There was another thread recently that had two members here touching on this subject just a little. I have not read a great deal of Nietzsche but I found myself agreeing completely with what one of those two members said: that Nietzsche’s Will-To-Power (WTP) is just a weaker version of Schopenhauer’s Will-To-Live (WTL). The two philosophies are so opposite and it seems that to accept his own philosophy and reject Schopenhauer’s, Nietzsche had to come to believe that the WTP was the underlying driving force even when it is obviously not. My reasonings for this statement…
Nature’s number one goal (personification) is survival of the species. This means the survival of the individual for a long enough time so it can reproduce and then die (this last phase is key for the evolution of the species). Therefore, nature wants the individual to live; meaning it wants the individual to want to live.
To raise the chances of living and reproducing, the individual must have power. Power is simply any advantage (physical, emotional) over other individuals. Thus we strive to have power, but the reason we strive for it is so we can live longer and reproduce. Why else would nature create this drive within us? It serves no other purpose. Thus the WTP is a means to the end; Survival. Life.
Even after having a firm grip on life (modern man for example), one still strives for more and more power. This is because if one is not always striving for more power, it can be lost or another competitor’s power may overtake your own. Thus nature has designed us to seek power relentlessly. Those who lacked this drive were weeded out by those who are always on the hunt for more power. By having this relentless drive towards more power our chances of survival and reproduction are increased. Another example of this is the desire for many people to over eat - they eat past not being hungry. They eat untill they hurt. Why not stop eating when you are full? Because if you stop eating now you won’t get all the energy you could have. And later, when you can find no food, you have no reserves and you die before those individuals who decided to eat all the food available to them. We want more power in much the same way. It’s only a means to life.
Nature designing us to have a WTP above all else is not possible. Nature shapes organisms for a reason and that reason is survival. Everything nature designs in an organism must, by necessity, ultimately end on the WTL. What good could a WTP possibly have for the organism except as a means towards survival and reproduction? You can’t answer the question because nothing else matters to nature. A WTP, by necessity, confirms a WTL and vice versa. However, the WTP must always be a means towards the ends - the WTL. Thus the WTP is very real and very strong but is below the WTL which is it’s only purpose.
If that was nature’s goal, how could the species ever have come into existence?
You might just as well reason the other way 'round:
“To be able to attain power at all, the individual must live. Thus we seek to remain alive, but the reason we seek to do this is so we can attain power. Why else would nature create this drive within us? It serves no other purpose. Thus the WTL is a means to the end; Power. Might.”
Which proves nothing as to the will to survival’s being the underlying motive of the will to power.
Look up what Nietzsche has to say on evolution and Darwin, maybe use the tag “lucky strokes” when you google it.
If you have a copy of the Will to Power, 684 and 685 are a good place to start.
I’m studying for mid-terms now, and don’t have time to properly explain why Nietzsche constantly criticizes the WTL in favor of the WTP, but those sections should be a good start.
You are correct, I meant once it has come into being.
Your rewording of my statement doesn’t make sense in the context in which nature works. Nature is strange in the fact that it exists only to keep existing and that is all. It has no meaning but still strives to continue to exist. You are correct that in order to have power one must live. Thus, living is the most important fact, not attaining power. That’s the whole point: we can have nothing without living. All nature wants is to continue on - to live. Whatever arises within nature is simply due to this fact. Thus the want of power is simply because having this want is more beneficial to survival of the species than not having this want.
Power is meaningless unless one has a reason for power. In fact, everything is meaningless unless one has a reason for it. This continues down the scale of all things untill we arive to power and then even below that to the will to life. And there it stops - completely and totally with no meaning other than itself. People struggle over the meaning of life because it has none. People struggle with the meaning of themselves and their interest because, without God, it all rests on something else… and that something else on another and on and on untill they reach the end - that life simply wants to continue for no reason whatsoever.
It’s like wanting nothing more than to eat and be full. Schopenhauer recognizes this ultimate underlying desire. However, Nietzsche goes one step backwards and says that instead the ultimate desire is to acquire as many forks as possible. Although that it is true that we desire to get as many forks as we can, the reason we want these forks is for another end: to eat with them. There has to be some bottom desire - something we strive for for no reason other than we strive for it. That is clearly what I spoke of before - life. Nature (life) wants to continue to live for no reason other than to live. It is the bottom axiomatic end. Power is simply a method that life - through evolution - has devised to make individuals conform to it’s ultimate goal. Make individuals desire power so that they may fulfill their ultimate desire - life.
