see above), and second, the notion of “subjects that will” is subject to Nietzsche’s critique of the concept “subject”:

“If the innermost essence of being is will to power, if pleasure is every increase of power, displeasure every feeling of not being able to resist and dominate; may we not then posit pleasure and displeasure as cardinal facts? Is will possible without these two oscillations of Yes and No? But who feels pleasure?.. But who wants power?.. Absurd question, if the essence is itself power-will and consequently feelings of pleasure and displeasure! Nonetheless: opposites, obstacles are needed; therefore, relatively, encroaching units…” (Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 693, entire.)

This may be a good occasion to start reading a book I recently acquired. It’s titled The Quantum Nietzsche.

http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2084622#p2084622

This has something to do with a stupid ILP topic where underage (irresponsible) people bash about NOTHING.

Or maybe you just don’t understand it—like this one: http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2130810#p2130810.

I understand perfectly well that the source of all metaphysics is weakness!
Something that you obviously avoid to think of like the dog avoids the wolf.

You have nonsensed my son, who can save you now?

“Metaphysics” in the popular sense of the word, or in the true, Aristotelian sense?

Aristotle was not so true. They both, Aristotle and Plato were offering things that didn’t belong to them. Copy-cats. I didn’t even read anything from them about metaphysics. One must save his eyes for better things.

I wasn’t talking about the content of Aristotelian metaphysics. I was talking about the meaning of the term “metaphysics” in Aristotelianism. Nietzsche’s doctrine of the will to power is metaphysical in that sense: it’s a teaching about existence as a whole.

Nietzsche’s WTP is not a teaching as a whole!

Nietzsche in the teaching of the ER clearly says there are centers of energy and combinations of those centers, and he clearly denies anything “whole”.

There is a stupid chaos from which fckn stars are born!

Perpetuum mobile!

Yes: that there are only such centers and combinations of those centers.

So what? You can specify what they are so you can distinguish what is impossible, or what?

Again that sht “thing in itself”?

Is that Nietzschean? Is it you idiot?

Sauwelios ist die Sau which will rather believe in Nothing than not to believe. Ende Gelände.

To the question of “What is Cezar contributing to this thread?” the answer is “Opposing it in a simmilar way as Nietzsche might have opposed it.”.

The accusation that you are using metaphysics and thus continuing christianity is a Nietzshean one. What is your answer?

Nietzche wasn’t perfect. He had some points though, which some people can find useful.
We shouldn’t look at only a man when we are dreaming and forming ideas.
I don’t think Nietzche’s goal was to guide the world or provide a system like that.
Religious figures would like everyone on the planet to follow their ideology word for word,
in hopes that that would cause some sort of eutopia. But N didn’t do that. So when someone
tries to get that out of Nietzche, an ‘ontology’, they will have to make most of it up themselves.

“One is necessary, one is a piece of fatefulness, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole,—there is nothing which could judge, measure, compare, or sentence our being, for that would mean judging, measuring, comparing, or sentencing the whole… But there is nothing besides the whole!” (Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “The Four Great Errors”, section 8.)

This world is the will to power—and nothing besides! And your yourselves are also this will to power—and nothing besides!” (Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 1067.)

This world is the whole is will to power and nothing besides.

We experience life in fragments, and to save time, we take that fragmentation literally.
Humans aren’t the smartest creatures in the universe, depsite what christianity says about earthly life.
So we are going to get it wrong.

Although separation isn’t a reality, it is a very common idea.
It has some value… untrue things can have value still.

The world is a whole without unity, without spirit, without a Being, that has been said too. There is nothing but physics of the will to power in this world!

No metaphysical unity, no “holy spirit” and a trash like that!

Is that clear?