ISSN 1393-614X Minerva - An Internet
Journal of Philosophy Vol. 8 2004.
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Nietzsche on Truth and the
Will Steven Michels |
Abstract
The fundamental — and many would say lingering — challenge
to Nietzsche concerns how he can ground the will to power, given what he says
about metaphysics as a philosophic prejudice. Does his teaching not topple of
its own weight/lessness? It is the standard objection to which all postmodern
philosophers must respond. This article examines what Nietzsche says about the
limits of truth and the role that experience and perspective have in setting
standards by which we might live correctly. The will to power, Nietzsche
instructs, is a claim on truth, confirmed only to the extent that it serves
life and culture. Hence Nietzsche’s most basic doctrine appears in nature as a
source of order and value, without imposing itself as such.
This world is the will
to power — and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power
— and nothing besides! (Nietzsche 1968, §1067)
Although
the centrality of the will to power to Nietzsche’s philosophy is nearly
undisputed, what remains contentious is how Nietzsche can defend the will to
power in a manner consistent with his break from Western rationalism. As Linda
L. Williams summarizes the tension: “ultimately… a wholly univocal answer to
the question ‘What is will to power?’ is not only impossible but also
undesirable” (2001, p. x). She concludes, “interpreting will to power as
Nietzsche’s empirical principle to which all experience can be reduced or
interpreting will to power as Nietzsche’s science have the benefit of being in
this world, but in my view they suffer from the implication that will to power
somehow transcends Nietzsche’s perspectivism” (2001, p. 129).
Does
Nietzsche, as Williams suggests, present an ambiguous or incongruous
philosophy? Or does he, as Heidegger charges, relapse into metaphysics? Is the
will to power a force for order or does it exemplify the chaos of the modern
age? This article examines how, through his emphasis on perspectivism and life
as the standard for truth, Nietzsche is able to use the will to power as the
basis for his positive thought, while avoiding what he would call standard
metaphysical trappings.
The
Problem of the Will
The
concept of the will came to Nietzsche through his reading of Schopenhauer. In
his magnum opus, The World as Will and Idea, Schopenhauer argues that
individuals, as conscious and reflective beings, interpret the world. This
notion is established a priori, for “no truth is more certain, more
independent of all the others, and less in need of proof, than this: that all
that is there for the knowing — that is, the whole world — is only object in
relation to the subject, perception of the perceiver — in a word, idea”
(Schopenhauer 1995, Bk. 1 §1).
Insofar
as the world is subjective, or the subject of its perceiver, the world is also
will. Schopenhauer claims: “the world as idea is a mirror which reflects the
will. In this mirror the will recognizes itself in ascending grades of
distinctness and completeness, the highest of which is man, whose nature,
however, receives its complete expression only through the integrated series of
his actions” (Schopenhauer 1995, Bk. 4 §54). This combination of idea and will
is the only logical, and indeed the only possible, ground for philosophy. “A
reality that is neither of these two,” Schopenhauer writes, “is the absurd
product of a dream, and its credence in philosophy is a treacherous will-o’-the
wisp” (Schopenhauer 1995, Bk. 1 §1).
Although
Nietzsche followed Schopenhauer in using the will as the foundation for his
philosophy, he broke with his teacher in a radical way. As Bryan Magee writes,
“Nietzsche’s philosophy developed in such a way as to retain Schopenhauer’s
insistence on the primacy of the will as its cardinal point, but to adopt an
attitude towards the will which was the diametrical opposite of Schopenhauer’s”
(1983, p. 269). Schopenhauer, Nietzsche explains, thought the will was “really
known to us, absolutely and completely known” (Nietzsche 1966, §19). Nietzsche
professes that the will is not known absolutely, nor can it be. The act of
willing is not even a single entity; it is “a unity only as a word” (Nietzsche
1966, §19). Against Schopenhauer, Nietzsche posits the will as something
“complicated” (Nietzsche 1966, §19). Nietzsche claims that Schopenhauer, like
many philosophers, misunderstood the function of the will. Schopenhauer did not
really know of the will: he merely accepted what others said of it and then
expounded upon their view. Nietzsche tells us that, unlike Schopenhauer, he
will be “cautious” and “unphilosophisch” (Nietzsche 1966, §19); much
like the will itself, his treatment is “complicated.”
In his
most succinct formulation, Nietzsche calls the will to power the “essence of
life” (Nietzsche 1989b, §2.12; Cf. 1968, §254). Nietzsche suggests that the
will is central to man’s existence: without it we would die. That, however,
tells us nothing about its operation, only its importance. The same can be said
of water, for example (see Nietzsche 1998, §3). Is the will physical or
psychological? What does it mean for a political community? In a sense, the
will as “essence” is not so much a definition as it is a standard for judgment,
a challenge to consider and perhaps accept Nietzsche’s philosophy as our own.
