In striving and in
compulsion
we are caught up in movement toward something without knowing what is at stake.
Heidegger - Nietzsche - v1-2
Finally: "Because you lie concerning what is, the
*Heidegger changes here the indefinite article, einer, to the definite, der, Cf. p. 25.
32
THE \VILL TO POWER AS ART
thirst for what should come to be does not grow in you" (XII, 279). Demonstration of will to power as the basic character of beings is supposed to expunge the lies in our experience of beings and in our interpretation of them. But not only that. It is also supposed to ground the principle, and establish the ground, from which the valuation is to spring and in which it must remain rooted. For "will to power" is already in itself an estimating and valuing. If beings are grasped as will to power, the "should" which is supposed to hang suspended over them, against which they might be measured, becomes superfluous. If life itself is will to power, it is itself the ground, principium, of valua- tion. Then a "should" does not determine Being; Being determines a "should. " "When we talk of values we are speaking under the inspira- tion or optics of life: life itself compels us to set up values; life itself
values through us whenever we posit values. . . . " (VIII, 89). *
To exhibit the principle of the new valuation therefore first of all means to display will to power as the basic character of beings through- out all groups and regions of beings. With a view to that task the editors
of The Will to Power divided the third book into four divisions:
I. Will to Power as Knowledge. II. Will to Power in Nature.
III. Will to Power as Society and Individual. IV. Will to Power as Art.
Several of Nietzsche's sets of instructions could have been used for such a division, for example, Plan I, 7, dated 1885 (XVI, 415): "Will to Power. Attempt at an interpretation of all occurrence. Foreword on the 'meaninglessness' that threatens. Problem of pessimism. " Then comes a list of topics arranged vertically: "Logic. Physics. Morals, Art. Politics. " These are the customary disciplines of philosophy; the only one that is missing, and not by accident, is speculative theology. For
*To this analysis of the "should" compare that in Heidegger's lecture course during the summer semester of 1935, published as Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik (Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1953), pp. 149-52; in the English translation, Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, tr. Ralph Manheim (Carden City, N. Y. : Doubleday- Anchor, 1961), pp. 164-67.
The Structure of the "Major Work" 33
the decisive stance vis-a-vis Nietzsche's interpretation of beings as will to power it is important to know that from the very start he saw beings as a whole in the perspectives of traditional disciplines of academic philosophy.
As a further aid in apportioning the aphorisms which appear in the handwritten notebooks into the chapters mentioned, the editors em- ployed an index in which Nietzsche himself numbered 372 aphorisms and divided them into particular books cited in a plan which, it is true, originates at a later date (Plan III, 6; XVI, 424). The index is printed in volume XVI, 454-67; it stems from the year 1888. *
The disposition of the third book of The Will to Power, as it lies before us today, is accordingly as well grounded as it could be on the basis of the extant handwritten materials.
However, we shall begin the interpretation of Book III not with the first chapter, "Will to Power as Knowledge," but with the fourth and final one, "Will to Power as Art. "
This chapter consists of aphorisms 794 to 853. Why we are begin- ning with the fourth chapter will soon become clear on the basis of that chapter's contents. Our immediate task must be to ask in what way Nietzsche perceives and defines the essence of art. As the very title of the chapter suggests, art is a configuration of will to power. If art is a configuration of will to power, and if within the whole of Being art is accessible in a distinctive way for us, then we should most likely be able to grasp what will to power means from the Nietzschean concep- tion of art. But lest the expression "will to power" remain an empty term any longer, let us delineate our interpretation of the fourth chapter by means of a preliminary observation. This we will do by asking, first, what does Nietzsche mean by the expression "will to power"; and second, why should it not surprise us that the basic. character of beings is here defined as will?
*Karl Schlechta indicates that the list of 372 aphorisms could apply to a number of plans other than that dated March 17, 1887. See Schlechta, Der Fall Nietzsche (Munich: C. Hanser, 2nd ed. , 1959), pp. 74 ff. and 88 ff.
.
