I just finished re-reading Nietszche’s beyond good and evil’s “Part one: on the prejudices of philosophers”.
I re-read it because i forgot some of it.
According to N, will is basically commanding and obeying simultaniously.
To me, will is a non thing. It’s a catagory. The true nature of our will is the 100% total of our conditioning. Evolutionary conditioning, and life time conditioning. A part of the conditioning is this natural force which determines the being as much as it can. There is also subconscious will, which people never mention, it is similar to our desires during our dreams. A flowing and non-objective process. If there was no conditioning, there would be no will.
“Free will”, now, freedom is also a non thing. Freedom is a sensation.
I’m mainly here to talk about will, but free will was mentioned by Nietszche, so I mentioned it a bit too.
Conditioning is like a stamp on some soft clay. It has to do with motion and change, and retaining the imprint of things. Our nature retains imprints aswel, and that is how the will is created. It is the flowing force of influences, passed and present.
I agree with you, that “will” is a category we use, and “free will” is a feeling. Of course we are highly conditioned, like all things, what we “are” is certainly another way of saying “what we have been/are conditioned to be”. How you phrase will as 'retaining impressions" is nice, I think this is a really useful description.
Certainly the idea of non-caused will is irrational, what is more reasonable is that our complex neuro-physiological determination is “masked” from us, to a very large extent – what this means in non-mystifying (scientific) terms is that a large part of the total structure of our consciousness is not communicated “up” into the most final and “surface” products of this consciousness, its “final effects” and consequences, such as our actual behaviors, thoughts and even feelings. We are like robots who, despite being fully programmed and acting at all times with regard to that programming in conjunction with the environmental circumstances in which we find ourselves, are largely unaware of these actual programs themselves. So from the perspective of the “highest point” of consciousness, its final consequences and the “top of the pyramid” which act like an image of the total conscious structure itself (our ‘ego’ perspective upon our “unconsciousness”), these behaviors “just happen”, we can only trace backward the causal reasons for our actions so far, until they quickly recede into obscurity.
Over time, we have been taught that the feeling of being unable to trace this causality, the appearance of “just happening” going on with regard to our behaviors, means we have “free will”, that we as “agents” and “free individuals” somehow magically “self-determine” ourselves. Of course that really just means we are the robot who is largely self-ignorance, and even more so because the robot is also ignorant of how and why it is so ignorant, and within this void deceives itself with notions of pure autonomy and self-determination.
Social usefulness as well as psychological usefulness are probably to blame for much of this ignorance. Ultimately science, and philosophy, can and will de-mystify consciousness to itself.
As for will, yes this is like a category we use to lump together certain experiences we have of ourselves, and which quickly becomes “moral”, thrown together under the heading of “blame-worthy”, “obligatory”, basically a strange sort of total ownership of behavior and all emergent states of consciousness with little or no regard to the reasons for these states themselves. It is all very strange indeed… probably why I have such a hard time relating to most people who are so caught up in these moralistic, ignorant half-concepts and religious-mystical delusions.
As far as I (probably misunderstand) Nietzsche a “will” does not exist at all. Or if you like, it exists in name only.
As far as what it is and what it isn’t. Well, my very name is “Will”. That too, according to Nietzsche (the “I” or “Self” or “Ego”) does not exist.
Nietzsche mentions somewhere that science (paraphrase) "should never be used for explanation, but only for description
“Will”, “I”, “Ego”, “Self” to Nietzsche only exists in the world of re-presentation. Otherwise these “things” have no rights. And furthermore, the whole idea of “representation” in and of itself is a theory built upon language, and therefore doesn’t actually have power aside from the power that the language that is rests upon induces in people.
What has Nietzsche’s philosophy done to further humanity? He’s given us half- to non-understood labels. He’s given us poetry–again, usually not understood except at a feeling level. Can we say that Nietzsche’s philosophies are one man’s ‘truth’ written in such a way as to stimulate other thought? The concept of ‘will’ has been examined by other philosophers, upon whom Nietzsche drew–Schopenhauer directly, for example.
Does the current political atmosphere give rise to Nietzsche’s musings of an ubermensch that will develop, genetically–or as the result of evolution–out of the untermensch–the ‘slaves?’ Or were Nietzsche’s ideas edited by his sister in such a way as to give credence to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany after WWI–and which are interpreted to mean something similar is possible, now.
Is it possible to define “will” without resorting to Nietzsche?