little bit of Nietzsche scholarship ...
For Life, To Power
In the note to the first essay of the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche outlines a two-stage model for his project. First, in a preparatory stage called genealogy, "scientists" must uncover the forces and values at work in our conceptions and practices of morals, science, philosophy, and more. Second, the true work of "philosophy", these values are to be ordered and "re-valued". Although we might find it helpful to break the second stage into two: first, in a stage of critique, Nietzsche ranks and values these uncovered values. Then, in an affirmative stage to come, the true philosopher (BGE210, 211) creates new values of his own. Of course the schema is inexact, as all three aspects of genealogy, critique, and creation/affirmation are interwoven throughout Nietzsche's writing. From the beginning of his work Nietzsche has values of his own to affirm, and he maintains that it is impossible to do preparatory genealogy other than from an evaluative perspective -- bad "English" genealogists who deny this are yet unwitting "shield bearers" of their morality (GS345). And Nietzsche's affirmative and critical values are clearly tied together -- for example, a positive ethic of life, health, strength, goes with a critique of values of decay, sickness, weakness.
In this essay I want to explore Nietzsche's own values, which can thus be seen both as the ground of his affirmative project and of his critical perspective. One bright thread to follow is the notion of life -- life, and life-filled concepts and imagery, carry the positive charge in Nietzsche's thinking from early on (e.g., the notable essay on history for the sake of life), and they never lose it. What is life for Nietzsche? There may be one sense, and an important one, in which life is everything there is. This enters in the context of affirmation, yes-saying, and the eternal recurrence: to affirm life is to affirm everything, the good and the bad, the small as well as the great, weakness and sickness too. But more often, life and related concepts can stand in contrast to anti-life forces -- sickness, decay, exhaustion. It is this more restricted usage I will pursue here -- although we may see that the two are not always so easily disentangled.
In his later work, Nietzsche connects life to the concept of will to power. Indeed (BGE259) "life is will to power". The introduction of the will to power, I think, provides the conceptual apparatus or system for a more developed life-philosophy which clarifies Nietzsche's thought. Here I follow the approach of those commentators who read the posthumously published notes on the will to power as outlining a systematic philosophy -- a "power ontology" -- which unites Nietzsche's thinking on diverse themes. In particular, I go along here with the approach taken by Gilles Deleuze (1962/2006), and more recently in English language philosophy by John Richardson (1996), of beginning by looking at Nietzsche's terms on the level of forces, sub- and super-individual, active and reactive. It is these forces, striving for power, that are the stuff of life.
forces and values
We might identify three domains in which Nietzsche talks of the Will to Power. According to Walter Kaufman (1950), Nietzsche early on introduced the concept in looking at human psychology, only later extending it to the broader domains of the "organic", or biological (life), and ultimately to all physical matter. In the published writings willing and power remain mainly features of human activity -- where some commentators would like to confine them. On the other hand, at least one important facet of the will to power doctrine is developed as an account of forces, as conceived by the physics of Nietzsche's day. But I won't here delve into these issues of the "anthropomorphising" or otherwise effect of Nietzsche's philosophy of biology and physics.
Nietzsche plays loose with terms and assignations, and fixing his terms is the work of later commentators and systematisers. Following Deleuze, here, I will fix on the notion of a force (kraft). (Noting that Nietzsche himself often uses the expression quantum of force, amongst many other formulations.) In Deleuze's general formulation, which perhaps somewhat Spinozises Nietzsche -- "Every relationship of forces constitutes a body -- whether it is chemical, biological, social or political. Any two forces, being unequal, constitute a body as soon as they enter a relationship." When operating in the more limited and less controversial domain of psychology, we might follow Richardson's systematisation in which a psychological force is a sub-individual drive (trieb) -- a human individual (human body) is a multiplicity of drives bundled together in relations of tension.