6. The Being of beings as Will ID Traditional Metaphysics
We shall begin with the second question. The conception of the Being of all beings as will is very much in line with the best and greatest tradition of German philosophy. When we look back from Nietzsche our glance falls immediately upon Schopenhauer. His main work, which at first impels Nietzsche toward philosophy but then later repels him, bears the title The World as Will and Representation. But what Nietzsche himself understands by "will" is something altogether differ- ent. Nor is it adequate to grasp Nietzsche's notion of will as the reversal of the Schopenhauerian.
Schopenhauer's major work appeared in the year 1818. It was pro- foundly indebted to the main works of Schelling and Hegel, which had already appeared by that time. The best proof of this debt consists in the excessive and tasteless rebukes Schopenhauer hurled at Hegel and Schelling his life long. Schopenhauer called Schelling a "windbag," Hegel a "bumbling charlatan. " Such abuse, directed repeatedly against philosophy in the years following Schopenhauer, does not even have the dubious distinction of being particularly "novel. "
In one of Schelling's most profound works, the treatise On the Essence of Human Freedom, published in 1809, that philosopher writes: "In the final and ultimate instance there is no other Being at all than Willing. Willing is Primal Being" (I, VII, 350). *And in his
*During the previous semester (summer 1936) Heidegger had lectured on Schelling. See Martin Heidegger, Schellings Abhandlung iiber das Wesen der menschlichen Frei- heit (1809}, ed. Hildegard Feick (Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1971). Especially useful in
The Being of beings 35
Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) Hegel grasps the essence of Being as knowing, but grasps knowing as essentially identical to willing.
Schelling and Hegel were certain that with the interpretation of Being as will they were merely thinking the essential thought of another great German thinker-the concept of Being in Leibniz. Leibniz de- fined the essence of Being as the original unity of perceptio and ap- petitus, representation and will. Not accidentally, Nietzsche himself referred to Leibniz in two decisive passages of The Will to Power: "German philosophy as a whole-Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, to name the great ones-is the most thoroughgoing kind of romanti- cism and homesickness that has ever existed: the longing for the best there ever was" (WM, 419). And: "Handel, Leibniz, Goethe, Bismarck -characteristic of the strong German type" (WM, 884).
Now, to be sure, one should not assert that Nietzsche's doctrine of will to power is dependent upon Leibniz or Hegel or Schelling, in order by such a pronouncement to cancel all further consideration. "De- pendence" is not a concept by which we can understand relationships among the greats. But the small are always dependent on the great; they are "small" precisely because they think they are independent. The great thinker is one who can hear what is greatest in the work of other "greats" and who can transform it in an original manner.
Reference to Nietzsche's predecessors with regard to the doctrine of Being as will is not meant to calculate some sort of dependence; it is rather to suggest that such a doctrine within Western metaphysics is not arbitrary but perhaps even necessary. Every true thinking lets itself be determined by what is to be thought. In philosophy the Being of beings is to be thought. For philosophy's thinking and questioning there is no loftier and stricter commitment. In contrast, all the sciences think always only of one being among others, one particular region of beings. They are committed by this region of beings only in an indirect manner, never straightforwardly so. Because in philosophical thought
the context of Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche are the notes sketched five years later for a seminar on that same treatise. The notes appear in an appendix to Heidegger's Schelling. See esp. pp. 224-25.
36 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
the highest possible commitment prevails, all great thinkers think the same. Yet this "same" is so essential and so rich that no single thinker exhausts it; each commits all the others to it all the more strictly. To conceive of beings according to their basic character as will is not a view held by particular thinkers; it is a necessity in the history of the Dasein which those thinkers ground.
7. Will as Will to Power
But now, to anticipate the decisive issue, what does Nietzsche himself understand by the phrase "will to power"? What does "will" mean? What does "will to power" mean? For Nietzsche these two questions are but one. For in his view will is nothing else than will to power, and power nothing else than the essence of will. Hence, will to power is will to will, which is to say, willing is self-willing. But that requires elucida- tion.
