My friends, it has been sad to see that aletheia’s words seem to have been entirely disregarded. I have hesitated to respond, as I do not know of the effort of dedicated writing will be made worthwhile by dedicated reading on your side. But on waking up today I found the trust that it will. And I trust that this explanation will for now be sufficient. It goes without saying that I ( and aletheia, and others whom I am fortunate to count among my allies and co-workers ) will continue to build and expand this theory. However it is very time consuming and I have a lot of other work to do, so I will in the future prefer to do it in an environment dedicated strictly to this theory and its ramifications, which also means revaluation of other thought systems in the terms of this one. I will be coming back to this thread in the future, so by all means make your thoughts known and formulate your criticisms (or those of others which you think are unaddressed by any of what I or aletheia have written – we are as ‘interchangeable’ as craftsmen of the same craft ), but for now this is my last entry. Again, I trust that it will have sufficed to clarify these ideas, at the very least as a useful clarification of the conditions of the will to power, at best as a perspective opening up entirely new philosophical vistas.
It is clearly not an absurd question, as N answers it directly – units.
What is a unit? How can it be? I ask these questions as it is clear that in a world-image of flux this is not a given. What is the mechanism whereby a unit may exist in the face of flux? This is what my theory addresses.
Units are not explained by positing / observing them. We can only make a unit logically understandable in terms of its relating to other units.
The “form” or “modus” of this relating is the will to power. But how do we understand the term relating itself? This is the subject of my theory.
What is relating? One value standing in proportion to another. This relating means that they exist in a shared value-system. This is how I use the term value.
By self-valuing I mean: by maintaining ones structural nature positing a value system, in which a relation may take place, in which otherness is to be dominated/subjected to as (in terms of) self. Relating without disintegrating requires firm value-positing. Willing to power demands firmness of self-value.
One either holds oneself as a fixed value, or disintegrates. In the latter case, there can be no willing to power.
I say the contrary - valuing-itself is what makes it a self. Only by consistently positing itself / holding itself as a consistent value – a standard by which it relates to otherness – can it exist as a unit and thereby relate.
Chaos can not relate. Self-valuing emerges not out of nothing, but out of chaos. It is crucial to understand the difference. The former (to speak of nothing as if it is a condition from which anything may arise) is irratonal, the latter is not.
Where I break from Nietzsche is where I say that unit-ness is not given, that only chaos, no-thingness (other than nothing-ness), is given. There is no “chaos of sensations” or “chaos of wills” - these are self-contradicting phrases.
This is where I see the contradiction in Nietzsches thought – on the one hand he states that all is a flux, on the other hand, to explain what this flux is (will to power), he had to posit units. To explain becoming at the root of all being, he has to posit being at the root of becoming.
We may then say that the order is: chaos-beings-flux. Flux is the highest order, for which beings are required.
I am looking into the core of elementary beings/forces/wills. What enables them the persistence of their activity – their being?
The fact that they can relate to whatever they are not, while maintaining a difference from what they are not. The fact that their relating includes them.
Willing is not an explanation of valuing, whereas valuing does explain how will is possible.
This is because value is a term bridging the gap between physics and metaphysics. Consider this for a moment. What does value mean? It conveys both the principles of information (which borders on the metaphysical (in the sense of beyond-physical)) and worth (which is physicality as subjectivity). My theory, when understood, makes metaphysics as separate from physics impossible, and logically grounds physicality in subjectivity.
A final example - the proposed apple. The apple values whatever is in the sap or light it receives in terms of itself. It does not value it in terms of a pear or cat. It will incorporate everything it can incorporate in accordance with its self-valuing, and reject everything it can not. It interprets in terms of itself, which means that it uses itself as the standard-value to all valuation/interpreting/overpowering. This consistent using-what-one-is as a standard to expand on, is what I mean by self-valuing.
Consistency is defined as activity. In this way, the revaluation of the static Platonic values is completed.