Deleuze here cites WP635, in which Nietzsche says that all "unities" -- being the root of our concepts of a thing, number, identity, and also dynamic concepts such as motion and activity -- are human fictions, and that when "we eliminate these additions, no things remain but only dynamic quanta, in a relation of tension to all dynamic quanta". The will to power is then not being, not even becoming, but "a pathos" -- which we might perhaps parse, following Kaufman's suggestion, as an "event" or occasion. (Also compare Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy of immanent events and momentary assemblages in the 1000 plateaux.) For John Richardson, we would be better to think of these forces not as intentional agents (some kind of "homunculi") but as "behaviour patterns", or "projects". This follows Nietzsche's call in GM1:13 to drop the illusion of a "doer" behind the doing: "A quantum of force is just such a quantum of drive, will, action, in fact it is nothing but this driving, willing and acting, and only the seduction of language (and the fundamental errors of reasoning petrified within it), which construes and miscontrues all actions as conditional upon an agency, a 'subject', can make it appear otherwise."
And yet perhaps the clearest way to grasp the notion of Nietzschean forces, and it is a way that Nietzsche himself often takes, is to see them as goal-directed entities. The picture I'll sketch here borrows largely from Richardson. Every force has a specific "internal goal", or series of such goals, which it strives after. For example, a hunger drive pursues food, a sex drive pursues sex. This is also where the notion of value comes in -- for Nietzsche another aspect of a force's activity, its striving for goals, is that this always involves valuing and interpreting. Perhaps the simplest way to see this is: a goal of a force is a value for that force. Thus, here in a psychological context although Nietzsche elsewhere extends this theme much more broadly, HH32: "all disinclination depends on a valuation, just as does all inclination. Man cannot experience a drive to or away from something without the feeling that he is desiring what is beneficial and avoiding what is harmful ..." We could say: to pursue or desire something is to interpret it as good, to give it a positive value.
Valuing here is primarily not a conscious activity, and indeed the thrust of the genealogical approach is that human consciousness on the whole mistakes or misidentifies human values. On an individual level, we might say that a person's "true" values are the values or goals of the largely unconscious drives that act in and through her body. Her consciousness is merely one force amongst others, itself with its own goal-directed striving, and not gifted with particular interpretative perspicacity (indeed, Nietzsche presents consciousness as subject to a form of systematic error -- cf. GS354, amongst others). It requires the grey science of genealogy, with unflinching courageous honesty, attention to detail, and a highly developed sense of smell, to unravel the mystifications with which conscious re-interpretation has obscured the real values at work in us.
will to power
From here, one approach to the doctrine of the Will to Power is then to see it as identifying an underlying commonality, perhaps a common nature (or "essence" -- cf. Richardson), behind all of these diverse goal-seeking value-creating forces. Nietzsche himself sometimes presents his theory as a replacement for more traditional such accounts in which all (human, or organic, or physical) activity is associated with (and, maybe, explained by -- or, even, reduced to?) a common motivating force. Thus, in WP688, Nietzsche says that "all driving force is will to power, that there is no other physical, dynamic or psychic force except this." Here he proposes will to power as a replacement for a hedonic theory of motivation: "it is notably enlightening to posit power in place of individual 'happiness' (after which every living thing is supposed to be striving)... pleasure is only a symptom of the feeling of power". Elsewhere the rival theory that will to power replaces is variously the Schopenhauerian Will; Spinozist connatus (drive to self-preservation); or a reading of Darwinism (perhaps, more accurately, Spencerism) in which survival and preservation of the species take on a quasi-Spinozist character. For example, to frame the position in contrast to Spinoza: it is not that bodies seek to preserve themselves in being; but that forces (within bodies) strive to become more powerful.