With our attempt, as with all conceptual definitions elaborated in a similar fashion which claim to grasp the Being of beings, we must keep two things in mind. First, a precise conceptual definition that ticks off the various characteristics of what is to be defined remains vacuous and false, so long as we do not really come to know in an intimate way what is being talked about and bring it before our mind's eye. Second, in order to grasp the Nietzschean concept of will, the following is espe- cially important: if according to Nietzsche will as will to power is the basic character of all beings, then in defining the essence of will we cannot appeal to a particular being or special mode of Being which would serve to explain the essence of will.
Hence, will as the pervasive character of all beings does not yield any immediate sort of directive from which its concept, as a concept of Being, might be derived. Of course, Nietzsche never explicated this state of affairs systematically and with attention to principles; but he knew quite clearly that here he was pursuing an unusual question.
Two examples may illustrate what is involved. According to the usual view, will is taken to be a faculty of the soul. What will is may be determined from the essence of the psyche. The latter is dealt with in
38 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
psychology. The psyche is a particular being, distinct from body and mind. Now, if in Nietzsche's view will determines the Being of every sort of being, then it does not pertain to the psyche; rather, the psyche somehow pertains to the will. But body and mind too are will, inasmuch as such things "are. " Furthermore, if will is taken to be a faculty, then it is viewed as something that can do something, is in a position to do it, possessing the requisite power and might. Whatever is intrinsically power, and for Nietzsche that is what will is, thus cannot be further characterized by defining it as a faculty or power. For the essence of a faculty is grounded in the essence of will as power.
A second example. Will is taken to be a kind of cause. We say that a man does something not so much by means of his intellect as by sheer willpower. Will brings something about, effects some consequence. But to be a cause is a particular mode of Being; Being as such cannot be grasped by means of causation. Will is not an effecting. What we usually take to be a thing that effects something else, the power of causation, is itself grounded in will (cf. VIII, 80).
If will to power characterizes Being itself, there is nothing else that will can be defined as. Will is will-but that formally correct definition does not say anything. It is in fact quite deceptive if we take it to mean that things are as simple as the simple phrase suggests.
For that reason Nietzsche can declare, "Today we know that it [i. e. , the will] is merely a word" (Tw1light of the Idols, 1888; VIII, 80). Corresponding to this is an earlier assertion from the period of Zara- thustra: "I laugh at your free will and your unfree one too: what you call will is to me an illusion; there is no will" (XII, 267). It is remarkable that the thinker for whom the basic character of all beings is will should say such a thing: "There is no will. " But Nietzsche means that there is no such will as the one previously known and designated as "a faculty of the soul" and as "striving in general. "
Whatever the case, Nietzsche must constantly repeat what will is. He says, for example, that will is an "affect," a "passion," a "feeling," and a "command. " But do not such characterizations of will as "affect," "passion," and so on speak within the domain of the psyche and of states of the soul? Are not affect, passion, feeling, and command each
Will as Will to Power 39
something different? Must not whatever is introduced in order to illuminate the essence of will itself be adequately clear at the outset? But what is more obscure than the essence of affect and passion, and the distinction between the two? How can will be all those things simultaneously? We can hardly surmount these questions and doubts concerning Nietzsche's interpretation of the essence of will. And yet, perhaps, they do not touch on the decisive issue. Nietzsche himself emphasizes, "Above all else, willing seems to me something complicat- ed, something that is a unity only as a word; and precisely in this one word a popular prejudice lurks which has prevailed over the always meager caution of philosophers" (Beyond Good and Evil; VII, 28). Nietzsche here speaks primarily against Schopenhauer, in whose opin- ion will is the simplest and best-known thing in the world.
But because for Nietzsche will as will to power designates the essence of Being, it remains forever the actual object of his search, the thing to be determined. What matters-once such an essence is discovered- is to locate it thoroughly, so that it can never be lost again. Whether Nietzsche's procedure is the sole possible one, whether the singularity of the inquiry concerning Being became sufficiently clear to him at all, and whether he thought through in a fundamental manner the ways that are necessary and possible in this regard, we leave open for now. This much is certain: for Nietzsche there was at the time no other alternative-given the ambiguity of the concepts of will and the multi- plicity of prevailing conceptual definitions-than to clarify what he meant with the help of what was familiar and to reject what he did not mean. (Cf. the general observation concerning philosophical concepts in Beyond Good and Evil; VII, 31 ff. )
If we try to grasp willing by that peculiarity which, as it were, first forces itself upon us, we might say that willing is a heading toward . . . , a going after . . . ; willing is a kind of behavior directed toward some- thing. But when we look at something immediately at hand, or observ- antly follow the course of some process, we behave in a way that can be described in the same terms: we are directed toward the thing by way of representation-where willing plays no role. In the mere obser- vation of things we do not want to do anything "with" them and do
40
THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
not expect anything "from" them; we let things be just as they are. To be directed toward something is not yet a willing, and yet such directed- ness is implied in willing. . . .
