As noted in the preceding chapter, the term will to power first appears in the works Nietzsche authorized for publication in Thus Spoke Zarathustra in the passage “One Thousand and One Goals”:
Much that was good to one people was scorn and infamy to another: thus I found it. Much I found called evil here, and decked out with purple honors there.
Never did one neighbor understand the other: ever was his soul amazed at the neighbor’s delusion and wickedness.
A tablet of the good hangs over every people. Behold, it is the tablet of their overcomings; behold, it is the voice of their will to power. (Z, 170)
Vieles, das diesem Volke gut heiss, heiss einem andern Hohn und Schmach: also fand ich’s. Vieles fand ich hier böse genannt und dort mit purpurnen Ehren geputzt.
Nie verstand ein Nachbar den andern: stets verwunderte sich seine Seele ob des Nachbarn Wahn und Bosheit.
Eine Tafel der Güter hängt über jedem Volke. Siehe, es ist seiner Überwindungen Tafel; siehe, es ist die Stimme seines Willens zur Macht. [KGW VI/1, 70]
The context of this passage concerns human behavior and morality. What people deem “good” and “evil” are manifestations of their will to power. “A tablet of the good” is a metaphor for a moral system that members of a given society or community of people share. Whatever moral system a community has is “the voice of their will to power.” In other words, a people’s will to power is expressed by their moral system, and the kind of moral system a society has will reflect or inform us about the kind of will to power of that society. Fortunately for us in our attempt to understand will to power, Nietzsche does discuss different types of moralities. He bifurcates moral systems into two typologies—“master” and “slave” moralities. Nietzsche explicitly states that these two classifications are generally heuristic devices and are rarely found in “pure” form in either a community or even a single individual.1
In order to understand what Nietzsche means by “master” and “slave” morality, we will examine Nietzsche’s genealogy, or “family history,” of morals as presented in his later works—On the Genealogy of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil. He describes the purpose of On the Genealogy of Morals as a “psychological analysis of the counter-concepts of a noble morality and a morality of ressentiment.”2 In this book Nietzsche seeks to uncover the sources of morality which would reveal the “value of these values themselves.”3
Nietzsche juxtaposes the notions of good and evil with the notions of good (noble) and bad (base). From an etymological review of the word good, Nietzsche finds that
everywhere “noble,” “aristocratic,” in the social sense, is the basic concept from which “good” in the sense of “with aristocratic soul,” “noble,” “with a soul of high order,” with a “privileged soul” necessarily developed. (GM I, 4)
dass überall “vornehm,” “edel” im ständischen Sinne der Grundbegriff ist, aus dem sich “gut” im Sinne von “seelisch-vornehm,” “edel,” von “seelisch-hochgeartet,” “seelisch-privilegirt” mit Nothwendigkeit heraus entwickelt. [KGW VI/2, 275]
Here Nietzsche suggests that the idea “good” describes a certain class of people—namely, the aristocrats. “Good” designates a certain class of people and not what “ought to be done.” Actions are judged good because aristocratic people perform them and not because those actions were “good in themselves.” As Nietzsche writes in Beyond Good and Evil,
It is obvious that moral designations were everywhere first applied to human beings and only later, derivatively, to actions. (BGE, 260)
Es liegt auf der Hand, dass die moralischen Werthbezeichnungen überall zuerst auf Menschen und erst abgeleitet und spat auf Handlungen gelegt worden sind. [KGW V1/2, 219]
Conversely, bad is etymologically derived from such words as common, plebeian, and low, which also applied to a class of human beings and not to actions.4 Thus, according to Nietzsche, “good” and “bad” merely denote what class of person performed the action with no judgment whether one class is morally better than the other.5 This is changed, however, by the “common folk.” They see the disparity in power (e.g., monetary, military, personal, and political power) between themselves and the aristocracy.
Unable to overcome directly the aristocrat’s power, resentment begins to build in the common people from their powerlessness. This is Nietzsche’s insight of ressentiment.6 The common people’s resentment of the aristocrats motivates the creation of their own meanings of good and bad. Having neither the external, physical strength to confront the aristocracy, they use the only avenue open to them—moral condemnation. As Nietzsche states in On the Genealogy of Morals,
The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values. (GM I, 10)
Der Sklavenaufstand in der Moral beginnt damit, dass das Ressentiment selbst schöpferisch wird und Werthe gebiert. [KGW VI/2, 284]
The traits and deeds of the common people become “good”—not in the sense of being descriptive of actions of the aristocracy but in the prescriptive sense of what they ought to do—and the traits and deeds of the aristocracy become not just “bad”—in the sense of a description of what common people do—but “evil” in the moral sense created by the resentful common people. The term evil connotes an immorality, a sinfulness, that the more descriptive term bad (of the aristocracy) lacks. Only in this way can the common people feel superior to the aristocracy. But this way of creating a moral system is reactionary—it devolves from the reaction of the common people to the aristocracy. On the other hand, the aristocratic values do not take the common people into consideration at all. The aristocracy’s values simply stem from whatever the aristocracy chooses to affirm or condemn:
Every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself. (GM I, 10)
Alle vornehme Moral aus einem triumphirenden Ja-sagen zu sich selber herauswächst. [KGW V1/2, 284]
Aristocratic morality is “active”—it originates from itself, and its values are determined from within the aristocracy. What is “good” enhances the aristocracy; what is “bad” does not. Conversely, the common people’s morality is reactive—it originates from outside itself, namely, from their reaction to the aristocracy.7 Thus, slave-type morality is derivative.
Nietzsche designates an active, “good and bad” moral system as “master” morality and a reactive, “good and evil” moral system as “slave” morality. What is meant by good in master morality is quite different from what is meant by good in slave morality owing to the differences in the origins of each morality. That is why Nietzsche thinks it is important to investigate the history, the genealogy, of morals. Slave morality not only inverts the values of the nobility, it invests them with a moral invective—it is not simply “other” or “different” but “evil” or “sinful.” What the aristocracy would deem “good,” slave morality deems “evil.” Master morality and slave morality designate types of morality, not actual, historical moralities; however, Nietzsche considers Christianity an example of a slave-type morality. In The Antichrist Nietzsche writes,
In my Genealogy of Morals I offered the first psychological analysis of the counter-concepts of a noble morality and a morality of ressentiment—the latter born of the No to the former: but this is the Judeo-Christian morality pure and simple. So that it could say No to everything on earth that represents the ascending tendency of life, to that which has turned out well, to power, to beauty, to self-affirmation, the instinct of ressentiment, which had here become genius, had to invent another world from whose point of view this affirmation of life appeared as evil, as the reprehensible as such. (AC, 24)
Ich habe in meiner “Genealogie der Moral” zum ersten Male den Gegensatz-Begriff einer vornehmen Moral und einer ressentiment-Moral psychologisch vorgeführt, letztere aus dem Nein gegen die erstere entsprungen: aber dies ist die jüdisch-christliche Moral ganz und gar. Um Nein sagen zu können zu Allem, was die aufsteigende Bewegung des Lebens, die Wohlgerathenheit, die Macht, die Schönheit, die Selbstejahung auf Erden darstellt, musste hier sich der Genie gewordne Instinkt des ressentiment eine andre Welt erfinden, von wo aus jene Lebens-Bejahung als das Böse, als das Verwerfliche an sich erschien. [KGW VI/3, 190]
The Judeo-Christian slave-type morality creates an entire cosmology where an omnipotent being can determine eternal bliss or damnation. The cosmology includes a God who not only creates the laws and moral standards but also is powerful enough to enforce punishments for eternity. By making master-type traits “evil” or sins, believers of slave-type morality ensure their own eternal happiness and the nonbelievers’ eternal doom. In this way, slave-type morality believers transform their resentment into an entire system that prefers the slave traits. The morality has the added advantage that, by being based on a transcendent cosmology, it cannot be disproved by empirical means. For Nietzsche, Christianity is a huge fiction or myth created out of ressentiment by slave-type people in order to diminish the master-type people’s dominion.
Nietzsche believes that the slave-type believer does not knowingly manufacture this cosmology with the express purpose of retaliation against the master type. Rather, Christianity is the result of nonconscious or subconscious resentment. Nietzsche refers to this as “sublimated” resentment—or ressentiment. Consciously, Christians sincerely believe that Christianity is the “true picture” of the universe and is not a myth. Subconsciously, slave-type people realize that they are in too weak a position to directly express their anger, so their resentment becomes suppressed, and the suppression or sublimation eventually expresses itself in an indirect and reactive manner. It is Nietzsche’s contention that Christianity is the product of ressentiment because it is based on a powerful supreme being who values and rewards the virtues of the meek and disenfranchised and damns and punishes the virtues-turned-to-sins of the aristocracy. By creating an otherworldly God who sees and knows everything, even our inner thoughts, and who administers praise and damnation, the slave-type individual is not making any overt moves against those individuals of the master type. It is God who has created the moral code, not the common people. It is God who judges the goodness of individuals, not the common people. It is God who determines what punishments or rewards are given, not the common people. The common people are as subordinated to this absolute moral code as the aristocrats, so the aristocrats cannot blame or be aggressive against the common people. It is pure “luck” that the traits of the common people “naturally” coincide with what God deems virtuous. No wonder Christianity is so appealing to the powerless.
According to Nietzsche, another indication of slave-type morality (and so Christianity) is that it attempts to equalize everyone. Everyone is as deserving or as culpable as the next person with respect to rights and responsibilities, whether they are political rights or the religious “right” to enter heaven:
The poison of the doctrine of “equal rights for all”—it was Christianity that spread it most fundamentally. Out of the most secret nooks of bad instincts, Christianity has waged war unto death against all sense of respect and feeling of distance between man and man, that is to say, against the presupposition of every elevation, of every growth of culture, out of the ressentiment of the masses it forged its chief weapon against us, against all that is noble, gay, high-minded on earth, against our happiness on earth. “Immortality” conceded to every Peter and Paul has so far been the greatest, the most malignant attempt to assassinate noble humanity.