Perhaps Nietzsche wishes to assess the composition of our will, to test his
audience. If not the will, what is our essence?
Although
Nietzsche’s treatment of the will is far from simple, one thing is certain: by
no means does the will to power mean the instinct for self-preservation.
“Physiologists should think before putting down the instinct of
self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being,” Nietzsche
charges. “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” (Nietzsche 1966, §13). If anything,
the drive for self-preservation is a sign of a weak will (Nietzsche 1974,
§349). The strong and healthy have no need to concern themselves with
preservation; it is the weak and fearful who must always pursue such an ignoble
aim. The confusion of the will with self-preservation is merely one among many
“superfluous teleological principles” common in modern philosophic
discourse. Nietzsche’s new philosophy breaks with this tradition, and instead
demands an “economy of principles” (Nietzsche 1966, §13).
Arguably,
Nietzsche’s clearest, if not most comprehensive, statement on the will is found
in Beyond Good and Evil. Nietzsche begins his instruction in Section 19,
where he writes: “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” (Nietzsche 1966, §19). As Nietzsche
describes it, “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 the will” (Nietzsche 1966, §19). Many, like Schopenhauer,
disregard this distinction and replace it with a specific and definite will
that corresponds to the “synthetic concept ‘I’” (Nietzsche 1966, §19). For
Nietzsche, however, activity itself is the only consideration; the “doer is
merely a fiction added to the deed” (Nietzsche 1989b, §1.13). Both science and
the “popular mind” suffer from “the misleading influence of language” and their
attention to the “subject” (Nietzsche 1989b, §1.13). In other words, treating
the will as if it were absolute neglects its true nature and its actual
effects. This was Schopenhauer’s error. Not only did he adopt the will from
popular opinion, but he also treated a subjective precept as an objective fact.
Although he breaks from Schopenhauer’s
singular will known “absolutely and completely,” Nietzsche considers “all
willing” more alike than not. The will may be a “unity only as a word,” 1 but willing is always
comprised of the same essential features: it contains a “plurality” of
sensations that, when conflicted, must be reconciled. These “sensations” are
those of affirmation or negation — the “away from which…[and the] towards
which” — and they require a point of reference (Nietzsche 1966, §19).
Willing demands recognition of the present and future, a condition of being and
a desire to effect any change that occurs. The plurality of the will means a
plurality of wills.
For Nietzsche, willing means “willing an
end” (Nietzsche 1968, §260). In this sense, the will is psychological, one
instance of appetite or aversion. It is also physical in that we need to move
our bodies in accordance with the sensation. The physical follows the
psychological through “force of habit,” where every movement is directed by an
act of the will (Nietzsche 1966, §19). Because the will necessarily contains an
action or movement, it is impossible to will and not to act, a notion
resembling what Hobbes had argued. Similarly, it is not possible to act, or to
move, and not to will. Although the will should not be confused with the drive
for self-preservation, will as “essence” implies that life is action, without
which our lives would be left to chance (Nietzsche 1968, §673). Without the
will, we would be as good as dead. Not surprisingly, Nietzsche alleges:
“biologically, modern man represents a contradiction of values; he sits
between two chairs, he says Yes and No in the same breath” (Nietzsche 1967b,
Epilogue). Modern man is deficient not only in his understanding of the will,
but in the action related to its full and healthy operation.
Perhaps the most important element of the
will, or at least the one most overlooked, pertains to the consequences
of willing. “What is strangest about the will,” Nietzsche observes, is that “he
who wills believes sincerely that willing suffices for action”
(Nietzsche 1966, §19). The result, Nietzsche insists, is the atrophy of the
will. Since the will is used most often in times where obedience is a foregone
conclusion, the full strength of the will is never realized or quickly
forgotten. The plurality of sensations becomes the totality of the will. Since
success is nevertheless equated with a demonstration of power, it goes
unnoticed that the consequences are most likely the result of someone else’s
will or just good fortune. In such instances, the will does not command; it
merely predicts. The will is no longer a will to power, but a will to hope. It
is far better, Nietzsche suggests, to fail on our own account, not to command,
than to confuse someone else’s successes with our will. Although the perception
of power may be similar, the actual amount of power, most evident in future
acts of willing, is diminished significantly. Hence “human nature finds it
harder to endure a victory than a defeat; indeed, it seems to be easier to
achieve victory than to endure it in such a way that it does not in fact turn
into a defeat” (Nietzsche 1997b, §1). In this sense, victory is a greater test
of the will. In either event, the will is more than a series of sensations and
thoughts: it is foremost an instance of command. An act of the will is
predicated on: “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” (Nietzsche 1966, §19). As Nietzsche tells it, “one is a
cause oneself only when one knows that one has performed an act of will”
(Nietzsche 1968, §136). Life is fundamentally the will to power, the doctrine
that “every power draws its ultimate consequences at every moment” (Nietzsche
1966, §22).