But we can also "want" [i. e. , will-to-have] some thing, e. g. , a book or a motorbike. A boy "wills" to have a thing, that is, he would like to have it. This "would like to have" is no mere representation, but a kind of striving after something, and has the special characteristic of wishing. But to wish is not yet to will. Whoever only wishes, in the strict sense of the word, does not will; rather, he hopes that his wish will come true without his having to do anything about it. Is willing then a wishing to which we add our own initiative? No, willing is not wishing at all. It is the submission of ourselves to our own command, and the resoluteness of such self-command, which already implies our carrying out the command. But with this account of willing we have suddenly introduced a whole series of definitions that were not given in what we first discussed, namely, directing oneself toward something.
Yet it seems as though the essence of will would be grasped most purely if this "directing oneself toward," as pure willing, were canceled abruptly in favor of a directing oneself toward something in the sense of sheer desire, wishing, striving, or mere representing. Will would thus be posited as the pure relation of a simple heading toward or going after something. But this approach is misconceived. Nietzsche is con- vinced that Schopenhauer's fundamental error is his belief that there is such a thing as pure willing, a willing that becomes purer as what is willed is left more and more indeterminate and the one who wills left more and more decisively out of the picture. Much to the contrary, it is proper to the essence of willing that what is willed and the one who wills be brought into the willing, although not in the extrinsic sense in which we can say that to every striving belongs something that strives and something that is striven for.
The decisive question is this: how, and on what grounds, do the willed and the one who wills belong to the willing to will? Answer: on the grounds of willing and by means of willing. Willing wills the one who wills, as such a one; and willing posits the willed as such. Willing is resoluteness toward oneself, but as the one who wills what is posited
Will as Will to Power 41
in the willing as willed. In each case will itself furnishes thoroughgoing determinateness to its willing. Someone who does not know what he wants does not want anything and cannot will at all. There is no willing-in-general. "For the will, as an affect of command, is the deci- sive distinguishing mark of self-mastery and force" (The Gay Science, Bk. V, 1886; V, 282). In contrast, striving can be indeterminate, both with respect to what is actually striven for and in relation to the very one who strives.
In striving and in compulsion we are caught up in movement toward something without knowing what is at stake. In mere striving after something we are not properly brought before ourselves. For that reason it is not possible for us to strive beyond ourselves; rather, we merely strive, and get wholly absorbed in such striving. By way of contrast, will, as resolute openness to oneself, is always a willing out beyond oneself. If Nietzsche more than once emphasizes the character of will as command, he does not mean to provide a prescription or set of directions for the execution of an act; nor does he mean to characterize an act of will in the sense of resolve. Rather, he means resoluteness-that by which willing can come to grips with what is willed and the one who wills; he means coming to grips as a founded and abiding decisiveness. Only he can truly com- mand-and commanding has nothing to do with mere ordering about -who is always ready and able to place himself under command. By means of such readiness he has placed himself within the scope of the command as first to obey, the paragon of obedience. In such decisive-
ness of willing, which reaches out beyond itself, lies mastery over . . . , having power over what is revealed in the willing and in what is held fast in the grips of resoluteness.
Willing itself is mastery over . . . , which reaches out beyond itself; will is intrinsically power. And power is willing that is constant in itself. Will is power; power is will. Does the expression "will to power" then have no meaning? Indeed it has none, when we think of will in the sense of Nietzsche's conception. But Nietzsche employs this expression any- how, in express rejection of the usual understanding of will, and espe- cially in order to emphasize his resistance to the Schopenhauerian notion.
