Is not his concept of “Will to Power” ludicrous? He conceives of this clearly biological function as existing outside of animal life-- as the imperceivable metaphysical reality underlying all external, perceivable phenomena. Can anything which is not an animal be said to have a “will to” (archaic term of course) anything? Is a rock or tree or electron a manifestation of a will to power? Whose will? The universe’s? The universe has a will to power or itself is will to power? Is this idiotic in either case or not? Are we to say the sky has a will to be blue or is will to be blue? Beyond this, his philosophy in general is devoid of value or is it just me? Everyone seems to love this guy. I struggle to find anything of value in what seems to me to be a fascist, misogynist, pigheaded little twerp spouting pretentious and meaningless rhetoric as if he invented the world. Did Nietzsche, in fact, believe that man created nature? The Will to Power seems almost to imply this. “Man in his will to power created nature and then placed himself in it!” Although Nietzsche of course did not argue something that idiotic, but it is implied. For nature does not have a will to power while man does if anything does. Solipsism turned into esoteric metaphysics? That’s what it seems like, but how could something so idiotic have become so widespread?
Yes and no. The WTP is a metaphysics which incorporates pragmatic morality and describes it perfectly. Your attempt to disprove it is a manifestation of the WTP.
Sartre destroyed the metaphysical value of the WTP with razor sharp precision. However this does not mean that it is not applicable in an existential way; it is the energy of morality and nothing more. It is not, as Nietzsche suspected, a “noumenal” reality.
I meant to ask you this on another thread, where did you get the idea that the WTP is a noumenal reality. Despite the obvious contradiction of knowing a noumenal reality, how does one resolve Nietzsche’s perspectivism while maintaining WTP as objective reality?
Keep in mind that the author of this page favors Nietzsche over Sartre, so of course he will rig the match so Nietzsche wins.
Still I believe that Being and Nothingness, a single book, is a greater epistemological significance than any and all books Nietzsche ever wrote, combined.
WTP is a metaphor which attempts to describe the essence of man. There is no essence of man because there is no third perspective to declare it. (assuming God does not exist)
Nietzsche is a post-platonist using platonic ontology.
So you maintain that Nietzsche contradicted himself by building a metaphysic, while at the same time critisizing and disowning metaphysics? You also maitain that, for Nietzsche, Will To Power underpinns all of existence as a most basic truth by which others can be built? You also must hold that he betrayed his methodology?
Leftist forum discussing Nietzsche!?! True Comrades.
Nietzsche contains no metaphyics. Nietzsche is very clear that the WTP is motive. In a slightly different sense, I can say that my legs are a motive force without declaring essence. The WTP is psychobiology. It’s a description. And it is, in fact, a rather weak claim. It is also only intelligible within the context of the entire mythology that Nietzsche attempts. It’s not a plug’n’play device.
I dislike the term “strawman argument”, but it comes to mind here.
Nietzsche should be thankful that he could retain his bourgeois existence in Europe. It was not Nietzsche’s power that allowed him to “live,” anymore than it was the power of the cultured bourgeois that allowed it to exist.
It was because the working class didn’t rise up and destroy them both.
What irony.
Nietzsche believes his power is earned and noble!? No, my friends, Nietzsche lived because he was allowed to live.
Had Lenin been around the moustache wouldn’t have even made it down the stairs in one piece.
It is not a biological function, but is at the root of all biological functions. And it is not exclusive to fauna, either.
A tree definitely is: it is an organism, just like you. But rocks and electrons can only be said to have this will by analogy:
“There is nothing for it: one is obliged to understand all motion, all “appearances,” all “laws,” only as symptoms of an inner event and to employ man as an analogy to this end.”
[The Will to Power, section 619.]
“But who wants power? - Absurd question, if the essence itself is power-will”.
[ibid., section 693.]
Yes: the latter.
Are you implying that the universe is power? But power to what? There cannot be any doubt, there is only one form of power: the power to will. Will what? - Power, obviously.
It is just you.
A fascist, yes (but avant la lettre). A misogynist, no: Nietzsche did not hate women. A pigheaded little twerp, no. I don’t know what a pigheaded little twerp sounds like, but if anything, I should guess he would sound like you.
No, not in the superstitious sense (as “creating out of nothing”); yes in the sense that he thought that, in valuing nature, man created it in his own image, or rather, lavished all his own gifts upon it. In itself, nature is neither beautiful nor ugly; it is man who bestowed beauty upon it, or on some idealistic supranature, comparing to which he perceived it as ugly.
Interesting, but highly esoteric. I don’t think you have the right to such speculations. “One man’s soul in its will to power invented nature, including his own body, and then placed itself in it.”
Indeed, if anything does. The concept “will” is just a description, a simplification - something to make existence workable. Thus the conception of the “will” is itself a consequence of the will to power (or rather, of that which we try to describe by that phrase).
What is idiotic about it? Do you have a better idea? A better description of experience?
“By 1990 the physicist Petr Beckmann of the University of Colorado had already begun going after Einstein. He greatly admired Einstein for his famous equation of matter and energy, E=mc2 , but called his theory of relativity mostly absurd and grotesquely untestable. Beckmann died in 1993. His Fool Killer’s cudgel has been taken up by Howard Hayden of the University of Connecticut, who has many admirers among the upcoming generation of Ultimately Skeptical young physicists. The scorn the new breed heaps upon quantum mechanics (“has no real-world applications”…“depends entirely on fairies sprinkling goofball equations in your eyes”), Unified Field Theory (“Nobel worm bait”), and the Big Bang Theory (“creationism for nerds”) has become withering. If only Nietzsche were alive! He would have relished every minute of it!”