And let us not underestimate the calamity which crept out of Christianity into politics. Today nobody has the courage any longer for privileges, for masters’ rights, for a sense of respect for oneself and one’s peers—for a pathos of distance. Our politics is sick from this lack of courage. (AC, 43)
Das Gift der Lehre “gleiche Rechte fur Alle”—das Christenthum hat es am grundsätzlichsten ausgesät; das Christenthum hat jedem Ehrfurchts—und Distanz—Gefühl zwischen Mensch und Mensch, das heisst der Voraussetzung zu jeder Erhöhung, zu jedem Wachsthum der Cultur einen Todkrieg aus den heimlichsten Winkeln schlechter Instinkte gemacht,—es hat aus dem Ressentiment der Massen sich seine Hauptwaffe geschmiedet gegen uns, gegen alles Vornehme, Frohe, Hochherzige auf Erden, gegen unser Glück auf Erden. . . . Die “Unsterblichkeit” jedem Petrus und Paulus zugestanden war bisher das grösste, das bösartigste Attentat auf die vornehme Mensclichkeit.—Und unterschätzen wir das Verhänginiss nicht, das vom Christenthum aus sich bis in die Politik eingeschlichen hat! Niemand hat heute mehr den Muth zu Sonderrechten, zu Herrschafts-Rechten, zu einem Ehrfurchts-Gefühl vor sich und seines Gleichen,—zu einem Pathos der Distanz. . . . Unsere Politik is krank an diesem Mangel an Muth! [KGW VI/3, 215–16]
In terms of deserving respect, or, in the case of Christianity, deserving to get into heaven, no one has inherently a greater claim than anyone else. Nietzsche sees this leveling maneuver as unnatural:
That little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes—such an intensification of every kind of selfishness into the infinite, into the impertinent, cannot be branded with too much contempt. And yet Christianity owes its triumph to this miserable flattery of personal vanity: it was precisely all the failures, all the rebellious-minded, all the less favored, the whole scum and refuse of humanity who were thus won over to it. (AC, 43)
Dass kleine Mucker und Dreiviertels-Verückte sich einbilden dürfen, dass um ihretwillen die Gesetze der Natur beständig durchbrochen werden—eine solche Steigerung jeder Art Selbstsucht ins Unendliche, ins unverschämte kann man nicht genug Verachtung brandmarken. Und doch verdankt das Christenthum dieser erbarmungswürdigen Schmeichelei vor Personal-Eitelkeit seinen Sieg,—gerade alles Missrathene, Aufständisch-Gesinnte, Schlechtweggekommene, den ganzen Auswurf und Abhub der Menschheit hat es damit zu sich überredet. [KGW VI/3, 215]
That “little prigs and three-quarter madmen” should be equally deserving of respect as, say, Goethe, sickens Nietzsche. Equality is unnatural because, from Nietzsche’s observations, people are very different—with different traits, abilities, and personalities. These observations suggest to Nietzsche that people should be accorded differing amounts of respect. This amounts to “ranking” individuals and moralities as well:
The difference among men becomes manifest . . . in the difference between their tablets of goods—in the fact that they consider different goods worth striving for and also disagree about what is more or less valuable, about the order of rank of the goods they recognize in common. (BGE, 194)
Die Verschiedenheit der Menschen zeigt sich . . . in der Verscheidenheit ihrer Gütertafeln, also darin, dass sie verschiedene Güter fur erstrebenswerth halten und auch über das Mehr und Weniger des Werthes, über die Rangordnung der gemeinsam anerkannten Güter mit einander uneins sind. [KGW VI/2, 117]
But what are the criteria for ranking individuals or moralities? Nietzsche never explicitly states these criteria, so trying to cull out possible criteria for ranking is difficult. However, in Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche provides us with some clues to how he might rank moralities. At one point he says that having an instinct for rank is one clue that one is of a higher rank—a self-serving criterion at best!8 In aphorism 259 he gives more helpful clues for ranking moralities. In this aphorism he is criticizing those moral and political theories that advocate equality:
Refraining mutually from injury, violence, and exploitation and placing one’s will on a par with that of someone else—this may become, in a certain rough sense, good manners among individuals if the appropriate conditions are present (namely, if these men are actually similar in strength and value standards and belong together in one body). But as soon as this principle is extended, and possibly even accepted as the fundamental principle of society, it immediately proves to be what it really is—a will to the denial of life, a principle of disintegration and decay. (BGE, 259)
Sich gegenseitig der Verletzung, der Gewalt, der Ausbeutung enthalten, seinen Willen dem des Andern gleich setzen: dies kann in einem gewissen groben Sinne zwischen Individuen zur guten Sitte werden, wenn die Bedingungen dazu gegeben sind (namlich deren thatsächliche Ahnlichkeit in Kraftmengen und Werthmaassen und ihre Zusammengehörigkeit innerhalb Eines Körpers). Sobald man aber dies Princip weiter nehmen wollte und womöglich gar als Grund princip der Gesellschaft, so würde es sich sofort erweisen als Das, was es ist: als Wille zur Verneinung des Lebens, als Auflösungsund Verfalls-Princip. [KGW VI/2, 217]
Anything that “denies life” would deserve a low ranking. If we were to discover what Nietzsche considers “life” to be, we would be in a better position to know what would count as “denying life.” Nietzsche presents his perspective of “life” in the immediately succeeding passages:
Life is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of what is alien and weaker, suppression, hardness, imposition of one’s own forms, incorporation and at least, at its mildest, exploitation. (BGE, 259)
Leben selbst ist wesentlich Aneignung, Verletzung, Überwältigung des Fremden und Schwächeren, Unterdrückung, Härte, Aufzwängung eigner Formen, Einverleibung und mindestens, mildestens, Ausbeutung. [KGW VI/2, 217]
This is not a rosy picture of the world, but Nietzsche warns us at the same time not to feel sentimental about life and not to think pejoratively of these descriptive words. It is only because we have been raised in a culture that puts negative values on these words that we find them deprecatory. We might instead regard these descriptions as evaluatively neutral descriptions, to be taken as no more value laden than scientific “facts” about the world. Thus, we should consider “Life is exploitation” to be as value laden a sentence as “Koala bears eat eucalyptus leaves.” We consider it neither good nor bad that koalas eat eucalyptus leaves; they merely do. Analogously, it is neither good nor bad that life is exploitation; it merely is. Again, “Life is exploitation” merely describes the way the world is for Nietzsche; it is not to be taken prescriptively, as how the world should be.
It is not such an impossible task to view these words neutrally, for there are many contexts in which the words do not have pejorative connotations. We can suppress laughter, exploit a mine for its ore, and incorporate new ideas into a belief system. Suppressing a laugh in a certain social situation may be prudent on your part, but no one would accuse you of doing something evil or immoral to your laughter.9
Nietzsche believes equality denies life because it leads to mediocrity. Individuals would be encouraged to be like everyone else and not to pursue their own individual excesses and excellences. We need only to read the prologue of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Nietzsche’s description of the last man to understand where he thinks equality will lead:
No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse. (TSZ, 130)
Kein Hirt und Eine Heerde! Jeder will das Gleiche, Jeder ist gleich: wer anders fühlt, geht freiwillig in’s Irrenhaus. [KGW VI/1, 14]
In this scenario even uniquely excellent people are forced to “settle” for equality, for the “happiness” of the mediocre in a society that demands equality. But this manufactured “happiness” is a kind of death for humans who are not mediocre. It denies the unique and authentic individual existence humans at either end of the spectrum would live if not subjected to live up or down to the middle.
If all moralities, ranked high or low, are expressions of will to power, then this one term must account for both master-type and slave-type moralities. Because these moralities are in opposition to each other, we are left with two ways of interpreting the role will to power plays in moralities. Either will to power has within it two distinguishable, but not metaphysically distinct, aspects, or pure slave morality is the complete negation or absence of will to power.
Is there any evidence in Nietzsche’s texts as to which interpretation is correct? It is here that I suggest we turn our attention to the “will to” part of will to power in order to answer this question. If we are to talk about “will,” we must be sure of what we are discussing, for there are many places where Nietzsche claims that there is no such thing as “will”:
In the beginning there is that great calamity of error that the will is something which is effective, that it is a capacity. Today we know that it is only a word. (TI, “Reason in Philosophy,” 5)
Am Anfang steht das grosse Verhängniss von Irrthum, dass der Wille Etwas ist, das wirkt,—dass Wille ein Vermögen ist. . . . Heute wissen wir, dass er bloss ein Wort ist. [KGW VI/3, 71]
The “will” in this passage refers to our usual, “everyday” notion of will—as a capacity humans have that enables them to effect change according to their wishes. The slightest human introspection supposedly reveals this will, and for Nietzsche, many philosophers, most notably Descartes and Schopenhauer, fail to consider the matter any further; they believe the will is wholly self-evident through direct introspection of their “inner” selves.
It is this supposedly transparent, “self-evident” will that Nietzsche believes does not exist. Nietzsche believes that what we usually take will to denote is neither self-evident nor singular. Will is a word we use to denote the outcome of a very complex and obscured series of operations of which we have severely limited knowledge, if indeed we have any knowledge of it at all. We like to think that our “will” is something over which we have complete control. But according to Nietzsche’s characterization, it seems we are under “its” control, and there really is no one “thing” that controls us; it stands for many drives that are constantly competing with one another to actualize their impulses. We are not conscious of many of these operations. Thus, will does not denote a single entity or capacity for Nietzsche. Will is shorthand, a linguistic “economy,” for many internal operations—recall the competing drives (Triebe) Nietzsche describes in Daybreak—going on that cannot be, or at least are not, known by us.
Our experience of ourselves, our self-knowledge, is not wholly clear and immediate (or as Descartes puts it, “clear and distinct”), according to Nietzsche. Our experience of ourselves may be only a part of a whole dynamic and complex interplay of drives. For Nietzsche, we are aware only of the “winning” drives, the drives that manage to subvert or overpower other ones. What we are conscious of may be just a small part of this:
For we could think, feel, will, and remember, and we could also “act” in every sense of that word, and yet none of all this would have to “enter our consciousness” (as one says metaphorically). The whole of life would be possible without, as it were, seeing itself in a mirror. Even now, for that matter, by far the greatest portion of our life actually takes place without this mirror effect. (GS, 354)
Wir könnten nämlich denken, fühlen, wollen, uns erinnern, wir könnten ebenfalls “handeln” in jedem Sinne des Wortes: und trotzdem brauchte das Alles nicht uns “in’s Bewusstsein zu treten” (wie man im Bilde sagt). Das ganze Leben ware möglich, ohne dass es sich gleichsam im Spiegel sahe: wie ja thatsächlich auch jetzt noch bei uns der bei weitem überwiegende Theil dieses Lebens sich ohne diese Spiegelung abspielt. [KGW V/2, 272]
We might not be conscious of our entire experience, which may be much more complicated than we realize. The feelings, thoughts, and volitions that we are aware of may be only a portion, and perhaps a very small portion, of the chaotic drives and impulses of which we are composed.