42 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
Nietzsche's expression "will to power" means to suggest that will as we usually understand it is actually and only will to power. But a possible misunderstanding lurks even in this explanation. The ex- pression "will to power" does not mean that, in accord with the usual view, will is a kind of desiring that has power as its goal rather than happiness and pleasure. True, in many passages Nietzsche speaks in that fashion, in order to make himself provisionally understood; but when he makes will's goal power instead of happiness, pleasure, or the unhinging of the will, he changes not only the goal of will but the essential definition of will itself. In the strict sense of the Nietzschean conception of will, power can never be pre-established as will's goal, as though power were something that could first be posited outside the will. Because will is resolute openness toward itself, as mastery out beyond itself, because will is a willing beyond itself, it is the strength that is able to bring itself to power.
The expression "to power" therefore never means some sort of appendage to will. Rather, it comprises an elucidation of the essence of will itself. Only when we have clarified Nietzsche's concept of will in these respects can we understand those designations Nietzsche often chooses in order to exhibit the complicated nature of what that simple word "will" says to him. He calls will-therefore will to power-an "affect. " He even says, "My theory would be that will to power is the primitive form of affect, that all other affects are but its configura- tions" (WM1 688). * Nietzsche calls will a "passion" as well, or a "feeling. " If we understand such descriptions from the point of view of our common psychology-something that always seems to happen-then we might easily be tempted to say that Nietzsche abandons the essence of will to the "emotional," or that he rescues it from the rationalistic misinterpretations perpetrated by Idealism.
Here we must ask two things. First, what does Nietzsche mean when
*Walter Kaufmann notes that the phrase "My theory would be" stems from the editors, not from Nietzsche himself. See his edition of The Will to Power, p. 366, n. 73.
Will as Will to Power 43
he emphasizes the character of will as affect, passion, and feeling? Second, when we believe we have found that the idealistic conception of will has nothing to do with Nietzsche's, how are we understanding "Idealism"?
8. Will as Affect, Passion, and Feeling
In the passage last cited Nietzsche says that all affects are "configura- tions" of will to power. If we ask what will to power is, Nietzsche answers that it is the original affect. Affects are forms of will; will is affect. That is called a circular definition. Common sense feels itself superior when it discovers such "errors of logic" even in a philosopher. Affect is will and will is affect. Now, we already know-at least roughly -that the question of will to power involves the question concerning the Being of beings; Being itself can no longer be determined by any given beings, since it is what determines them. Therefore, if any desig- nation of Being is brought forward at all, and if it is supposed to say the same as Being, yet not in a merely empty way, then the determina- tion brought to bear must of necessity be drawn from beings-and the circle is complete. Nevertheless, the matter is not all that simple. In the case at hand Nietzsche says with good grounds that will to power is the original form of affect; he does not say that it is simply one affect, although we often find such turns of phrase in his hastily composed argumentative presentations.
To what extent is will to power the original form of affect, i. e. , that which constitutes the Being of an affect in general? What is an affect? To this, Nietzsche provides no clear and precise answer. Just as little does he answer the questions as to what a passion or a feeling may be. The answer ("configurations" of will power) does not immediately conduct us any farther. Rather, it assigns us the task of divining what it is in what we know as affect, passion, and feeling that signifies the essence of will to power. In that way we could derive particular char- acteristics which are suitable for making clearer and richer the previous
Wl11 as Affect, Passion, and Feeling 45
attempts to define the essential concept of will. This work we must do ourselves. Yet the questions (what are affect, passion, and feeling? ) remain unanswered. Nietzsche himself often equates the three; he follows the usual ways of representing them, ways still accepted today. With these three words, each an arbitrary substitute for the others, we depict the so-called irrational side of psychic life. For customary repre- sentational thought that may suffice, but not for trite knowledge, and certainly not if our task is to determine by such knowledge the Being of beings. Nor is it enough to revamp the current "psychological" explanations of affects, passions, and feelings. We must above all see that here it is not a matter for psychology, nor even for a psychology undergirded by physiology and biology. It is a matter of the basic modes that constitute Dasein, a matter of the ways man confronts the Da, the openness and concealment of beings, in which he stands.
