A thread ( not a threat as I began to write, but all it is somewhat daunting to me ) to investigate if there is any use in trying to bring strongly differing thinkers together around a central concept; if not the mere use of the concept binds them enough - the logic of self-valuing entities thrown together dictates that those who have similar values are as often as they are able to help one another by recognizing each others needs, forced to contradict each other and claim the value that both value; to have it contribute to their own self-valuing and not the other’s; cooperation is not always accumulative. There must be a common aim.
Is there such an aim?
I can’t begin the thread and set the aim. That would already annihilate the significance.
I fear that this will be forced to be a pre-structuralist project. A definition of “space” would already require equal terms. We are in the pre-spatial dimension; the only dimension we can ‘walk’ at first is the self-valuing logic. Space must be drawn, time must be sown.
Space between self-valuings exists in so far as they exchange values. Most basically, gravity, electromagnetism. Less basically, the ecological cycle of Earth. If there is no exchange of values, there is no space either; if there is no relation into which both partake on comparable terms, it is a matter of chaos or usurping, there is no space but there is progression. Time involves always the filling in of space, as space is nothing besides the preconditions to time. We can not observe what is not being ‘created’ in the sense of synthesized. Conscious creation involves the close scrutiny of synthesis; the courage to abandon the things as they are and look at how they are torn apart by specific processes; creation involves a form of cruelty. Can we be brought to the precipice of such cruelty under the banner of reason?
Important for that cruelty is also the self-cruelty of “humility”.
We might start this thread/t with Nietzsche’s idea of will to power; not because this is the best place but because it is the most common thus far, I would guess.
You’re right that a shared aim is probably lacking or at least invisible, un-manifest. I wonder what that says, a shared aim that has not been able to be expressed and known-- assuming a shared aim does exist. I do assume it exists, because I choose to assume the philosophical motive underlies all honest thinking, that motive being in a word, truth.
Truth can be a shared aim most easily across meta-philosophies, which is unfortunately where I spend much of my time, and this larger picture is a ground from which many of my more practical philosophical projects spring. This makes me less useful when it comes to cooperating with more practical, limited projects, although I should point out that any intent by those projects to engage a wider view beyond themselves would reap much benefit. Then again, benefit and growth are often enough less motives for the concrete aim than is a controlled maintaining of pre-figured powers.
I can’t be too critical of that nor of the stabilized emotional constructs that underlie such motives, because I understand and know personally what is on the other side of that divide… But I’m guessing this is already become too “esoteric”.
Shared aim, or to state a thing as plainly and directly as possible, to minimalize and adequatize it; I’m not very good at that, since it involves cutting off my own method of thinking. But perhaps I can throw something out there: my aim is to situate the will to power with respect to what delimits it and to its actual aim/causal background. Past and future should flow from the will to power, not to it. All great ideas it is the responsibility and joy of the philosopher alone to transcend, situate and ‘destroy’ (make into something greater), and never to turn into a religious object. We must contribute, build, push beyond, we must be vessels of existence, pure translators of truth.
Of course if one is an artist that does not apply so much, he may certainly be a defined process of delimitation to this or that world-force. Philosophy is only for those for whom it is strictly necessary, all others would better live as artists or lovers.
I don’t know if I accomplished anything toward your objective here, FC. If not let’s just skip this and jump in somewhere else, I’ll take your lead or Sauwelios lead if he wants to be the one to initiate.
Pride can also be cruel on oneself; think Seppuku. Or simply the often ‘unnecessarily’ tough lives of those who do not abandon their highest selfvaluing.
It is indeed the root of our most certain terrain of agreement; the ground of value ontology.
Let’s hear Sauwelios on this.
Would you two be ok with me playing the debate-leader? I have mainly the desire to see if you two, both very highly esteemed by me, can understand one another. That may mean as much as to find out whether VO is powerful enough to overrule strongly different tastes.
In general I would like to investigate the function of taste in willing to power.
The last part; self-valuing uses improvement to secure maintenance, humans differ to great degrees in terms f how conservative or experimental they need to be to self-value.
