Scholars who think that will to power is Nietzsche’s metaphysics or cosmology appeal almost exclusively to textual support from the writings that were never authorized for publication by Nietzsche. The Nachlass note most often cited as evidence that will to power is metaphysical is the following:
And do you know what “the world” is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income; enclosed by “nothingness” as by a boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set in definite space as a definite force, and not a space that might be “empty” here or there, but rather as a force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there; a sea of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing, eternally flooding back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and a flood of its forms; out of the most complex, out of the stillest, most rigid, coldest forms striving toward the hottest, most turbulent, most self-contradictory, and then again returning home to the simple out of this abundance, out of the play of contradictions back to the joy of concord, still affirming itself in this uniformity of its courses and its years, blessing itself as that which must return eternally, as a becoming that knows no satiety, no disgust, no weariness: this is my Dionysian world of the eternally self-creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous delight, my “beyond good and evil,” without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will toward itself—do you want a name for this world? A solution for all its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men?—This world is the will to power—and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power—and nothing besides! (WP, 1067)
Und wisst ihr auch, was mir “die Welt” ist? Soll ich sie euch in meinem Spiegel zeigen? Diese Welt: ein Ungeheuer von Kraft, ohne Anfang, ohne Ende, eine feste, eherne Grosse von Kraft, welche nicht grosser, nicht kleiner wird, die sich nicht verbraucht sondern nur verwandelt, als Ganzes unveranderlich gross, ein Haushalt ohne Ausgaben und Einbussen, aber ebenso ohne Zuwachs, ohne Einnahmen, vom “Nichts” umschlossen als von seiner Granze, nichts Verschwimmendes, Verschwendetes, nichts Unendlich-Ausgedehntes, sondern als bestimme Kraft einem bestimmte Raum eingelegt, und nicht einem Raume, der irgend—wo “leer” ware, vielmehr als Kraft überall, als Spiel von Kraften und Kraftwellen zugleich Eins und “Vieles,” hier sich haufend und zugleich dort sich fluthender Krafte, ewig sich wandelnd, ewig zurucklaufend, mit ungeheueren Jahren der Wiederkehr, mit einer Ebbe und Fluth seiner Gestalten, aus den einfachsten in die vielfaltigsten hinaustriebend, aus dem Stillsten, Starrsten, Kaltesten hinaus in das Gluhendste, Wildeste, Sich-selber-wider-sprechendste, und dann wieder aus der Fulle heimkehrend zum Einfachen, aus dem Spiel der Widerspruche zuruck bis zur Lust des Einklangs, sich selber bejahend noch in dieser Gleichheit seiner Bahnen und Jahre, sich selber segnend als das, was ewig wiederkommen muss, als ein Werden, das kein Sattwerden, keinen Überdruss, keine Mudigkeit—: diese Meine dionysische Welt des Ewig-sich-selber-Schaffens, des Ewig-sich-selber-Zerstorens, diese Geheimniss-Welt der doppelten Wolluste, diess mein Jenseits von Gut und Böse, ohne Ziel, wenn nicht im Gluck des Kreises ein Ziel liegt, ohne Willen, wenn nicht ein Ring zu sich selber guten Willen hat,—wollt ihr einem Namen fur diese Welt? Eine Losung für alle ihre Rathsel? Ein Licht auch fur euch, ihr Verborgensten, Stärksten, Unerschrockensten, Mitternächtlichsten?—Diese Welt ist der Wille zur Macht—und nichts ausserdem! Und auch ihr selber seid dieser Wille zur Macht—und nichts ausserdem! [KGW VII/3, 38(12), 338–39]
This appears to be an extremely strong statement about the nature of the world or what the world “really is.” The addition of “and nothing besides!” implies that will to power is the ultimate nature of the world and that nothing else is just as or more fundamental than will to power. Finally, will to power is not something that we “have” or “do”—it is what we are. Not only our behavior is explained by will to power, but our very being is will to power, and so is the being of everything, animate or inanimate. If we take a metaphysical principle to be what everything is ultimately reduced to, then will to power seems to be a metaphysical principle. Let us try to make sense of will to power as Nietzsche’s metaphysics.
Although the above aphorism is steeped in metaphor, it nevertheless informs us of how Nietzsche views the world. First, Nietzsche considers the world to be composed only of force (Kraft). While there are many configurations possible within this world of forces, the entire amount of force does not grow larger or shrink smaller. This world of forces, however, is spatially finite; “nothingness” surrounds it. There are no spatial “holes” of nothingness in this world; rather, force fills the entire space—“and not a space that might be ‘empty’ here or there, but a force throughout.” There is, however, infinite time through which these forces interplay, combining here and disbanding there—“a sea of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing, eternally flooding back.” This depiction by Nietzsche has always put me in mind of the infamous “lava lamps” popular in the 1960s. When turned on, the heated globules drift through the thinner gunk, bulging out in some areas, separating in others, but as long as the lamp is on and the globules moving, there is a constant shifting and changing. However unromantic my analogy may be, I think it captures some essential aspects of Nietzsche’s aphorism. We might be tempted to call the thicker globules “things,” although for Nietzsche they would not be fundamentally different from the thinner gunk. Analogously, we are tempted to separate liquids from solids, yet materialists would agree that both are composed of molecules. So for Nietzsche, rather than talk about molecules, atoms, or quarks, he talks about forces. Some of these forces combine to create “things” like rocks, some combine to create “things” like worms, and some combine to create “things” like human beings. And if you think it is difficult for Nietzsche to explain how “force” can create such diverse things as animate and inanimate things and conscious from nonconscious life, materialists have the same problem. Even more, materialists have a harder time explaining motion than force theorists, so it would seem that Nietzsche’s explanation has at least one advantage over classical materialist theories.
Nietzsche has a relatively long history of being against materialism, which had been shaped by some of the scientific and philosophical theories advanced in the mid–nineteenth century and earlier. Nietzsche first encountered the work of Friedrich Lange in 1866, six years before The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music was published. Lange was one of numerous theoretical scientists who were investigating the possibility that the world was the result of forces acting on each other at the molecular level. More importantly, these forces were not divinely directed. The forces were simply “dynamic” in themselves. There was no telos, no aim or goal, to their dynamics; the motions of the forces were described in terms of attraction and repellence. That Nietzsche was aware of these scientific theories has been well demonstrated.1 What we need to see at this point is how they are incorporated into Nietzsche’s own writings.
Nietzsche wrote in a letter to a friend that he read Lange’s History of Materialism and was impressed with it. Through it, Nietzsche became acquainted with numerous thinkers on dynamic theory, from Ruggiero Boscovich to Ernst Mach. What these theorists held in common, along with Lange, who was undoubtedly promoting their thoughts, was that there is no such thing as substance. The debate on whether the universe is composed of molecules or something smaller was entirely moot to these thinkers; molecules, atoms, or anything purporting to be the substantial building blocks of physical substances were the stuff of fantasy. According to these thinkers, there is no substance, there is only force.
We have seen that Nietzsche equates the world with a “sea of forces” and “will to power.” Is will to power simply identical to this flux of forces? Unfortunately, the answer to this question is both yes and no. The “yes” side occurs because for both “forces” and “will to power” there is motion going on, so in this sense they are the same.
