Talk:The Will to Power

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Socrates
Philosophy Portal
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Philosophy, which collaborates on articles related to philosophy. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
High This article has been rated as high-importance on the importance scale.

Contents

[edit] The Will to Power: Manuscript Verses Concept

The book "The Will to Power", especially in light of its history (e.g. being compiled by Nietzsche's ignorant, anti-semitic sister), and the concept of The Will to Power, with its various interpretations and applications, are two very distinct and separate subjects, and therefore should have their own articles.

I concur. Does anyone want to argue that they should be a single article? RJC Talk Contribs 16:01, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Uncategorized Comments

Why doesn't this even say anything about WHAT the Will to Power is about or to outline it? gelo 05:46, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Because the bunglers who wrote this have an axe to grind, declaring the book as something made from thin air, which is obviously false. Just look at all the vandalism at the article Friedrich Nietzsche. Utterly pathetic and risible. "AS HE IS" my ass. And now the section that talks about the book and the overman have been deleted and moved to "their articles". Hah! This has to be changed. These incompetent morons have had their day in the shade but not any more.--67.65.35.62 03:07, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

This is completely pathetic. If a section is entitled "The concept [of The Will to Power]" then it should at least have an outline of the concept within the first paragraph. How can I understand that the Nazi's misappropriated the concept if I do not even know what it is? This "article" has a very long way to go. 74.194.27.5 07:36, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] disambiguation

You know, I think this should really be split into two articles. This one, in title case, should be the book, and Will to power should be about the concept. mgekelly 09:02, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I quite agree. On expansion to your proposal, I suggest the case of his planned book go along with the concept itself in the prospective "will to power", since the two are inseparable, while the "forgery", which was contrary to Nietzsche's intent, that is The Will to Power go elsewhere. With these a disambig. message can be put atop each of the articles to sieve the differences most clearly. Perhaps this design for new article titles is more adequate: the forgery as The Will to Power (book); and the concept with details on the planned book as The will to power (and/or as Will to power).—ignis scripta 22:10, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The concept and its interpretations

Now... don't we need to make it more clear that a general description of the idea suffices after which we can separately describe the interpretations more carefully and apparently? Just a thought for those that might want to contribute. Aey 22:30, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

As a matter of fact the idea of "power" (Macht from machen [to do, to make, etc]) needs furthering as well. Aey 22:42, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

At this point, it is clear we cannot do with one section alone. It needs more organization: separate parts describing the ontological implications, Nietzsche's attitude to those categories, etc., etc., needs to be established for the readers' understanding. Aey 23:06, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Completely agree. I did my best to clean this up, although it could still use a lot of work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.68.115.175 (talk) 23:25, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Entire article is garbage

Another entry on Nietzsche by someone who is afraid of what people will do if they understand what he was saying. Article is also poorly cited. Will to power is about control over one's self? Does anyone actually believe this? No reference is provided to support such a ridiculous claim.

Not all philosophy is supposed to make you feel all warm and fuzzy. Nietzshce was vehemently anti-egalitarian and viewed most Western values as values for the weak. Learn to accept this.

Here are a few quotes from the actual book:

Morality consequently taught men to hate and despise most profoundly what is the basic character trait of those who rule: their will to power.

Moral valuations as a history of lies and the art of slander in the service of a will to power (the herd will that rebels against the human beings who are stronger).

No where does Nietzsche describe the will to power as a "tenuous equilibrium in a system of forces". What nonsense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.83.248.178 (talk • contribs)

Poorly cited and poorly organized: Yes. Thus, instead of giving a pretentiously ascerbic statement, go about improving it - everyone can do so.
Yes, the "Will to power is [not] about control over one's self [sic]". I certainly have heard of this from a scholarly/academic sources. As to "tenuous equilibrium in a system of forces": something like this is described by R. Schacht in his book Nietzsche (no doubt in other places, too: it is far from being "nonsense") that gives a very good summation of his thought, to which too few give proper attention, but from that it sounded like the editor of that phrase was guided by something else... (As to your confused quotations: you really do not understand a modicum of Nietzsche's genealogy and how it relates to his entire work...) Too few cite their work to the detriment of the article, hence I've tried to clean it up some. I'll try to do more later on. Even so, the entire article is not "garbage"; there are many solid points in it. Aey 19:56, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Based on your tones I'm pretty sure you don't understand what Nietzsche was trying to say either. 71.68.15.163 19:08, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

This is an excellent article which certainly does not make Nietzsche 'warm and fuzzy'. It is more ontological - rightly so - and as such could not support a slave morality (i.e. post-WW2 liberalism).

