Nietzsche's _BGE_ argument for his "will to power" doctrine.

In section 36 of his Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche provides an argument for his doctrine of the “will to power”. In this thread, I want to take a close look at it, and determine 1) what his premises are, and 2) whether we can find or provide adequate grounds for those premises.

I will start by reformulating the argument in syllogistic form. I will be using the Helen Zimmern translation of BGE, which can be found here: http://nietzsche.holtof.com/Nietzsche_beyond_good_and_evil/index.htm. Section 36 is found in Chapter II.

Syllogism I

1. Nothing else is “given” as real except our world of desires and passions, and we cannot get down, or up, to any other “reality” besides the reality of our drives.
   a. Thinking is merely a relations of these drives to each other.
   2 = Occam’s Razor.
2. This “given” is sufficient for also understanding on the basis of this kind of thing the so-called mechanistic (or “material”) world—not as a deception, as “mere appearance”, an “idea” (in the sense of Berkeley and Schopenhauer) but as holding the same rank of reality as our affect—as a more primitive form of the world of affects in which everything still lies contained in a powerful unity before it undergoes ramifications and developments in the organic process (and, as is only fair, also becomes tenderer and weaker)—as a kind of instinctive life in which all organic functions are still synthetically intertwined along with self-regulation, assimilation, nourishment, excretion, and metabolism—as a pre-form of life.

Syllogism II

4. We recognize the will as efficient, we believe in the causality of the will.
   a. At bottom our faith in this is nothing less than our faith in causality itself.
   5 = 3.
5. We have to make the experiment of positing the causality of the will hypothetically as the only one.

Syllogism III

7. “Will” can affect only “will”—and not “matter” (not “nerves,” for example).
   8 = 6.
8. One has to risk the hypothesis whether will does not affect will wherever “effects” are recognized—and whether all mechanical occurrences are not, insofar as a force is active in them, will force, effects of will.

Syllogism IV

10. Our entire instinctive life is the development and ramification of one basic form of the will—namely, of the will to power, as my proposition has it; all organic functions can be traced back to this will to power and one can also find in it the solution of the problem of procreation and nourishment—it is one problem.
    11 = 9.
11. One has the right to determine all efficient force univocally as will to power. The world viewed from inside, the world defined and determined according to its “intelligible character” is “will to power” and nothing else.

Thus far my syllogistic reformulation. We see that Nietzsche’s argument rests on five premises: statements # 1, 2, 4, 7, and 10. Of these, statements # 1 and 4 themselves, in turn, each rest on at least one ‘sub-premise’. If nobody disputes anything I’ve said here so far, our first objective has been accomplished and we shall next look closely into premise # 1.

Premise 1 falls because it is based on assumptions about the world and drives that cannot stand when faced with experiences that do not depend on drives and which show the physical world to be an illusion. Much more is then given to consider. For example, premise number 2 is also limited; thinking can be so much more or other than merely being a relation of drives to each other, which also speaks to a mind that is not just accounted for as limited to the physical brain or world. I like Ockham’s law of parsimony, but I don’t think it’s valid to use it to justify premise 2 in light of the evidence that thought operates like quantum reallity in many respects, particularly as an aspect of energy. David Bohm wrote: “Logic is to Thought, as Classical Physics is to Quantum Mechanics.” That is the great analogy of our age from which equally great premises should be formed.

Okay, you are hereby barred from this thread, as I’m not interested in your allegedly revelation-based assertions.

That begs the question, though. Are there experiences that do not* depend on drives?

• or preferably, cannot?

Excellent post! The “will to power” is one of those ideas I secretly like to agree with, though I’m reluctant because I feel my understanding of the notion is always incomplete, or otherwise inadequate. I’ve researched the shit out of it (along with eternal recurrence), but have been left to my own devices as far as interpreting what it is, exactly, Nietzsche was getting at. I have yet to find anyone, even among those who claim to understand it, who can give me an explanation that consists of anything other than some regurgitated obfuscation.

I’m not sure if it is the wording, but the sub-premise here seems a little simplistic. I might include “the relation of these drives to an identity” as well, but I may be nit picking…

Pre-form in what respect? Genetics? I suppose that would make sense being that genetic code could be seen as that more primal form “in which everything still lies contained in a powerful unity before it undergoes ramifications and developments in the organic process.”

Do you think we accept the will as “efficient”, or just accept the will as necessary? In other words, do we actually recognize the will as being efficient, or do we accept the will (as necessary to our condition) and strive toward efficiency? I think efficiency of the will is something that may be refined, and is contextual. For all intents and purposes, I’d say we accept the will as sufficient until we are forced to consider ‘efficiency’ (possibly through adaptation).

Also, by “causality of the will”, you are referring to the will being a source, instrument, or result of causality? Or all of the above?

Is this faith justifiable as a universal, or just as it pertains to our perceptible modes?

Falsifiability. I like it! Although, I’m not sure what you mean by “only one.” Of what?