We cannot deny that the things physiology grapples with-particu- lar states of the body, changes in internal secretions, muscle flexions, occurrences in the nervous system-are also proper to affects, passions, and feelings. But we have to ask whether all these bodily states and the body itself are grasped in a metaphysically adequate way, so that one may without further ado borrow material from physiology and biology, as Nietzsche, to his own detriment, so often did. The one fundamental point to realize here is that no result of any science can ever be applied immediately to philosophy.
How are we to conceive of the essence of affect, passion, and feeling, indeed in such a way that in each case it will be fruitful for an interpre- tation of the essence of will in Nietzsche's sense? Here we can conduct our examination only as far as illumination of Nietzsche's characteriza- tion of will to power requires.
Anger, for instance, is an affect. In contrast, by "hate" we mean something quite different. Hate is not simply another affect, it is not an affect at all. It is a passion. But we call both of them "feelings. " W e speak of the feeling of hatred and of an angry feeling. W e cannot plan or decide to be angry. Anger comes over us, seizes us, "affects" us. Such a seizure is sudden and turbulent. Our being is moved by a kind of excitement, something stirs us up, lifts us beyond ourselves, but in
46 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
such a way that, seized by our excitement, we are no longer masters of ourselves. We say, "He acted on impulse," that is to say, under the influence of an affect. Popular speech proves to be keensighted when it says of someone w'ho is stirred up and acts in an excited manner, "He isn't altogether himself. " When we are seized by excitement, our being "altogether there" vanishes; it is transformed into a kind of "falling apart. " We say, "He's beside himself with joy. "
Nietzsche is obviously thinking of that essential moment in the affect when he tries to characterize will in its terms. Such being lifted beyond ourselves in anger, the seizure of our whole being, so that we are not our own master, such a "not" does not at all mean to deny that in anger we are carried beyond ourselves; such "not being master" in the affect, in anger, distinguishes the affect from mastery in the sense of will, for in the affect our being master of ourselves is transformed into a manner of being beyond ourselves where something is lost. Whatever is contrary we call "counter. " We call anger a counter-will
that subsists beyond us, in such a way that in anger we do not remain together with ourselves as we do when willing, but, as it were, lose ourselves. Here will is a counter-will. Nietzsche turns the state of affairs around: the formal essence of the affect is will, but now will is visualized merely as a state of excitement, of being beyond oneself.
Because Nietzsche says that to will is to will out beyond oneself, he can say that, in view of such being beyond oneself in the affect, will to power is the original form of affect. Yet he clearly wants to add the other moment of the affect for the sake of the essential characterization of will, that moment of seizure in the affect by which something comes over us. That too, and precisely that, in a manifold and Protean sense of course, is proper to the will. That we can be beyond or outside ourselves in this or that way, and that we are in fact constantly so, is possible only because will itself-seen in relation to the essence of man-is seizure pure and simple.
Will itself cannot be willed. We can never resolve to have a will, in the sense that we would arrogate to ourselves a will; for such resolute- ness is itself a willing. When we say, "He wants to have his will carried out in this or that matter," it means as much as, he really wants to stand
Will as Affect, Passion, and Feeling 47
firm in his willing, to get hold of himself in his entire being, to be master over his being. But that very possibility indicates that we are always within the scope of will, even when we are unwilling. That genuine willing which surges forward in resoluteness, that "yes," is what instigates the seizure of our entire being, of the very essence within us.
Nietzsche designates will as passion just as often as affect. W e should not automatically conclude that he identifies affect and passion, even if he does not arrive at an explicit and comprehensive clarification of the essential distinction and connection between these two. We may surmise that Nietzsche knows the difference between affect and pas- sion. Around the year 1882 he says regarding his times, "Our age is an agitated one, and precisely for that reason, not an age of passion; it heats itself up continuously, because it feels that it is not warm- basically it is freezing. I do not believe in the greatness of all these 'great events' of which you speak" (XII, 343). "The age of the greatest events will, in spite of all that, be the age of the most meager effects if men are made of rubber and are all too elastic. " "In our time it is merely by means of an echo that events acquire their 'greatness'-the echo of the newspapers" (XII, 344).