Similarly, Nietzsche suggests that “will” is more complex than we are aware. There is no such thing as a self-evident, efficient capacity that we set in motion—“will”—for Nietzsche. That “will” does not exist except as a simplifying term in our language. Hence, when we try to account for things by appeal to this “everyday” notion of the “will,” we are mistaken.
I believe the crucial passage is aphorism 19 of Beyond Good and Evil. Here Nietzsche is doing something akin to a conceptual analysis of “will” and “willing.” The first move Nietzsche makes is to persuade us that “will” is not what we commonly think it is:
Philosophers are accustomed to speak of the will as if it were the best-known thing in the world: indeed, Schopenhauer has given us to understand that the will alone is really known to us, absolutely and completely known, without subtraction or addition. But again and again it seems to me that in this case, too, Schopenhauer only did what philosophers are in a habit of doing—he adopted a popular prejudice and exaggerated it. Willing seems to me to be above all something complicated, something that is a unit only as a word—and it is precisely in this one word that the popular prejudice lurks, which has defeated the always inadequate caution of philosophers. (BGE, 19)
Die Philosophen pflegen vom Willen zu reden, wie als ob er die bekannteste Sache von der Welt sei; ja Schopenhauer gab zu verstehen, der Wille allain sei uns eigentlich bekannt, ganz und gar bekannt, ohne Abzug und Zuthat bekannt. Aber es dünkt mich immer wieder, dass Schopenhauer auch in diesem Falle nur gethan hat, was Philosophen eben zu thun pflegen: dass er ein Volk-Vorurtheil übernommen und übertrieben hat. Wollen scheint mir vor Allem etwas Complicirtes, Etwas, das nur als Wort eine Einheit ist,—und eben in Einem Worte steckt das Volk-Vorurtheil, das über die allzeit nur geringe Vorsicht der Philosophen Herr geworden ist. [KGW VI/2, 25–26]
The first thing we may notice in this passage is that by this time (1886) Nietzsche’s uncritical affection for Schopenhauer has vanished. In chapter 1 it is said that “will” was Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, the one constituent of the noumenal world to which everything could be reduced. Now Nietzsche questions, What, precisely, is denoted by that word? Nietzsche suggests it is merely “popular prejudice” that will denotes one indivisible and self-evident thing. And philosophers, too, have used the word will as if everyone knew to what it referred and no further discussion was warranted. Nietzsche, however, regards “will” as not so clear and unitary. What is “will” for Nietzsche? He writes,
So let us for once be more cautious, let us be “unphilosophical”: let us say that in all willing there is, first, a plurality of sensations, namely, the sensation of the state “away from which,” the sensation of the state “towards which,” the sensations of this “from” and “towards” themselves, and then also an accompanying muscular sensation, which, even without our putting into motion “arms and legs,” begins its action by force of habit as soon as we “will” anything. (BGE, 19)
Seien wir also einmal vorsichtiger, seien wir “unphilosophisch”—, sagen wir: in jedem Wollen ist erstens eine Mehrheit von Gefühlen, nämlich das Gefühl des Zustandes, von dem weg, das Gefühl des Zustandes zu dem hin, das Gefühl von diesem “weg” und “hin” selbst, dann noch ein begleitendes Muskelgefühl, welches, auch ohne dass wir, “Arme und Beine” in Bewegung setzen, durch eine Art Gewohnheit, sobald wir “wollen” sein Spiel beginnt. [KGW VI/2, 26]
This passage suggests that Nietzsche regards “will” as internally dualistic. “Will,” although linguistically denoted by a single word, is first, according to Nietzsche, a complex operation consisting of many sensations or feelings of two states, “toward which” and “away from which,” accompanied by sensations of muscular activity (whether or not any particular arm or leg moves). Along with these various sensations are associated thoughts:
Therefore, just as sensations (and indeed many kinds of sensations) are to be recognized as ingredients of the will, so, secondly, should thinking also: in every act of the will there is a ruling thought—let us not imagine it possible to sever this thought from the “willing,” as if any will would then remain over! (BGE, 19)
Wie also Fühlen und zwar vielerlei Fühlen als Ingredienz des Willens anzuerkennen ist, so aweitens auch noch Denken: in jedem Willensakte giebt es einen commandirenden Gedanken;—und man soll ja nicht glauben, diesen Gedanken von dem “Wollen” abscheiden zu können, wie als ob dann noch Wille übrig bleibe! [KGW VI, 26]
When we think of human “will,” we can understand Nietzsche’s analysis. Our “popular prejudice” about our will is that, first, we have a conscious desire to do something and, second, that our desire communicates itself to the will, which then moves the appropriate muscles to accomplish the task. But Nietzsche notices the enormity of this scenario: How do conscious desires relate to the will? How do they communicate this desire to the will? How does the will relate to the physical body? How does “it” know what the appropriate muscles to activate are? How is the will effective? For Nietzsche, there is no separate entity called “will” that interacts with thoughts and desires and is the “middleman” between our desires and our muscles. Nietzsche continues,
Third, the will is not only a complex of sensation and thinking, but it is above all an affect, and specifically the affect of the command. That which is termed “freedom of the will” is essentially the affect of superiority in relation to him who must obey: “I am free, ‘he’ must obey”—this consciousness is inherent in every will; and equally so the straining of the attention, the straight look that fixes itself exclusively on one aim, the unconditional evaluation that “this and nothing else is necessary now,” the inward certainty that obedience will be rendered—and whatever else belongs to the position of the commander. A man who wills commands something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience. But now let us notice what is strangest about the will—this manifold thing for which the people have only one word: inasmuch as in the given circumstances we are at the same time the commanding and the obeying parties, and as the obeying party we know the sensations of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and motion, which usually begin immediately after the act of will; inasmuch as, on the other hand, we are accustomed to disregard this duality, and to deceive ourselves about it by means of the synthetic concept “I,” a whole series of erroneous conclusions, and consequently of false evaluations of the will itself, has become attached to the act of willing—to such a degree that he who wills believes sincerely that willing suffices for action. Since in the great majority of cases there has been exercise of will only when the effect of the command—that is, obedience; that is, the action—was to be expected, the appearance has translated itself into the feeling, as if there were a necessity of effect. In short, he who wills believes with a fair amount of certainty that will and action are somehow one; he ascribes the success, the carrying out of the willing, to the will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensation of power which accompanies all success. “Freedom of the will”—that is the expression for the complex state of delight of the person exercising volition, who commands and at the same time identifies himself with the executor of the order—who, as such, enjoys also the triumph over obstacles, but thinks within himself that it was really his will itself that overcame them. (BGE, 19)
Drittens ist der Wille nicht nur ein Complex von Fühlen und Denken, sondern vor Allem noch ein Affect: und zwar jener Affect des Commando’s. Das, “Freiheit des Willens” gennant wird, ist wesentlich der Überlegenheits-Affect in Hinsicht auf Den, der gehorchen muss: “ich bin frei, ‘er’ muss gehorchen”—dies Bewusstsein steckt in jedem Willen, und ebenso jene Spannung der Aufmerksamkeit, jener gerade Blick, der ausschliesslich Eins fixirt, jene unbedingte Werthschätzung “jetzt thut dies und nichts Anderes Noth,” jene innere Gewissheit darüber, dass gehorcht werden wird, und was Alles noch zum Zustande des Befehlenden gehört. Ein Mensch, der will—, befiehlt einem Etwas in sich, das gehorcht oder von dem er glaubt, dass es gehorcht. Nun aber beachte man, was das Wunderlichste am Willen ist,—an diesem so vielfachen Dinge, für welches das Volk nur Ein Wort hat: insofern wir im gegebenen Fallezugleich die Befehlenden und Gehorchenden sind, und als Gehorchende die Gefühle des Zwingens, Drängens, Drückens, Widerstehens, Bewegens kennen, welche sofort nach dem Akte des Willens zu beginnen pflegen; insofern wir anderseits die Gewohnheit haben, uns über diese Zweiheit vermöge des synthetischen Begriffs “ich” hinwegzusetzen, hinwegzutäuschen, hat sich an das Wollen noch eine ganze Kette von irrthümlichen Schlüssen und folglich von falschen Werthschätzungen des Willens selbst angehängt,—dergestalt, dass der Wollende mit gutem Glauben glaubt, Wollen genüge zur Aktion. Weil in den allermeisten Fällen nur gewollt worden ist, wo auch die Wirkung des Befehls, also der Gehorsam, also die Aktion erwartet werden durfte, so hat sich der Anschein in das Gefühl übersetzt, als ob es da eine Nothwendigkeit von Wirkung gäbe; genug, der Wollende glaubt, mit einem ziemlichen Grad von Sicherheit, dass Wille und Aktion irgendwie Eins seien—, er rechnet das Gelingen, die Ausführung des Wollens noch dem Willem selbst zu und geniesst dabei einen Zuwachs jenes Machtgefühls, welches alles Gelingen mit sich bringt.“Freiheit des Willens”—das ist das Wort für jenen vielfachen Lust-Zustand des Wollenden, der befiehlt und sich zugleich mit dem Ausführenden als Eins setzt,—der als solcher den Triumph über Widerstände mit geniesst, aber bei sich urtheilt, sein Wille selbst sei es, der eigentlich die Widerstände überwinde. [KGW VI, 26–27]
Essentially this passage informs us that Nietzsche believes there is no simple, unitary, and indivisible thing called the “will.” Instead, the “will” of which we are conscious is the conclusion of a complex struggle of drives “toward which” or “away from which.” We think we initiate action and the action occurs. But exactly which impulses must go out, which muscles must remain slack and which must tighten, are never truly in our control. We are cognizant of only our commands. That is because commanding gives us a feeling of power that obedience does not. By focusing solely on the “command” aspect of “will” as the executor of “will,” we are led to the “popular prejudice” of “free will.” But, as Nietzsche reminds us, there can be no “commanding” without “obeying”; there cannot be resistance without something resisting and something that must be resisted. A myriad of feelings are fighting for expression. Some of those feelings will “win out” over others; some feelings will “command” and others “obey.” Some thoughts about what to do next, what to go toward or away from, will be suppressed; others, pursued. For Nietzsche, intentions do not arise ex nihilo and “cause” actions. It only seems that way because we do not choose to focus on the “obeying” sensations. They do not give us a sensation of power.