The “no” answer to the question occurs for two reasons. First, according to Nietzsche, we cannot explain will to power by equating it with “forces” because the idea of “forces” is no clearer or more informative than will to power. For Nietzsche, “force” cannot be demonstrated:
Has a force ever been demonstrated? No, only effects translated into a completely foreign language. We are so used, however, to regularity in succession that its oddity no longer seems odd to us. (WP, 620)
Ist jemals schon eine Kraft constatirt? Nein, sondern Wirkungen, ubersetzt in eine vollig fremde Sprache. Das Regelmassige im Hintereinander hat uns aber so verwohnt, dass wir uns über das Wunderliche daran nicht wundern. [KGW VIII/1 2(59), 141]
We cannot perceive “pure” force. All we can perceive are the effects, the results, of forces. Similarly, there is no “pure” will to power; will to power is nothing other than these effects. There is no “pure,” “raw,” or “naked” will to power to which the phrase refers. There are just the effects, as the following passage from On the Genealogy of Morals demonstrates:
A quantum of force is equivalent to a quantum of drive, will, effect—more, it is nothing other than precisely this very driving, willing, effecting, and only owing to the seduction of language (and of the fundamental errors of reason that are petrified in it) which conceives and misconceives all effects as conditioned by something that causes effects, by a “subject,” can it appear otherwise. . . . [T]he popular mind separates lightning from its flash and takes the latter for an action, for the operation of a subject called lightning. . . . But there is no such substratum; there is no “being” behind doing, effecting, becoming; “the doer” is merely a fiction added to the deed—the deed is everything. (GM I, 13)
Ein Quantum Kraft ist ein eben solches Quantum Trieb, Wille, Wirken—vielmehr, es ist gar nichts anderes als eben dieses Treiben, Wollen, Wirken selbst, und nur unter der Verführung der Sprache (und der in ihr versteinerten Grundirrthümer der Vernunft), welche alles Wirken als bedingt durch ein Wirkendes, durch ein “Subjekt” versteht und missversteht, kann es anders erscheinen. . . . [D]as Volk den Blitz von seinem Leuchten trennt und letzteres als Thun, als Wirkung eines Subjekts nimmt, das Blitz heisst. . . . Aber es giebt kein solches Substrat; es giebt kein “Sein” hinter dem Thun, Wirken, Werden; “der Thäter” ist zum Thun bloss hinzugedichet,—das Thun ist Alles. [KGW VI/2, 293]
This passage shows that the quantum of power is not only recognizable by “its effect,” it is nothing other than “its effect.” The lightning is nothing other than “its” flash. In fact, to even speak of the flash as an effect caused by the lightning is erroneous (hence my scare quote marks), for to speak of something as an effect is to immediately imply a cause. But, remember, Nietzsche denies the existence of causes or effects:
Cause and effect: such a duality probably never exists; in truth we are confronted by a continuum out of which we isolate a couple of pieces, just as we perceive motion only as isolated points and then infer it without ever actually seeing it. The suddenness with which many effects stand out misleads us; actually, it is sudden only for us. In this moment of suddenness there is an infinite number of processes that elude us. An intellect that could see cause and effect as a continuum and a flux and not, as we do, in terms of an arbitrary division and dismemberment, would repudiate the concept of cause and effect and deny all conditionality. (GS, 112)
Ursache und Wirkung: eine solche Zweiheit giebt es wahrscheinlich nie,—in Wahrheit steht ein continuum vor uns, von dem wir ein paar Stücke isoliren; so wie wir eine Bewegung immer nur als isolirte Puncte wahrnehemen, also eigentlich nicht sehen, sondern erschlissen. Die Plötzlichkeit, mit der sich viele Wirkungen abheben, führt uns irre; es ist aber nur eine Plötzlichkeit für uns. Es giebt eine unendliche Menge von Vorgängen in dieser Secunde der Plötzlichkeit, die uns entgehen. Ein Intellect, der Ursache und Wirkung als continuum, nicht nach unserer Art als willkürliches Zertheilt—und Zerstücktsein, sähe, der den Fluss des Geschehens sähe,—würde den Begriff Ursache und Wirkung verwerfen und all Bedingtheit leugnen. [KGW V/2, 151]
According to Nietzsche, we artificially carve or bracket out sections of the continuous flux of becoming and set these sections in another contrived or artificial relationship, either as a cause or an effect. But cause and effect are orders imposed on becoming by the human mind; they do not exist in the world. So Nietzsche talks about affects of will to power to differentiate his conception of the world as becoming from the conventional scientific conception of the world as conforming to causal laws.
Will to power, then, does not lurk behind affects, causing affects. Will to power consists of the affects themselves. It is the event by which becoming and affects are recognizable. The relationship between will to power and affects—actions and relationships among actions—is one of identity. So to say will to power causes affects or is the force behind affects is to be seduced by the preposition of in “affects of will to power.” Yet our language leaves us little alternative for expressing Nietzsche’s position other than “affects of will to power.” The of is not possessive, for example, the daughter of George, but, rather, constitutive, for example, the army of men, where the army simply consists in men. Take away the men, and there is no pure “army” left over. Will to power is analogous to an onion, where the whole onion is the world of becoming at any given moment. The layers of the onion correspond to specific events—affects of will to power. By stripping away the layers of the onion, we hope to arrive at its core, its essence. But, of course, there is no core; the onion simply consists in its layers. Analogously, we cannot strip away the affects of will to power hoping to discover “pure” will to power devoid of “its” affects; will to power is nothing other than affects, and the world is nothing other than the totality of affects at any given moment. Looking for will to power “underneath” or “behind” things or events is like looking for lightning underneath its flash. Because lightning is the flash, there is nothing underneath it, behind it, or supporting it.
The second reason that “forces” cannot simply be equated with “will to power” stems from Nietzsche’s belief that “forces” cannot be random. Both Lange and Schopenhauer conceive of “force” as being completely chaotic. According to Nietzsche, this conception is senseless:
The victorious concept “force” by means of which our physicists have created God and the world, still needs to be completed: an inner will be ascribed to it, which I designate as “will to power,” i.e., as an insatiable desire to manifest power; or as the employment and exercise of power, as a creative drive, etc. Physicists cannot eradicate “action at a distance” from their principles; nor can they eradicate a repellent force (or an attracting one). There is nothing for it: one is obliged to understand all motion, all “appearances,” all “laws,” only as symptoms of an inner event and to employ man as an analogy to this end. In the case of an animal, it is possible to trace all its drives to the will to power; likewise all functions of organic life to this one source. (WP, 619)
Der siegreiche Begriff “Kraft,” mit dem unsere Physiker Gott und die Welt geschaffen haben, bedarf noch einer Ergänzung: es muss ihm eine innere Welt zugesprochen werden, welche ich bezeichne als “Willen zur Macht,” d.h. als unersättliches Verlangen nach Bezeigung der Macht; oder Verwendung, Ausübung der Macht, als schöpferischen Trieb usw. Die Physiker werden die “Wirkung in die Ferne” aus ihren Principien nicht los: ebensowenig eine abstossende Kraft (oder anziehende). Es hilft nichts: man muss alle Bewegungen, alle “Erscheinungen,” alle “Gesetze” nur als Symptome eines innerlichen Gesechehens fassen und sich der Analogie des Menschen zu Ende bedienen. Am Thier ist es möglich, aus dem Willen zur Macht alle seine Triebe abzuleiten: ebenso alle Funktionen des organischen Lebens aus dieser Einen Quelle. [KGW VII/3, 36(31), 287]
Here Nietzsche indicates that mere force is not enough to account for life as he sees it. He claims that even physicists—“mechanistic scientists”—must attribute some directional impetus to their concept of force. Contrary to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche’s “will” is not blind or random. Nietzsche believes there must be an explanation why force goes one way rather than another. Force needs a conatus or an inherent directional impulse. Physicists may attempt to explain such impetus as “attraction” or “repulsion,” but Nietzsche accuses these terms of being too anthropomorphic:
“Attraction” and “repulsion” in a purely mechanistic sense are complete fictions: a word. We cannot think of an attraction divorced from an intention.—The will to take possession of a thing or to defend oneself against it and repel it—that “we understand”: that would be an interpretation of which we could make use. (WP, 627)
“Anziehen” und “Abstossen” in rein mechanischem Sinne ist ein Fiktion: ein Wort. Wir können uns ohne eine Absicht ein Anziehen nicht denken.—Den Willen sich einer Sache zu bemächtigen oder gegen ihre Macht sich zu wehren und sie zurück-zustossen—das “verstehen wir”: das ware eine Interpretation, die wir brauchen könnten. [KGW VIII/1, 2(83), 100–01]
We humans ascribe an “inner event” for our own motions—the will. Thus, the motions of other objects must have inner events as well, if we are to make sense of these nonhuman motions. Scientists call these inner events “attraction,” “repulsion,” “cause,” and so on, but, to Nietzsche, these words are anthropomorphic terms humans impose on the world. Does will to power avoid Nietzsche’s criticism of anthropomorphism? It does not appear to; in fact, it seems to emphasize anthropomorphism. The phrase contains the word will. That word, too, seems highly anthropomorphic and subject to Nietzsche’s own criticism of it as we have seen in Beyond Good and Evil 19 in the last chapter. In addition, as discussed in Beyond Good and Evil 36, Nietzsche purposely (whether in irony or not) thrusts this “inner world” onto the material world.2 Nietzsche believes some impetus to this force is required, or else why does force move in the direction that it does? Because humans believe that their “will” propels their movements, “will” is the origin of all movement. And the teleological end that propels force to go in a certain direction rather than another, according to Nietzsche, is power. Hence Nietzsche calls his idea “will to power.” The question now becomes whether Nietzsche can explain the entire world as will to power.