The best way I can explain this argument is that there are many lesser desires we have through nature. But we must ask, what is needed in order to even have these desires? Life is needed. Therefore life must be valued above all else because it is needed for all else. How can something be of more value than another if its existence is dependent on the first? Thus nature’s number one value must be life. All other values must be lesser. Not only lesser, but also a means to it. Everything that has ever come of nature has been a means to it. Every evolutionary step and genetic change has been a means to it. Why not power? Does it not make perfect sense to think that through evolution nature has shaped our brains to desire specific things such as sex, food, and power so that we can continue its one and only desire: life? I find no reason to assume power is above all other desires and drives that have ever been. Everything points to nature’s want to continue on and everything points to the fact that everything that has evolved from nature has been for that want of life. Indeed it is the same with the will to power. We will it because without it we could not live as efficiently. Those who did not will power died. Thus nature has made this desire so strong in some that they feel it is the ultimate end when in reality it is your survival by using that power.
Enough rambling… continue to disagree with everything I’ve posted here
I will definitely read the references you posted here. I am more willing than most to take on a new stance. Many people are hesitant to accept new ideas. I am more hesitant to stay thinking foolish things. That’s the whole reason I looked into the WTP in the first place - the challenge my view of the WTL. I just am not convinced in any way from what I have read or heard. I was hoping to get insightful responses that show me where my reasoning has gone wrong but from the way the thread is already going, I’m assuming I will get nothing but short responses which hold little to no philosophic value - all held together with a comment of arrogance. Whenever I see people defend Nietzsche, they never seem to have anything to say. They simply deny whatever was originally stated and offer no evidence for their own view. Rather, they call you foolish and speak in overly lavish and (usually) nonsensical little sentences and hope you simply assume they must know what they are talking about because it appears “above you.” If the WTP truly is above the WTL, giving actual responses that support this should not be all that difficult.
A lot of it can be explained by hindsight. After all, we are all playing the same game, right? Just living and reproducing. But in order to have an impact in this system, you need to do more than just the baseline – this would be fecundity essentially. WTP, in this light, can be seen as a pure expression of WTL. In this light, it is not merely enough to “live” but one must also thrive within that sphere.
What? But I have just reversed your statement that one must have power in order to live.
What species: the species of which “nature” is the only existing individual?
Survival of the species is of no concern to nature. Species develop from other species. So if the “will to live” was the primordial fact of life, then the first species that ever came to exist - by chance, perhaps - would, if the “will to life” had been successful, still exist.
What I’m trying to say is that if the survival of the species was all-important to nature, the development of one species into a new one would be a failure on her part.
I disagree. And I would rather say that life is meaningless unless one has a reason to live. The feeling of increased power is synonymous with joy, happiness, pleasure, etc. Enjoyment is a good reason to live. In fact, it is the only real reason to live.
There we go, that’s what I wanted. A post with information that I can learn from or respond to.
“What? But I have just reversed your statement that one must have power in order to live.”
Very true, my mistake. Although I still hold that the sentence cannot be rewritten thusly. I will get back to that later though.
"Survival of the species is of no concern to nature. Species develop from other species. So if the “will to live” was the primordial fact of life, then the first species that ever came to exist - by chance, perhaps - would, if the “will to life” had been successful - still exist.
What I’m trying to say is that if the survival of the species was all-important to nature, the development of one species into a new one would be a failure on her part."
To say that the Will-To-Life is above all other wills does not mean that it will succeed. It obviously will not for all individuals - hence we have evolution. Each species currently existing wants, above all, to keep existing. I suppose I’m being confusing in speaking in the term of species. The individual wants to keep existing above all else. Because of this drive I say that the species wants to exist (because it is simply all the individuals) but this can be misleading because species change. This is not a failure, but a success! The change in a species means that the individuals most fit are surviving which means we are moving towards better. We are moving towards more life because we are better to adapted to survive and reproduce. The change in species is the WTL in its prime.