These “dualistic” aspects of willing I believe provide the main clue to interpreting will to power as pluralistic—that is, there are two states of will to power, “toward which” and “away from which.” I interpret these dual states to correspond to master and slave morality, respectively, if the state “toward which” is considered active and life affirming and the state “away from which” is considered reactive and life denying.10
The third essay of On the Genealogy of Morals also supports the view that will to power is inherently pluralistic. Here Nietzsche discusses the meaning of ascetic ideals. As we saw earlier, Nietzsche believed Christianity was an example of a slave-type morality. Thus, the ascetic, the height of the religious practitioner, represents individual slave-type traits to a high degree. Of the ascetic priest Nietzsche says,
We can no longer conceal from ourselves what is expressed by all the willing which has taken its direction from the ascetic ideal: this hatred of the human, and even more of the animal, and more still of the material, this horror of the senses, of reason itself, this fear of happiness and beauty, this longing to get away from all appearance, change, becoming, death, wishing, from longing itself—all this means—let us dare to grasp it—a will to nothingness, an aversion to life, but it is and remains a will! . . . And to repeat in conclusion what I said at the beginning: man would rather will nothingness than not will. (GM III, 28)
Man kann sich schlechterdings nicht verbergen, was eigentlich jenes ganze Wollen ausdrückt, das vom asketischen Ideale her seine Richtung bekommen hat: dieser Hass gegen das Menschliche, mehr noch gegen das Thierische, mehr noch gegen das Stoffliche, dieser Abscheu vor den Sinnen, vor der Vemunft selbst, diese Furcht vor dem Glück und der Schönheit, dieses Verlangen hinweg aus allem Schein, Weschel, Werden, Tod, Wunsch, Verlangen selsbst—das Alles bedeutet, wagen wir es, dies zu begreifen, einen Willen zum Nichts, einen Widerwillen gegen das Leben, eine Auflehnung gegen die grundsatzlichsten Voraussetzungen des Lebens, aber es ist und bleibt ein Wille. . . . Und, um es noch zum Schluss zu sagen, was ich Anfangs sagte: lieber will Noch der Mensch das Nichts wollen, als nicht wollen. [KGW VI/ 2, 430]
The ascetic priest, who perpetuates and preaches the ascetic ideal, eschews this world and devotes time, actions, and thoughts toward the eternal, spiritual world—heaven. He or she pities and even despises the material world and its concerns, all of which are trifling and petty when compared with heaven and its rewards. But even this “slavish” ascetic wills, although what the ascetic wills is nothingness—the negation of everything Nietzsche considers life to be. One could will nothingness to the same degree as one could will something life enhancing. Given the intensity of some ascetics’ religious fervor, to say they are willing to a lesser extent than other, life-affirming people would seem clearly false.
To support the view that slave willing is not a lesser degree but, rather, a different kind of willing, it will be helpful to return to Beyond Good and Evil 19, where Nietzsche is analyzing “will.” After discussing the states “toward which” and “away from which” and the thoughts that accompany them, Nietzsche writes,
The will is not only a complex of sensation and thinking, but it is above all an affect, and specifically the affect of command. That which is termed “freedom of the will” is essentially the affect of superiority in relation to him who must obey: “I am free, ‘he’ must obey”—this consciousness is inherent in every will. . . . A man who wills commands something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience. But now let us notice what is strangest about the will—this manifold thing for which the people have only one word: inasmuch as in the given circumstances we are at the same time the commanding and obeying parties. (BGE, 19)
Drittens ist der Wille nicht nur ein Complex von Fühlen und Denken, sondern vor Allem noch ein Affekt: und zwar jener Affeckt des Commando’s. Das, was “Freiheit des Willens” genannt wird, ist wesentlich der Überlegenheits-Affekt in Hinsicht auf Den, der gehorchen muss: “ich bin frei, ‘er’ muss gehorchen”—dies Bewusstein steckt in jedem Willen. . . . Ein Mensch, der will—, befiehlt einem Etwas in sich, das gehort oder von dem er glaubt, das es gehorcht. Nun aber beachte man, was das Wunderlichste am Willen ist,—an diesem so vielfachen Dinge, für welches das Volk nur Ein Wort hat: insofern wir im gegebenen Falle zugleich die Befehlenden und Gehorchenden sind. [KGW VI/2, 26–27]
It is apparent from this passage that the very act of willing involves a struggle for superiority within oneself. The states “toward which” and “away from which” vie for command. The “victor” commands and the “loser” obeys, and either state may become the victor. All will inherently involves a struggle for superiority. “Willing” (in our everyday sense of human free will) is not the initiation of an action, according to Nietzsche, but already the outcome of a complex struggle within oneself to determine what will command and what will obey.
Nietzsche discusses “the weak” having will to power in other passages in his writings. He describes “the weak” as being those people who inspire or preach pity of humankind, which is indicative of slave morality:
They are all men of ressentiment, physiologically unfortunate and worm-eaten, a whole tremendous realm of subterranean revenge, inexhaustible and insatiable in outbursts against the fortunate and happy and in masquerades of revenge and pretexts for revenge; when would they achieve the ultimate, subtlest, sublimest triumph of revenge? Undoubtably if they succeeded in poisoning the consciences of the fortunate with their own misery, so that one day the fortunate began to be ashamed of their good fortune and perhaps said one to another: “it is disgraceful to be fortunate: there is too much misery!” (GM III, 14)
Das sind alles Menschen des Ressentiment, diese physiologisch Verunglückten und Wurmstichigen, ein ganzes zitterndes Erdreich unterirdischer Rache, unerschöpflich, unersättlich in Ausbrüchen gegen die Glücklichen und ebenso in Maskeraden der Rache, in Vorwänden zur Rache: wann würden sie eigentlich zu ihrem letzten, feinsten, sublimsten Triumph der Rache kommen? Dann unzweifelhaft, wenn es ihnen gelänge, ihr eignes Elend, alles Elend überhaupt den Glücklichen in’s Gewissen zu schieben: so dass diese sich eines Tags ihres Glücks zu schämen begönnen und vielleicht unter einandersich sagen: “es ist eine Schande, glücklich zu sein! es giebt zu viel Elend!” [KGW VI/2, 388–89]
These weak, unfortunate people resent the strong, fortunate people, so they parade their weaknesses and unhappiness in order to make the fortunate people feel guilty about their good fortune. And the weak do even more, according to Nietzsche. They attempt to turn their weakness (Nietzsche also calls it their “sickness”) into an asset. They reserve the title “good” for themselves:
At least to represent justice, love, wisdom, superiority—that is the ambition of the “lowest”, the sick. . . . They monopolize virtue, these weak, hopelessly sick people, there is no doubt of it: “we alone are the good and just” they say, “we alone are homines Bonae voluntatis.” They walk among us as embodied reproaches, as warnings to us. . . . There are among them an abundance of the vengeful disguised as judges, who constantly bear the word “justice” in their mouths like poisonous spittle, always with pursed lips, always ready to spit upon all who are not discontented but go their way in good spirits. . . . The will of the weak to represent some tyranny over the healthy—where can it not be discovered, this will to power of the weakest! (GM III, 14)
Die Gerechtigkeit, die Liebe, die Weisheit, die Überlegenheit wenigstens darstellen—das ist der Ehrgeiz dieser “untersten”, dieser Kranken! . . . Sie haben die Tugend jetzt ganz und gar für sich in Pacht genommen, diese Schwachen und Heillos-Krankhaften, daran ist kein Zweifel: “wir allein sind die Guten, die Gerechten, so sprechen sie, wir allein sind die homines bonae voluntatis.” Sie wandeln unter uns herum als leibhafte Vorwürfe, als Warnungen an uns. . . . Unter ihnen giebt es in Fülle die zu Richtern verkleideten Rachsüchtigen, welche beständig das Wort “Gerechtigkeit” wie einen giftigen Speichel im Munde tragen, immer gespitzten Mundes, immer bereit, Alles anzuspeien, was nicht unzufrieden blickt und guten Muths seine Strasse zieht. . . . Der Wille der Kranken, irgend eine Form der Überlegenheit darzustellen, ihr Instinkt für Schleichwege, die zu einer Tyrannei über die Gesunden führen,—wo fände er sich nicht, dieser Wille gerade der Schwächsten zur Macht! [KGW VI/2, 387–88]
It is evident from this passage that the weak, the “sick,” can express will to power. Some of the reasons “sick” will to power differs from “healthy” will to power are that the weak express their will to power by devious methods and that their objective—the downfall or equalization of the strong—is reactive and unnatural according to Nietzsche’s view of man. Nietzsche wants to promote strength of character. The weak use different means, such as indirect, covert, surreptitious ways, and have a different end, such as the reduction of the noble to the level of the base to express their will to power. This suggests that it is not a difference in degree but, rather, in kind—determined by the ends and means of will to power—that differentiates sick will to power from healthy will to power.
The weak express their will to power in an underhanded way. They try to “trick” the strong people into feeling guilty for their strength of character. And if the weak are successful in obtaining their goal, as Nietzsche is convinced they had been in nineteenth-century Europe through Christianity, it would certainly seem that the weak would exhibit a greater degree of will to power than the master-type people. In Christianity-based societies, the “weak” have a great deal of social, political, and moral power. It would seem absurd to assert that in these societies there is a very small amount of will to power. It would seem more reasonable to say that in these societies a different kind of will to power, a reactive, life-denying, ressentiment-based will to power, was operating.
