I don’t think you get the theory enough (by your own admission) to really say much about it. Saying that it computes and explains away nothingness is hardly resting the theory on it. Unless I am very wrong.
Let me try to rephrase it:
“A being maintains its particular structural nature by being selected. In the first place, it is selected by itself, or rather, by its particular activity, which is the selecting of other beings.”
But if the particular activity of beings is the selecting of other beings, then “selecting” does mean an active picking.
And if we relate this back to what you said before, we get this:
“A being posits a value system, in which a relation may take place, in which otherness is to be dominated/subjected to as (in terms of) self. This positing of a value system it does by maintaining its particular structural nature. And this in turn it does by being selected. In the first place, it is selected by itself, or rather, by its particular activity, which is the selecting of other beings.”
It strongly appears that the domination of/subjection to otherness is the selection of other beings. This would make your “explanation” wholly circular. And indeed, after the first sentence of the last paraphrase, you originally said:
“Relating without disintegrating requires firm value-positing. Willing to power demands firmness of self-value.”
So value-positing requires not disintegrating (“maintaining its structural nature”), and not disintegrating requires value-positing!
So Being is Erupting, i.e., a Breaking-forth, but not a Breaking-forth from anything, but a Breaking-forth that has not begun and will not end—i.e., that has no root or fruit.
What I’ve been doing here is trying to “get” the theory, if possible, by getting to the bottom of it, if any. Nobody else has done anything of the sort in this thread! So if you “get” the theory, please explain it clearly. I asked the same of aletheia, but haven’t heard from her since.
Value Ontology, as I have come to understand it, is a description of what the existence we inhabit is; or more accurately, how it is. Since it is a description of a current, observable state of affairs, it gives little importance to its genesis (nothingness, Jehova, some unknowable or as yet unknown something, whatever).
It describes the existence of individual entities, each defined by the act of valuing and self-valuing. An important thing to grasp here (which I think you are having trouble with) is that self-valuing is subordinate to valuing. Entities self-value as a result of valuing. First, there is a need to value, a valuing principle. Out of that need springs self-valuing, as the entity needs to be a coherent whole, or a distinct something, to efficiently value and gain profit from that act of valuing.
This is why existene has shape, why things are things instead of a confused mass of whatever. It is because we value it, and value each self-valuing thing as a thing. We value them as self-valuing because what we observe is the concentrated efforts, or valuing, of a single thing. An atom values the energy around it in a way that translates into our valuing it as an atom, so with the electrons, the molecules and a chainsaw.
A description of shape/s, how the shape/s is/are, and how the shape/s come/s to be.
But what FC claims is that it’s not just a description, but an explanation…
Okay. So first, there is a need to value—no valuing yet. But in order to value, an entity has to value itself. So in order to value, it has to value… How is this not circular?
So we value it as valuing, not as self-valuing…
I really think you are splitting hairs here. Plus, this is my interpretation, not straight from FC. I think what’s important here is that there is no great need to understand the genesis, only the how is the focus.
As I said, if you look at it as a description of a current state of affairs instead of a description of where the world started/starts, this will become more acceptable. The first thing is the need, which we know about because we know that we(humans), as entities, value out of need. And that is really the genious of this ontology, that it incorporates human perception into existance itself without requiring humans to be the only existing things.
We value it as valuing, and therefore self-valuing.
*Pending approval by the developpers of the original theory.
A little more about the relationship between self-valuing and valuing:
Self-valuing is subordinate to valuing. Almost a sub-category of valuing.
And in what way is all this different, not to say superior, to the will to power doctrine?
In my humble-est of opinions, the will to power is very specifically a psychological concept. Value ontology takes elements from it to form an ontological system.
Apples and Oranges.
I think the revolutionary claims of the theory are grounded in a misunderstanding of the will to power doctrine. In order to will power over an entity, one must first value that entity, right? But the will to power is at the root even of interpretation: to interpret the “confused mass” (“the chaos of sensations”, as Nietzsche puts it) as things is already an act of the will to power. And is not the valuation of an entity the interpretation of that entity as valuable?