It is apparent that Nietzsche’s thinking mirrors Lange’s endorsement of Boscovich and others’ antimaterialist theories. What we call “things” are force groupings and not material “stuff”:
“Things” do not behave regularly, according to a rule: there are no things (—they are fictions). (WP, 634)
“Die Dinge” betragen sich nicht regelmassig, nicht nach einer Regel: es giebt keine Dinge (—das ist unsere Fiktion). [KGW VIII/3, 14(79), 49]
No things remain but only dynamic quanta, in a relation of tension to all other dynamic quanta; their essence lies in their relation to all other quanta, in their “effect” upon the same. (WP, 635)
[S]o bleiben keine Dinge übrig, sondern dynamische Quanta, in einem Spannung-verhaltniss zu allen anderen dynamischen Quanten: deren Wesen in ihrem Verhaltniss zu allen anderen Quanten besteht, in ihrem “Wirken” auf dieselben. [KGW VIII/3, 14(79), 51]
Linguistic means of expression are useless for expressing “becoming”; it accords with our inevitable need to preserve ourselves to posit a crude world of stability, of “things,” etc. We may venture to speak of atoms and monads in a relative sense; and it is certain that the smallest world is the most durable—There is no will: there are treaty drafts of will that are constantly increasing or losing their power. (WP, 715)
Die Ausdrucksmittel der Sprache sind unbrauchbar, um das Werden auszudrücken: es gehort zu unserem unablöslichen Bedurfniss der Erhaltung, beständig die eine grobere Welt von Bleibend[em], von “Dingen” usw. zu stezen. Relativ, dürfen wir von Atomen und Monaden reden: und gewiss ist, dass die kleinste Welt an Dauer die dauerhafteste ist . . . es giebt keinen Willen: es giebt Willens-Punktationen, die beständig ihre Macht mehren oder verlieren. [KGW VIII/2, 11(73), 278–79]
These passages indicate at least two things. First, our supposedly common notion of a “thing” as a complete, separate unity distinct from other “things” is mistaken. According to Nietzsche, there are only amounts or quanta of energy that at certain times and in certain areas become more concentrated. These “constellations” or federations of energy—Nietzsche calls them Willespunktuationen 3—are what we designate as “things,” but they are not really separate entities. They merely have a certain quantum of energy that may be significantly greater than the surrounding quanta. This concentration of energy is sufficient for us to perceive it, and we designate it as a “thing,” but “its” only difference is the quantum of force. There is no essential difference between people, daffodils, or pencils.
Second, what we commonly call “things” are in constant flux. What we perceive as stable entities are actually quanta of fluctuating forces. They have no “being” as Nietzsche uses being—as a set of fixed or permanent characteristics. Of course, “things” have Being—they exist as centers of forces, but Nietzsche is using being to contrast with becoming, whereby being signifies permanence and stability.
It is difficult to imagine things that seem so permanent, for example, the rock of Gibraltar, to be in constant states of flux. What we call “inanimate objects,” like keys, just lie on the table where we put them; they continue to unlock the same lock day after day. If keys were in a constant state of flux, wouldn’t we expect that the same key would never unlock the same lock more than perhaps every fifty years or so? Also, wouldn’t it be impossible to say “same key” or “same lock” because the “things” would be constantly changing?
If we are to make any sense of how “inanimate objects” are will to power, we must wrench our thoughts about them in a radical way. Generally we think of “objects” like books and keys as stable and inactive until something changes them, like fire burning or melting them. We think their natural or usual state is cohesive and fixed, and things only arouse our curiosity when they change. But what if we reverse this? Then we would ponder not how things change but how they manage to stay relatively stable. For Nietzsche, the question may not be “Why do things change?” but “Why do things stay together?”
Nietzsche’s answer to this question, of course, would be will to power. Now we are in a position to make sense of this answer. A “thing,” being a “power-constellation,” is constantly struggling to maintain that constellation in the midst of “its” surrounding forces. This struggle can be viewed in two ways. One way is that the power-constellation struggles to maintain “its” constellation amid the potentially destructive forces around “it”—gravity, sunlight, air pressure, temperature, and so forth. In this view, these other forces (power-constellations) are attempting to destroy the present power-constellation.
The other view is that these same forces are what holds the power-constellation together. The power-constellation is “itself” trying to disband, but the surrounding forces prohibit “it” from doing so. Nietzsche himself never explicitly advances either of these models, but either one is consistent with his remarks about “things” and “substances.”
Nietzsche’s world is a world of change, of becoming. So if a key remains for the most part intact after the friction of the lock, “it” is evidencing “its” will to power. Again, it is important to remember that it is not the case that this struggle is intentional—the key is not consciously willing itself to stay together. But if the world is a “sea of forces” and is in constant flux, we might expect “inanimate objects” to change much more than we perceive they do. Thus, Nietzsche’s will to power would have to explain the apparent stability of these objects. “Thing” will to power, however severely limited when compared with organic and especially human will to power, is enough to hold objects together.
What effect does all this have on the meaning of will to power? At the end of the previous chapter, we had good support for the view that (1) will to power is a teleological explanation for all human and other organic activity, (2) will to power is dualistic in that there are active and reactive ways of gaining power, and (3) mere growth is evidence of power. As many “inanimate objects” exhibit no growth or “behavior,” except just sitting there, it would seem that a teleological explanation would have no place in the inorganic realm. But we have discovered that, for Nietzsche, there are no such things as inanimate objects in the sense of separate, nonactive substances. What we call “things” are fluctuating power-constellations and are constantly active; therefore, a teleological explanation may be appropriate, if these teleological explanations for nonhuman actions can be taken as dead metaphors of teleological explanations for human actions.4 The main feature of teleological explanations for nonhuman actions is just that the consequence of the action somehow plays a part in the action itself, for example, bringing about or initiating the action. For Nietzsche, the consequence that plays a part in initiating an action is power, whether it is the power of remaining a power-constellation or the power of the outside forces keeping the power-constellation intact.
If will to power is Nietzsche’s metaphysics, then nonhuman organic life and behavior must also be reducible to will to power. At the end of the last chapter, we believed that Nietzsche meant to explain more than human behavior with his references to “life” being will to power. The Nachlass notes, however, provide a much more detailed account of how will to power can explain organic behavior. In fact, these Nachlass entries seem to differ stylistically from the more metaphorical and ambiguous passages from the writings Nietzsche authorized for publication. In the works Nietzsche published himself, will to power is mentioned as an explanation for organic behavior, but Nietzsche leaves it to the reader to make sense of it. By contrast, in the Nachlass material Nietzsche explicitly details how hunger, happiness, self-preservation, and even mechanistic explanations of nonhuman, organic life can be interpreted as derivations of will to power:
Let us take the simplest case, that of primitive nourishment: the protoplasm extends its pseudopodia in search of something that resists it—not from hunger but from will to power. Thereupon it attempts to overcome, appropriate, assimilate what it encounters: what one calls “nourishment” is merely a derivative phenomenon, an application of the original will to become stronger. (WP, 702)
Nehmen wir den einfachsten Fall, den der primitiven Ernährung: das Protoplasma streckt seine Pseudopodien aus, um nach etwas zu suchen, was ihm widersteht—nicht aus Hunger, sondern aus Willen zur Macht. Darauf macht es den Versuch, daselbe zu überwinden, sich anzueignen, sich einzuverleiben:—das, was man “Ernährung” nennt, ist bloss eine Folge-Erscheinung, eine Nutzanwendung jenes ursprünglichen Willens, stärker zu werden. [KGW VIII/3 14(174), 152]
One cannot ascribe the most basic and primeval activities of protoplasm to will to self-preservation, for it takes into itself absurdly more than would be required to preserve it, and, above all, it does not thereby “preserve itself,” it falls apart. (WP, 651)
Man kann die unterste und ursprünglichste Thätigkeit im Protoplasma nicht aus einem Willen zur Selbsterhaltung ableiten: den es nimmt auf eine unsinnige Art mehr in sich hinein, als die Erhaltung bedingen würde: und vor allem, es “erhält sich” damit eben nicht, sondern zerfällt. [KGW VIII/2, 11(121), 299]
A protoplasm divides in two when its power is no longer adequate to control what it has appropriated. (WP, 654)
Die Theilung eines Protoplasma in 2 tritt ein, wenn die Macht nicht mehr ausreicht. [KGW VIII/1, 1(118), 34]
“Man strives after happiness,” e.g.—how much of that is true? In order to understand what “life” is, what kind of striving and tension life is, the formula must apply as well to trees and plants as to animals. . . . For what do the trees in a jungle fight each other? For “happiness”?—For power! (WP, 704)
“Der Mensch strebt nach Glück” z.B.—was ist daran wahr! Um zu verstehn, was Leben ist, welche Art Streben und Spannung Leben ist, muss die Formel so gut von Baum und Pflanze als vom Thier gelten. . . .Worum kampfen die Baume eines Urwaldes mit einander? Um “Glück”?—Um Macht. [KGW VIII/2, 11(111), 294]
These entries echo the textual evidence from the writings Nietzsche authorized for publication that Nietzsche extended his notion of will to power to all organisms and that will to power is meant to contrast with other, competing explanations of organic behavior. These other accounts would explain why an organism acted in a certain way by saying that the organism sought to preserve itself, make itself happy, or feed itself. Nietzsche rejected all these explanations as the basic motivations of organisms. Instead, he saw them all as corollaries of another, presumably more basic motivation—will to power. These other explanations are inadequate because they cannot, by themselves, account for all organic behavior.