Usually Nietzsche employs the word "passion" interchangeably with "affect. " But if anger and hate, for example, or joy and love, not only are different as one affect is from another, but are distinct as affects and passions respectively, then here too we need a more exact defini- tion. Hate too cannot be produced by a decision; it too seems to overtake us-in a way similar to that when we are seized by anger. Nevertheless, the manner in which it comes over us is essentially differ- ent. Hate can explode suddenly in an action or exclamation, but only because it has already overtaken us, only because it has been growing within us for a long time, and, as we say, has been nurtured in us. But something can be nurtured only if it is already there and is alive. In contrast, we do not say and never believe that anger is nurtured. Because hate lurks much more deeply in the origins of our being it has a cohesive power; like love, hate brings an original cohesion and perdur- ance to our essential being. But anger, which seizes us, can also release
48 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
us again-it "blows over," as we say. Hate does not "blow over. " Once it germinates it grows and solidifies, eating its way inward and consum- ing our very being. But the permanent cohesion that comes to human existence through hate does not close it off and blind it. Rather, it grants vision and premeditation. The angry man loses the power of reflection. He who hates intensifies reflection and rumination to the point of "hardboiled" malice. Hate is never blind; it is perspicuous. Only anger is blind. Love is never blind: it is perspicuous. Only infatua- tion is blind, fickle, and susceptible-an affect, not a passion. To passion belongs a reaching out and opening up of oneself. Such reach- ing out occurs even in hate, since the hated one is pursued everywhere relentlessly. But such reaching out in passion does not simply lift us up and away beyond ourselves. It gathers our essential being to its proper ground, it exposes our ground for the first time in so gathering, so that the passion is that through which and in which we take hold of our- selves and achieve lucid mastery over the beings around us and within us.
Passion understood in this way casts light on what Nietzsche calls will to power. Will as mastery of oneself is never encapsulation of the ego from its surroundings. Will is, in our terms, resolute openness, in which he who wills stations himself abroad among beings in order to keep them firmly within his field of action. * Now the characteristic traits are not seizure and agitation, but the lucid grip which simultaneously gathers that passionate being.
Affect: the seizure that blindly agitates us. Passion: the lucidly gath- ering grip on beings. We talk and understand only extrinsically when we say that anger flares and then dissipates, lasting but a short time,
*Perhaps a word is needed concerning the traditional translation of Entschlossenheit, "resoluteness. " Heidegger now hyphenates the German word to emphasize that Ent- schlossenheit, far from being a sealing-off or closing-up of the will in decision, means unclosedness, hence a "resolute openness. " The word thus retains its essential ties to Erschlossenheit, the disclosure of Being in Dasein. On Entschlossenheit see Martin Heidegger, Sein undZeit, 12th ed. (Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1972), esp. p. 297; "Yom Wesen der Wahrheit," in Wegmarken (Frankfurt/Main: V. Klostermann, 1967), p. 90; and Celassenheit (Pfullingen: C. Neske, 1959), p. 59. Cf. Martin Heidegger: Basic
Writings, ed. D. F. Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 133 n.
Will as Affect, Passion, and Feeling 49
while hate lasts longer. No, hate and love not only last longer, they bring perdurance and permanence for the first time to our existence. An affect, in contrast, cannot do that. Because passion restores our essential being, because it loosens and liberates in its very grounds, and because passion at the same time reaches out into the expanse of beings, for these reasons passion-and we mean great passion-possesses ex- travagance and resourcefulness, not only the ability but the necessity to submit, without bothering about what its extravagance entails. It displays that self-composed superiority characteristic of great will.
Passion has nothing to do with sheer desire. It is not a matter of the nerves, of ebullition and dissipation. All of that, no matter how excited its gestures, Nietzsche reckons as attrition of the will. Will is what it is only as willing out beyond itself, willing more. Great will shares with great passion that serenity of unhurried animation that is slow to answer and react, not out of insecurity and ponderousness, but out of the broadly expansive security and inner buoyancy of what is superior.