To the first; Could you explain roughly that you mean by meta-philosophies? I am not sure either of us three is interested in specialization; this is after all antithetical to philosophy. Our art is to aspire to address úniversal bein’g; what we see is that the aim of universality brings out the individual differences between humans, especially philosophers. hey are after all the most self-explicated human beings; the nature of self-valuing, difference, is visible most in them. Admiration and disgust between humans is accentuated between philosophers. Perhaps to express less of ourselves as a whole, and more of a shared valuing in particular (a particular modus of thought in this case) - our aim must surely be one of architwecture of some sort. Ourselves as pillars. Disciplined, voluptuopus with restraint; too much nor too little; all must carry the same weight, etc. This also means that all are able to rely on the others appropriate discernment of first meaning (what is meant) and then truth (is this in accordance with what I have found to be true).
The impression that I have is that the first stage is causing the problems.
Well, the storms of Jupiter take some doing to translate to rains over the deserts of mankind. On the other hand we are all three people who derive our visions form ‘the gods’ - be it the visions of Miltons Giants or the powers of mind that lurk beyond our direct control, which we tease out by some externally unfathomable subtleties - all of us have been taught our arts by the same dancing gods. We have found a courage in something that we all value beyond all else - but is it exactly the same thing? That is what we are maybe going to find out.
Then this should be your ‘function’ in this experiment’, I would say; to raise the end of the edifice that supports the West; the future, the direction of the Sun; Sauwelios would represent the East; where the Sun rises, the history of thought, the ages; maybe it is wise to orient our discussion with the help of such metaphors. Not sure.
Such experiments have ended ion failure upon failure; Natural World Order, Humanarchy, the various disasters with others; but what doesn’t kill it makes it stronger; the thought itself kept self-valuing with remarkable power. It has grown stronger, even as all these all too human projects of cooperation found their natural fates. what we do here may be either all too human or something as sublime as Before The Light, the first project and the only one that corresponds with the nature of the situation; we are indeed still well before the dawn of reason. I have always had the patience of the farmer; the sun wont be up for a while but our éarly morning work is to draw the first inks into the splitting darkness.
I push upward through philosophy by understanding the philosopher himself, and the ‘truth-seeking’ impulse that grounds other things more ‘human’; philosophizing about philosophy is what I mean here by meta-philosophy. In such a context many other things find and fall into their natural place. But one’s instincts also shrink before the immensity of one’s vision, before the immensity of our purpose as someone once said.
I’m not surprised when two thinkers cannot relate to each other, I am more surprised when they can.
I think a shared aim must be as concrete and grounded in the earth as possible. If for a person truth itself is not such a concrete aim and earthiness, then I honestly have almost no way of relating to them honestly. The real problem is there are so few people like this, for whom truth itself is able to move everything. I probably cannot “cooperate” with anyone who isn’t like that. Or maybe I just balk at the effort it would take.
The other thing I value is good writing style and personality, a forcefulness with words, a “way of communicating” oneself. So I guess we ought to just start exchanging a large amount of our personal writings, see where that gets us. This would probably be better than trying for more direct confrontations, for now.
I think it’s probably best to note where this thread is coming from. I first heard of it before it was started, when Fixed Cross told me in a private email that MechanicalMonster and he had noticed some good posts of mine–by which I think he meant (some of) my posts in James S. Saint’s “Value Ontology Benefits” thread up to and including this one:
Fixed Cross then went on to tell me that MechanicalMonster had–supposedly (partially) as a result of those posts–proposed “to cultivate a rigorous Nietzsche/VO thread” with the three of us. This, then, is that thread. I have some ideas for it, but I think it would be best if MM and FC, as I will henceforth call you in this thread, would specify which posts, or which passages, you found especially worthy of notice, and why. We could then take it from there.
I also think FC should be more than a debate-leader. First off, I’m not sure it should necessarily be a debate, and secondly, I think MM and I should both try to make ourselves understood to FC where we can’t seem to make ourselves understood to each other. FC can then try to make his understanding, in turn, understood to the other. In other words, there’s a weaker link between MM and me than between either of us and FC, so we should use that indirect connection to complement the direct one.
At this point, my heart is not really in it. The “remarkable” posts in James’s thread occurred naturally in the discussion that started with my first post, which was specially about political philosophy. At the moment I’m really interested in the notion of “Nietzschean superhumanism versus transhumanism”.
[size=95]“Ye shall only have enemies to be hated, but not enemies to be despised. Ye must be proud of your enemies; then the successes of your enemies are also your successes.” (Thus Spake Zarathustra, Of War and Warriors.)[/size]
For what it’s worth, here’s what I had before I changed my mind and wrote what I wrote.