For Nietzsche, to say that pleasure is the basic motivation for even human, much less other organisms’, behavior is a mistake. He believes that if our choice is to be between pleasure and displeasure, it is “constructive” displeasure that would motivate people. “Pleasure” is, for Nietzsche, an increase in the feeling of power. This is possible only if one has overcome some resistance. Seeking a resistance to overcome (what we usually consider “displeasure” because it is an obstacle to our will), then, is the necessary prerequisite for pleasure:
Man does not seek pleasure and does not avoid displeasure. . . . Displeasure, an obstacle to its will to power, is therefore a normal fact, the normal ingredient of every organic event; every victory, every feeling of pleasure, every event, presupposes a resistance overcome. (WP, 702)
Der Mensch sucht nicht die Lust und vermeidet nicht die Unlust. . . . Die Unlust, als Hemmung seines Willens zur Macht, ist also ein normales Faktum, das normale Ingredienz jedes organischen Geschehens, der Mensch weicht ihr nicht aus, er hat sie vielmehr fortwährend nöthig: jeder Sieg, jedes Lustgefühl, jedes Geschehen setzt einen überwundenen Widerstand voraus. [KGW VIII/3, 14(174), 152]
Those who equate all displeasure with losing to the obstacle have, according to Nietzsche, “confused displeasure with one kind of displeasure.” This kind of displeasure can be called “destructive” because it leads to a “profound diminution” in the feeling of power and “exhaustion.” However, “constructive” displeasure leads to increased stimulation—somewhat like the rush of energy or the elation one feels when one plays a particularly tough sporting event. The intense competition, win or lose, is invigorating. The mistake is to conflate the two kinds of displeasure and then claim that people are fundamentally motivated to avoid displeasure. As with our examples of selfishness and pity in the previous chapter, displeasure cannot simply be stuck in the “avoid” category. There is “healthy” displeasure as well as “sick” displeasure. Only “destructive” displeasure is avoided, according to Nietzsche, because it does not result in an increase in the feeling of power.
In many cases people purposely pursue painful activities. If seeking pleasure and avoiding displeasure were the fundamental motivations of humans, this principle could not account for these people’s behavior. However, pleasure as a derivative of a feeling of an increase in power, in overcoming resistance, could account for their behavior. Thus, pleasure cannot be the most basic motivation for organisms, according to Nietzsche, because it is the result of something more fundamental—striving for an increase in the feeling of power.
Because Nietzsche lumps human behavior within the broader category of organic behavior, any basic motivation must also account for not only human behavior but all organic behavior. Thus, the “happiness” explanation of behavior, which might seem reasonable as an explanation of basic human motivation, seems ludicrous when applied to plants, insects, bacteria, and other organisms we consider to be nonconscious. Thus, will to power can explain more behavior than happiness can.
In Nietzsche’s account of protoplasm behavior, self-preservation and hunger also cannot be the explanations of basic organic behavior. This is illustrated by the protoplasm’s continual processing of food. Nietzsche believes that the amoeba eats “absurdly” more than it needs to maintain its existence:
It is not possible to take hunger as the primum mobile, any more than self-preservation. To understand hunger as a consequence of undernourishment means: hunger as a consequence of a will to power that no longer achieves mastery. It is by no means a question of replacing a loss—only later, as a result of the division of labor, after the will to power has learned to take other roads to its satisfaction, is an organism’s need to appropriate reduced to hunger, to the need to replace what has been lost. (WP, 652)
Es ist nicht möglich, den Hunger als primum mobile zu nehmen: ebenso wenig als die Selbsterhaltung: der Hunger als Folge der Unterernährung aufgefasst, heisst: der Hunger als Folge eines nicht mehr Herr werdenden Willens zur Macht . . . es handelt sich durchaus nicht um eine Wiederherstellung eines Verlustes,—erst spat, in Folge Arbeitstheilung, nachdem der Wille zur Macht ganz andere Wege zu seiner Befriedigung einschlagen lernt, wird das Aneignungsbedürfniss des Organismus reduzirt auf den Hunger, auf das Wiederersatzbedürfniss des Verlorenen. [KGW VIII/3, 14(174), 153]
Hunger becomes a motive (but never a prime motive) only when an organism’s will to power has directed the organism toward other areas to such an extent that it needs to take in energy in order to accomplish other tasks. Nourishment only takes place when nourishment becomes the way to increase power.
Self-preservation cannot be the primary explanation for organic behavior, either, because some organisms eat much more than they need to survive. If one of these organisms merely sought to preserve itself, it would stop eating when it had acquired enough food to sustain itself. Instead, it eats much more, and the extra food results in the organism’s division—an occurrence that would not happen if the organism only preserved itself: it would preserve itself as a single-celled organism. The amoeba’s actions, instead, evince appropriation and exploitation of its environment; it grows, multiplies—it exhibits will to power.
In the botanical kingdom, plants’ photokinesis can be interpreted as will to power rather than self-preservation. Turn a plant away from the window, and its leaves will twist around back toward the window. The amount of sunlight in the room may be quite sufficient for the plant to survive, to preserve itself, but it still seeks out the window. The plant is striving for the maximum amount of sunlight for its photosynthesis. Photosynthesis promotes more growth of the plant, and growth is evidence of power over the environment. The plant is not merely surviving (self-preservation) but also growing, which can be better explained by will to power than by an instinct for self-preservation.
Nietzsche also adds that hunger and happiness cannot be sufficient explanations for organic behavior. “Pleasure” cannot account for some beings’ search for nonpleasurable activities. “Hunger” cannot account for some beings’ overeating. “Self-preservation” cannot account for some beings’ active pursuit of dangerous situations. And “mechanics” (scientific explanations) cannot account for spontaneous and aggressive activity, only reactivity. While Nietzsche does not discard these explanations as possible accounts of some organic behavior, he does reject each of them as the sole explanation for all organic behavior. Further, he claims that will to power can account for all four of these supposedly fundamental explanations. Because these four explanations are derivations of will to power, will to power is more fundamental than any of them.
If all accounts of behavior and, indeed, the entire world are not only explained by but are will to power, it seems clear that will to power is a metaphysical principle in the sense that everything can be reducible to it. Yet there are some Nietzsche scholars who reject the notion that will to power is Nietzsche’s metaphysics. Why is there such a controversy surrounding will to power’s metaphysical status? Aside from the fact that philosophers have a difficult time agreeing on what counts as metaphysics to begin with, Nietzsche presents us with two additional problems.
First, Nietzsche has left a long record of criticism against metaphysics. From Human, All-Too-Human on, Nietzsche maintains a consistent critique of metaphysics. His criticism is not of the specific metaphysical principles or theories offered; his criticism is of the entire enterprise itself. In several places, he calls himself an “anti-metaphysician.”5 Why would he then turn around and present will to power as his metaphysics? I do not believe Nietzsche is that stupid or forgetful. Second, the source of the aphorisms that put will to power so clearly in the metaphysical arena come from the Nachlass, and there are many problems connected with Nietzsche’s Nachlass. Why does it present such problems for Nietzsche scholarship?
The Nachlass can be divided roughly into three different kinds of works. The first kind comprises the works Nietzsche was editing right before his collapse. These works are Ecce Homo, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and The Antichrist, and they are so polished that we can safely take them as equal in status to the works that Nietzsche had already published or that were being published at the time of his collapse (e.g., Twilight of the Idols).
The second kind are Nietzsche’s early, finished pieces that were never published, the so-called Schriften—primarily his lectures and writings while he was employed at Basel. These pieces are presumably complete and polished; however, Nietzsche chose not to publish them. These works do not affect our present inquiry, for, again, will to power was a relatively late concept for Nietzsche.
The third kind of work consists of Nietzsche’s notes. These notes vary from near essay length and form, to extremely sketchy outlines of various projects, to single sentences or sentence fragments. Nietzsche’s notebooks look like anyone’s notebook—there are passages lined out, words jotted in the margins, and some overwriting. The famous aphorism where Nietzsche declares that this world is will to power and nothing besides is entirely crossed out. Also, Nietzsche often liked to write back to front in his notebooks. Karl Schlecta was unaware of this tendency, so the third volume of his collection should be read with some care; the order of the Nachlass notes is unreliable. Some of the passages in the Nachlass can be found with only very minor revisions in the books Nietzsche had published. Surely these notes must be regarded as rough drafts of the published aphorisms, for he painstakingly recopied his books in his neatest handwriting right before he sent them to the publisher.
The notes that did not find their way into publication in any form present the problem. I shall refer to these notes as the “controversial notes.” What are we to make of these? Are they rough drafts of some future work that Nietzsche was unable to realize because of his illness? If so, some of these controversial notes would have been waiting for years and would raise the question of why Nietzsche chose not to publish them earlier. Even if we consider them rough drafts of future works, it remains unclear whether we should consider what is written in these notes to be as indicative of what Nietzsche thought as the works he authorized for publication. Sometimes what is written in the unpublished notes on a particular topic is very different from what is written on that topic in the published works.