Pete Hughes MA —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.69.223.191 (talk • contribs) 10:56, 18 July 2006


The article is clearly salvageable. There are some poor paragraphs, and it needs citations, and it needs clarity in a few places. But the idea of presenting the varied views is a sound one. What else is the article supposed to do? It could present the views that our angry commenter demands, but it cannot endorse them.

Will be back to add to this sometime.

My observation is that the final sentence needs to be expanded on. Those power quanta are N's most basic or fundamental level of description. Then there are the quanta gathering or subsuming other quanta. At the cellular level, similar events happen to bring about organisms. At the human level, persons do the same to bring about societies.

Nehamas (Life as Literature) and Golomb (N's Enticing Psychology of Power) discuss these power quanta. I can't specifically recall them in Schacht, but I am sure there have been more treatments. Not2plato 19:24, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Better explanation

Excellent summary that does not try to sugar-coat his work.

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/travis_denneson/power.html

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.83.248.178 (talk • contribs)

Online sources aren't entirely reliable unless the writer is a known scholar. The case is a simple one: paper (or "hard") literature tends to be much more reliable. A summary like this (which sounds like poor lecture notes) misses so much in Nietzsche's idea: for instance, it misses the point that such dominating over other's is a declination in life; and another (amongst many more), Nietzsche does not "approve of the violent conquest of others", he merely sees it as a very frequent occurrence in life. Briefly, it fails as an "explanation".
It seems strange that there is a recent appearance of (mostly anonymous) individuals who are against "sugar-coating" and "softening": are they oblivious to the ideas of progressing and improving scholarship on Nietzsche? I suppose someone should tell them how droll and idiosyncratic they appear! To be against "sugar-coating", or for any other predilection, will undoubtedly lead to shoddy scholasticism - and this has long been the situation in Nietzsche scholarship (e.g., Nietzsche has been characterized as a "proto-Nazi" and all the rest of it). Is it too bad things are improving? (That is, how could you presume to see that a paper is against "sugar-coating" unless you already uncritically accepted a sort of interpretation? How ironic it is that you beg the question just here.) Aey 19:56, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Consciousness as instinct?

the line "In fact, Nietzsche considered consciousness itself to be a form of instinct" is incorrect. Nietzsche instead understood consciousness to be a linguistic product of communication initiated out of the necesity of social interaction. He explains in the Gay Science that life originally had no need for consciousness and it is only after one is drawn into the herd that one begins to "know" himself via the general categories provided by language.


There is something correct in what you say, but in Beyond Good and Evil, he claims that the opposition between consciousness and instinct is a false one because conscious thinking is instinctive. Not2plato 02:01, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Ibid. See for ex. §333 of Gay Science which yourself quoted. Lapaz 01:17, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Of note, however, involving the biological interpretation..."

I'm not trained in philosophy beyond a 100-level course in college, but I'm a reasonably bright guy. I've been trying to make sense of the latter half of this paragraph for a while now, and it's turning into a losing battle; there are a lot of big words obscuring the meaning more than they clarify it. My best translation of the "then such concinnity" clause is: "the idea of W2P is so at harmony, and so interrelated, with the rest of his ideas that one can actually consider the other ideas to be based upon it." Related to the sentence as a whole, then, it strikes me as a tautology: W2P is the most central concept of Nietzsche's work because his other ideas are based on it. But there must be something here I'm not getting, and it seems to have to do with Nietzsche's use of the word pathos, not as a synonym for sympathy or for the evokation of sympathy, but as a term meaning the concept of "becoming." (Do I read that right?) If Nietzsche's particular definition of pathos is so vital to understanding this interpretation of his work, then perhaps more information on his definition is in order — or, perhaps, the text is just getting so dense that we need to consider whether it's suitable for a work like Wikipedia. There have been, after all, some significant battles going on here about the nature and meaning of Nietzsche's work, and maybe too many of the spent shells are still left lying on the battlefield? --Jay (Histrion) (talk • contribs) 19:32, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