::
In James’s thread, I quoted part of the following passage (which I myself wrote):
[size=95]Nietzsche does of course not says “Being is willing to power”, but “life is will to power” or “Living is will to power” (Leben ist Wille zur Macht). However, he also says we have no other concept of Being than as Living. And a will is a Willing. Thus: Being is Willing to power. But the notion of selfhood or Being is lacking in “Willing to power”. It seems that only a self or a being could will. The specific notion of selfhood or Being as power is lacking, and therefore Heidegger said the doctrine of the will to power only answered the guiding question of metaphysics–the question what beings are–, and not its grounding question–the question what Being is. Value Metaphysics (as I call it) makes this step, by not speaking of Willing power but of Willing selfhood–Willing Being. And yes, that is a self-reference, a circularity.[/size]
It is not my aim to delimit the will to power in the sense of saying “there is more”; rather, it is to expand it, by saying “it is more”. The “power” in “will to power” means much more than the narrow sense in which people usually understand it. It becomes too broad, however,–too general, too abstract–until we specify the meaning of “power”. We expand the will to power, then, precisely by delimiting it.
To expand on the notion of Being as power, it may be helpful if I quote at length from Laurence Cooper’s Eros in Plato, Rousseau, and Nietzsche. There, the Nietzschean counterpart to Platonic eros is understandably the will to power; Platonic eros, however, is understood as follows:
[size=95]“[I]f philosophy isn’t erotic in any ordinary sense, it is nevertheless erotic in the truest sense. For it understands that what we most deeply want, or what would most deeply satisfy us, is not immortality but experience of the eternal and infinite. That is eros’ true aim, which means that what is normally called eros is a defective version of the desire for the good based on a misapprehension of what would really satisfy us. Ordinary eros, in fact, is based on two delusions: first, that immortality–earthly immortality–is possible, whether through children, fame, or lasting works; second, that, if attained, it would bring comprehensive satisfaction.” (Cooper, op.cit., page 95.)[/size]
Now the second part of Cooper’s book is dedicated to eros in Rousseau, and the first section of that part (chapter 5 of the book) is titled “Between Eros and Will to Power: Rousseau and ‘The Desire to Extend Our Being’”. In it, Cooper writes:
[size=95]“The good, as the desirable, is fulfilling either of our deepest desire (Plato) or our highest desire (Kant, and also Plato). What, then, are our deepest and our highest desires?
Rousseau has an answer worth considering. […] Rousseau holds that there is one good, arising from one desire, that outranks all others and indeed comprehends them, in the sense that these other goods are good only to the extent that they participate in or contribute to the primary good. In this, Rousseau’s good is comparable to Plato’s good. Yet Rousseau’s good is not, in its content, presented as synonymous with Plato’s, and Rousseau does not endorse or otherwise indicate that he subscribes to the Platonic conception of eros. The kinship between his thought and Plato’s appears to be formal or structural more than substantive. Rather than suggest that there is some particular condition or state of being or content of consciousness that constitutes the good for human beings, he holds that the good exists in maximized existence, that is, felt existence, or, as he calls it, the sentiment of our being, a good whose rather formal and abstract name points to the fact that it can be gained through a number of means. Rather than suggest that we all long for or are drawn to transcendence of our finitude and mortality (which would seem to be the core meaning of eros), he seems to hold that our desire for the good, that is, our desire to exist, a desire whose name is self-love, is more a push than a pull and an intrinsically directionless, nonteleological push at that. Self-love is inherently expansive: it seeks to extend one’s very being or self–though not, apparently, to any particular end.” (Cooper, op.cit., pp. 136-37.)[/size]
To say that life (or that being as life) has no end or goal/aspiration other than itself or than “expansion” would be a simplification and distortion, for the structure of what we call living or consciousness is rooted far beyond itself in greater and wider circles-- expansion is a sign of basically concentric and hierarchical finitizations of which “beings” are partialities. But we were talking about Being.
Being can most accurately and completely be described as truth, which is to say if we want to speak of life and the “living as being” (manifest being-ness, will to power) as depth. What is depth? Depth is connection and openness, unconscious or pre-conscious receding linkages through material and immaterial substances; depth is a reality as well as a sign of the underlying mechanics of method, here we have a unity of episteme and ousia.