That is indeed a most humble opinion.
“[T]he genious [sic] of this ontology [is] that it incorporates human perception into existance [sic] itself without requiring humans to be the only existing things.”
That is exactly what Nietzsche does in, e.g., section 36 of his Beyond Good and Evil.
Wow… I had not read that passage before. (In all honesty, I have been kind of stuck on “The Antichrist” with Nietzsche after having read “Human, all too Human” because I am afraid that it might be impossible to write something even better than those two. Obviously I have been very mistaken.)
So, Nietzsche did propose a… kind of ontology. But inasmuch as it still requires a sort of metaphysical “will”, the will to power doctrine differs from value ontology. The latter attempts at an objective description, while Nietzsche’s is ultimately subjective.
(I am still too humble as regards Nietzsche to talk of one being superior to the other. I am not convinced that objectivity has any inherent superiority to subjectivity, whereas I am increasingly convinced that subjectivity is the only legitimate angle, and that the more objectivity it incorporates, the more powerful it becomes.)
I hope this explains how, while I refrain from calling it superior, I certainly find value ontology to be… Valuable!
But also without denying the (human)will. In fact there is nothing, no “thing in itself”, no “matter”, no “energy”, but only will. There is no “thing”, and consequently there is no “thing in itself”!!! - All is subjective!
Nietzsche incorporates will and perspective! You deny the will! You are slaves of the “perspective” which is not even yours - moral Christian or Buddhist fanatics! - Opportunists! In ancient Greece morals were not an imperative until the end of the 4th BCE religion has become an instrument of manipulation in the hands of the masses and powerful men were persecuted as “heretics” out of hate. Modern philosophy with its “ontology” is nothing but a hunt against “witches”, “heretics” and the likes…
Nietzsche never said in BGE36 anything about a “metaphysical will”! There is no “meta” because there is no PHYSICAL!
So, there is no will-matter relationship, because there is no matter.
Hmm…
The way you keep a simplistic view of a concept that is very complex is illumintaing in many ways. I have come to resent your ability for it, but I am greedy enough to learn from what you say anyway.
But I will, now, begin to question you.
There IS a physical… or at least a real. A something. A something that applies itself. Not just human, but something that the human is a complex developpment of.
This second part is still refered to by what I wrote above, but I quoted it seperately because… well, don’t you see it?
FC, tell 'em.
Nothing applies itself.
The will is discovered only out of interaction with other wills.
Of course you resent, you are a slave.
Ah, don’t be cranky.
Your use of willing is looking mighty similar to FC’s use of valuing…
That is so shallow, almost American. If not stupidly English.
I am making a list of secondary drives. If you want to know what will is then work on it and you will see the drives and the perspective (value) are different.
The thing with you, Cezar, is that you play in a depth that you are not deep enough for. The result is statements that sound deep, but the percieved depth is only an echo of the place you are in. Get out of there! You do not belong.
The trick is in not speaking before you are sure what you are saying.
If you have that, then you don’t need to hear the sound of the room, you can look into the dark of the depth.
One day there will maybe be no chance to speak at all. People will kill each other for a wrong word.
Therefore you can see this as a training for more serious undertakings.
Train yourself for war.
Instead of “subjective” and “objective”, I propose that we use the words “perspectival” and “non-perspectival”, respectively—so as not to reify subjects and objects all too explicitly (though the word “per-spective” still implies a subject and an object).
Nietzsche’s doctrine of perspectivism is perspectival and non-perspectival at the same time:
“Precisely if all views of the world are interpretations, i.e. acts of the will to power, the doctrine of the will to power is at the same time an interpretation and the most fundamental fact, for, in contradistinction to all other interpretations, it is the necessary and sufficient condition of the possibility of any ‘categories’.” (Leo Strauss, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil”.)