“I disagree. And I would rather say that life is meaningless unless one has a reason to live. The feeling of increased power is synonymous with joy, happiness, pleasure, etc. Enjoyment is a good reason to live. In fact, it is the only real reason to live.”
You are completely right - life is meaningless unless one has a reason to live. And power is meaningless unless one has reason for having power. The only difference is that power cannot be the living beings ultimate will. Nor can enjoyment. Enjoyment can be a reason humans assign to themselves, but that does not mean it will change their ultimate will. We can recognize that our true will is the survive but still take refuge in other things such as enjoyment. We must will life more than we will enjoyment because without life we cannot experience enjoyment. We must will life more than power because without life we can have no power.
The reason life is the ultimate will and no power is because it is impossible for power or any other will to be above that of life. This is because individuals who will another thing above life will be overtaken by those individuals whom have more will to live. By the very definition of Natural Selection our ultimate desire must be the WTL. For if it were something else, we would be outcompeted by those who’s ultimate end is the WTL. Having a will to power is beneficial but would be outcompeted by individuals with a WTL. Individuals wanting power surely cannot out compete those who want LIFE for life! The individual with the WTL wants nothing but life. How could he be beaten by a WTP? It is not possible and nonsensical. If your end in itself is life, you will survive above all others who’s end is not life. Through selection we are left will only those whose end is life. The WTL is necessary due to Natural Selection and cannot be avoided.
And thus the competition begins among those who have the WTL. And from here we get the WTP. Individuals now attempt to acquire as much power as they can in order to out compete everyone else and fulfill their desire to live.
I think that you are mistaking “will-to-power” as “will to power”. Will-to-power doesn’t mean a desire for more control or dominance over other creatures. Actually, much of how you’ve described WTL is in keeping with WTP since it is expansive as opposed to Schopenhauer’s more insular idea of WTL.
Furthermore, from a Nietzschean point of view, the individual is the primary concern so the idea of a broader structure playing a role would be moot at best. From his philosophical perspective, you have to look at the individual events in order for the broader whole to have any meaning.
You posit this as self evident. It isn’t. Try to prove your axiom first before you build a line of reasoning on top of it.
Personally I agree with the notion that there is a more powerful, simply more captivating motivation than just staying alive. I stay alive for something. Life is most often lived as an arrow, not as a final end.
I see some merit in the idea that a fulfilling life, subjective as definition of that necessarily is, can be seen as a goal of nature beyond survival.
If it does, then why do human beings, for example, propagate sexually? Why not rather clone oneself (though mutations will ensure that this clone will never be, or remain, genetically identical to the original specimen)? I think the will to clone oneself is much rarer than the will to impregnation (which is how I define the sexual drive). Indeed, I think it is relatively so rare that it may be considered an aberration.
Sexual procreation ensures variety, which in turn ensures greater adaptability (power to overcome diverse conditions).
They are not surviving, their genes are surviving (but also diminishing themselves: sacrificing half of their space to the genes of another individual (in the case of a sexually propagating species)).
I would say that the reason for having power lay in the joy of the expending of power. Will to power for Nietzsche did not just mean the desire to “have” power (can one at all stockpile power? Sugar is energy; is fat energy?). In The Will to Power, section 619, he speaks of an “inner will” which he designates as:
“an insatiable desire to manifest power; or as the employment and exercise of power, as a creative drive, etc.”
The word here translated as “manifest” is bezeigen, literally “to display, to exhibit, to show, to demonstrate”, etc.
Right, and we can experience life without enjoyment; for we can experience it in suffering. So we might posit suffering as the meaning of our life, as our reason to live: in order to suffer. But is not this suffering then a means to experience life, to be conscious of life, and the will to be so the consequence of our enjoyment of being conscious of life?
When you say: “We must will life more than we will enjoyment because without life we cannot experience enjoyment”, do you not present life as the condition of enjoyment? I.e., as the most basic prerequisite of enjoyment? And only meaningful as a prerequisite?
First off, willing something above life, of which life is the prerequisite, should ensure that one who does will it sees to it that he stays alive, no?
Secondly, I am reminded of the following, which was written by a self-proclaimed Nietzschean called “Moody Lawless”:
“WTP describes that constant expansion of things even to the point of their own extinction and destruction (and hence not always to survival).”