However, there are two passages that provide textual evidence for the competing interpretation that slave morality might merely be a lesser degree, or smaller amount, of will to power. In On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche writes,
By prescribing “love of the neighbor,” the ascetic priest prescribes fundamentally an excitement of the strongest, most life-affirming drive, even if in the most cautious doses—namely, of the will to power. The happiness of “slight superiority” involved in all doing good, being useful, helping and rewarding, is the most effective means of consolation for the physiologically inhibited, and widely employed by them when they are well advised: otherwise they hurt one another, obedient of course, to the same basic instinct. (GM III, 18)
Der asketische Priester verordnet damit, dass er “Nächstenliebe” verodnet, im Grunde eine Erregung des stärksten, lebenbejahendsten Triebes, wenn auch in der vorsichtigsten Dosirung,—des Willens zur Macht. Das Glück der “kleinsten Überlegenheit,” wie es alles Wohlthun, Nützen, Helfen, Auszeichnen mit sich bringt, ist das reichlichste Trostmittel, dessen sich die Physiologisch-Gehemmten zu bedienen pflegen, gesetzt dass sie gut berathen sind: im andern Falle thun sie einander weh, natürlich im Gehorsam gegen den gleichen Grundinstinkt. [KGW VI/ 2, 401]
In this passage, the ascetic is prescribing small “doses” of will to power, so it seems that there are amounts of will to power, which would not contradict our first interpretation of two different kinds of will to power. But the above passage implies that will to power has only to do with striving for superiority, and, for Nietzsche, being able to give anything-love, aid, money, even harm or pain—reflects the giver’s superiority over the recipient. This would mean that, for Nietzsche, giving money to charities and inflicting pain on someone weaker express the same basic kind of act—a demonstration of superiority over someone else. The only difference would be that the former has monetary power to give and the latter an excess of physical power to “give.” The ascetic, by encouraging followers to give love, is encouraging the congregation to express will to power, even though this “loving superiority” is only a small dose of will to power. So it would appear from this passage that will to power is only one kind of act or will—the life-affirming striving for superiority—and people express differing amounts or degrees of this striving.
Later in this aphorism, Nietzsche again implies that will to power is only one certain kind, that of gaining superiority:
The “will to mutual aid,” to the formation of a herd, to “community,” to “congregation” called up early in this was (as a remedy for depression) is bound to lead to fresh and far more fundamental outbursts of that will to power which it has, even if only to a small extent, aroused: the formation of a herd is a significant victory and advance in the struggle against depression. . . . All the sick and sickly instinctively strive after a herd organization as a means of shaking off their dull displeasure and feeling of weakness. (GM III, 18)
In einem dergestalt hervorgerufnen “Willen zur Gegenseitigkeit,” zur Heerdenbildung, zur “Gemeinde,” zum “Cönakel” muss nun wiederum jener damit, wenn auch im Kleinsten, erregte Wille zur Macht, zu einem neuen und viel volleren Ausbruch kommen: die Heerdenbildung ist im Kampf mit der Depression ein wesentlicher Schritt un Sieg. . . . Alle Kranken, Krankhaften streben instinktiv, aus einem Verlangen nach Abschüttelung der dumpfen Unlust und des Schwächegefühls, nach einer Heerden-Organisation. [KGW VI/2, 401–02]
According to this passage, “sick” people band together not only to find solace in one another’s company but also to increase their will to power. It would seem that their individually small doses of will to power can become a considerable force as a collective will. Like the Russian army of World War I, where the sheer number of ill-equipped and untrained soldiers produced victories because their enemies ran out of ammunition, so it seems the magnitude of the herd could create a collective amount of will to power that could overcome the individually more powerful, but far fewer numbered, master-type aristocrats. Banding together to create a collective, stronger will to power is the only way individually weak, “sick” people can gain power.
The other passage that suggests that will to power is only one kind of willing—life—affirming willing—is in Twilight of the Idols. Here Nietzsche equates liberalism with the herd:
Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. Their effects are known well enough: they undermine the will to power, they level mountain and valley and call that morality, they make men small, cowardly and hedonistic—every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. (TI, “Skirmishes,” 38)
Die liberalen Institutionen hören alsbald auf, liberal zu sein, sobald sie erreicht sind: es giebt später keine ärgeren und gründlicheren Schädiger der Freiheit, als liberale Institutionen. Man weiss ja, was sie zu Wege bringen: sie unterminiren den Wille zur Macht, sie sind die zur Moral erhobene Nivellirung von Berg und Tal, sie machen klein, feige und genüsslich,—mit ihnen triumphirt jedesmal das Heerdenthier. [KGW VI/3, 133]
Because anything that is herdlike “undermines” will to power, Nietzsche seems to be associating the term will to power with only life-affirming, “masterly” actions.
However, the bulk of the will to power aphorisms in the works Nietzsche himself authorized for publication supports the pluralistic interpretation.11 Many of the aphorisms containing the phrase will to power are incomprehensible unless they are interpreted pluralistically. The best example of this is Beyond Good and Evil 51. I reproduce it in full:
So far the most powerful human beings have still bowed worshipfully before the saint as the riddle of self-conquest and deliberate final renunciation. Why did they bow? In him—and as it were behind the question mark of his fragile and miserable appearance—they sensed the superior force that sought to test itself in such a conquest, the strength of the will in which they recognized and honored their own strength and delight in dominion: they honored something in themselves when they honored the saint. Moreover, the sight of the saint awakened a suspicion in them: such an enormity of denial, of anti-nature will not have been desired for nothing, they said to and asked themselves. There may be a reason for it, some very great danger about which the ascetic, thanks to his secret comforters and visitors, might have inside information. In short, the powerful of the world learned a new fear before him; they sensed a new power, a strange, as yet unconquered enemy—it was the “will to power” that made them stop before the saint. They had to ask him. (BGE, 51)
Bisher haben sich die mächtigsten Menschen immer noch verehrend vor dem Heiligen gebeugt, als dem Räthsel der Selbstbezwingung und absichtlichen letzten Entbehrung: warum beugten sie sich? Sie ahnten in ihm—und gleichsam hinter dem Fragezeichen seines gebrechlichen und kläglichen Anscheins—die überlegene Kraft, welche sich an einer solchen Bezwingung erproben wollte, die Stärke des Willens, in der sie die eigne Stärke und herrschaftliche Lust wieder erkannten und zu ehren wussten: sie ehrten Etwas an sich, wenn sie den Heiligen ehrten. Es kam hinein solches Ungeheures von Verneinung, von Wider-Natur wird nicht umsonst begehrt worden sein, so sagten und fragten sie sich. Es giebt vielleicht einen Grund dazu, eine ganz grosse Gefahr, über welche der Asket, Dank seinen geheimen Zusprechern und Besuchern, näher unterrichtet sein möchte? Genung, die Mächtigen der Welt lernten vor ihm eine neue Furcht, sie ahnten eine neue Macht, einen fremden, noch unbezwungenen Feind:—der “Wille zur Macht” war es, der sie nöthigte, vor dem Heiligen stehen zu bleiben. Sie mussten ihn fragen. [KGW VI/2, 69]
This aphorism is perplexing if read according to the second, monomorphic interpretation of will to power as being only life affirming. In the above aphorism, the ascetic priest appears to have a very large “dose” of will to power; yet given the second interpretation of will to power, we would think that the ascetic, being the epitome of slave-type, life-denying morality, would exhibit a very small dose of will to power. But if this is so, why would the powerful human beings bow before the ascetic priest? What is Nietzsche presenting here?
This aphorism is crucial to resolving the dilemma in favor of the first interpretation of will to power—that will to power is at least dualistic. The opposing interpretation that will to power is only life affirming would create the contradiction in Beyond Good and Evil 51 that the ascetic priest had both a large and small dose of will to power. However, the pluralistic interpretation can deal with this passage fairly easily.
This ascetic represents the extreme of “away from,” or reactive, will to power. He is “otherworldly”—renouncing this world in favor of a transcendental afterlife. He embraces Christianity, which Nietzsche considers “slavish”; however, he has complete mastery over his emotions and faculties-hunger, lust, jealousy, and so on are all held in complete check by him. The priest exhibits a tremendous amount of power in relation to himself—all aspects of his person are under his firm control; he is not swayed by his passions. This overt, active, “masterly” control over oneself is attractive to “powerful human beings.” They sense a power in the ascetic that rivals their own. They must stop to ask. But ultimately this power is rejected by Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil 51 is an attempt to explain how powerful people, too, can be drawn to Christianity. Christianity is powerful, but on close inspection it reveals that it derives its power reactively; it is slave-type power.
We can look at this in the following way: master and slave morality are not opposites but, rather, counterparts of willing. The ascetic priest becomes the epitome of reactive will to power. As Nietzsche explains in the third essay in On the Genealogy of Morals, “Man would rather will nothingness than not will.” In other words, man will will anything, even something unreal or otherworldly (nothing), rather than not will at all. This implies that the opposite of willing is not willing nothingness but, rather, not willing at all. The ascetic priest wills nothingness to the greatest degree—he is the epitome of slave-type willing. And who would represent the epitome of master willing? The answer to that question remains unclear, although I would say that the extreme master will would be exemplified by Nietzsche’s Übermensch.
So the relationship between the Übermensch and the ascetic priest is analogous to the love/hate distinction. Love and hate can be interpreted as the two extremes of emotion one person can have for another, and because they share the common property of intensity of emotion, it can be argued that indifference is the opposite of love. Analogously, human beings will in various degrees, either actively or reactively:
There are master and slave morality—I add immediately that in all higher and more mixed cultures there also appear attempts at mediation between these two moralities, and yet more often the interpenetration and mutual misunderstanding of both, and at times they occur directly alongside each other—even in the same human being, within a single soul. (BGE, 260)
Es giebt Herren-Moral und Sklaven-Moral;—ich füge sofort hinzu, dass in allen höhren und gemischteren Culturen auch Versuche der Vermittlung beider Moralen zum Vorschein kommen, noch öfter das Durcheinander derselben und gegenseitige Missverstehen, ja bisweilen ihr hartes Nebeneinander—sogar im selben Menschen, innerhalb Einer Seele. [KGW VI/2, 218]
Because morality comes in master and slave types for Nietzsche, and because all morality is an expression of will to power, actions can be explained as some form of master (overt) or slave (covert) will. These types merely describe which “state of sensation” the action is—“toward” or “away.”