The
extreme form of this doctrine, however, is the belief that the will is totally
free, “the hundred-times-refuted theory of a ‘free will’” (Nietzsche 1966,
§18). “Extravagant pride” has led man to believe that he is an autonomous
creature, that his will is entirely free. This view, “the desire to bear the
entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve
God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society[,] involves nothing less than to
be precisely this causa sui and… to pull oneself up into existence by
the hair, out of a swamp of nothingness” (Nietzsche 1966, §21). Nietzsche
challenges the absurdity of this position by presenting the opposite (and
equally problematic) claim, that the will is not “free” at all.
This
“unfreedom of the will” is held in two different ways. The first is to accept
without question the responsibility for all actions, regardless of their cause.
Nietzsche claims that this view is held mainly by “vain races” (Nietzsche 1966,
§21). “Others,” Nietzsche continues, “do not wish to be answerable for
anything, or blamed for anything, and owing to an inward self-contempt, seek to
lay the blame for themselves somewhere else” (Nietzsche 1966, §21). In
both instances the will is either given credit for everything or denied blame
for anything. Both positions, Nietzsche argues, are examples of the “misuse of
cause and effect” (Nietzsche 1966, §21). “The ‘unfree will’ is mythology,”
Nietzsche concludes. “In real life it is only a matter of strong and weak
wills” (Nietzsche 1966, §21). Lest we forget into which category we fall, Nietzsche
reminds us: “Today the taste of the time and the virtue of the time weakens and
thins down the will; nothing is as timely as weakness of the will” (Nietzsche
1966, §212).
These
errors of the will manifest themselves in politics as well. Political men often
confuse their will with successes that occur during their watch; they too
profess a sort of “freedom of the will” (Nietzsche 1968, §136). Nietzsche ends
the section sarcastically by declaring that a philosopher should “claim the
right to include willing as such within the sphere of morals” (Nietzsche 1966,
§19). Simply put, if everyone — including and especially rulers — thinks
himself “free” to exercise his will and satisfy desires, why has no one seized
the opportunity to rule? Nietzsche’s implicit claim is that philosophers are
among those claiming “freedom of the will,” that they too wish to be ruled;
hence it is no wonder that the will has gone unappreciated.
Your
Truth or Your Life
The
first mention of the will in Beyond Good and Evil occurs in the first
section as “the will to truth.” Although the book opens in a philosophic tone,
Nietzsche seeks to determine the value of what heretofore has been philosophy’s
will. He begins by questioning why truth has been so venerated by philosophers:
“What in us really wants ‘truth’?” he asks. “Why not rather
untruth? and uncertainty? even ignorance?” (Nietzsche 1966, §1). What are the
forces behind the moral turn in philosophy? In this formulation, truth is not a
solution; it is the problem.
Nietzsche’s answer is that the “drive to
knowledge” is not and has never been the “father of philosophy” (Nietzsche
1966, §6). Philosophy, he contends, is not simply the pursuit of truth. The
reality is more insidious: “anyone who considers the basic drives of man…will
find that all of them have done philosophy at some time — and that every single
one of them would like only too well to represent just itself as the
ultimate purpose of existence and legitimate master of all the other
drives. For every drive wants to be master — and it attempts to philosophize in
that spirit” (Nietzsche 1966, §6). Thus, for Nietzsche, philosophy is
not the will to truth; it is a manifestation of the will to power. Philosophers
— “wily spokesman for their prejudices which they baptize ‘truths’” (Nietzsche
1966, §5) — are neither honest nor courageous in that they do not speak to,
much less admit, the true nature of their actions, even when they are aware of
what they are doing. “Truths” are nothing more than our “irrefutable
errors,” Nietzsche claims (Nietzsche 1974, §265). “The essence of a thing is
only an opinion about the ‘thing,’” he writes (Nietzsche 1968, §556). In
sum, “all valuations are only consequences and narrow perspectives in the
service of this one will: valuation itself is only this will to power”
(Nietzsche 1968, §675).