A few alternative understandings of what power might mean here have developed in a recent English language debate. On one position, advocated by Maudemarie Clark, power is the "second order desire" of an individual for the ability or capacity to realise her "first order desires" -- e.g., appetites for food, sex, etc.1 I think Clark's account is confused by remaining figured in terms of human individuals (rather than drives), but the point might be rephrased: while drives strive for different first-order "internal goals", they all also strive for the second-order goal of increasing their ability to attain these -- their power. This usage broadly corresponds to what in political theory is sometimes called "outcome power" -- the ability to attain desired outcomes, perhaps by the use of resources.2 It seems in tune with a rather basic notion of power as ability or potential; but it falls short of much of the rich meaning Nietzsche wants to attribute to the will to power. As we saw above, Nietzsche appears to say not that all forces seek power as well as, or for the sake of, other (first-order) goals, but that the seeking of power is the most basic and primary pursuit -- "there is no other ... force except for this."
But if power is not just a means to other ends, what is it? One approach, taken by Bernard Reginster amongst others, is to identify power with the overcoming of resistance. (More precisely, for Reginster, will to power is the second-order "desire for overcoming of resistance in the pursuit of some determinate first-order desire.") This reading emphasises passages where Nietzsche suggests forces go out looking for trouble. E.g., GM1:13's "thirst for enemies and resistances"; or Z2:12: "That I must be struggle and a becoming and an end and an opposition to ends ... Whatever I create and however much I love it, soon I must oppose it and my love; thus my will wills it"; or the memorable analysis of tickling in WP699.
John Richardson follows another line which is strongly suggested by many passages in which power is associated with domination or mastery over other forces. A force has its specific internal goals -- or better, less teleological, its own projects or behaviour patterns. But these are not fixed ends, a forces is always in a process of self-overcoming (selbstueberwindung), in which its activity changes -- grows -- and new goals replace old ones -- "striving to enhance itself, to extend its own scope of activity". A first sense of Nietzschean power is then "power as growth in activity".The question may arise here -- what of the identity of the force, does it remain the same force when its goals and activities are transformed by self-overcoming? But Richardson (and I think Nietzsche would approve) is happy to let go of identity-ontology, here it seems taking a cue from neo-Darwinist "population thinking": "it wills to rise to a new and higher level of effort -- perhaps indeed a level at which its internal ends are also overcome and replaced by descendent ones that will have to be overcome in turn." (Cf. Nietzsche on species.)
The next move is to see what "growth" consists in for Nietzsche. As Richardson argues, Nietzsche "most often and most emphatically identifies growth as increased 'mastery' (Herrschaft) of others." Thus in (BGE6) "every drive seeks to be master"; WP490 "the only force that there is, is of the same kind as the will: a commanding of other subjects, which thereupon alter"; D113: "the striving for distinction is the striving of subjugation of the nearest", and many more.
If we take the power ontology seriously -- if we say that all there is in the world, in life, are forces brought together in "relations of tension" -- then there seems to be a clear route from (1) power as growth in activity; to (2), power as mastery. For example, conversely, in an ontology of agents and objects, we might suppose a way in which an agent increases her power by acquiring more resources, where these resources are objects. E.g., by acquiring an axe I increase my power to cut trees, and potentially boost my tree-cutting activity. But if we think of the world as made up of only forces, a force can only grow by acquiring or accumulating more -- force. The next move, a crucial one for Nietzsche's ontology and for its evaluative implications, is to ask -- from where can a force take more force?
Here Nietzsche posits something like a law of conservation of energy for forces. That is -- the only way for a force to increase its strength is to take it from other forces. WP369: "life lives always at the expense of other life". WP689: "Not merely conservation of energy, but maximal economy in use, so that the only reality is the will to grow stronger of every center of force -- not self-preservation, but the will to appropriate, dominate, increase, grow stronger."