Deciding which actions are “toward” or “away” is no easy task. We cannot simply split all actions into one of these either/or categories, as this example from Thus Spoke Zarathustra illustrates:
You force all things to and into yourself that they may flow back out of your well as the gifts of your love.
Verily, such a gift-giving love must approach all values as a robber; but whole and holy I call this selfishness.
There is also another selfishness, an all-too-poor and hungry one that always wants to steal—the selfishness of the sick: sick selfishness. (TSZ, 187)
Ihr zwingt alle Dinge zu euch und in euch, dass sie aus eurem Borne zurückströmen sollen als die Gaben eurer Liebe.
Warlich, zum Raüber an allen Werthen muss solche schenkende Liebe werden; aber heil und heilig heisse ich diese Selbstsucht.
Eine andre Selbstsucht giebt es, eine allzuarme, eine hungernde, die immer stehlen will, jene Selbstsucht der Kranken, die kranke Selbstsucht. [KGW VI/1, 94]
We cannot simply say that “selfishness” is a master-type trait or a slave-type trait. When selfishness is a case of taking things into oneself so that they may flow out from one again, Nietzsche applauds it. When “selfishness” is simply taking things into oneself to keep to oneself, he calls it “sick selfishness.” Even pity, which seems to be the one emotion indicative of slave morality (it is the last temptation Zarathustra must overcome), can be an expression of the master type. In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche writes,
A man who is by nature a master—when such a man has pity, well, this pity has value. But what good is the pity of those who suffer. Or those who, worse, preach pity. (BGE, 293)
Ein Mann, der von Natur Herr ist,—wenn ein solcher Mann Mitleiden hat, nun! dies Mitleiden hat Werth! Aber was leigt am Mitleiden Derer, welchen leiden! Oder Derer, welche gar Mitleiden predigen! [KGW VI/2, 246]
As this passage suggests, the actions or emotions do not determine master from slave types, the type of person determines whether the action or emotion is “masterly” or “slavish.” Pity from people filled with ressentiment is different from pity from Zarathustra. We cannot always label pity “slavish” and automatically assign it into the category of slave-type morality. Nietzsche is far too subtle a thinker to be given to black-and-white distinctions, whatever his writings might suggest at first glance. Descriptive typologies, such as “master and slave,” are only starting points for discussing the complex state of nineteenth-century morality—how it arrived where it was and, for Nietzsche, how to go beyond it.
I have argued that the differences between master-type and slave-type moralities are explained by the two different aspects of will to power—active and reactive. These aspects are differentiated by the means and superficial ends by which will to power is expressed. Active will to power seeks its own independent goals and uses direct and overt means to achieve those goals. Reactive will to power adopts its immediate goals based on reactions to others’ goals and uses indirect, covert methods born from resentment to attain its goals. However, overtly or covertly, the ultimate end or goal for both healthy and sick forms of will to power is superiority or more power.
But what are we to make of those passages that imply that will to power is only of the life-affirming, active kind? Was Nietzsche simply confused or trying to be purposefully misleading? Will to power is a simple-sounding phrase, but it signifies a deceptively complex notion. In most of the passages in the published texts it seems clear that Nietzsche uses will to power to mean very generally any striving for superiority, active or reactive. It is only in a few places that Nietzsche seems to use a narrower sense of the term to denote only the active, overt aspect of will to power. I favor the pluralistic interpretation because it can make sense of all the passages in which will to power is used, while the more narrow, monomorphic interpretation can only make sense of a few passages.
If we remove the stipulation that the narrower sense imposes—that the striving for superiority must be life affirming—and at this point merely take will to power to mean the more general “striving for superiority” in either active (healthy, master-type) or reactive (sick, slave-type) sense, this allows the ascetic priest to express will to power but not necessarily in any life-affirming manner. This more general sense of the phrase also has the advantage of not eliminating the possibility of degrees (or doses) of will to power; there are differing degrees of master-type and slave-type will to power within cultures and individuals. The only interpretation that seems unwarranted is the reading that slave-type individuals evince no or only a small amount of will to power. As we have seen in aphorism 51 of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche describes ascetic priests as people who have a high degree of will to power.
Even though the majority of aphorisms containing will to power in the works Nietzsche authorized for publication does center around specifically human behavior, Nietzsche does not limit his discussions of will to power to only humans and morality. Nietzsche extends his notion of will to power to life in both Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil:
Where I found the living, there I found will to power . . . where there is perishing, a falling of leaves, behold, there life sacrifices itself—for power! . . . Only where there is life is there also will: not will to life but—thus I teach you—will to power! (TSZ, 226–27)
Wo ich Lebendiges fand, da fand ich Willen zur Macht; . . . wo es Untergang giebt und Blätterfallen, siehe, da opfert sich Leben—um Macht! . . . Nur, wo Leben ist, da ist auch Wille: aber nicht Wille zum Leben, sondern—so lehre ich’s dich—Wille zur Macht! [KGW VI/1, 143–45]
Physiologists should think twice before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength—life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results. (BGE, 13)
Die Physiologen sollten sich besinnen, den Selbsterhaltungstrieb als kardinalen Trieb eines organischen Wesens anzusetzen. Vor Allem will etwas Lebendiges seine Kraft auslassen—Leben selbst ist Wille zur Macht—: die Selbsterhaltung ist nur eine der indirekten und häufigsten Folgen davon. [KGW VI/2, 21]
“Exploitation” does not belong to a corrupt or imperfect and primitive society; it belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will to life. (BGE, 259)
Die “Ausbeutung” gehört nicht einer verderbten oder unvollkommnen und primitiven Gesellschaft an: sie gehört in’s Wesen des Lebendigen, als organische Grundfunktion, sie ist eine Folge des eigentlichen Willens zur Macht, der eben der Wille zur Lebens ist. [KGW VI/2, 218]
Thus the essence of life, its will to power, is ignored; one overlooks the essential priority of the spontaneous, aggressive, expansive, form-giving forces that give new interpretations and directions, although “adoption” follows only after this; the dominant role of the highest functionaries within the organism itself in which the will to life appears active and form-giving is denied. (GM II, 12)
Damit ist aber das Wesen des Lebens verkannt, sein Wille zur Macht; damit ist der principielle Vorrang übersehn, den die spontanen, angreifenden, über greifenden, neu-auslegenden, neu-richtenden und gestaltenden Kräfte haben, auf deren Wirkung erst die “Anpassung” folgt; damit ist im Organismus selbst die hereschlaftliche Rolle der höchsten Funktionäre abgeleugnet, in denen der Lebenwille aktiv und formgebend erscheint. [KGW VI/2, 332]
In these passages the references to “organism,” “organic function,” and “life” suggest not merely human life but all kinds of organisms from single-celled viruses to complex plants and animals. It is evident that Nietzsche extends the notion of will to power beyond only humans.
But how does will to power figure in the organic realm? If we are to believe Nietzsche, will to power is the explanation for any organism’s actions or behavior. In Beyond Good and Evil 13 Nietzsche states that self-preservation is an indirect result of will to power rather than the cardinal instinct of an organism. For Nietzsche, self-preservation is an inadequate explanation for organic actions because it cannot explain certain kinds of organic behavior. For instance, it cannot adequately explain why organisms do much more than is necessary merely for their own survival. An organism’s growth is more than self-preservation, for it could preserve itself in its present state rather than taking in more nourishment or sunlight that it would require for its growth. But plants and other nonhuman organisms grow, and Nietzsche believes self-preservation has difficulty explaining this growth. Instead, Nietzsche believes will to power can explain both self-preservation and growth. As a result of an organism striving to grow, trying to gain superiority over its environment, the organism is more likely to survive—preserve itself. Nietzsche’s explanation can explain more organic behavior than the explanation of self-preservation, and so Nietzsche considers will to power to be a better explanation for an organism’s behavior than self-preservation.
Nietzsche also sees will to power as a better explanation than scientific explanations. In On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche touts the value of historical method over scientific, or “mechanistic,” method:
I emphasize this major point of historical method all the more because it is in fundamental opposition to the now prevalent instinct and taste which would rather be reconciled even to the absolute fortuitousness, even the mechanistic senselessness of all events than to the theory that in all events a will to power is operating. The democratic idiosyncracy which opposes everything that dominates and wants to dominate, the modern misarchism (to coin an ugly word for an ugly thing) has permeated the realm of the spirit and disguised itself in the most spiritual forms to such a degree that today it has forced its way, has acquired the right to force its way into the strictest, apparently most objective sciences; indeed, it seems to me to have already taken charge of all physiology and theory of life—to the detriment of life, as goes without saying, since it has robbed it of a fundamental concept, that of activity. Under the influence of the above-mentioned idiosyncracy, one places instead “adaptation” in the foreground, that is to say, an activity of the second rank, a mere reactivity; indeed, life has been defined as a more and more efficient inner adaptation to external conditions (Herbert Spencer). Thus the essence of life, its will to power, is ignored; one overlooks the essential priority of the spontaneous, aggressive, expansive, form-giving forces that give new interpretations and directions, although “adaptation” follows only after this; the dominant role of the highest functionaries within the organism itself in which the will to life appears active and form-giving is denied. (GM II, 12)
Ich hebe diesen Haupt-Gesichtspunkt der historischen Methodik hervor, um so mehr als er im Grunde dem gerade herrschenden Instinkte und Zeitgeschmack entgegen geht, welcher lieber sich noch mit der absoluten Zufälligkeit, ja mechanistischen Unsinnigkeit alles Geschehens vertragen würde, als mit der Theorie eines in allem Geschehn sich abspielenden Macht-Willens. Die demokratische Idiosynkrasie gegen Alles, was herrscht und herrschen will, der moderne Misarchismus (um ein schlechtes Wort für eine schlechte Sache zu bilden) hat sich allmahlich dermaassen in’s Geistigste, Geistigste umgesetzt und verkleidet, dass er heute Schritt für Schritt bereits in die strengsten, anscheinend objektivsten Wissenschaften eindringt, eindringen darf; ja er scheint mir schon über die ganze Physiologie und Lehre vom Leben Herr geworden zu sein, zu ihrem Schaden, wie sich von selbst versteht, indem er ihr einen Grundbegriff, den der eigentlichen Aktivität, eskamotirt hat. Man stellt dagegen unter dem Druck jener Idiosynkrasie die “Anpassung” in den Vordergrund, das heisst eine Aktivität zweiten Ranges, eine blosse Reaktivität, ja man hat das Leben selbst als eine immer zweckmässigere innere Anpassung an äussere Umstände definirt (Herbert Spencer). Damit ist aber das Wesen des Lebens verkannt, sein Wille zur Macht; damit ist der principielle Vorrang übersehn, den die spontanen, angreifenden, übergreifenden, neu-auslegenden, neu-richtenden und gestaltenden Kräfte haben, auf deren Wirkung erst die “anspangung” folgt; damit ist im Organismus selbst die herrschaftliche Rolle der höchsten Funktionäre abgeleugnet, in denen der Lebenswille aktiv und formgebend erscheint. [KGW VI/2, 331–32]
This passage indicates that mechanistic theories are inadequate as the basic explanation of organic behavior for Nietzsche because he thought they could not account for organic activity except as reactions to the environment. Therefore, will to power would be considered a better explanation because it allows for the organism to act as well as react to its surroundings. The organism is not merely adapting to its environment—reacting to it—it is also actively affecting the environment. Will to power allows the organism to initiate at least some action rather than be solely a consequence of determined causes. Nietzsche rejects mechanistic explanations because they cannot explain why any action occurs in the first place; they can only explain how an action could occur. According to Nietzsche, mechanistic explanations are not all encompassing. For instance, they lack any teleological aspect a full explanation may warrant because there may be some cases of organic (and certainly human) behavior in which the consequences of that behavior figure into the explanation of the action. Nietzsche believes will to power can account for both teleological and mechanistic behavior, so it is a better explanation than mechanistic explanations alone.