In his book Nietzsche’s Existential Imperative, Bernd Magnus examines Nietzsche’s notion of eternal recurrence as found in the works Nietzsche authorized for publication and as found in the Nachlass notes. The difference in the way eternal recurrence is presented in each case is profound. In the works Nietzsche authorized for publication, eternal recurrence is couched within a hypothetical “what if.” This has led some Nietzsche commentators to conclude that eternal recurrence is a normative claim that Nietzsche is advancing. On the other hand, in many of the Nachlass notes, eternal recurrence is considered “empirically.” This leads some other Nietzsche commentators to believe that eternal recurrence is a cosmological principle. So the difference between the published and unpublished writings on eternal recurrence is startling and leads to two very different and incompatible interpretations. If eternal recurrence is actually the case (the cosmological view), then the normative imperative to act as if it were true loses its command. This problem convinces Magnus that neither interpretation is correct, and he devises his own. Magnus notes that even the styles of the published and unpublished material differ: the former has graphic imagery and poetic intensity and immediacy, and the latter tends to be declarative, argumentative, and unpoetic. So in this one case at least, the unpublished material bears a striking difference from the published material. And while the stylistic differences are not as apparent in the case of will to power as they are in that of eternal recurrence, we have seen that the scope of will to power as an explanation is greatly expanded in the Nachlass. If the controversial notes on will to power are analogous to those in the eternal recurrence situation, then including them will bias our interpretation of will to power in ways that Nietzsche may have rejected himself.
Perhaps we should not consider any of these controversial Nachlass notes to be indicative of Nietzsche’s ultimate position on any given topic. These notes could be ideas that Nietzsche wrote down but later decided against publishing and, thus, were never meant to be published. Is there any evidence that Nietzsche was saving them or had no intention of using them?
There is no conclusive evidence one way or another. R. J. Hollingdale, who considers all the controversial notes “reject material,”6 offers only this story as evidence. When Nietzsche left Sils Maria for the last time in 1888, he told his landlord, Durish, that the pile of loose notes in his room could be burned. Instead, Durish saved them and handed them out to touring Nietzschephiles. When an account of this was written in Magazine für Literatur in 1893, Nietzsche’s sister, Elisabeth, insisted that the remaining notes be sent to her. At this time Nietzsche was already four years into his illness and was incapable of managing his own affairs. Elisabeth had declared herself “executrix” of his literary estate. She also had delusions of becoming the ultimate authority for all interpretations of Nietzsche’s writing, and she was in the process of compiling the notes that would eventually be published under the title The Will to Power. Whether any Sils Maria notes were included in The Will to Power is impossible to determine with certainty; however, anything written between June and 20 September 1888 would be particularly suspect, for that was the length of Nietzsche’s last stay at Sils Maria.
Hollingdale uses this incident as evidence that Nietzsche was not interested in the fate of his unpublished notes, but even this story is not without its problems. As Magnus writes in “The Use and Abuse of The Will to Power,” the Magazine für Literatur article is about a version of the preface for Twilight of the Idols that Nietzsche was editing at the time. However, Magnus and Michael Platt did find a version of Hollingdale’s story in Carl Bernoulli’s Franz Overbeck und Friedrich Nietzsche: Ein Freundschaft, which has a 1908 printing date.
All in all, this one dubious example seems insufficient grounds to reject all the controversial Nachlass notes. Remember, Nietzsche was sending Twilight of the Idols off to the publisher at this time, and his reportedly “rejected” notes might simply be the less neatly written notes of Twilight of the Idols. The article about Nietzsche’s notes that is in the Magazine für Literatur concerns a slightly altered portion of the preface to Twilight of the Idols. That would provide support for this latter interpretation. At this point, there is no evidence that all the controversial notes should be rejected.
Another complication with the Nachlass notes is the accuracy of the notes themselves. Some of these notes were scribbled down while Nietzsche was on walks or anywhere else he happened to be. The handwriting of many of the notes is difficult to make out. Also, as his illness was progressing and his eyesight was getting worse, Nietzsche’s handwriting deteriorated as well. One of Nietzsche’s good friends and protégés, Heinrich Köselitz (Peter Gast), was assigned by Elisabeth to decipher these notes, and he did his best to translate them into something legible and understandable—Nietzsche sometimes dropped prepositions or used abbreviations. Karl Schlechta suggests that Köselitz may have made stylistic changes by dropping or adding words or phrases.
Along this same line, Elisabeth has also been charged with tampering with her brother’s notes. Erich Podach and Karl Schlechta are particularly suspicious of the accuracy of the Nachlass material; Schlechta documents forgeries by Elisabeth. However, Arthur Danto thinks that any changes were wholly stylistic in nature and that any philosophical content has remained intact. He maintains that Elisabeth was more interested in preserving her honor than in preserving Nietzsche’s philosophy. Why would she stoop to forgery?
Elisabeth’s husband was Bernhard Förster, an ardent anti-Semite. Nietzsche had been against Elisabeth marrying him, and he had threatened that he would cut off communication with and affection for her if she married Förster. There were a few bitter and nasty letters exchanged between them at this time. Förster went to Paraguay to establish an Aryan-pure colony. From there Förster wrote anti-Semitic articles that were published back in Germany and also solicited funds for maintaining and expanding the colony. When Förster committed suicide, Elisabeth returned to Germany deep in the debts that her husband had incurred. Publishing her brother’s writings was a source of some income, for Nietzsche had begun to become a kind of folk hero because of his mysterious illness. Could God be exacting revenge for Nietzsche’s anti-Christian remarks? No doubt Elisabeth encouraged this image. At one time tours to the Nietzsche family’s home included a glimpse of the famous philosopher himself helplessly propped up in bed. Elisabeth was certainly instrumental in fostering the belief that Nietzsche was anti-Semitic and pro-Reich, mainly by quoting him out of context. Although Nietzsche did make some scathing remarks about Jews in context, these were usually immediately followed by even more scathing remarks about Germans. These latter remarks never seemed to be included in the World War II propaganda.
Despite Schlechta’s documentation of forgeries on Elisabeth’s part, Walter Kaufmann notes that all of Schlechta’s evidence is confined to letters; there is no evidence that Nietzsche’s notebook entries were changed significantly philosophically. Still, it does make one pause. Elisabeth was quite conscious of public opinion. As Nietzsche’s writings became more popular, she realized what total control over her brother’s literary estate could mean to her. Elisabeth somehow got their mother to sign over her rights to the material and profits to her. It was Elisabeth who decided what of Nietzsche’s would be published and when. She set herself up as the sole authority in Nietzsche interpretation. Many Nietzsche commentators are convinced that she delayed the publication of Ecce Homo, which was entirely complete before Nietzsche’s collapse, until 1908, nearly twenty years after he wrote it, so she could establish her authority in interpreting Nietzsche’s works rather than let Nietzsche speak for himself.
All of this adds considerable confusion to how to interpret the material amassed under the title The Will to Power. This book was published originally with only some 400 or so aphorisms. Five years later, a second, expanded edition appeared with a total of 1,067 aphorisms. This is the book that Kaufmann and Hollingdale translated into English. All Nietzsche commentators agree that the book The Will to Power that Elisabeth published is not the book that Nietzsche promises in a footnote in On the Genealogy of Morals:
I shall probe these things more thoroughly and severely in another connection (under the title “On the History of European Nihilism,” it will be contained in a work in progress: The Will to Power: Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values). (GM III, 27)
Jene Dinge sollen von mir in einem andren Zusammenhange gründlicher und härter angefasst werden (unter dem Titel “Zur Geschichte des europaischen Nihilismus”; ich verweise dafür ein werk, das ich vorbereite: Der wille zur Macht, Versuch einer Umwerthung aller Werthe). [KGW VI/2, 426–27]
Yet the belief persists today that our present edition of The Will to Power contains a good cross section of Nietzsche’s notes. There are several problems with this belief.
First, Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, who spent more than a decade laboriously reconstructing Nietzsche’s writings, are convinced that Nietzsche abandoned his project of writing a book entitled The Will to Power. But Nietzsche did consider it for some time. He collected and wrote 374 entries under that title in mid-February 1888. According to one of his first provisional drafts, dated 1887, one of the main sections of The Will to Power was to be called “Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values.” In a later Nachlass entry, Nietzsche removes “Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values” from a section heading and uses it as the subtitle of the book itself; this is roughly around the time of the On the Genealogy of Morals parenthetical remark. Still later, Nietzsche appears to have abandoned the title The Will to Power altogether.
The succession of Nachlass notes suggests that Nietzsche decided on a new title for his book—The Revaluation of All Values. In the outline for this project, the first part was to be called “The Antichrist.”7 Colli and Montinari believe that Nietzsche started working on The Revaluation of All Values in early September 1888. From the middle of September to the end of that month, Nietzsche polished sections 29 to 62 of The Antichrist, at that point the first book of The Revaluation of All Values. Nietzsche then had plans to write the second book, tentatively entitled “The Free Spirit,” but he interrupted them to write Ecce Homo. By the end of November, Nietzsche had switched the titles, with the main title of his book being The Antichrist and “The Revaluation of All Value” being the subtitle. Finally, at the end of December, or possibly at the very beginning of January, 1889, Nietzsche changed the subtitle of The Antichrist to “A Curse on Christianity” and then again changed the subtitle to “Attempt at a Critique of Christianity,” which is how the book is reprinted today.