Consciousness expresses a formal system of moving into relation to larger realities and logics, what we call expansion is grounded in one aspect or pole of this structure just as the other pole is rooted in coherence and recoherence, in resisting the expansive, dissociating impulse. Meaning circles back upon itself in consciousness and becomes the actual contents and “subjectivity” of a given consciousness, as “living as being”, which is to say that formal structure alone cannot reveal anything about the “nature of life” or of existence except to define some outer parameters beyond which our momentary reason cannot yet travel. Therefore it is a huge mistake to rest in these categories of rational (de)limitation in terms of that which to and for consciousness is pronounced as most real, substantive, meaningful, true.
Every shade of philosophy or ethics reflects one such place of temporary rest, where some such categorical configuration and series of psychologically-procured drives have been reified beyond their proper scope, thus once an intimation of this appears irresistably to us we also gain a subtler idea of a more essential “expansivity” as if growth, will, creation, were somehow the secret truth all along, when in reality our constitution and psychological makeup has not even yet prepared us, let alone in our highest ideas, for receiving any such “secret truths”. This is of course where Nietzsche and cynical scientific modernity fall victim to the same trap, a trap that so-called postmodernity struggles to break free of. We should read the often absurd “at all costs” associated with that struggle of the postmodern spirit as a sign of the danger and seriousness of the trap itself.
Then we are also speaking of Being itself which might be at this point most adequately described as this very pre-figuring schematism itself (and consequently beginning to be encapsulated by a Peircean approach to logic and the “metalogical”), the ebb and flow of tides which momentarily coordinated configurations speak convincingly of will, freedom, strength or even beauty, good and right. Expansion defeats itself in a sufficiently greater purview in which such expansion might actually be comprehended and given a true context-- in that largeness once finally invoked expansion loses its momentum and its majesty, becoming just one more abstracted dynamism that, once we really see it clearly, plays a largely derivative role in the grand succession of things, in the more eternal bend and ideality. Life cannot comprehend itself without undoing that comprehension, hence the vast diversity of conscious forms and moments, and too this vagarity and profusion cannot be comprehended its own structure and ‘essence’ without likewise un-making those very coordinations and organizations that we call life, consciousness, or truth. Being aims to draw itself as a veil around its contents, around an interiority; philosophy cannot root itself either in the structure of that being’s drawing-itself-around nor in some kind of abstraction and generalization from beings to Being along similar routes… philosophy must instead go bravely into the center, into the depths and darkness, into the contents themselves and bring with it as tools all former powers of abstraction, formalism, categorical will, phenomenal passion, ethical freedom, etc. But philosophy isn’t ready for that yet, not nearly there yet. So we can basically work to bring about such possibilities and transformations in the philosophical spirit, if we really want to contribute something. Or we can be human and coordinate human substances among the living and non-living, freedom and slavery as ultimate bounds for our valuation. In the absence of being required to sit oneself in the hell of philosophy, the next best thing is to seat oneself firmly in our humanity, to be human.
That is a mistranslation. The zu means ‘for’, not ‘to’, and Wille is not always merely ‘will’, as you can see if you consult a good German-English dictionary. Thus, Leben ist Wille zur Macht = ‘Life is the desire for power’.
The English “will” can also be synonymous with “desire”, so you don’t really have a point there.
Moreover, you’re also wrong there, as the Wille in Wille zur Macht does expressly not mean “will” in the sense of “desire”.
As for zu, that means as literally “to” as Wille obviously literally (etymologically) means “will”.
The only reason to translate it as “for” is if the context demands it, for instance because there is as little such a thing as a “desire to” as a “will for” something.
But, to be sure, there is an even more literal possible translation than mine above: “Living is will to might”.—
No. ‘Will to’ in English is followed only by a verb (will to win, will to fight, will to live, etc.). The ‘to’ is thus not a preposition but part of the infinitive. The translation ‘will to power’ is not only incorrect, it is impossible.
Zu in German does not mean only ‘to’. For example, zum Beispiel means ‘for example’. Ich bin zu Berlin means ‘I am in Berlin’. Er is nicht zu Hause means ‘he is not at home (or in)’. To say I am going home, you say nach Hause, not zu Hause.
No, Ornello merely broke ILN 1 (I Love Nietzsche) and ILSC (I Love Social Criticism).
tab ILF (“I Love Fun”),
(2) ILG (“I Love Gossip”),
(3) ILL (“I Love Lies”),
(4) ILN 1 (“I love Nietzsche”),
(5) ILN 2 (“I love Nonsense”),
(6) ILN 3 (“I Love Nothing”),
(7) ILP (“I Love Philsophy”) (that means: averagely merely 12.5% (1/8) are really interested in philosophy),
(8) ILSC (I Love Social Criticism).[/tab]
The Nietzschean(ist)s do not know what Nietzsche meant - as usual.