We now must ask whether Nietzsche’s extension of will to power as an explanation of organic behavior alters our provisional meaning of will to power as a “striving for superiority.” At first glance the extension into the entire organic realm seems to have little effect on our provisional meaning. Instead of the claim that only humans strive for superiority, Nietzsche contends that all living beings strive for superiority, and this shift seems unproblematic. Even the two different kinds of striving, the active, life-affirming kind and the reactive, life-denying kind, can be observed in nonhuman life. The predatory animals might be good examples of aggressive, exploitive will to power. On the other hand, those animals that survive because of camouflage, for example, salamanders and chameleons, might be examples of reactive will to power. Spiders do not actively conquer flies; they catch them indirectly in webs that hold the flies until the spider is ready to feed on them.12 Spiders and chameleons survive and grow just as well as and sometimes better than lions and cheetahs; only the method of survival is different.
On closer inspection, however, extending will to power as an explanation for all organic behavior seems to raise some complications for interpreting will to power as a striving for superiority. The examples I just used are highly selective and are concentrated on the higher forms of nonhuman life. In the case of lionesses hunting their prey, the use of strive may make some sense to us. But perhaps we are being too anthropomorphic in our application of strive. Does “striving for superiority” imply an awareness of the striving? If so, we could not substitute striving for superiority for will to power, for there are many forms of life that we do not consider conscious or aware, and yet they must express will to power if life is will to power.
Strive does not necessarily involve consciousness. It can simply mean to engage or be engaged in some sort of struggle. Being engaged in a struggle does not necessarily involve awareness of the contention; it is sufficient that there is a struggle. Nonconscious organisms, such as bacteria, strive against each other and their environments, not just for survival but for dominance. For Nietzsche, the growth of an organism is evidence of that organism’s superiority over the forces around it, evidence of the organism’s increased power—its will to power.
But if Nietzsche believes that will to power is an explanation for all organic behavior at all levels of life from the microscopic to the most complex, there are some organic actions that seem quite mundane. These organic actions seem better explained by scientific, or mechanistic, explanation than by will to power. For example, one of the acts that an acorn does is become an oak tree. If all organic activity is explainable by will to power, then an acorn becoming an oak must be explained by the acorn’s striving for superiority. It seems strange to say that an acorn becomes an oak because of will to power. We are more inclined to explain the acorn’s actions by a mechanistic explanation. To the scientist, an acorn becomes an oak because that is what an acorn is, the seed of the oak, and the genetic information the acorn carries, along with favorable environmental factors, allows the acorn to germinate. In what way does the acorn “strive for superiority,” in this case, the superiority of being a sturdy oak?
If Nietzsche is right and all life is will to power, then there are trillions of struggles going on at every moment. At the cellular level, the genetic material is struggling to relay its information to the cells; it struggles to stay free from viruses or cancer-like mutations. At another level, the acorn struggles with the natural elements. If it lands on somewhat sandy soil, it will have a tougher struggle than if it lands in topsoil rich in nitrogen. It must also struggle with higher life forms. People and other animals possess so much more power than acorns that the struggle is over very quickly, if, say, an animal decides to eat it. Thus, if an acorn does take root and eventually grow into an oak, we can better understand how Nietzsche might consider this as evidence of will to power—the acorn has striven for superiority over the elements as well as other forces and has grown into an oak.
So the provisional interpretation of will to power as a striving for superiority remains understandable even when applied to nonconscious, nonhuman, organic life. But is this the extent to which will to power pertains? Some writers on Nietzsche claim that will to power is Nietzsche’s explanation for everything, that will to power is a metaphysical or cosmological principle for Nietzsche. In order for will to power to be an explanation for the entire cosmos, both the inorganic and organic realms would have to be included.
What textual evidence do these writers have for thinking Nietzsche applies will to power to inorganic things? In the works Nietzsche authorized for publication, there are only two aphorisms that suggest that Nietzsche extends will to power beyond the organic domain—one in On the Genealogy of Morals and one in Beyond Good and Evil.
The passage from On the Genealogy of Morals (II, 12) is typically vague: Nietzsche says fleetingly that “in all events a will to power is operating” within the context of a criticism of preferring scientific method to a genealogical one. This aphorism mentions will to power two other times: one time in connection with a striving for superiority and the other equating will to power with life. Events is just too ambiguous a word here to assert with any confidence that Nietzsche means to take will to power into the inorganic realm. Thus, I shall turn to the more detailed discussion of will to power and “the world” that occurs in Beyond Good and Evil.
Only aphorism 36 in Beyond Good and Evil is an explicit, extended discussion of the world being will to power in the works Nietzsche authorized for publication before his collapse. It is so philosophically dense and important that I will ask the reader’s patience and reproduce it entirely:
Suppose nothing else were “given” as real except our world of desires and passions, and we could not get down, or up, to any other “reality” besides the reality of our drives—for thinking is merely a relation of these drives to each other: is it not permitted to make the experiment and to ask the question whether this “given” would not be sufficient for also understanding on the basis of this kind of thing the so-called mechanistic (or “material”) world? I mean, 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. In the end not only is it permitted to make this experiment; the conscience of method demands it. Not to assume several kinds of causality until the experiment of making do with a single one has been pushed to its utmost limit (to the point of nonsense, if I may say so)—that is a moral of method which one may not shirk today—it follows “from its definition,” as a mathematician would say. The question is in the end whether we really recognize the will as efficient, whether we believe in the causality of the will: if we do—and at bottom our faith in this is nothing less than our faith in causality itself—then we have to make the experiment of positing the causality of the will hypothetically as the only one. “Will,” of course, can affect only “will”—and not “matter” (not “nerves,” for example). In short, 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. Suppose, finally, we succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive life as the development and ramification of one basic form of the will—namely, of the will to power, as my proposition has it; suppose all organic functions could be traced back to this will to power and one could also find in it the solution of the problem of procreation and nourishment—it is one problem—then one would have gained the right to determine all efficient force univocally as—will to power. The world viewed from the inside, the world defined and determined according to its “intelligible character” —it would be “will to power” and nothing else. (BGE, 36)
Gesetzt, dass nichts Anderes als real “gegeben” ist als unsere Welt der Begirden und Leidenschaften, dass wir zu keiner anderen “Realität” hinab oder hinauf können als gerade zur Realität unsere Triebe—denn Denken ist nur ein Verhalten dieser Triebe zu einander—: ist es nicht erlaubt, den Versuch zu machen und die Frage zu fragen, ob dies Gegeben nicht ausreicht, um aus Seines-Gleichen auch die sogenannte mechanistische (oder “Materielle”) Welt zu verstehen? Ich meine nicht als eine Täuschung, einen “schein,” eine “Vorstellung” (im Berkeley’schen und Schopenhauerischen Sinne) sondern als vom gleichen Realitäts-Range, welchen unser Affect selbst hat,—als eine primitivere Form der Welt der Affecte, in der noch Alles in mächtiger Einheit beschlossen liegt, was sich dann im organischen Prozesse abzweigt und ausgestalt (auch wie billig, verzärtelt und abschwächt—), als eine Art von Triebleben, in dem noch sammtliche organische Funktionen, mit Selbst-Regulirung, Assimilation, Ernährung, Ausscheidung, Stoffwechsel, synthetisch gebunden in einander sind,—als eine Vorform des Lebens?—Zuletzt ist es nicht nur erlaubt, diesen Versuch zu machen: es ist, vom Gewissen der Methode aus, geboten. Nicht mehrere Arten von Causalität annehmen, so lange nicht der Versuch, mit einer einzigen auszureichen, bis an seine äusserste Grenze getrieben ist (—bis zum Unsinn, mit Verlaub zu sagen): das ist eine Moral der Methode, der man sich heute nicht entziehen darf;—es folgt “aus ihrer Definition,” wie ein Mathematiker sagen würde. Die Frage ist zuletzt, ob wir den Willen wirklich als wirkend anerkennen, ob wir an die Causalität des Willens glauben: thun wir das—und im Grunde ist der Glaube daran eben unser Glaube an Causalität selbst—, so müssen wir den Versuch machen, die Willens-Causalität hypothetisch als die einzige zu setzen. “Wille” kann natürlich nur auf “Wille” wirken—und nicht auf “Stoffe” (nicht auf “Nerven” zum Beispiel—): genung, man muss die Hypothese wagen, ob nicht überall, wo “Wirkungen” anerkannt werden, Wille auf Wille wirkt—und ob nicht alles mechanische Geschehen, insofern eine Kraft darin thätig wird, eben Willens-kraft, Willens-Wirkung ist.—Gesetzt endlich, dass es gelänge, unser gesammtes Triebleben als die Ausgestaltung und Verzweigung Einer Grundform des Willens zu ereklären—nämlich des Willens zur Macht, wie es mein Satz ist.—gesetzt, dass man alle organischen Funktionen auf diesen Willen zur Macht zurückführen könnte und in ihm auch die Lösung des Problems der Zeugung und Ernährung—es ist Ein Problem—fande, so hätte man damit sich das Recht verschafft, alle wirkende Kraft eindeutig zu bestimmen als: Wille zur Macht. Die Welt von innen gesehen, die Welt auf ihren “intelligiblen Charakter” hin bestimmt und bezeichnet—sie ware eben “Wille zur Macht” und nichts ausserdem. [KGW VI/2, 50–51]
So many things are going on in this aphorism that one hardly knows where or how to begin. Obviously, saying that the “world . . . according to its intelligible character . . . would be ‘will to power’ and nothing else” would lead us to believe that Nietzsche intends to expand will to power beyond the human and organic into the inorganic realm. Will to power would be the explanation of not only why organisms, including people, act the way they do but also why the world is the way it is at any given moment. But in what way can will to power be said to be an explanation of the world and, more specifically, inanimate objects?