More exactly, it is not (or not usually) that a successful force "steals" or subtracts strength from other forces: the subdued forces persist and maintain their energy, but they themselves are appropriated, dominated, re-directed under the control of the ruling force, which adds their strength to its own. As Richardson explains it: "drive A rules B insofar as it has turned B towards A's own end, so that B now participates in A's distinctive activity. Mastery is bringing another will into a subordinate role within one's own effort, thereby 'incorporating' the other as a sort of organ or tool."3
This also means that power as mastery is closely tied to (3) power as overcoming resistance. That is, the resistance here is precisely the resistance offered by an opposing force. Nietzsche himself often joins the two ideas of mastery and resistance. In GM1:13, for example, we have "a willing to subjugate, a willing to throw down, a willing to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs." Or, e.g., in WP693 he writes that "opposites, obstacles are needed: therefore, relatively, encroaching units"; in WP694 the formulation is "the resistance a force seeks to master". Of course, the opposite force here is also seeking to grow, achieve mastery, and the resistance it presents to a dominant force encroaching on it is of a piece with the domination it would exert if it were the stronger or mastering force -- attack and defence are two aspects of the same willing. Thus, e.g., in WP693 displeasure is "every feeling of not being able to resist or dominate" (my emphasis); or WP634 "a will to violate and to defend onself against violation."
Resistance, on this picture, is not sought out by the aggressor force, or not usually, simply for "its own sake", but because achieving mastery over a force necessarily involves overcoming its resistance. While Nietzsche associate the experience of overcoming resistance with the feeling of pleasure (meeting resistance in the first place causes displeasure, which turns into pleasure when the resistance is successfully overcome), he is insistent that pleasure is merely epiphenomenal (WP702) -- it is not the pursuit of pleasure itself that drives forces.
In short: forces increase in power by (1) growing, increasing their activity (or perhaps, in some senses, also, their capacity for activity -- which also ties us back to a version of Clark's theory); they grow by (2) assimilating or dominating other forces; and to do so they (3) overcome the resistance of these other forces. These three senses of power are intrinsically linked, given Nietzsche's picture of a world made just of forces which can only grow at the expense of others. This is the fundamental agonistic ontology in which the world is war or, at the least, competition of struggling forces. Triumph in this conflict is not to destroy enemies/opponents but to subdue, enslave, master, absorb, alter.4
life values
In these late notes life and will to power often seem to be interchangeable terms, making it easy to read them as synonyms. Or at least, as in WP689, life is will to power operating specifically in the organic domain. "Life, as the form of being most familiar to us, is specifically a will to the accumulation of force; all the processes of life depend on this; nothing wants to preserve itself, everything is to be added and accumulated." Life is "essentially a striving for more power; striving is nothing other than striving for power."
To start looking at Nietzsche's values, then, we can outline a first approach which works on this level of forces. Nietzsche's values here are values he gives (or strives to give) to forces. Recalling that all these forces are also, for Nietzsche, engaged in evaluation -- they have their own values (goals) -- we can also say: he is re-valuing, or (re-)ranking, the values of forces. The core criterion for evaluation/re-valuation here is the life -- that is, the power or growth -- of forces. I.e., Nietzsche assigns positive values to strong forces, forces that grow, dominate, overcome others. Throughout Nietzsche's writings we find praise of strength, activity, liveliness, "virility", conquest. Again, this positive evaluative stance is connected to Nietzsche's critical position, exposing and overturning "slave morality" and ascetic doctrines which denigrate strong forces and praise the weak.
strong, active, creative
However, Nietzsche's position is more subtle than a simple ode to strength. For example, in The Genealogy of Morals, we see how Nietzsche's common assault on the otherworldly values of priests turns with the recognition of the new value created by the ascetic ideal: it is thanks to priests "that man first became an interesting animal ... and that the human soul became deep in the higher sense and turned evil for the first time -- and of course, these are the two basic forms of man's superiority, hitherto, over other animals! ..." (GM1:7) Linked to this is the theory developed in Beyond Good and Evil (BGE262) in which decadent periods beginning when a triumphant "species" relaxes after the end of struggle, although they lead to the decline of strong warlike values, allow the creative upsurge of new variations and "deviations". Similarly, in the Gay Science, Nietzsche develops a cyclical story in which periods of sickness and recuperation are also to be valued. Thus there are various points in Nietzsche's work where it seems that retreating as well as aggressive forces are valued. A common thread is perhaps that these forces, while apparently weak and self-destructive, are creative -- they invent new variations, new values, new ways of life.