Nietzsche directed his assault on truth
against Plato’s metaphysics, the standard-bearer of the will to truth, and
Kant, Plato’s heir apparent. In light of Nietzsche’s teaching on the will to
power, philosophy’s metaphysical claims come to the fore as a construction of
the will. “As soon as any philosophy begins to believe in itself,” Nietzsche
contends, “it always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do
otherwise. Philosophy is this tyrannical drive itself, the most spiritual will
to power, to the ‘creation of the world,’ to the causa prima” (Nietzsche
1966, §9). Hence previous philosophers are not truly philosophers; they have
loved their truths, but not truth as such. “Plato, as the artist he was,
preferred appearance to being!” Nietzsche writes. “Lie and invention to truth!
the unreal to the actual! But he was so convinced of the value of appearance
that he gave it the attributes ‘being,’ ‘causality’ and ‘goodness,’ and
‘truth,’ in short everything men value” (Nietzsche 1968, §572). Not only is
Plato’s philosophy his creation, but he used it for his own political purposes.
Nietzsche sees the eide not as universal truth, but as Plato’s will to
power. 2
As a result, Nietzsche deems the ancient
quarrel between the poets and the philosophers as a sham: Socrates and Plato
were poets, too—poets clever enough to mask their faulty moralism and
self-serving politics. It is no wonder that Plato kept a copy of Aristophanes
“under the pillow of his deathbed…. How could even Plato have endured life — a
Greek life he repudiated — without an Aristophanes?” (Nietzsche 1966, §28). In
Nietzsche’s estimation, Socrates and Plato have lost their moral authority to
speak on behalf of the good and the just: their ruse has been found out. “That
is all over now,” he might say to them (Nietzsche 1974, §357). Platonic
philosophy is the cause of the modern dilemma. If Socrates is a decadent, then
Nietzsche wishes to be “the opposite of a decadent” (Nietzsche 1989a,
Wise §2). Nietzsche’s aim is to rid philosophy of masks and release man’s
natural creative energies.
The
same is true of religious figures. Paul, we should recall, appears in
Nietzsche’s writings not only as a political actor, but as “the greatest of all
apostles of vengeance” (Nietzsche 1982a, §45). We note, however, that while
Nietzsche is hostile to Christianity, he is unexpectedly sympathetic to Jesus.
In Nietzsche’s estimation, youth almost always excuses ignorance (Nietzsche
1982b, ‘Death’). What is more, Jesus’ teachings, as Nietzsche tells it, were
much different from what is now preached in his name. Nietzsche believes that
Christianity was founded as a break from the teachings of Jesus; it was Paul
who distorted what Jesus had said and made Christianity the religion that it is
today. If Paul, the true founder of Christianity, did for Jesus what Plato did
for Socrates, it is no wonder that Nietzsche does not want any followers (Nietzsche
1989a, Destiny §1).
The problem, Nietzsche contends, is that
metaphysical philosophers, and with them religious thinkers, do not take their
bearings from nature, properly understood. Most contemplative individuals are
animated by concerns for a world and a life different from the one in which we
find ourselves, and as a result, “philosophy, religion, and morality are symptoms
of decadence” (Nietzsche 1968, §586C).
Although
it is relatively new, the belief in metaphysics, Nietzsche argues, has already
produced disastrous results: “That for thousands of years European thinkers
thought merely in order to prove something — today, conversely, we suspect
every thinker who ‘wants to prove something’ — that the conclusions that ought
to be the result of their most rigorous reflection were always settled from the
start… this tyranny, this caprice, this rigorous and grandiose stupidity had educated
the spirit” (Nietzsche 1966, §188). Metaphysics has made the philosophic
endeavor one-dimensional, casting even non-metaphysical philosophy in an all
too metaphysical light.
Nietzsche
counsels us that the metaphysical posture of philosophy is not as old as its
practitioners allege: “it was only very late that truth emerged — as the
weakest form of knowledge” (Nietzsche 1974, §110). Truth as an end, as the
standard for judgment, is a recent, and therefore uncertain, phenomenon. It is
problematic, Nietzsche charges, in that it is potentially at odds with human
nature: “It seemed that one was unable to live with [truth]: our organism was
prepared for the opposite; all its higher functions, sense perception and every
kind of sensation worked with those basic errors which had been incorporated
since time immemorial” (Nietzsche 1974, §110). If living without truth demanded
strength, then the demand for truth has made man weak. “It is more comfortable
to obey than to examine,” Nietzsche laments (Nietzsche 1968, §452). Metaphysics
is an emotional crutch, supporting the fragile modern psyche. In this, we are
all letzten Menschen. Nietzsche wishes to eliminate truth as the
standard for knowledge and “dispatch all metaphysical comforts to the devil”
(Nietzsche 1967a, Self-Criticism §7).