One’s greatest expression of power may well occur during one’s death:
“A supernova may briefly out-shine its entire host galaxy before fading from view over several weeks or months. During this brief period of time, the supernova radiates as much energy as the Sun would emit over about 10 billion years.” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova
““Duration” as such has no value: one might well prefer a shorter but more valuable existence for the species.-- It would remain to be proved that, even so, a richer yield of value would be gained than in the case of the shorter existence; i.e., that man as summation of strength acquires a much greater quantum of mastery over things if life is as it is-- We stand before a problem of economics------”
[Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 864.]
“Value” here means the amount of power one manifests or exercises, and ultimately the joy this manifesting or exercising brings one. Is the cumulative consciousness of pleasure greater in the “white dwarf” man who lives long (though perhaps in a relatively vegetative state) than in the “supernova” (Ãœbernova!) man who lives fast and dies young?
Why does he want life?
Does it fulfill their desire to live to be only clinically alive, or do you mean “live!” Because if you mean the desire to LIVE!, I think that is rather the will to power than the will to survival.
To live is to have power; consciousness is the focus of power as life is the focus of energy.
The words ‘life’ and ‘power’ are interchangeable.
To be alive is to be in control over a piece of energy/power. It is the constant defense against dis-assimilation.
An excess of power results in self-consciousness and eventually to nihilism.
Nihilism being the realization that everything is incompleteness trying to Be and a void requiring fulfillment; it is the realization of a responsibility.
A word is a reference to what is not absolute.
In fact it is a reference to a concept existing in the mind as completed because it has been simplified into an artificial absolute pointing to non-existence.
Nobody really knows what ‘to live’ is, other than a it’s set of conditions that arise to produce a certain result. Calling it ‘having power’ isn’t all that useful if the point is to overcome oneself, because in that sense even a gnat has power. I realize characterizing it as ‘a set of conditions’ doesn’t have the sort of emotional thrust that makes one stand erect and consider developing his will to power muscles; nevertheless, it’s all we can realistically claim about ‘life’. Really, it’s the terms ‘power’ and ‘energy’ that are interchangable, because consciousness is certainly a focus of energy. The choice of directing focus (concentration) is exercising that energy or power, that’s the will to overcome one’s ‘conditions’ at any given point in order to realize a higher degree of being.
An artificial absolute versus a ‘real’ absolute? It’s all artificial, it’s all construct. Perhaps what you mean is that the illusion is that there is ‘completion’. Which is of course, no more ‘real’ than incompletion. Becoming and ceasing, constant flux, ignorance fuels the cycle of birth-rebirth.
I guess this means it’s also a reference to a concept existing in the mind. As the mind can’t ‘non-exist,’ it can only think up fabricated dreams of non-existence. When it does, it scares itself into scrabbling around for some idea of its ‘power’ (real-being) to hold onto. Or negating the perceived lack of power in others. I consider those to be comfort-seeking behaviors. There is no ‘power’ in that sense, the power is in understanding how it’s illusory. The idea of power can be employed effectively in the world at times…but that’s not because the power itself is external, only that people are malleable to the extent that they don’t understand it and fear it. And so it’s unwise not to understand its true nature. Otherwise, how is it to be overcome?
See, this is where you expose how little you follow along with the reasoning.
An ‘artificial absolute’ refers to an absence that is impossible to realize. Thusly making all ideals absurd.
Nevertheless the organism, the mind, finds identity in his choice of ideals.
They characterize and define him as a consciousness. They determine his personality.
I thought that much was clear.
Incompleteness like completeness is never absolute or realized because if it were it would result in a cessation of all existence.
We are an in-between state.
To put it simpler we are incompleteness seeking completeness.
This in-between state is called ‘existence’.
Exactly.
It’s conception of non-existence is as illusionary as its conception of existence.
It is caught in a conundrum produced by its necessity to create artificial absolutes so as to attain its position.
The absence of absolutes includes both Something and Nothing. Both denoting the same absence from a different vantage point.
But since the mind needs concrete certainties to know and to comprehend it ascertains them by simplifying experience into artificial absolutes, we call abstractions.
This is why fear is the first and basic emotion.
But this does not negate the gradation of interpretations and reactions to reality.