This points us towards a tightly complex issue in Nietzsche's evaluative thinking, which here I'm just musing on. Nietzsche often positively values forces that create. Here the affirmation of life seems to become an affirmation of newness, change -- new life, or forms of life. But the relationship between creativity and strength is not always so clear.
Sometimes Nietzsche does plainly associate creativity with strength -- an important case is his assertion in GM1:2 that the judgement 'good' can only have been initially created by masters: "It was from this pathos of distance that they first claimed the right to create values and give these values names ..." Creativity, here, is closely linked with the idea of an active, spontaneous, and aggressive force -- creation is the over-flowing of super-abundant power. Creativity is what gets covered over by herd mentality and unexplained by science's mechanistic chains of reactions: "One overlooks the essential priority of the spontaneous, aggressive, expansive, form-giving forces that give new interpretations and directions ..." (GM2:12).
The importance of activity in Nietzsche's evaluation is brought out in the discussion by Deleuze, who begins by distinguishing quantity and quality of Nietzschean forces. When two forces meet, there is always a stronger one that dominates and a weaker one that resists. On the one hand, we can consider their difference as a differential of quantity -- one has more strength than the other. But Deleuze also considers a corresponding, but distinct, difference of quality -- the force with more strength takes on an active quality or role in the relation, while the weaker force is reactive. Qualities indicate the ways in which forces express their different powers within the relation. An active force, with its over-abundance of power, casts off or flows energy into creation -- new values, new arrangements -- as well as seeking new expansions and struggles. A reactive force has to devote its energy to resisting assimilation by the conqueror (alternatively, it may self-destructively turn its aggression inward).
The ambiguity (if that's what it is) here is that reactive forces can also be creative. For example, a few sections further into the first essay of the Genealogy, the "priestly method of valuation" becomes a creative force which stems precisely from a lack of power -- "the history of mankind would be far too stupid a thing if it had not had the intellect of the powerless injected into it." (GM1:7). A resolution of this knot might be to distinguish two sorts of creativity: only an active force can create a truly new or "original" value or meaning; the creativity of a reactive force is always a re-working, inverting, twisting, combining, deviating -- a mutation, adaptation or otherwise variation of the original creation of an active force.
There are two issues which I will just flag up for now. First, even if we can maintain this distinction, it may not determine much for Nietzsche's evaluative criteria: reactive creativity still seems valuable -- it is reactive inventiveness that has made human beings interesting, "superior" to other animals. Second, the distinction requires an account of creativity in which active forces create new activities and meanings, as it were, ex nihilo -- or, perhaps, from "within" themselves, from their own internal abundance (however we can understand that); and which distinguishes these originary creations from mere variations and adaptations. A theory of active creativity is also central to the part of Nietzsche's project that emphasises the will to power doctrine as distinct from mechanistic interpretations of Newtonian physics or Darwinian evolution. However, I am not sure that Nietzsche managed to develop such an account.
life of bodies
So far we have looked at valuation in terms of "simple" forces and their goals. But although Nietzsche sees an individual -- or some other body, such as a nation or a species -- as an assembled multiplicity of forces, it is still the case that the "beings" he is primarily interested in are these composite bodies rather than their component forces. His writing is largely concerned with the conditions of life, persistence, growth, of human individual and social bodies. For example, he is interested in how a human individual (e.g., a philosopher, a free spirit) can live well, or whether or how a society or people (e.g., Europeans, or sometimes the human species) can flourish. It may be that Nietzschean life-values become clearer when we look at them at this level -- our interest is the life of bodies.