This is not to say that Nietzsche is
enthusiastically nihilistic, for he disdains those who are unconditionally
anti-modern: “‘Everything is subjective,’ you say; but even this is
interpretation” (Nietzsche 1968, §481). While it is correct that much of
modernity is objectionable, it too possesses elements of truth. To reject the
whole of the modern project, to be unqualifiedly or anti-modern, is just as
adverse to philosophy, as being fully modern. Nietzsche is suspicious of
historicism, since “it is a prejudice of the learned that we now know better
than any age” (Nietzsche 1997a, §2). The possibility, and even the likelihood,
that an objective truth exists Nietzsche leaves virtually untouched; he
believes that such an animal exists. “As Nietzsche understands it,” Ted Sadler
writes, “perspectivism does not rule out, but rather presupposes, an
absolutistic conception of truth. Only when this is understood can the
authentically philosophical radicalism of Nietzsche’s thought emerge, as
opposed to the mere epistemological radicalism of postmodernist pluralism and
other forms of relativism” (1995, p. 13). If an objective truth does exist,
however, it cannot serve as the foundation for human activity, since we have no
means of ascertaining its nature. Yet, far from dismissing truth, Nietzsche has
high regard for it, perhaps even the highest: “In the end [truth] is a woman:
she should not be violated” (Nietzsche 1966, §220).
Nevertheless,
Nietzsche fails to comprehend why anyone, much less those professing a love of
truth, would “prefer even a handful of ‘certainty’ to a whole carload of
beautiful possibilities” (Nietzsche 1966, §10). Science limits and stunts the
growth of man, both intellectually and spiritually:
A ‘scientific’
interpretation of the world, as you understand it, might therefore still be one
of the most stupid of all possible interpretations of the world, meaning
that it would be one of the poorest in meaning…. But an essentially mechanical
world would be an essentially meaningless world. Assuming that one
estimated the value of a piece of music according to how much of it
could be counted, calculated, and expressed in formulas: how absurd would such
a ‘scientific’ estimation of music be!” What would one have comprehended,
understood, grasped of it? Nothing, really nothing of what is ‘music’ in it!
(Nietzsche 1974, §373)
Science
is unable to speak to the ends of human activity. At its best, science can
provide only facts; it cannot speak to the values of a political community.
Nietzsche defines science as “the transformation of nature into concepts for
the purpose of mastering nature”; it “belongs under the rubric ‘means’”
(Nietzsche 1968, §610). Provided that it is placed in the hands of Nietzsche’s
new philosophers, science may be useful as a means, but as an end in itself, it
is highly suspect.
As it
now stands, faith in reason and science does not and can never provide a firm
basis on which to ground political life. “What is science for at all if
it has no time for culture?” Nietzsche asks. “What is the Whence, Whither, To
what end of science if it is not to lead to culture? To lead to barbarism,
perhaps?” (Nietzsche 1997b, §8). Yet, later he asks:
Why do we fear and hate
a possible reversion to barbarism? Because it would make people unhappier than
they are? Oh no! The barbarians of every age were happier….The reason is
that our drive to knowledge has become too strong for us to be able to
want happiness without knowledge or the happiness of a strong, firmly rooted
delusion…. Knowledge has in us been transformed into a passion which shrinks at
no sacrifice and at bottom fears nothing but its own extinction…. Perhaps
mankind will even perish of this passion for knowledge! … if mankind does not
perish of a passion it will perish of a weakness. (Nietzsche
1997a, §429)
In
practice, the quest for truth has often come at the expense of man and society,
which includes the moral standing of its practitioners: “In antiquity the
dignity and recognition of science were diminished by the fact that even her
most zealous disciples placed the striving for virtue first, and one felt that
knowledge had received the highest praise when one celebrated it as the best
means to virtue. It is something new in history that knowledge wants to be more
than a mere means” (Nietzsche 1974, §123). If anything, Nietzsche claims, man will
live better, both individually and collectively, by a change in what is called
truth.
What is
Life?
Although
Nietzsche concludes that the will to power is the fundamental fact of nature,
there are those who doubt the viability or the desirability of such a teaching.
Some maintain (Rosen 1989, Berkowitz 1995) that deviating from a just and moral
order would invariably result in instability or even chaos. Mankind, this view
alleges, needs a firm set of values in order to live ethically. Destroying, or
even undermining, such an order can have grave consequences. In response,
Nietzsche argues the opposite: “it is not conflict of opinions that has made
history so violent but conflict of belief in opinions, that is to say conflict
of convictions” (Nietzsche 1996, §630). The real chaos and the greatest danger
lie in using an absolute (and therefore impossible) goal as the foundation for
moral and political life. If man were focused instead on strength and intellectual
honesty, the world would be more peaceful. “Three-quarters of all the evil done
in the world happens out of timidity,” Nietzsche writes. “And this is above all
a psychological problem” (Nietzsche 1997a, §538). It is acknowledging the
limits on truth that makes men tolerant, peaceful, and happy. “Convictions are
prisons” to be avoided at all costs (Nietzsche 1982a, §54).