Earlier in the aphorism Nietzsche claims that will can affect only will and not matter. This implies that Nietzsche believes what we normally call matter or physical substance is actually “will” or force. Thus, the usual distinction we make between matter and will is illusory. There is no division between the corporeal and noncorporeal. The inorganic is merely a “pre-form” of the organic, and while we can distinguish between them, they are not metaphysically distinct. Thus, mechanistic explanations are inadequate and ultimately fictitious because they presuppose material things acting on material things. But this aphorism states that there is no “matter,” only will. Therefore, scientific explanations, which rely on causal language, are only one way, and not the objectively “True” way, to explain events. Nietzsche suggests that there is only chaotic will. How could one explain events in terms of will, as this aphorism suggests?
Let us look at a classic example of “mechanistic” explanations (cause and effect): the cue ball hitting the eight ball in a game of pool. A mechanistic explanation of the effect the cue ball has on the eight ball would involve physics. The moving cue ball impacts the eight ball, and motion is transferred to the extent that some of the motion of the cue ball transfers to the stationary eight ball, which absorbs some of the motion, repels the cue ball, and moves in the opposite direction, at a lesser velocity, of its being hit.
How would Nietzsche’s will to power explanation handle the same event? The moving cue ball would be a will struggling with other wills—the air and the felt of the pool table. The will-felt is slowing the will-cue-ball down a bit, but the force of the air-will is almost negligible. As the will-cue-ball encounters the will-eight-ball, a more difficult struggle ensues. The will-cue-ball may continue to move but slower and on a different trajectory. If the will-cue-ball is moving fast enough, it will have sufficient efficient force to make the stationary will-eight-ball move as well. So in the strivings, or struggles, or battles of differing wills, some struggles are easily overcome, and others are not. Although the will-eight-ball “loses” its ability to remain at rest, it succeeds at remaining a will-eight-ball: the impact of the will-cue-ball is not so strong as to shatter the will-eight-ball, so in the struggle to remain a will-eight-ball, it has “won.” A Nietzschean way of explaining pool may not be obviously superior to Newtonian mechanics at this point, but it is an alternative explanation.
Finally, Nietzsche says that if all organic functions could be traced to will to power, then all efficient force is will to power. But we have just seen that Nietzsche does think that all organic functions are will to power. The antecedent to the hypothetical is met, so we can logically conclude that Nietzsche thinks that all efficient force is will to power. Thus, Nietzsche has expanded the notion of will to power to account for everything, whether organic or inorganic, because the delineation between the two is already removed earlier in the aphorism. We should not even distinguish between the two because the inorganic is only a preform of the organic. It simply has not undergone certain ramifications and developments that organic will has. If there is only one kind of “stuff” (will) and Nietzsche believes all will is reducible to one basic form (will to power), it seems clear that will to power is akin to a metaphysical principle for Nietzsche. Will to power is the fundamental explanation (or principle) of the entire world.
There are, however, some problems with this interpretation of the aphorism. The aphorism begins with the word suppose. According to some interpreters, this renders the entire aphorism hypothetical and immediately problematic.13 The contention is that Nietzsche is simply being ironic with the ideas that follow this opening. Additionally, halfway through the aphorism Nietzsche explicitly asks whether or not it is permissible to make an experiment. This would imply that something new is being tested, and we must try to determine whether Nietzsche comes to any conclusions to his experiment by the end of the aphorism. The experiment Nietzsche wants to conduct is to see whether our “world” (our inner world) of passions and desires would be a sufficient explanation for everything, including the material (outer) world. He then decides not just that the experiment is permissible but that methodologically it is morally imperative.
It is at this point that Nietzsche talks about a “conscience of method.” He says that one ought to try to do as much as one can with one explanation before trying to explain events with more than one explanation. However, he also says that a conscientious philosopher must push this one explanation “to the point of nonsense.” Is this what he does with will to power? My explanation of the pool balls is very unusual. Does it push Nietzsche’s notion of will to power to the point of nonsense?
This part of the aphorism concerning methodology sounds very tongue in cheek about how Nietzsche sees methodology in the nineteenth century. First, the initial method is italicized, giving it greater weight, as if one has no choice but to relinquish oneself to methodology. Second, there are the two phrases “conscience of method” and “a moral of method,” which imply that to do otherwise than to pursue one causal explanation to its limit is an unconscionable breach of methodology to the point of being immoral. But surely there is nothing intrinsically immoral about abandoning some strange form of Ockham’s Razor. That the simplest explanation is the right one (and one explanation for all phenomena is simpler than two or more) is simply an assumption science makes—an assumption that Nietzsche challenges in many other passages, most notably in Beyond Good and Evil 19, where he criticizes the notion that “will” is somehow immediate, self-evident, and singular. Surely, Nietzsche has not forgotten what he just placed fifteen aphorisms earlier. It is implausible that he has done a complete about-face on the subject. Earlier in Beyond Good and Evil he criticizes even language on just this point—that words mask subtle and perhaps important differences and so are simplifications of complexities.14 Any simplification is inherently suspicious to Nietzsche. Why, then, would he feel compelled to pursue a notion simply because a definition or method demands it? This could be an ironic criticism of philosophical (particularly metaphysical) and perhaps philological and scientific methodology. Perhaps Nietzsche is saying, “Method demands an economy of principle, but, of course, there is no justification for this—it is only a convention, which in the end has no hold on us, but for the moment I will play along.”
Next Nietzsche asks whether humans believe that our wills are causal. All of us would say that we believe our wills can effect change. If we do not think our wills are efficient, then the whole meaning of efficient causation is at risk. This seems straightforward enough, but Nietzsche again complicates matters by saying that the belief in our causal wills is a faith, implying that we believe in efficient causation even when there is no empirical proof of it. This is not a particularly surprising or original argument; David Hume said very much the same thing a century earlier.15 Then Nietzsche reiterates that he must continue with the experiment.
The ensuing sentences in Beyond Good and Evil 36 repeat that matter does not exist. This is to reemphasize the beginning of the aphorism, where Nietzsche suggests that there is only “reality” or “given” and that it is akin to our world of passions rather than “the so-called mechanistic (or ‘material’) world.” This claim is consistent with many other places in the published works where Nietzsche denies the traditional philosophical divisions, that is, corporeal/noncorporeal, phenomena/noumena, and body/soul. So in this experiment, there are not two different worlds—our “inner” experience of drives and desires and our “outer” experience of material objects. Nietzsche invites us to make the experiment that the “outer” world is actually like our “inner” one—composed of drives and desires rather than matter.
Finally, Nietzsche suggests that his proposition of will to power can handle just such an assignment—to explain not only the inner world and all organic functions but also the “outer,” material world. Thus, Nietzsche concludes that if we view the outside world “from inside,” that is, if we view the outer world as being metaphysically the “same” (at least a “pre-form” of it) as our inner world, it would be will to power, for will to power is his explanation of the inner world.
However, Nietzsche again prefaces his final remarks with the speculative word suppose. He also italicizes my in “my proposition.” This suggests to some Nietzsche interpreters that Nietzsche may recognize that there might be other explanations besides will to power that are just as good at explaining the world.16 If this is so, we could then conclude that Nietzsche is not seriously advancing the idea that will to power is the fundamental metaphysical principle from which everything can be explained, only that he explains or interprets the world in this way.17
This leaves us with two interpretations of Beyond Good and Evil 36, both of which seem to have textual support. Both interpretations acknowledge that Nietzsche is conducting an experiment. The first interpretation finds that although Nietzsche begins with a hypothesis, he comes to a conclusion about the experiment, namely, that everything is will to power. The second interpretation finds that Nietzsche is conducting a playful, ironic thought experiment that stays experimental throughout and that Nietzsche does not come to any conclusion he is willing to defend. Although many of Nietzsche’s aphorisms are philosophically dense and open to several interpretations, Beyond Good and Evil 36 is particularly enigmatic because it is so explicitly hypothetical. This one aphorism is too problematic to determine definitively whether Nietzsche extends will to power beyond “life” into the inorganic realm or into the realm of metaphysics.
We have, then, almost no textual evidence from the writings Nietzsche authorized for publication that he extends will to power as an explanation for the inorganic realm as well as the organic one. Nevertheless, quite a few Nietzsche scholars have concluded that will to power is Nietzsche’s metaphysics, cosmology, or ontology. However, their textual support for these claims is almost exclusively material taken from Nietzsche’s unpublished writings. In the following chapter we will examine the unpublished writings on will to power and discuss the problems inherited with them.
For Nietzsche’s views on morality, see the following:
Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983; chapters 3–4.
Hunt, Lester. Nietzsche and the Origin of Virtue. New York: Routledge, 1991.
Nehamas, Alexander. Nietzsche: Life as Literature. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985; chapter 7.
Schacht, Richard. Nietzsche. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983; chapters 6–7.
————, ed. Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.