If ‘will’ and ‘desire’ are not being held synonymously (as “drives”), I would opine that the will affects our desires and passions, which would follow to our actions indirectly.

Agreed. This risk seems like a hard pill to swallow for many folks.

And any force which is recognized, but not as “efficient”?

OK, just remember, that thoughts and arguments that go unchallenged tend to get stuck in their own cement; and your take on my assertions is purely eccentric on your part because you simply don’t want to deal with challenges. I would say more, but right now you are in a place where you can’t take it. I’ll put you on my ignore list for awhile and you can play around with the acolytes or those who won’t pose much of a challenge.

Jonquil, the truth is most of the time your input on this site is a waste of time. The reason this is so is you think you are far more intelligent, and wise or whole or whatever else, than you actually are. You have plenty of opinions, and it seems you can recall a good deal of information, but they’re all filed messily, based off their keywords, in either a cabinet of general “bad” or general “good”. You just don’t think clearly and carefully enough to play a part in a coherent philosophical discussion.

Regarding premise 1… if you look at the source it begins with “SUPPOSE”. It’s not like his first premise is some supposedly “rational conclusion” based on nothing. This thread is for questioning why he wrote it that way, what he meant by it. You have proven yourself uninterested and incapable of doing so, so you should just let those who are interested enjoy themselves. Thanks.

Join the rest of the world

It’s interesting to see a Schopenhauerian tint to will with points 7 and 9. But how does will then introduce causality to matter at all, in any sense that the word “will” implies?

Side-related mod note: Could we at least pretend to keep the conversation vaguely philosophical, please? I’m sure there are plenty of sites for constructive criticism of one another’s weaknesses out there.

For the record, no-one’s banned from any threads and if there are ignore lists, it’s new to me.

Ya know, I sat pondering that same question actually. The way I figure it, the ‘will’ is something of a catalyst in this respect. If the ‘will’ is innate, I would assume desire to be predicated upon those drives. Going further, if ‘will’ affects desire (which, as Spinoza says, is the “essence of man”), and desire affects our passions (which seems obvious), then we might act based on the effects of our passions. Thus imposing our nature, or ‘will’, on external matter through our actions.

…does that make sense?

Have you read Cox’ Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation?

Genes would be an instance of that pre-form, yes. The living ultimately consists of lifeless matter, after all.

“Efficient” is here meant in the sense as in “efficient cause”. The German word is wirkend, literally ‘working’; but Wirkung means “effect”, so we may also well translate it as “effecting”.

Thus far just as a source.

I think he thinks it’s justifiable as universally human, i.e., as it pertains to the perceptible modes of all humans.

The only causality.

I think he holds them synonymously here, though.

I don’t follow. But perhaps what I’ve just said about wirkend will answer this question.

It doesn’t. According to Nietzsche, there is no matter; just will to power. ‘Matter’ is just how we interpret certain forms of the will to power.

You’re right, I cannot really bar anyone; just ignore them. What jonquil means by her “ignore list” is her foes list, by the way.

Wait a hot second here, you caught my attention. Could this be to say that Nietzsche considers the will to power as …noumenal?

I don’t think so. Thus in WP 569, he says:

[size=95][T]he antithesis of this phenomenal world [i.e., of “the adapted world which we feel to be real”, which is “[t]he material of the senses adapted by the understanding, reduced to rough outlines, made similar, subsumed under related matters”] is not “the true world,” but the formless unformulable world of the chaos of sensations—another kind of phenomenal world, a kind “unknowable” for us[.][/size]
According to Nietzsche, then, there is no noumenal world, but only two kinds of phenomenal world, both of which are will to power and nothing besides (see ibid., paragraph 4).

Good summary Sauwelios. Looking more closely at premise 1 - Nothing else is “given” as real except our world of desires and passions, and we cannot get down, or up, to any other “reality” besides the reality of our drives - I’ve been reading on who Nietzsche was influenced by in his formulation of the will to power. I’ve come up with the following influences, Schopenhuaer, Heraclitus, Roux, Rolph, Boscovich, and Newton. It seems to be a mixture of the philosophies of each.
You’re probably familiar with Schopenhauer and Heraclitus’ influence so I shan’t repeat it.
Roux and Ralph were biologists. Nietzsche read their works from 1880-85. Roux was dissatisfied with Darwin’s explanation of evolution and sought to grant ‘internal conditions’ more influence, rather than Darwin’s ‘external conditions’. Roux claims our organs struggle against one another in competition for nutriments, and exploits the ‘external conditions’ for this end. He claims the ‘external’ doesn’t evolve us, it’s the ‘internal’ struggle that does so. This argument is identical to Nietzsche’s criticism of Darwin in one respect, claiming he emphasized external conditions to a ridiculuous extent and ignored the immense internal forming powers (see WP 647). Rolph’s hypothesis was the belief in the ‘principle of insatiablity’. He states life seeks to expand itself by being driven by an involuntary urge to assimilate and increase its intake of nutriments. All organic functions, apparently, can be explained and reduced to the ‘principle of insatiability’. See WP 689 for Nietzsche’s almost identical view. Then there’s the influence of the physicists Boscovich and Newton. WP 619 sees Nietzsche stating the victorious concept of force which the physicists have explained the physical world should also be used to explain the ‘inner world’. Man now becomes a ‘centre of force’ (BGE 12), and not an atom or substance. I suspect right here that drives, desires, and passions are only a centre of force with no intrinsic qualities. Newton shelved the belief in intrinsic qualities and went onto explain things only in terms of measured force, Nietzsche has incorporated this perspective. Nietzsche cannot claim the drives, desires, and passions have any intrinsic value as this would see him slipping into the transcendent metaphysical doctrines he spends a considerable amount of time refuting.
I believe it’s a mixture of all the above philosophies; but we shouldn’t underestimate the influence of Schopenhuaer’s ‘will to live’. It seems Nietzsche has taken this perspective but completely drained it of Kantian metaphysics and replaced it with a ‘metaphysics of experience’, and also replaced ‘live’ with ‘power’.