To equate all reactions and perceptions as being similarly viable is to negate multiplicity.
‘Power’ is illusory when it is taken literally as the expression of omnipotence or of an Absolute.
it is not illusory when it is used to express a difference in degree or a comparison.
Everyone has an intuitive understanding of his or her own lack and his or her own comparison to another.
Power attracts as any absolute attracts; by the mere absence of it.
We are attracted by nutrition, food, because it represents a final satiation which is not attainable.
Why?
Because we feed on the incomplete, such as we are.
We are seeking to fill a void with that which also lacks. Therefore the sensation of satisfaction is temporary and only the result of us healing the effects of temporality, the flux, upon us.
This temporary fix is felt as empowerment in relation to another.
Obviously complete fulfillment is never attained because it is impossible and so omnipotence is never reached.
This is why life is characterized by ‘care’.
To find completion would be to become indifferent to everything.
it would be a state of inert uncaring, completed satiation.
It mass, its force, would absorb all of existence within it just as a near-singularity, we call a black hole, absorbs everything within its vicinity into its mass.
If a real Black Hole were possible then the universe would not exist.
Again, to 'overcome" is to become indifferent to what is overcome. It ceases being a need.
This is why power attracts, just as a near-singularity does.
In my Feminization of Man thread I mention how women are attracted to power in the indifferent to them man.
The man that is most indifferent to them in particular, even if he may betray his weakness or incompleteness by being not indifferent to sex or reproduction, they find irresistible.
It is the power of power.
The irony stems from the fact that when we reach for something we betray a need, and so a weakness towards it, whereas when we don’t it is attracted to us by the sheer force of our uncaring indifference. We are made worthy of what we least desire.
This is where the irony and absurdity of life is shown.
Wow, what a change in thought so quickly. I think my car ride back has possibly swayed me against my opinion stated in the original post.
It had been asked in the post I mentioned before “what good is a will to live?” and I remember thinking it was such a dumb question. It is the ultimate good because without this want to life, you would die off and be replaced by those who do have such a want.
But on this drive I started thinking about it differently, in an attempt to be a little less biased in favor of my current opinion. What about animals that have no will? They have no will to live yet they have survived. They want food and sex and other things necessary for them to live, but they do not knowingly strive to live.
Instead, they strive for the actual things that help them to live. An individual can want to live as much as it wants but if it does not want sex and food and shelter, it will not survive. No matter how much is wishes to live, it will not. Those with a will to live will die off. However, those individuals who happen to want sex, food, shelter, and other things such as this end up surviving and reproducing - thus passing on this drive.
The fact that we see organisms attempting to acquire the things needed to live gives us the false impression that they attempt to acquire these things because they want to live. They really only want the things themselves. The fact that the things happen to be that which allows individuals to survive (sex, food, etc) rests on Natural Selection. Individuals who wanted things in themselves that did not give aid to survival died. We drew a conclusion, but in the wrong direction.
A want of life does nothing. A want for things themselves, that just happen to promote life, will always win over the want for anything else. I assumed we want things because they provide life. But we want things because we evolved to want them - and those things promote actions that support life as a whole.
I hope I’m making sense. I don’t really see how I missed this when first thinking about all of this. Nature can’t want anything and we as individuals have no reason to want anything over anything else. It’s simply the fact that some individuals will want some things, and others will want other things. But if you happen to want sex and food, you will end up surviving. Thus, in the end, we are left will nothing but organisms that want things that assist life. But not because they want it. It’s just along for the ride.
But all of this still makes me wonder; why do we fear death so much? Is it because although it is not our ultimate desire, it is still of importance? Maybe by itself it does nothing but combined with other wants it is helpful? Or do we fear death because dying makes us no longer able to strive for what we truly want?
And also, if life is not the ultimate will, what is? Sex? Food? Competition? Is one really dominate over all the others? Or is that what is meant by Power? I’ll admit, I haven’t read enough of Nietzsche to know exactly how he defines it. I just assumed the WTL was so obviously right that it didn’t really matter.