But perhaps the German philologist Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche did also not know what he meant.
“Ich bin in Berlin” <=> “I am in Berlin”.
Instead of “Er ist nicht zu Hause (zuhause)” you can also say “Er ist nicht daheim” <=> “He is not at home”.
Instead of “Ich gehe nach Hause” you can also say “Ich gehe heim” <=> “I am going home” or “I go home”.
The English (and b.t.w.: also the Low German) preposition “to” is the right translated form of the High German preposition “zu” in the term “will to power” or “will to might” <=> “Wille zur Macht”. But it is also true that the English (and b.t.w.: also the Low German) preposition “to” requires a following verb, if the foregoing word is a noun, and this is mostly also required by the High German preposition “zu”.
Are you shocked now?
So again: perhaps the German philologist Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche did also not know what he meant.
The German preposition “zu” does not always but mostly also require a following verb, if the foregoing word is a noun. “Wille zur Macht” or “Liebe zum Detail” are examples of the absolutely accepted exceptions of a rule. So the preposition “zu” in the term “Wille zur Macht” is the right preposition, and therefore the term “Wille zur Macht” is correctly translated by “will to power (might)”.
No, it is not. ‘Will to’ can never be followed by a noun in English. It’s impossible. The ‘to’ is not a preposition here, but part of the infinitive (‘to live’, ‘to fight’). There is no such thing as ‘will to (noun)’. But in German, Wille zu is followed by a noun, sometimes a nominalized verb (Wille zum Leben). Thus, Wille zur Macht is perfectly normal. The zur means ‘for’, just as it does in zum Beispiel. Thus, since ‘for’ is the correct translation of zur (and ‘to’ is incorrect), a noun such as ‘desire’ or ‘wish’ is called for.
Had you lived before roughly the turn of the twentieth century, you may have had a point. Living languages like English are not fixed, however. So, like it or not, there has been a tradition of the phrase “will to” followed by a noun in English for well over a century now.
Yes, it means different things in different contexts, as I already pointed out. The language into which one translates it may require different words in different contexts. This does not change the fact that the German literally says “to example” (more literally “to the byplay”), “I am to Berlin”, “he is not to house”, etc.
Yes, literally “after house”. Compare the fact that one may also say “desire after” instead of “desire for”. This may serve as a hint as to the difference between “will to power” and “desire for power”: the will to power reaches all the way to power, it touches power–it is not removed from power. Thus Nietzsche writes:
[size=95]“‘Willing’ is not ‘desiring,’ striving, demanding [‘begehren’, streben, verlangen]: it is distinguished from these by the affect of commanding.” (Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 668, Kaufmann translation.)[/size]
Whoever wills is thereby already a commander–one in power.
[quote=“Sauwelios”]
Nonsense. ‘Will to (noun)’ is not a proper construction in English. There may be some influence from the mistranslation that we are discussing.
By the way, Kaufmann’s translations are full of egregious errors.
Während auf palästinensischer Seite heute der Wille zu verzeichnen ist, zu fordern, daß die Europäische Union in den Friedensprozeß […]
While the Palestinian side is currently demonstrating a desire to seek European intervention in the peace process, there are […]
Dieser gemeinsame Wille zu Veränderung hat in der Wirkung dazu geführt, dass der Anteil unrentabler Geschäfte bei LANXESS […]
The effect of this common commitment to change has been to greatly reduce the share of unprofitable businesses within LANXESS as measured by EBITDA margin.
Zu diesen zählen beispielsweise das Vermeiden von Leid, der Wille zu leben, die Freiheit und die Verwirklichung von Interessen an sich. tierrechte-muelheim.de
These interests are for example the avoidance of pain, the will to live, to live in freedom and the realization of interests itself.
[…] den EU-Außenbeziehungen strukturell angelegtes und daher wiederkehrendes Problem: die Frage nach der Gewichtung der Wertedimension im Verhältnis zu Staaten, die gravierende Defizite bei der Achtung der Menschenrechte und der Herrschaft des Rechts aufweisen und in denen der politische Wille zu substantiellen Reformen fehlt.
However, a divergence of opinion emerged in relation to a structural and therefore recurring question within EU foreign policy: what role should values play in the EU’s relationship with states that lack the political will for substantive reforms and exhibit grave deficits in their respect of rule of law and human rights?