[Tom Wolfe, Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died.]
Saully, you said something that I want to ask you about. I have described the WTP as psychobiology. By that I mean that the WTP is a description of how we cognitively experience a biological fact - itg is a description - it is language, and so it is “cognitive”. I am wondering if this is at odds with your claim that the WTP is not a biological function. My position, external to Nietzsche as well as within a Nietzschean framework, is that everything we can describe about ourselves is, at root, biological, we are wholly physical entities. Perhaps my confusion is over the word “function” and not the word “biological”. There are several meanings of “function”, so I am not clear if we disagree. Can you clarify?
Nietzsche contains some metaphysics in the broadest sense of the word. What is metaphysics anyway? No one can define anything in philosophy since no one understands it–even those at the very top of it-- and there are no criteria for proof or disproof (which is to the advantage of Nietzsche and his followers). “Power” is a term in physics–work divided by time. I doubt this is the kind of power Nietzsche was talking about which is one reason why I use the word “metaphysics”. I myself don’t have good definitions for words but a better job can be done than Nietzsche did in defining. He made a mess of everything. And my problem with Nietzsche is not Christianity vs. Godless Man but simply some amount of reason vs totally "bs"ing your way through everything and reducing everything to “a mad, gay dance of joy, war and poems”. Someone could have advanced an anti-Christian argument or anti-theist argument in a more intelligent and coherent way than Nietzsche does. Goethe was anti-Christian or at least lukewarm on it and many earlier Germans had gone against a strictly dogmatic Christian worldview which is another thing that makes Nietzsche overblown. He did not single-handedly end the Middle Ages (which had been over for some time) yet seems to have been recast over time as some earth-shaking Neptune who found the cure for cancer and discovered that the Earth revolves around the Sun and is not flat all at the same time. Why? Because that’s how he described himself and everyone believed it. Nietzsche is “pulp philosophy”. People are free to their beliefs, but philosophy should be basically straightforward prose with a minimum of self-contradiction. If Nietzsche wanted to write poems about being a Carthaginian warrior he was free to go do that in another arena.
I’m sure there is a Wikipedia article that will define metaphysics.
You’re correct about one thing: Nietzsche did not singlehandedly end the Middle Ages. Of course, I have never seen anyone claim that he did. Doesn’t change the facts, though. Nice work.
I wonder if you could share with the group just which works of Nietzsche you have read.
Yes, it is about the word “function”. The sexual function is a biological function; like all biological functions, it follows from what Nietzsche named “will to power”. Which is indeed a biological thing, as it is a self-description of the essence of a certain biological entity (man), which is then projected onto all entities (though the concept “entity” is a description and a simplification also). Man conceives himself as an entity whose essence is will to power, then projects this entity outward. Even Nietzsche, who conceived all “entities” as will to power, could not do without “will points” (his quotation marks), relative centers of force, which continuously gained and lost their power. Even he could not get beyond the dualism will - power, or rather, he understood that nothing can be described without such a dualism. As Crowley says, “We may regard rational apprehension as a projection of Truth in dualistic form” [Little Essays toward Truth, Knowledge]: thus the “subject” wants power over “objects”, and every “object” is such a “subject”. We cannot get beyond this model, “I will” is our most basic formula, if we deconstruct the concepts “subject” and “will” we lose the means of description, and existence ceases to be workable for us. The will to logical “truth” serves a profoundly practical purpose; it is the will to falsify experience so as to make it workable, it is will to power at bottom and whoever will not break out of this vicious circle is condemned to a pitiful form of “philosophy”:
“Philosophy reduced to “theory of knowledge”, actually no more than a timid epochism and abstinence doctrine: a philosophy that does not even get over the threshold and painfully denies itself the right of entry ‑ that is philosophy at its last gasp, an end, an agony, something that arouses pity. How could such a philosophy rule!”
[BGE 204, conclusion.]
metaphysics is a highly contentious term that has no agreed upon definition. if you want to go check wikipedia, go for it, but it won’t change the fact that there is an arguably metaphysical aspect to Nietzsche’s philosophy. I’m right on a few things actually, not just one. Re-read and you will see. I’ve read the genealogy of morality, beyond good and evil, the birth of tragedy, the case of wagner, and some of the will to power (should I be expected to have read all of a tedious repetitive tome of notes?) I feel it’s hardly relevant what I’ve read of someone who is a minor figure in philosophical history or at least should be. I probably should have read less of him than I did. The guy ought to be kept in perspective rather than exploded into Columbus/Plato/Newton/Einstein/Edison all in one. Is he a good rhetorician? Of course. Is he a good philosopher? Not really and not particularly original, let alone earth-shaking.
ben123, are you some guy gaming back, whom I dued before? No body fucks with Fritz on this site. I have conditioned and attuned this place during the past two years of silent subtle power works, into a symposium that regularly produces vigoros debates about Nietzsche. The portion of members here with a Nietzschean inclination have increased from less than 2% over the years to over 92%. Our Nietzschean ranters are by far the most witty, readable and loved members. The fact that you are posting this rort here, shows you’ve got some balls, or you just got nuts. In any case, I myself is ready to convert you. Kneel and behold, my first teaching to you is as follows, some basic critique:
Philosophy is not a particular type of prose, mate, it is laiden with incomprenhensiable concepts and intercontradictory notions. If you think Kant is straightforward, you are either an epistemological quintifier talking tough, or you have read my summary and treaties on Kant in the other forum.
ben, I suggest you read up a few more quotes before claiming one of the most read and studied philosopher of all time who spurred political events and shaped modern cultures is fraud.