Hollingdale offers two more reasons to support Colli and Montinari’s view that Nietzsche had indeed abandoned the project The Will to Power. The first is from a letter dated November 1888 to George Brandes, in which Nietzsche writes, “The whole work (Ecce Homo) is a prelude to The Revaluation of All Values which lies completed before me.” At that point in time, the only completed portion of The Revaluation of All Values had to be The Antichrist.
The second is a prelude from Ecce Homo, in which Nietzsche writes,
I attacked the tremendous task of the Revaluation and . . . without permitting myself to be distracted for a moment, I went on with my work: there was only the last quarter of the book still to be disposed of. (EH, “Twilight,” 3)
Griff ich die ungeheure Aufgabe der Umwerthung an . . . ohne mich einen Augenblick abziehn zu lassen, gieng ich wieder an die Arbeit: es war nur das letzt Viertel des Werks noch abzuthun. [KGW VI/3, 353–54]
Because Nietzsche was working on The Antichrist at the time, Hollingdale concludes that Nietzsche envisioned The Antichrist as a book unto itself and not simply the first chapter of a larger work. If Nietzsche had abandoned both The Will to Power and The Revaluation of All Values, then, according to Hollingdale, we need not be concerned that these notes might have been saved for future works. With Twilight of the Idols at the publisher and Ecce Homo and The Antichrist in final form, we can infer that Nietzsche was not in the middle of a book when he collapsed. Thus, notes that had not made their way into Ecce Homo or The Antichrist were not waiting for Nietzsche to begin The Will to Power. This does not necessarily lead us to Hollingdale’s recommendation that the controversial Nachlass notes be ignored completely, but The Will to Power that is in circulation today is to be met with some skepticism.
Another serious problem with The Will to Power is that many of the numbered aphorisms are chopped up versions of longer entries. Sections have been deleted or moved to totally different headings. One lengthy note has been reedited to become 634, 635, and 693 in The Will to Power. Another starts as 702, then, after the penultimate paragraph, one must go back to 652, then come back to the ultimate paragraph of 702, and finally tack on 703 to get the original entry. Still another single notebook entry is broken into eighteen different aphorisms scattered throughout aphorisms 234 and 970 in The Will to Power. Some entries that Nietzsche crossed out have been included.
A third problem is the form of The Will to Power itself. Elisabeth and Köselitz chose one of Nietzsche’s sketchiest outlines on which to pattern the book. There were many more detailed plans—including the list of 374 entry headings—and several that were penned after the brief one chosen. Bernd Magnus notes that these later outlines all drop the famous “Will to Power as Nature” heading that Elisabeth chose to use.8 Also, of the 374 entry headings that Nietzsche collected in mid-February 1888, none comes even close to the famous, final entry in The Will to Power, written in June–July 1885, on which so much interpretation of will to power as Nietzsche’s metaphysics rests. So there may be some evidence that Nietzsche may not have wanted to extend will to power into the inorganic or inanimate realm.
Even if these particular problems of Nietzsche’s notebooks could be resolved, the question as to what to do with any writer’s notebooks remains. Should we consider them as guides to the development of the writer’s thoughts? Should we ignore them and only consider the published material, or should we focus on the notes and ignore the published material? Perhaps we should make no distinction between the two, as many commentators do. Certainly, at age forty-four, Nietzsche should have had more productive years ahead of him had it not been for his collapse. Although he may not have been in the middle of a writing project in early January 1889, there is no indication that he would have given up writing altogether after the completion of The Antichrist. There is still a possibility that some of the notes may have been used or revised for future works. On the other hand, Nietzsche wrote down all sorts of things, from laundry lists, to fragments of sentences, to lengthy, densely philosophical pieces. Part of Colli and Montinari’s task of editing Nietzsche’s written remains was to decide which pieces were suitable to be included in the Nachlass. Which fragments ought to be ignored in a philosophical study, and which ought to be taken seriously?
It comes as no surprise that Nietzsche commentators are divided on this issue. Those who want to use some of the controversial notes to support their interpretations of Nietzsche’s philosophy defend using the Nachlass notes or simply ignore the Nachlass problems altogether. These commentators have been labeled “lumpers.”9 They lump the controversial notes together with the published material and make no distinction between them. By contrast, there are the “splitters.” There are two types of splitters: those who separate the Nachlass notes and only use the published material and those who separate the Nachlass notes and emphasize the controversial notes.
Of the latter type of splitter, Martin Heidegger is the most renowned. Heidegger believes that the works Nietzsche published are too literary, that they were written merely for style and effect:
But Nietzsche’s philosophy proper, the fundamental position on the basis of which he speaks in these and in all the writings he himself published, did not assume a final form and was not itself published in any book, neither in the decade between 1879 and 1889 nor during the years preceding. What Nietzsche himself published was always foreground. . . . His philosophy proper was left behind as posthumous, unpublished work.10
The “real” philosophy of Nietzsche, according to Heidegger, is in the Nachlass, so he takes the Nachlass material more seriously than the published works. Heidegger believes Nietzsche wrote these notes to himself, so they represent Nietzsche’s thoughts more accurately than the writings stylized for public consumption. In Heidegger’s view, themes such as eternal recurrence and will to power are either watered down or cloaked in hyperbole to cater to the public’s diminished capacity for deep thinking. This would account for the discrepancy between the published presentations and those of the Nachlass that Magnus finds with eternal recurrence and that we find with will to power. By ignoring the published presentations of eternal recurrence and will to power, Heidegger’s interpretation of will to power, not surprisingly, emphasizes solely the metaphysical aspects. As we have seen, will to power is more firmly rooted in the metaphysical realm in the Nachlass notes and is offered only as an account for human behavior and morality (with a few couplings with “life”) in the published works. This allows Heidegger to advance his claim that Nietzsche is the “last metaphysician” and that his investigation into the question of Being is a radical departure from traditional philosophy and the true focus of philosophy proper. But all this sounds a bit too self-serving, doesn’t it? It seems like the real reason Heidegger prefers the Nachlass notes to the published writings is that the unpublished notes support his interpretation of Nietzsche as a metaphysician.11
Wolfgang Müller-Lauter tries to find some more fuel for Heidegger’s position, although Müller-Lauter takes the more modest position that the controversial notes are at least as important as the works Nietzsche published.12 He cites a Nachlass fragment from the year 1887 as support:
I don’t respect readers anymore: how could I write for readers? . . . When I write myself, I write for myself. (my translation)
Ich achte die Leser nicht mehr: wie könnte ich für Leser schreiben? . . . Aber ich notire mich, fur mich. [KGW VIII/2, 9(188), 114]
Müller-Lauter believes this fragment indicates that what Nietzsche held back from publication is just as philosophically important as the published writings.
But this passage is part of a longer entry that has as its main thrust Nietzsche’s disgruntlement at having written his books, especially Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in the German language because his books require thinking and Germans don’t think anymore: “Die Deutschen von Heute sind keine Denker mehr. . . .” According to Nietzsche, they persist in systematizing everything, even those ideas, like Nietzsche’s, that resist being categorized. This “will to systematize” Nietzsche calls a character sickness. It is only after this harangue on the character and intelligence of Germans that he says he writes for himself.
This kind of remark should come as no surprise. There are several places in the published works where Nietzsche makes a similar claim. One example is the subtitle of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “A Book for All and None.” This has generally been interpreted to mean that while all who read the book will think they understand it, in fact its deeper messages will be missed entirely and hence not grasped by anyone. Yet, even though Nietzsche had little faith in his then current readership, he published the book nonetheless. Thus we should not interpret “A Book for . . . None” to mean that no one should read it, or else the question would arise as to why Nietzsche had it published in the first place.
Another example of Nietzsche’s “writing for himself” is found in the preface of The Antichrist:
This book belongs to the very few. Perhaps none of them is even living yet. Maybe they will be readers who understand my Zarathustra: how could I mistake myself for one of those for whom there are ears even now? Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously. (AC, “Forward”)
Dies Buch gehört den Wenigsten. Vielleicht lebt selbst noch Keiner von ihnen. Es mögen die sein, welche meinen Zarathustra verstehn: wie dürfte ich mich mit denen verewechseln, für welche heute schon Ohren waschen?—Erst das Übermorgen gehört mir. Einige werden posthum geboren. [KGW VI/3, 165]
Even though Nietzsche did not consider any of his contemporaries able to understand him, he obviously hoped some person(s) in future generations might be able to comprehend and enjoy his ideas. In light of these examples, we could reinterpret Müller-Lauter’s citation to be saying that Nietzsche did not write for the then present European, and particularly German, community.
The consequence of adopting Müller-Lauter’s interpretation and seriously thinking that Nietzsche wrote only for himself is confusion. Why did Nietzsche publish his work? Why didn’t he just keep all his notes for his eyes only? Publishing his work would be irrational if he truly wrote for just himself. It would also contradict his letters, in which he expresses his dissatisfaction with the way his books were selling. He was upset that more people were not reading and discussing his work and wanted his editor to advertise them better. The Nachlass passage that Müller-Lauter cites is too fragile to support the entire weight of Heidegger’s or his own position.