It is
these same convictions that have led man to pursue absolute truth. “The
methodical search for truth,” Nietzsche posits, “is a product of those ages in
which convictions were at war with one another. If the individual had not been
concerned with his ‘truth,’ that is to say with his being in the right,
there would have been no methods of inquiry at all” (Nietzsche 1996, §634). The
search for truth easily becomes the demand for truth and the desire to prove
the truth of our claims. “‘Truth’ is,” Nietzsche writes, “more fateful than
error and ignorance, because it cuts off the forces that work toward
enlightenment and knowledge” (Nietzsche 1968, §452). In this respect,
“half-knowledge is more victorious than whole knowledge,” Nietzsche claims. “It
understands things as being more simple than they are and this renders its
opinions more easily intelligible and more convincing” (Nietzsche 1996, §578).
Appreciating
the shortcomings of truth does not entail a thorough embrace of ignorance or a
deliberate and exuberant return to the Dark Ages, the other objection to
Nietzsche’s philosophy. “Without this new passion — I mean the passion to
know,” Nietzsche declares, “science would still be promoted; after all, science
has grown and matured without it until now” (Nietzsche 1974, §123). 3 Recent advances in science
have occurred despite, not because of, the modern perspective on reason and
truth. “We all know how our age is typified by its pursuit of science,”
Nietzsche charges.
We know it because it is
part of our life: and that precisely is the reason almost no one asks himself
what the consequences of such an involvement with the science could be for
culture, even supposing that the will and the capacity to promote culture were
everywhere to hand. For the nature of scientific man … contains a real
paradox…. He seems to be permitted to squander his life on questions whose
answer could at bottom be of consequence only to someone assured of an
eternity. (Nietzsche 1997b, §8)
Reason
is hostile to life not only in the answers that it finds, but in the sorts of
questions it poses. In a sense, modernity is too concerned with method to
concern itself with wisdom (Nietzsche 1968, §466). Rejecting truth as a
standard does not mean that man’s growth will be arrested.
There
is a great difference, Nietzsche explains, between what is true and what is
useful. “It is no more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than
mere appearance; it is even the worst proved assumption there is in the world”
(Nietzsche 1966, §34). “Man has been educated by his errors,” says Nietzsche.
First he always saw
himself incompletely; second, he endowed himself with fictitious attributes;
third, he placed himself in a false order of rank in relation to animals and
nature; fourth, he invented a new tables of goods and always accepted them for
a time as eternal and unconditional: as a result of this, now one and now
another human impulse and state held first place and was ennobled because it
was esteemed so highly. If we removed the effects of these four errors, we
should also remove humanity, humaneness, and ‘human dignity.’ (Nietzsche 1974,
§115)
It
might also be that falsehood is equally, or perhaps more, essential to life
than is truth. There may be no fundamental difference between “the true, the
truthful, and selfless” and “deception, selfishness, and lust”; the latter may
be of even greater value (Nietzsche 1966, §2).
This is
not to say that error cannot also cause great suffering, for man has been
harmed by his errors, too: “Error is the most expensive luxury that man can
permit himself; and if the error happens to be a physiological error, then it
is perilous to life” (Nietzsche 1968, §453). The key question concerns the
impact that knowledge has on life: “The falseness of a judgment is for us not
necessarily an objection to a judgment…. The question is to what extent it is life-promoting,
life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-cultivating”
(Nietzsche 1966, §4). Life is often served greater by error than by truth.
Truth, Nietzsche argues, is not good for its own sake; rather, it is only good
to the extent that it serves life.
Replacing
truth with life as a standard, however, presents its own set of difficulties.
Most important, how is it to be measured? For this, Nietzsche looks to his will
to power: “What is good?” he asks. “Everything that heightens the feeling of
power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? Everything that is
born of weakness” (Nietzsche 1982a, § 2). With Nietzsche, happiness is “the
feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome” (Nietzsche
1982a, §2). It is not a question of virtue but one of “fitness” (Nietzsche
1982a, §2). The will to power is the will to life. “If this should be an
innovation as a theory — as a reality it is the primordial fact [Ur-Faktum]
of all history: people ought to be honest with themselves at least that far”
(Nietzsche 1966, §259).