mmm, gibberish. I've tidied the grammar and readability, I hope without changing the meaning too much, of the first half of the last para. The last part I have removed and copied here, because I can't make head nor tail of it:
Additionally, one interpretation (which lends significant credence to the view of the will to power as the most central concept of Nietzsche's thought) says that if attention were given to the will to power "as pathos", according to Nietzsche's own definition, as the fundament of his conception of becoming, then such concinnity vis-à-vis his work suggests a more thoroughgoing interrelation to the ideas prevalent throughout his work in its entirety and how other ideas might be shown to be based upon it. Such a view is then taken further to view Nietzsche's ontology as a part of a much larger conception of a process philosophy.
If anyone knows what it might be about, I'd be interested to see a clearer version back in the article. Squiddy | (squirt ink?) 18:28, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I gather that the author's intent was to highlight the passive aspect of W2P versus active, voluntary will. Thus, W2P is the pathos, the capacity to be affected, and therefore to change. This is not uninteresting, but because of its complex nature, deserves more than four lines to be clearly explained at all. Finally, I'd like to recall to Wikipedians that philosophy, no more than mathematics, is an easy thing, and clear for all. When I stumble unto the mathematic article discretization, I don't understand much of it... So why should someone who totally ignores Nietzsche's philosophy should be able to easily understand Nietzsche's concepts? The point of Wikipedia articles on Nietzsche is to eliminate any misunderstandings (and such misinterpretations exist — as a philologist, Nietzsche did not consider all interpretation to be equivalent, as some readers of Nietzsche would have it) rather than to make them believe that one can understand Nietzsche without (slowly) reading his texts. Lapaz 19:08, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

"Concinnity" is a musical term appropriated by postmodernists to give themselves airs. It should be removed and something intelligent, rather than vain, should replace it.Not2plato 19:28, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Will to power not natural but psychological in nature

I question the assertion that Nietzsche held such a strong view on the will to power doctrine as put forward in the article. Brian Leiter on Nietzsche's Metaethics shows that "Nietzsche's doctrine of will to power in its original deployment and most of its later development is psychological in character: the will to power is posited as the best psychological explanation for a wide variety of human behaviors." The multiple objections to a Privilege Reading" raised by Leiter need to be addressed. Narco404 15:32, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Left-wing Corruption of Nietzsche

The corruption of Nietzsche's philosophy in the Wikipedia articles by radical-left activists is insane. What better way to neutralize one's enemy than to appropriate, weaken, soften and distort him? The German Rudiger Safranski, at least, has the balls to speak the truth in a world gone mad with doctrinaire socialistic political correctness:

"According to Nietzsche, nature produces the weak and the strong, the advantaged and disadvantaged. There is no benevolent providence and no equitable distribution of chances to get ahead in life. Before this backdrop, morality can be defined as an attempt to even out the 'injustice' of nature and create counterbalances. The power of natural destinies needs to be broken. In Nietzsche's view, Christianity represented an absolutely brilliant attempt to accomplish this aim ... Nietzsche greatly admired the power of Christianity to set values, but he was not grateful to it, because its consideration for the weak and the morality of evening things out impeded the progress and development of a higher stage of mankind.

Nietzsche could envision this higher stage of mankind only as a culmination of culture in its 'peaks of rapture,' which is to say in successful individuals and achievements. The will to power unleashes the dynamics of culmination, but it is also the will to power that forms a moral alliance on the side of the weak. This alliance works at cross-purposes with the goal of culmination and ultimately, in Nietzsche's view, leads to widespread equalization and degeneration. As a modern version of the 'Christian theory of morality,' this alliance forms the backbone of democracy and socialism. Nietzsche adamantly opposed all such movements. For him, the meaning of world history was not happiness and prosperity of the greatest possible number but individual manifestations of success in life. The culture of political and social democracy was a concern of the 'last people,' whom he disparaged. He threw overboard the state-sponsored ethics of the common welfare because he regarded such ethics as an impediment to the self-configuration of great individuals. If, however, the great personalities were to vanish, the only remaining significance of history would be lost in the process. By defending the residual significance of history, Nietzsche assailed democracy and declared what mattered was 'delaying the complete appeasement of the democratic herd-animal'(11,587; WP 125) ... Nietzsche opted against democratic life organized according to the principle of welfare. For him, a world of that sort would signal the triumph of the human herd animal...

If we are content to regard this highly personal philosophy and these maneuvers of self-configuration with fascination and perhaps even admiration, but are not willing to abandon the idea of democracy and justice, it is likely that Nietzsche would have accused us of feeble compromise, indecisiveness, and epitomizing the ominous 'blinking' of the 'last men.'" Safranski, Rudiger (trans. Shelley Frisch), Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography, Norton, 2002, pp. 296-298. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.3.10.2 (talk) 14:08, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nietzsche's AntiBlack White Racism

On the Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Douglas Smith. Oxford University Press, 1998. , p. 49:

"By way of consolation to the more delicate, perhaps in those does pain did not hurt as much as it does today. At least, that might be the conclusion of a physician who has treated Negroes* (these taken as representatives of prehistoric man--) for serious cases of internal inflammation; such inflammation would bring even the best-organized European to the brink of despair--but this is not the case with Negroes. (The curve of human capacity for pain seems in fact to fall off extraordinarily abruptly, once past the upper ten thousand or ten million of the higher culture; and I personally have no doubt that in comparison with a single painful night undergone by one hysterical little bluestocking, the total suffering of all the animals put to the knife in the interests of scientific research simply does not enter into consideration.)"