Despite its internal struggles the body as a whole, if it is healthy, presents a united front to other forces and bodies outside. A healthy body is something like a collection of rival forces that have managed to unite, despite their mutual antagonism, and form a coalition against the outside world. More generally, we could think of nested layers of forces coalescing into organised bodies, which then as united forces form coalitions with other bodies, constructing joint larger body-forces, etc. WP636: "My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (—its will to power:) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement (‘union’) with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on --"
A second layer of the power ontology is, then, a theory of what different structural relations of forces in bodies mean for the health and strength of those bodies as composite forces -- their ability to act effectively as coalitions struggling against other coalitions. Here Nietzsche has a clear stance -- the strongest bodies are dictatorships, strict hierarchies where one dominant force within establishes itself as master to shape and direct the collectivity. "Democratic" or "levelled" structures make for weak bodies which tear themselves apart in internal dissension, or become flabby and vulnerable to invasion
Another recurring theme in Nietzsche's treatment of life -- as hygiene, extirpating violence, "cleanliness and severity" (BGE210) -- comes in here. In GS26 he writes: "What is life? Life -- that is: continually shedding something that wants to die. Life -- that is: being cruel and inexorable against everything about us that is growing old and weak ..." This theme can be reconciled with life as growth when we take it to the level of bodies rather than (simple) forces. A body (composite force) can gain strength and grow at the expense of other weaker bodies if dominant forces within it can carry out an internal restructuring which includes: (1) asserting their mastery over and re-directing weaker but "sufficiently related" complementary forces; but also (2) cutting away, or excreting, from the body weak forces which are harmful to the dominant project.
This theory of the benefits of hierarchy gives an ontological grounding both for Nietzsche's political elitism, and for his approach to transformative individual psychology -- a personal ethic of self-mastery "through long practice and daily work". To focus in on the latter, one strong statement of Niezsche's values is GS290: "One thing is needful. -- To 'give style' to one's character -- a great and rare art ... In the end, when the work is finished, it becomes evident how the constraint of a single taste governed, and formed everything large and small. Whether this taste was good or bad is less important than one might suppose, if only it was a single taste!" The strong and domineering nature imposes a strict law on itself -- as opposed to weak spirits which cannot serve without becoming slaves. These self-dominating spirits are successful and powerful in the world (they build palaces); they know satisfaction and gaiety; and they do not harm others through revenge or ugliness, as weak dissatisfied spirits do.
In this passage we find a bundle of Nietzschean positive values, values which run through his thought and again and again resurface in colour: joy, brightness, strength, pride, creativity, dominance, magnanimity, more. If it does make sense, though, to try and identify a more or less stable core or main thread amongst these, the more metaphysical notion of growth of power still seems the most reliable guide. Success -- "worldly power" -- conceived in any common terms is never a core value for Nietzsche, and avoiding harm to others is very far from a main concern. While Nietzsche often affirms sensations, experiences, of joy, happiness, gaiety, these are, in terms of the power ontology, consequences (epihenomenal, if inextricable) of the overcoming of resistance by growing forces, rather than intentions or ends. The key value, then, that guides the picture of self-mastery in this passage, and runs through many other affirmative statements, is not attached to the consequences of the strong spirit's actions, but to the alignment of forces that gives this body strength. Nietzsche would (presumably) still affirm the project of self-mastery even if such a domineering will failed to overcome worldly obstacles, and perished suffering in the attempt, without experiencing joy.
for whose life?
On this account, Nietzsche's core concern is with the healthy life -- i.e., the growth of power -- of bodies. He positively values forces and values that contribute to the growth -- and ultimately the self-overcoming and transformation -- of these bodies. But if the rise of any force is the decline of another, the power of any body the weakness of another, then we can ask the question: why should Nietzsche be concerned with the flourishing of any (particular) body, if its failure to flourish will just mean an opportunity for a rival? I'll conclude with a few sketchy suggestions on this -- maybe there are elements of some or all of these in Nietzsche's work.