Nietzsche
uses the will to power to describe his sense of the good and the desirable. If
we were to think of pleasure and pain, we would eventually be drawn to the will
to power:
If the innermost essence
of being is will to power, if pleasure is every increase of power, displeasure
every feeling of not being able to resist or dominate; may we not then posit
pleasure and displeasure as cardinal facts? Is will possible without these two
oscillations of Yes and No? — But who feels pleasure? — But who
wants power? — Absurd question, if the essence itself is power-will and
consequently feelings of pleasure and displeasure! (Nietzsche 1968, §693)
Pain,
to the extent that we can speak of such feeling, is not the frustration of the
will; rather, “the feeling of pleasure lies precisely in the dissatisfaction of
the will, in the fact that the will is never satisfied unless it has opponents
and resistance” (Nietzsche 1968, §696). The strength of the will is predicated
on the amount of strength gathered in opposition to it. Pleasure and growth are
coeval and linked to the will to power.
True
“growth” — an increase of the will’s power — is revealed in and determined by
the ability to gain from experience. “Life itself,” Nietzsche writes
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… if it is a living and not a dying body, [it] has to do
to other bodies what the individuals within it refrain from doing to each
other: it will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow,
spread, seize, become predominant — not from any morality or immorality but
because it is living and because life simply is will to power.
(Nietzsche 1966, §259)
The
will to power is superior in that it not only accepts the contradictory, the
ability to “appropriate the foreign,” it incorporates the contradictory into
its system and appreciates it as such (Nietzsche 1966, §230). The will, and
more importantly the growth of the will, is the source of Nietzsche’s
perspectivism.
Even
when tension occurs, it too can provide a great source of strength. The
potential of perspective is related to the belief in the will to power and the
growth process. For Nietzsche, “there is only a perspective seeing, only
a perspective ‘knowing’; and the more affects we allow to speak about
one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one
thing, the more complete will our ‘concept’ of this thing, our ‘objectivity’
be” (Nietzsche 1989b, §3.12).
Yet
there is another, seemingly opposite, drive that resembles this spirit. It is
fundamentally the rejection of new experiences, a “deliberate exclusion, a
shutting of one’s windows, an internal No to this or that, a refusal to let
things approach, a kind of state of defense against much that is knowable, a
satisfaction with the dark, with the limiting horizon, a Yea and Amen to
ignorance” (Nietzsche 1966, §230). Here, the will rejects the unknown; it is
unable to withstand the tests of strength that experience requires. Nietzsche’s
presents this spirit as a “stomach” that lacks “digestive capacity” (Nietzsche
1966, §230). The will’s capacity for growth does not mean that it always grows:
the will is more likely to wither than thrive. Being healthy is not a state but
a process through which strength is sought and achieved. Modern culture is
diseased because it does not understand the conditions for its health, much
less strive to attain those conditions. True strength and true growth of the
will mean enduring the unfamiliar and exploring the dangerous.
Action,
Nietzsche tells us, is primarily instinctive. The same is true of conscious
thinking. Nietzsche notes: “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” (Nietzsche
1966, §19). Thinking too is an element of the will, an activity guided by the
same physiological forces. To remove this activity from the will is to
eliminate the will altogether. To conceive of thinking, or philosophy for that
matter, without reference to the will, is to misconstrue the composition and
the method of the will. Philosophy is also an instinct; consequently, “behind
all logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement, too, there stand valuations
or, more clearly, physiological demands for the preservation of a certain type
of life” (Nietzsche 1966, §3). Much of our “truth” derives from considerations
of life and its preservation. The new philosophy is driven primarily by a
concern for health.
This
view of the will and growth is tied to the philosophy of the future. If
Nietzsche intends to use life as the standard by which to order rank and judge
truth, the two are connected through philosophy: the philosophers of the future
are those best able to realize life as a value and philosophize in that
spirit. Nietzsche’s new philosophy breaks from the moralistic tradition of
philosophy and uses life as the standard for judgment.
Conclusion:
Outside the Inside
There
are, we must admit, two great difficulties concerning Nietzsche’s doctrine of
the will. First, is life, or growth, an unambiguous standard? Nietzsche himself
is aware of this difficulty:
One would require a
position outside of life, and yet have to know it as well as one, as
many, as all who have lived it, in order to be permitted even to touch the problem
of the value of life: reasons enough to comprehend that this problem is for us
an unapproachable problem. When we speak of values, we speak with the
inspiration, with the way of looking at things, which is part of life: life
itself forces us to posit values; life itself values through us when we posit
values. (Nietzsche 1982c, ‘Morality’ §5)
The
second question has to do with Nietzsche’s perspectivism. How can the will to
power be, or even serve, as the foundation for life, given what Nietzsche says
of universal truth? How does it comport with his post-metaphysical philosophy?
Nietzsche’s revision of the scientific method is related to his faith in the
value of perspective and the recognition of the will as a thesis to be tested.