Note 49 by Douglas Smith, p. 147: "Nietzsche's terminology and views here are clearly racist, assuming an evolutionary difference between white European and black African."

James Winchester, "Nietzsche's Racial Profiling" in Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy. Ed. Walls, Andrew. Cornell University Press, 2005. 255:

"At one point Nietzsche suggests that black skin may be a sign of lesser intelligence as well as a sign that one is closer to the apes (Dawn/Daybreak 241). Nietzsche clearly shares some of the basic tenets of nineteenth-century race theory ... In On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche writes that Negroes are representatives of prehistoric men (vorgeschlictlichen Menschen) who are capable of enduring pain that would drive the best-organized European to despair (Genealogy 2.7). Today most would see this claim about Africans as a prejudice. Who today would defend the claim that blacks feel pain less acutely than whites, particularly given that such a characterization could be used to justify the enslavement and maltreatment of blacks? ... William Preston uses this passage to make the claim that Nietzsche is a cruel racist, and there are in fact many places that support this claim (William A. Preston, "Nietzsche on Blacks" in Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy. Gordon, Lewis. Routledge, 1997, 169). Preston also argues that Nietzsche is equating Negroes to lab animals and that Nietzsche feels that blacks are worth so little that men of distinction will not derive much pleasure in oppressing them. As we have already seen, Nietzsche states unambiguously that cruelty is essential to every 'higher' culture..."

"In On the Genealogy of Morals, we find a discussion of the Aryan race, which is, Nietzsche proclaims, white. Against Rudolf Virchow, whom Nietzsche credits with having created a careful ethnographic map of Germany, Nietzsche argues that dark-haired peoples of Germany cannot be Celtic. Germany's dark-haired people are essentially pre-Aryan. Nietzsche further argues that suppressed races are coming to the fore again in Europe, and one can see this on the basis of the emergence of darker coloring and shorter skulls. He says it is even possible that modern democracy, or even more likely modern anarchism and the inclination for the commune, 'the most primitive form of society which is now shared by all socialists in Europe', is a sign of the counter-attack of the pre-Aryan races. The Aryan race may very well be in a state of physiological decline..."

Gooding-Williams, Robert, "SUPPOSING NIETZSCHE TO BE BLACK--WHAT THEN?" in (same author) Look, a Negro!: Philosophical Essays on Race, Culture and Politics. Routledge, 2005.

"While new and still newer Nietzsches continue to thrive...older Nietzsches remain-one of which is Nietzsche, the philosopher of aristocratic radicalism, but likewise the brutally scathing critic of socialism, feminism, and liberalism-indeed, of all forms of modern egalitarianism. This, for example, is the figure Georg Lukacs describes in writing that Nietzsche's 'whole life's work was a continuous polemic against Marxism and socialism' (The Destruction of Reason). Similarly, it is the figure William Preston evokes when...he insists that 'Nietzsche's whole philosophy-and not just his view of blacks-is racist.' In an essay meant for an anthology devoted to black existentialism ('Nietzsche on Blacks' in Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy. Gordon, Lewis. Routledge, 1997, 169), Preston asks, 'Can Nietzsche help black existentialists find answers to their own questions?' 'No' is Preston's clear response to this question, but a careful reading of his argument urges a still stronger conclusion-namely, that progressive philosophers given to a serious engagement with issues like white supremacy, colonialism, black politics, and black identity-whether or not they are existentialists, and whether or not they are black-have no use for Nietzsche. Preston tends toward this conclusion when he claims that Nietzsche saw suffering black people as laboratory animals that he wanted 'to make ... suffer more.' In effect, Preston argues that black and other progressives have no use for Nietzsche, because Nietzsche was a 'cruel racist' and a forwardlooking, trans-European 'man of the Right.'