(1) Perhaps the simplest answer is that Nietzsche begins with a concern with particular bodies with which he (or dominant drives in his own body) identifies -- e.g., the individual body of Friedrich Nietzsche, or a European Culture of which he feels himself to be part. This identification is the starting point for Nietzsche's evaluative perspective -- an unquestioned fixed point from which his values operate. At the level of societies or cultures, this position would amount to a kind of chauvinism (a bit like the cultural chauvinism admitted and embraced by a philosopher such as Richard Rorty). However, many would be more comfortable with this stance on the individual level -- we don't find so much to object to in the idea of "care of the self".
(2) Some passages may suggest, though, that Nietzsche is able to -- or aspires to -- dissociate himself from such contingent attachments. But then it may be that affirmation of life in the restricted sense, life meaning the growth of particular forces and bodies, collapses into the affirmation of life in the broadest sense -- life as everything there is. What content is then left in Nietzsche's values? What is the difference between affirming growth and affirming decay, its inevitable converse?
(3) We might look at Nietzsche's evaluative stance as tied to the critical project of opposing levelling moralities, the ascetic ideal. He affirms values of aggression and growth in a particular context of opposition to the conventional moralising of selflessness and timidity, morality which seeks to cover up the role of aggressive forces in life. (Though this version would subordinate Nietzsche's affirmative values to his critical stance -- and make it an essentially reactive thinking?)
(4) While the growth of any one force implies an equal decline in the strength of other forces, the distribution of strength amongst forces may be changed in various ways. For example, we could imagine a kind of general melée involving many small bodies, all more or less equal in strength; or a more polarised landscape in which a few mighty bodies absorb and concentrate the available forces; etc. It may be that what Nietzsche is interested in are particular distributions, or movements towards distributions, of power between bodies. This might be the case, for example, on aesthetic grounds (recalling that existence and world are justified solely as an aesthetic phenomenon -- BT1). He may believe that certain kinds of force distributions and patternings (more hierarchical ones) produce more beautiful results (e.g., art); or perhaps that certain patterns of force are intrinsically more beautiful.
Note -- on left-Nietzscheanism
Although I haven't been able to go into much detail, one of the main themes emerging here is that Nietzsche's political and personal ethical programmes can be seen as grounded in a number of commitments he makes within power ontology. There is at least one strong sense in which Nietzsche's agonistic picture of the world is very open to "left-Nietzschean" interpretations -- as a form of anti-liberal "conflict theory" in which history is made up of conflict and resistance of classes and other power groups. However there are two particular claims that seem to have unavoidably elitist implications:
(1) forces can only grow at the expense of other forces -- a kind of "law of conservation of energy";
(2) strong bodies (coalitions of forces) must be organised hierarchically.
While anarchists, in particular, have found much in Nietzschean thinking (despite Nietzsche's absolute scorn for anarchism and indeed class struggle in any form), these two claims are just about as un-anarchist as any could be. E.g., the first point is exactly the idea that Bakunin refused with his claim that "the freedom of any individual is multiplied by the freedom of others"; or that Kropotkin tried to argue against with the theory of "mutual aid" as a "factor of evolution". The second point is what all of us involved in organising non-hierarchical social forms attempt to counter in practice every day. So -- how central are these claims to Nietzsche's power ontology? Can we make a left-Nietzscheanism without them?
... to be continued ...
2Dowding (xx); Dahl (xx); Lukes (xx).
3Though note that, e.g., WP642, Nietzsche sometimes suggests that this "incorporation" is only ever partial or temporary -- resistance can always flare up again -- "To what extent resistance is present even in obedience: individual power is by no means surrendered. In the same way, there is an admission that the absolute power of the opponent has not been vanquished, incorporated, disintegrated. 'Obedience' and 'commanding' are forms of struggle." This passage is important for the left Nietzscheanisms of Deleuze and Foucault -- Deleuze gives it some prominence (p37).
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