EDIT: It must be that we will life due to the fact that without it we can no longer strive for that which is our ultimate end. Life has thus become the forks I spoke of before. We cant to keep life so we can obtain those things. Without a will to life we cannot attain our deepest ends. How strange - a complete and total 360 - saying exactly what was posted in response to me myself. However, such quick changes makes me wonder if I’m just playing word games and confusion myself. This will definitely require more thinking… but it seems, for now, that I was wrong - defending the exact opposite of what really is.
Well, bugs have life and the innate ability to do what’s necessary to sustain it, but of course don’t have the kind of power necessary to ‘overcome’ the self that Nietzshe referred to. But then again, Nietzshe didn’t think most people did, either.
Disagreement isn’t always the outcome of our exchanges, just the more common one, and the one that is pursued, especially when it comes to certain topics.
It’s not that I’m not following it, it’s that I don’t agree with making a distinction between real and artificial in this respect. And from what I know of your views, you don’t agree with mine that all things exist (or have a particular ‘reality’) both conventionally and ultimately. These two realms manifest simultaneously and without separation between the distinctions, other than how we must separate them in the convention of thought/language. And thought/language is always relegated to the conventional realm. Thus our expressions here are inherently dualistic and thus the best we can do is to point correctly through negation. That’s why I tend to use terms like ‘non-self’ or ‘illusion’.
It seems to be a significant difference, as it leads to a disparity in what we believe to be the effective approaches to the ‘overcoming’ path. You apparently believe that you can ‘think’ or ‘reason’ your way along it. I don’t.
Yes, the impossibility is because there isn’t anything ‘there’ to be realized. Just what we imagine. Even when we imagine an ‘absent absolute’, we treat it as a substantive concept of a substantive ‘thing’, when it’s just another convention we’ve created that is the opposite of a ‘present absolute’. That’s not just semantics for me, it underlies the entire fabric of reality and how one comprehends it.
Because there isn’t anything that is realized.
Yes, and the point is to understand how, meaning understanding the true nature of ‘personality’.
I’m not disagreeing that we seek ‘completeness’ or ‘the absolute’ in our ignorance. I’m saying that ‘completeness’ or ‘the absolute’ is illusory (which is different from characterizing it as a ‘thing’ that is absent) but that you falsely give it ‘reality status’ when you posit that we think about the following possible chain of events: this ‘real’ completeness could be ‘reached’, the ‘absolute’ would arise and existence would cease.
Up to this point, we agree.
No, there is no separation, other than in a conventional (thought/language) framework.
Yes, and it cannot ‘overcome’ this limitation by ‘ascertaining’ (cognizing) experience into its idea of a ‘real’ absolute.
That’s imagination. Experience interpreted, not experience just experienced.
Again, just imagination, thought, construct. It’s not new or different action, it doesn’t ‘overcome’ anything because it still presumes an independent self (a “Thinker”) at some level. The mind moving only in that way will always run up against that barrier.
The illusion just takes on a different look or feel. But it’s still illusion.
The indifference (dispassion) manifests with the understanding that this seeking and fulfilling of needs is done from ignorance, from the illusion of a false ‘self’. With ‘overcoming’ (‘awakening’ in my parlance), the perspective is revolutionized, one realizes impermanence and interdependence in a sense that is maybe best described as convergently cognitive and intuitive. The false belief in substantiality, permanence and independence vanishes, or it’s more like a veil slowly lifting. That’s when wisdom and compassion (certainly as natural to beings with such minds as ours as anything else is) are revealed.
I don’t think this is theoretically true, but I’m not knowledgable enough to address it.
Only when they walk around in dreams.
Well, my view is that this WTP (‘overcoming’, as it were) results in a state of wisdom about the true nature of ‘needs’. They lose their power over us and thus don’t get out of control, no extreme on either end. For example, such wisdom leads to insight about how it’s dumb to ‘need’ to make more money than I need to care for myself and my family, to ‘need’ to wear a bunch of make-up that clogs my pores, to ‘need’ to eat other than food which contributes to my optimum health, to ‘need’ to be with a man who isn’t wise or kind or respectful, to ‘need’ to watch television programming where people act like morons or violent freaks, to ‘need’ to act in ways that do irreversible damage to the natural environment, to ‘need’ to feel helpless because I can’t end the suffering in Darfur, etc.
It’s ironic only to the degree that we have that limited perspective. The view from one side of the coin, you might say. It’s still a perspective, just limited, in need of dissolution.