The other kind of splitter, the one that completely ignores the Nachlass material, is exemplified by Harold Alderman and R. J. Hollingdale. As we have already seen, Hollingdale rejects the controversial notes because Nietzsche was not in the middle of writing The Will to Power. Alderman argues that the vast majority of the controversial notes was written between 1882 and 1888, the very peak of Nietzsche’s productivity. The Case of Wagner, The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, and On the Genealogy of Morals were published; Twilight of the Idols was at the publisher’s; and Ecce Homo and Nietzsche Contra Wagner were complete but not publisher ready. Alderman argues that because Nietzsche decided not to publish these notes, we should defer to Nietzsche’s judgment and disregard them as well. But even if Nietzsche did reject these notes, must we ignore them totally?
Lumpers generally do not argue for their position; they just cite unpublished material along with published material indiscriminately. However, they could argue that the fact that Nietzsche wrote these ideas down demonstrates that he was seriously considering them and that any idea that Nietzsche had in his life is open to philosophical scrutiny. The problem with the Nachlass notes arises when lumpers try to make the case that the controversial notes represent Nietzsche’s “real” or final position on philosophical topics. Richard Schacht’s otherwise excellent book, Nietzsche, is one of the most notable examples of this. I believe that to equate the Nachlass notes with the material Nietzsche authorized for publication is to invite confusion for the reader and trouble in interpretation from all the problems inherent in using them. I hope this chapter has demonstrated how differently will to power is presented in the Nachlass material from the way Nietzsche uses the idea in the works he himself published or authorized for publication.
Not surprisingly, there is a one-to-one correlation between commentators’ positions on the Nachlass notes and their positions on whether will to power is metaphysical. Those who reject the Nachlass material, for example, Hollingdale and Alderman, either argue that will to power is not a metaphysical principle or do not even discuss the possibility at all. Heidegger, who regards the Nachlass material as more valid than the published works, zeroes in on just the metaphysical aspects of will to power—as a metaphysical principle that does away with metaphysics altogether. Lumper commentators, too numerous to mention all by name, either are ignorant of the whole distinction between published and Nachlass material or casually brush aside any concerns. Not surprisingly, their positions also suggest that will to power is in some sense metaphysical.
The prudent position would be a cautious and sensitive approach to these controversial notes. Happily, this seems to be the approach most often taken in current Nietzsche scholarship, although vigilance against lumpers is still required. It is too harsh to ignore the vast richness of the Nachlass. Even if these notes are “thought experiments,” as Walter Kaufmann suggests, that Nietzsche ultimately rejected, it is by no means clear that we should disregard them completely. It may still be philosophically valuable to reconstruct and investigate them. It was a challenge to me to explain how inorganic “things” could be will to power. But we must be sure that any reconstructions we undertake are clearly noted to be our interpretations of the material and not said to be Nietzsche’s final position without providing ample support from the material Nietzsche authorized for publication. It may be more profitable to note the differences between how something is presented in the published writing and how it is portrayed in the Nachlass entries. This approach has been quite informative, particularly with Nietzsche’s notions of eternal recurrence, as Magnus has documented, and will to power, as I have documented. In the case of will to power, there is very dubious evidence in the published material that will to power is extended beyond the organic realm. And even if Nietzsche gives us evidence that will to power is an explanation for organic behavior, it is only in the Nachlass material that he talks about every other explanation being a derivation of will to power. In the works Nietzsche authorized for publication, Nietzsche does not give will to power such a foundational role. Instead, it is given the role of an alternative explanation to the ones current in the nineteenth century, not the more foundational metaphysical-sounding role apparent in the Nachlass. Further, there is evidence that Nietzsche did not want will to power to be considered metaphysical.
As we have noted, Nietzsche calls himself an “anti-metaphysician” in several places. The entire first chapter of Human, All-Too-Human is a scathing indictment of metaphysics, which is excoriated—mocked!—throughout the succeeding published books. There are also plenty of passages in the Nachlass against metaphysics as well: “metaphysics, morality, religion, science—in this book these things merit consideration only as various forms of lies. . . .” With over ten years of constant criticism against metaphysics, it is hardly likely that Nietzsche simply “forgot” about his position. Nietzsche’s various criticisms against metaphysics were about the entire enterprise of metaphysics and not just the various candidates for supreme metaphysical principle. Thus, his judgments against the Christian God are not that Christianity has the wrong metaphysical underpinning. Nietzsche is not saying that Christians should be worshiping will to power instead of God; he is arguing against the notion of metaphysical underpinnings in the first place, whether those underpinnings take the form of transcendental deities or scientific atoms. So, too, it would seem, the arguments would be apropos of “forces” in the form of will to power. It is not that the previous philosophers simply had the wrong metaphysical principle; it is that metaphysical principles themselves are erroneous. To then present will to power as a metaphysical principle would be the height of self-contradiction. Nietzsche seems too philosophically astute to make this kind of self-referential blunder; yet what are we to make of his assertions that “the innermost essence of Being is will to power”?13
This rather obvious self-reflective problem is the reason why some Nietzsche commentators have explicitly separated their interpretations of will to power from metaphysics, linking it to ontology or cosmology. Considering Nietzsche calls himself an “anti-metaphysician,” his theory of will to power must be something else. We could differentiate between metaphysics and cosmology by saying that metaphysics is concerned with transcendental (“otherworldly”) or a priori principles. To say that will to power is a cosmology allows it to be the product of empirical observation in a way that transcendental metaphysical musings cannot be. But unlike God, who is not of this world, will to power is very much a part of this world—it is the world. This differentiation depends, of course, on a very narrow interpretation of metaphysics, though not an unduly uncharitable one in Nietzsche scholarship, for it was one that Nietzsche himself liked to espouse, especially in Human, All-Too-Human and Daybreak.
In the writings of Nietzsche’s middle period, metaphysics is contrasted with science, and, in this “positivistic” period, science is preferred by Nietzsche. While science examines the world as it is, metaphysics concerns itself with questions and issues that cannot be answered by empirical observation:
Metaphysical world.—It is true, there could be a metaphysical world; . . . but one can do absolutely nothing with it, not to speak of letting happiness, salvation, and life depend on the gossamer of such a possibility.—For one could assert nothing at all of the metaphysical world except that it was a being-other; it would be a thing with negative qualities.—Even if the existence of such a world were never so well demonstrated, it is certain that knowledge of it would be the most useless of all knowledge: more useless even than knowledge of the chemical composition of water must be to the sailor in danger of shipwreck. (HAH I, 9)
Metaphysische Welt.—Es ist wahr, es könnte eine metaphysische Welt geben; . . . aber mit ihr kann man gar Nichts anfangen, geschweige denn, dass man Gliick, Heil and Leben von den Spinnenfäden einer solchen Möglichkeit abhängen lassen dürfte.—Denn man könnte von der metaphysischen Welt gar Nichts aussagen, als ein Anderssein, ein uns unzugängliches, unbegreifliches Anderssein; es ware ein ing mit negativen Eigenschaften.—Wäre die Existenz einer solchen Welt noch so gut bewiesen, so stünde doch fest, dass die gleichgültigste aller Erkenntniss eben ihre Erkenntniss ware: noch gleichgültiger als dem Schiffer in Sturmesgefahr die Erkenntniss von der chemischen Analysis des Wassers sein muss. [KGW IV/2, 25–26]
For the metaphysical outlook bestows the belief that it offers the last, ultimate foundation upon which the whole future of mankind is then invited to establish and construct itself. (HAH I, 22)
Denn metaphysische Ansichten geben den Glauben, dass in ihnen das letzte endgültige Fundament gegeben sei, auf welchem sich nunmehr alle Zukunft der Menschheit niederzulassen und anzubauen genöthigt sei. [KGW IV/2, 39]
It is the empirical aspect of will to power that commentators, especially Walter Kaufmann, like to emphasize. It is Kaufmann’s contention that will to power began as an empirical observation about human conduct. It was next extended to psychological motivation, then to all organic behavior, and finally to the inorganic realm. This progression is crucial for Kaufmann, for it is meant to persuade us that at all times Nietzsche was consistently basing his conclusions on empirical observations and avoiding metaphysical thinking and, therefore, never contradicting himself. Instead, as with any empirical, scientific theory, he was merely extending an explanation to see how far it could be taken (before it becomes nonsense, as Nietzsche suggests in BGE 36?). This experiment with will to power was extended to the entire world, but Kaufmann maintains that Nietzsche was never entirely comfortable or persuaded by his writings about will to power in the inorganic realm. That is why those aphorisms remain solely in the Nachlass and do not appear in the works Nietzsche authorized for publication. This may be a plausible reconstruction of Nietzsche’s method and intentions, but perhaps Nietzsche avoided making it an empirically based explanation for the world because he did not want it to be considered a “science.” In his writings on metaphysics in the later works, beginning with The Gay Science, Nietzsche criticizes science along the same lines as his criticisms against transcendental deities:
But you will have gathered what I am driving at, namely, that it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests—that even we seekers after knowledge today, we godless anti-metaphysicians still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by a faith that is thousands of years old, that Christian faith which was also the faith of Plato, that God is the truth, that truth is divine.—But what if this should become more and more incredible, if nothing should prove to be divine any more unless it were error, blindness, the lie—if God himself should prove to be our most enduring lie? (GS, 344)
Doch man wird es begriffen haben, worauf ich hinaus will, nämlich dass es immer noch ein metaphysischer Glaube ist, auf dem unser Glaube an die wissenschaft runt,—dass auch wir Erkennenden von heute, wir Gottlosen und Antimetaphysiker, auch unser Feuer noch entzündet hat, jener Christen-Glaube, der auch der Glaube Plato’s war, dass Gott die Wahrheit ist, dass die Wahrheit göttlich ist—Aber wie, wenn dies gerade immer mehr unglaubwürdig wird, wenn Nichts sich mehr als göttlich erweist, es sei denn der Irrthum, die Blindheit, die Lüge,—wenn Gott selbst sich als unser längste lüge erweist? [KGW V/2, 259]
Metaphysics is still needed by some; but so is that impetuous demand for certainty that today discharges itself among large numbers of people in a scientific-positivistic form. The demand that one wants by all means that something should be firm (while on account of the ardor of this demand one is easier and more negligent about the demonstration of this certainty)—this, too, is still the demand for a support, a prop, in short, that instinct of weakness which, to be sure, does not create religious, metaphysical systems, and convictions of all kinds but—conserves them. (GS, 347)
Metaphysik haben Einige noch nöthig; aber auch jenes ungestüme Verlangen nach Gewissheit, welches sich heute in breiten Massen wissenschaftlich-positivistisch entladet, das Verlangen, durchaus etwas fest haben zu wollen (während man es wegen der Hitze diese Verlangens mit der Begründung der Sicherheit leichter und lässlicher nimmt): auch das ist noch das Verlangen nach Halt, Stütze, kurz, jener Instinkt der Schwäche, welcher Religionen, Metaphysiken, Ueberzeugungen aller Art zwar nicht schafft, aber—conservirt. [KGW V/2, 263–64]
Thus, science can no more be the foundation for anything than God; there is no foundation, period. The consequences of this for Nietzsche will be more fully discussed in chapter 4. At this point, it seems clear that Nietzsche’s criticism of metaphysics extends to anything that tries to establish a foundation in what he sees as a sea of becoming. If will to power were the foundational explanation for everything, it would be subject to the same criticisms Nietzsche levels against setting up God and science as foundations.
To reduce everything to will to power, then, would seem to come under the same attack leveled at religion and science. Also, it would seem that emphasizing will to power as an empirical observation is not going to let will to power escape this criticism, for science is also empirical in method. Perhaps Nietzsche realized that reducing everything to will to power would rob will to power of its explanatory effectiveness. Maudemarie Clark states that “the enlightening character of explanations of behavior in terms of the desire for power is dependent on an implicit contrast with other motives, and it is therefore lost as soon as all other motives are expressions of the will to power.”14 In Clark’s example, to explain rape as an act of power has explanatory power only when contrasted with the explanation that rape is an act of repressed sexual desire. But if sexual desire is itself an act of power, then the explanation loses its revelatory and explanatory punch. Thus, making will to power a cosmological principle rather than a metaphysical principle does not extricate it from being problematic for Nietzsche.
The other distinction is made between metaphysics and ontology. Ontology fares better because it is concerned with how beings experience the world and not with the ultimate foundation of the world. Thus, Nietzsche can say without apparent contradiction that there is no ultimate foundation of the world and that all beings’ experience in the world is one of power, for will to power would be more a way of being in the world than the ultimate constitution of it. Again, the pluses of this distinction are that ontology does not preclude empirical observation and that ontology is concerned less about the ultimate constitution of the world and more about the kind of existence experienced in the world. That is why many current commentators call will to power Nietzsche’s ontology rather than his cosmology or metaphysics. However, in today’s philosophical climate, many times ontology is included under the broad heading of metaphysics.
The question of will to power being Nietzsche’s metaphysics centers around how narrowly one construes metaphysics. Nietzsche’s criticisms are against a fairly narrow interpretation of “metaphysics” as concerned with a priori concepts or transcendent, otherworldly matters, specifically God. Will to power is neither a priori nor transcendent. On the other hand, there is W. V. O. Quine’s more sweeping interpretation of metaphysics: that it is any answer to the question “What is there?” Surely we would be tempted to say that “will to power” is Nietzsche’s answer to Quine’s question. So will to power is not metaphysical in Nietzsche’s interpretation of metaphysics, which does not include the more contemporary idea of ontology, but it may be considered metaphysical in the broadest interpretation of metaphysics, such as Quine’s. If this move of distinguishing between a narrow and a broad definition of metaphysics is made, then Nietzsche avoids the self-referential problem by arguing against metaphysics in the narrow sense and then positing will to power as the answer to Quine’s question of metaphysics in the broad sense.
But even this move can be hazardous. When will to power appears in the writings Nietzsche authorized for publication, the contexts are almost exclusively about organic, and primarily human, behavior. The most metaphysical-sounding passages on will to power occur in the controversial unpublished notes. Thus, we cannot be totally confident that “will to power” is Nietzsche’s answer to Quine’s question. At best, all we can say is that the published aphorisms that contain will to power imply that will to power might be Nietzsche’s answer to Quine’s question.
The question of whether Nietzsche’s remarks on will to power are contradictory to his criticism of metaphysics may be a twentieth-century dilemma. One of the main reasons we can talk about a narrow or broad interpretation of metaphysics or about will to power being ontological is because of Nietzsche’s influence on later philosophers. His criticisms against metaphysics were instrumental in getting some subsequent philosophers to expand on or abandon altogether the notion of metaphysics. With the ensuing broadening of the term to encompass cosmology and ontology, late-twentieth-century philosophers can talk about different positions within metaphysics. But Nietzsche was in no such position. For him, there were not several subsets of metaphysics from which to choose. Being steeped in the classics, he interpreted “metaphysics” as the ancient Greeks did—as “beyond nature.” Will to power is not beyond nature, it is nature, so perhaps no self-referential problem arose in Nietzsche’s thinking.
I hope I have shown that the entries about will to power in the Nachlass are not only distinctly broader in scope than those passages Nietzsche chose to publish but also, in the case of extending will to power to explain the nonorganic realm, distinctly different. While the Nachlass entries about human and organic behavior broaden the views presented in the published works, they at least have some counterparts in the writings that Nietzsche authorized for publication. However, the difference is striking and significant in the case of Nietzsche’s remarks about will to power in the inorganic realm. I have already discussed the problems with interpreting Beyond Good and Evil 36 in any definitive way. The Nachlass entries on will to power as force share the same writing style Magnus describes for Nietzsche’s Nachlass entries on eternal recurrence: they are unimaginative, argumentative, straightforward, and “scientific” sounding. The notable exception to this style is, of course, the marvelously metaphorical entry I quote at the beginning of this chapter. Its poetical and imaginative style is almost unsurpassed in the published writings. But this entry was written in 1885, just after Nietzsche wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The fact that Nietzsche wrote eight books after this time and never chose to publish that entry seems to me to be a strong indication that Nietzsche was somehow dissatisfied with it. Colli and Montinari comment that Nietzsche’s entries about will to power in this time period reflect his positivistic and pro-scientific periods.15 Given these considerations, I interpret will to power nonmetaphysically, noncosmologically, and nonontologically. But then how do I interpret it?
In order to answer that question, we need to examine Nietzsche’s discussion of will to power’s connection with will to truth. I propose we shift the focus of the problem away from the question of metaphysics and toward the question of truth. In my discussion of will to power, I have presented Nietzsche’s views as if his texts faithfully reveal Nietzsche’s thoughts, as if there were a “true picture” of Nietzsche’s thoughts on will to power. But what if a “true picture” of will to power is not possible? Indeed, Nietzsche suggests that it isn’t even desirable. Given these complications, what are we to make of will to power? The following chapter discusses Nietzsche’s remarks on will to power in connection with his remarks on the nature of truth.
Heidegger, Martin. Nietzsche, 4 vols. Trans. David Krell. New York: Harper and Row, 1979; see especially vol. 3.
Magnus, Bemd. “The Use and Abuse of The Will to Power.” In Reading Nietzsche, ed. Robert Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Poellner, Peter. Nietzsche and Metaphysics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
Schacht, Richard. Making Sense of Nietzsche. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995; see especially part 1, chapter 6.
Stack, George. Man, Knowledge, and Will to Power. Durango, Colo.: Hollowbrook Press, 1994.
———. Lange and Nietzsche. New York: Walter de Gruyter and Co., 1983.