This somehow reminds me of a passage I wanted to quote when discussing statement # 10:

[size=95]From a very large number of experiments, two primitive drives emerged as dominant: the desire for power and the emotion of fear. And when Nietzsche came to understand fear as the feeling of the absence of power, he was left with a single motivating principle for all human actions: the will to power.
[R.J. Hollingdale, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Introduction, section 4.][/size]
I would really like to know to which experiments he is referring, and whether they are still up-to-date, scientifically.

In the Kaufmann translation, it speaks of an “inner will”, not an “inner world”. Cox says it should say “inner world”, as the German original says so, and it does indeed in the edition I have. But I think that is a typo in that edition, and Cox uses the same edition; moreover, “inner world” makes no sense in that context. I would like to compare the Ludovici translation, though, which however I don’t have.

Premise # 1 contains a ‘sub-premise’ (a). I think the premise is the conclusion of a ‘sub-syllogism’, of which said ‘sub-premise’ is a premise.

Sub-syllogism I

a. Thinking is merely a relations of our drives to each other.
b. …

1. Nothing else is “given” as real except our world of desires and passions, and we cannot get down, or up, to any other “reality” besides the reality of our drives.

I think premise 1b should read: “All contents of consciousness other than thoughts, if any, are also only drives or relations of drives.” For only then would the sub-syllogism be valid.

I think this may have to do with Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation. Thinking is Representing, or at least an instance of Representing. Nietzsche is thus basically saying that Representing, or at least this instance of Representing, is Willing. I don’t think Schopenhauer said representation was ultimately also will. I think this is a point at which Nietzsche fundamentally disagrees with Schopenhauer, and did so even at the beginning of his philosophical career:

[size=95][Nietzsche’s fundamental opposition to Schopenhauer] emerges almost immediately, as Nietzsche presents both the Dionysian and the Apollinian as both “tendencies” and, “drives” (Tendenzen; Triebe) in human nature; also as “impulses,” as “energies that are satisfied.”
[Martha Nussbaum, “The transfigurations of intoxication”, section 5.][/size]

Reading through the first few posts I am struck [as I often am] by how abstract these arguments are. Basically they are rational only to the extent they abide by the internal logic of the meaning given to the words.

They are, by and large, merely words defining and defending other words.

Why are there no connections being made to the world we actually live in?

For example, how does Nietzsche’s “will to power” manifest itself in world of war? in politics? in Wall Street boardrooms? in gangs? in moral conflicts?

“For many, abstract thinking is toil; for me, on good days, it is feast and frenzy”.
(Nietzsche, as quoted in Heidegger, Nietzsche, Vol. I, chap. 1, trans. Krell.)

You’re free to do so in your own thread.

Yeah, I was just lazy when typing it out.

I am not sure if I am on track here, but the entirety of the human soul, I have come to understand, is a “centre of force”. Drives, passions, and desires, then, are the “forces” emitting from the “centre” (the soul). So you are basically right, I would presume, that Nietzsche had already defined energies or force in the opening section of The Birth of Tragedy; however, in BT these “burst forth from nature without the mediation of the human artist”, and not the human “soul”. I believe in his ‘mature’ philosophy he would maintain force “bursts” from the soul, and not nature herself.
“Thinking” is a comparing of one drive state, passion, or desire with another drive state, passion, or desire (see BGE 16), or, one drive, passion, or desire trying to subdue another drive, passion, or desire. Each drive, passion, or desire has a teleology and is named according to that teleology (e.g. hunger, sex, reading, swimming). The drive’s different teleologies then enables us to distinguish them from each other. These differing drives then allows Nietzsche to go onto call the soul a “subjective multiplicity” and “social structure of the drives and affects” (BGE 12).

Note: In Australia we spell “center” as “centre”.

In war, politics, gangs, and conflicts it could be explained as two or more opposing forces vying for power. The stronger force subdues the weaker force, e.g. Nazi Germany was subdued by a stronger force, America subdued Iraq (well, we’ll see on that one), and so forth.