“The question is in the end,” Nietzsche declares, “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” (Nietzsche 1966, §36).
While Nietzsche is skeptical of cause and effect as a science, he does leave
faith in causation untouched, for “to eliminate the will altogether, to suspend
each and every affect, supposing we were capable of this — what would that mean
but to castrate the intellect?” (Nietzsche 1989b, §3.12). Viewing the
will as the principal cause is an experiment that must be conducted. Short of
this, philosophy becomes ideology and faith becomes nihilism. “In short,”
Nietzsche concludes, “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” (Nietzsche 1966, §36; emphasis added). The will as
causation is an experiment marking a new philosopher.
Although
his defense of life as the standard for truth and philosophy emerges from his
perspectivism, Nietzsche claims superiority for his approach and defends it as
such:
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 inside, the world
defined and determined according to its ‘intelligible character’ — it would be
‘will to power’ and nothing else. (Nietzsche 1966, §36)
“Suppose,”
Nietzsche warns — twice. Although the will to power is presented here as a
thesis to be tested, it is one that Nietzsche endorses as the “fundamental fact
of nature.” 4 It is true
because it serves life better than any other alternative. Viewing the whole of
nature as the will to power is the surest means to the health and growth of
individuals and, through individuals, culture.
If we
are to truly know the will, we must first admit what we do not know of it.
Williams’ conclusion seems to negate her premise that Nietzsche presents the
will to power in various forms throughout his writings. If the will to power
can only be appreciated in its entirety through his perspectivism, then it makes
little, or even no, difference how the development of the will to power is
understood, only that we take every perspective possible, Nietzsche’s included.
What is more, her suggestion that “viewing the will to power as a consciously
chosen perspective from which to interpret the world eliminates any need to
argue about whether the will to power is metaphysical, cosmological, or
ontological” (2001, p. 130) clearly runs afoul of Nietzsche’s perspectivism,
and is in fact the opposite of Nietzsche’s stated desire.
The
will to power appears in nature as a source of order, without presupposing
nature itself as an ordering principle. Furthermore, it is not metaphysical
because Nietzsche presents the will to power as a claim on truth, not as
self-evidently true or absolute. Where Plato brings the will to its knees,
Nietzsche raises it to the heavens. The will to power may begin as perspective,
but it ends as ontology.
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NOTES
1. For a discussion on the will to power as a deceptive or rhetorical
device, see Charles E. Scott, “The Mask of Nietzsche’s Self-Overcoming,” Nietzsche
as Postmodernist: Essays Pro and Contra, Clayton Koelb, ed. (Nietzsche
1982a, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990), pp. 217-229.
Scott concludes that the notion of will to power sets aside solutions in favor
of a series of more robust questions. Scott claims, “in Nietzsche’s mask of
self-overcoming, question dominates solution and sets in motion a distinctive
way of thinking that forms in the self-overcoming movements” (p. 229).
2. Richard Rorty calls Plato a “power freak”
and credits him with the emergence of pragmatism: “We have become pragmatists.
But we only took the path that leads to pragmatism because Plato told us that
we had to take evidence and certainty, and therefore skepticism, seriously.”
“Heidegger, Contingency, and Pragmatism,” Essays on Heidegger and others:
Philosophical papers, vol. 2 (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press,
1991), pp. 30-31. Furthermore, Rorty interprets Heidegger to mean that a
self-conscious pragmatism is preferable to the “repressed and self-deceived”
alternative provided by Plato (p. 32). For Rorty, pragmatism is really the best
outcome of the Platonic tradition.
3. “Knowledge grows as and when the gods are ceasing to be good; it springs
from the egoism of individuals seeking their fortunes (for example, through
navigation); it is elaborated as a variety of aristocratic amusement; and
finally the urge to know arises in those who, becoming tired of the ebb and
flow of popular opinion, want something solid to cling to.” Keith M. May,
Nietzsche on the Struggle between Knowledge and Wisdom (New York, NY: St.
Martin’s Press, 1993), p. xi.
4. Daniel Conway argues that Nietzsche fails
to prove the hypothesis of the will to power: “The world viewed ‘from inside’
thus remains a project rather than an accomplishment.” “Revisiting the Will to
Power: Active Nihilism and the Project of Trans-human Philosophy,” Nihilism
Now! Monsters of Energy, Keith Ansell-Pearson and Diane Morgan, eds. (New
York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), p. 136.
Copyright © 2004 Minerva
All rights are reserved, but fair and good faith use with full attribution may
be made of this work for educational or scholarly purposes.
Steven
Michels is an assistant professor of political science at Sacred Heart
University in Fairfield, Connecticut.
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