...In his excellent essay on Nietzsche and colonialism, Robert Holub remarks that events heralding Germany's emergence as a colonial power (Germany began to acquire colonies in Africa and the Pacific in 1884) 'reached their height during the years that Nietzsche was composing his major works' ('Nietzsche's Colonialist Imagination: Nueva Germania, Good Europeanism, and Great Politics' in The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and its Legacy, ed. Sara Friedrichsmeyer, Sara Lennox). Holub also reminds his readers that Nietzsche became personally involved with colonialism through the adventures of his sister and brother-in-law, Elisabeth and Bernhard Forster, founders of the Paraguayan colony of Nueva Germania. Finally, and most important for my purposes, Holub recognizes that this personal involvement has 'a philosophical counterpart in [Nietzsche's] writings.' More exactly, he acknowledges that Nietzsche's philosophical imagination becomes a colonialist imagination when it conjures the images of the 'good European' and a 'great politics' to envision a caste of 'new philosophers' that would rule Europe and subjugate the entire earth. A critic of the sort of nationalism the Forsters embraced,

Nietzsche endorsed a supranationalist imperialism, and his 'untimeliness ... involves his unusual way of approaching the problems posed by foreign affairs and world politics. Eschewing the nationalist, mercantile, and utopian/idealist approach to colonization, he developed ... a conceptual framework that entailed a geopolitical perspective. In the 'good European' he found a term for a future elite that could overcome the nation-state, create a superior cultural life, and achieve domination of the world. With 'great politics' he offered an alternative to parliamentary life and actual colonial fantasies, as well as a vague blueprint for global conquest on a grand scale.'

Holub's description of Nietzsche's geopolitics helps put Preston's remarks into perspective. Thus, when Preston describes Nietzsche as a forward-looking, trans-European 'man of the Right,' he alludes to Nietzsche's colonialist fantasy of a future, European elite that would dominate the world beyond Europe. When he describes Nietzsche as a racist, he reminds us that this fantasy is, in part, the fantasy of a black Africa subjected to European rule, and that Nietzsche's antiblack racism (evident, for example, in his suggestion that the black race is less intelligent than the white races; see Daybreak, aphorism 241; On the Genealogy of Morals, second essay, aphorism 7, where Nietzsche takes blacks as representatives of prehistoric man) in tandem with his enthusiasm for breeding higher human beings, suggests that he imagined an 'imperialism of the future' as involving the domination of racially inferior black Africans by racially superior white Europeans. In short, Preston exposes the white supremacist connotations of Nietzsche's colonialist imagination."

Cf. Abir Taha, Nietzsche, Prophet of Nazism: The Cult of the Superman: Unveiling the Nazi Secret Doctrine —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.131.55.73 (talk) 03:56, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Very amateur article. Anyone reading this would get poor impression of Wikipedia

General lack of professionalism especially critical and well-supported assertions. Instead we have an article with too many brazen assertions which are at best contentious and at worst plain wrong (e.g. I have a particular penchant for N's views on consciousness. It is true that he has talked of consciousness in relation to instinct in his early writings, but to say outright that "Nietzsche considered consciousness itself to be a form of instinct" is entirely misleading. Reading his later writings such as Gay Science and Zara, you certainly would not come to that conclusion.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.9.36.209 (talk) 19:28, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

While I agree that the article is amateurish, I think you are mistaken to say that no one who read any of his later works might think that consciousness was instinctual. For instance, in Beyond Good and Evil he states "Just as the act of birth merits little consideration in the procedures and processes of heredity, so there's little point in setting up "consciousness" in any significant sense as something opposite to what is instinctual—the most conscious thinking of a philosopher is led on secretly and forced into particular paths by his instincts" (I.3). RJC Talk 03:12, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FYI...

Just a heads up...
A "related" article (not the concept, but the books) is subject of one of today's "Did you know" over at the de:Wikipedia.
In summary,... the various versions of The Will to Power are forgeries.
-- Fullstop 19:07, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Amazing!

This is like Nietzsche scholarship back in the dark 50s!!! Ok, so Nietzsche was a fascist bla bla bla. The real problem is that the whole article is riddled with contradictions - not a subtle reflection of Nietzsche's own writing I should imagine - the opening paragraph is enough to drive a sane man mad! Cheerio. - 62.158.113.163 19:28, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Frustrating

Completely agree with previous post. That opening sentence is unbelievably frustrating as is the whole article. Imagine, you come to Wiki and all you want to know is WHAT IS 'WILL TO POWER' and the first thing you find is " ... although this reading itself has been criticized by Mazzino Montinari as a "macroscopic Nietzsche" ..." What's really sad is that this sets the scene for the whole article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.240.128.75 (talk) 08:03, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] POV tag

This is about tag cleanup. As all of the tags are more than a year old, there is no current discussion relating to them, and there is a great deal of editing done since the tags were placed, or in some cases it's clear there is a consensus, they will be removed. This is not a judgement of content. If there is cause to re-tag, then that of course may be done, with the necessary posting of a discussion as to why, and what improvements could be made. Better yet, edit the article yourself with the improvements in place. This is only an effort to clean out old tags, and permit them to be updated with current issues if warranted.Jjdon (talk) 00:53, 29 April 2008 (UTC)