Instead of "affect" and "passion" we also say "feeling," if not "sensa- tion. " Or, where affects and passions are distinguished, the two are conjoined in the genus "feeling. " Today if we apply the term "feeling" to a passion, it is understood as a kind of reduction. For we believe that a passion is not a mere feeling. Nevertheless, the simple fact that we refrain from calling passions feelings does not prove that we possess a more highly developed concept of the essence of passion; it may only be a sign that we have employed too paltry a concept of the essence of feeling. So it is in fact. But it may seem that here we are merely inquiring into word meanings and their appropriate applications. Yet the matter that is here in question is, first, whether what we have now indicated as being the essence of affect and of passion exhibits an original, essential connection between these two, and second, whether this original connection can truly be understood if only we grasp the essence of what we call "feeling. "
Nietzsche himself does not shy from conceiving willing simply as feeling: "Willing: a compelling feeling, quite pleasant! It is the epi- phenomenon of all discharge ofenergy" (XIII, 159). To will-a feeling of pleasure? "Pleasure is only a symptom of the feeling of power
50 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
attained, a consciousness of difference ( - i t [a living creature] does not strive for pleasure: rather, pleasure enters on the scene when it achieves what it is striving for: pleasure accompanies, it does not motivate-)" (WM, 688). Is will accordingly but an "epiphenomenon" of energy discharge, an accompanying feeling of pleasure? How does that jibe with what was said about the essence of will in general, and in particular with respect to the comparison with affect and passion? There will appeared as what properly sustains and dominates, being synonymous with mastery itself. Is it now to be reduced to a feeling of pleasure that merely accompanies something else?
From such passages we see clearly how unconcerned Nietzsche is about a unified, solidly grounded presentation of his teaching. We realize that he is only getting under way, that he is resolutely open. His task is not a matter of indifference to him; neither is it of only supple- mental interest. He knows, as only a creator can, that what from the outside looks like a summary presentation is actually the configuration of the real issue, where things collide against one another in such a way that they expose their proper essence. Nevertheless, Nietzsche remains under way, and the immediate casting of what he wants to say always forces itself upon him. In such a position he speaks directly the lan- guage of his times and of the contemporary "science. " When he does so he does not shy from conscious exaggeration and one-sided formula- tions of his thoughts, believing that in this way he can most clearly set in relief what in his vision and in his inquiry is different from the run-of-the-mill. Yet when he proceeds in such a manner he is always able to keep his eye on the whole; he can make do, as it were, with one-sidedness. The results are fatal when others, his readers, latch onto such statements in a superficial way and, depending on what Nietzsche
just then is offering them, either declare it his sole opinion on the matter or, on the grounds of any given particular utterances, all too facilely refute him.
If it is true that will to power constitutes the basic character of all beings, and if Nietzsche now defines will as an accompanying feeling of pleasure, these two conceptions of will are not automatically compat- ible. Nor will one ascribe to Nietzsche the view that Being simply
Will as Affect, Passion, and Feeling 51
accompanies something else as a feeling of pleasure-that "something else" being yet another entity whose Being would have to be deter- mined. The only way out is to assume that the definition of will as an accompanying feeling of pleasure, which is at first so foreign to what was presented earlier, is neither the essential definition of will nor one such definition among others. It is much more the case that it refers to something altogether proper to the full essence of will. But if this is the case, and if in our earlier remarks we have sketched an outline of the essential structure of will, then the definition just mentioned must somehow fit into the general pattern we have presented.
"Willing: a compelling feeling, quite pleasant! " A feeling is the way we find ourselves in relationship to beings, and thereby at the same time to ourselves. It is the way we find ourselves particularly attuned to beings which we are not and to the being we ourselves are.
*Heidegger changes here the indefinite article, einer, to the definite, der, Cf. p. 25.
32
THE \VILL TO POWER AS ART
thirst for what should come to be does not grow in you" (XII, 279). Demonstration of will to power as the basic character of beings is supposed to expunge the lies in our experience of beings and in our interpretation of them. But not only that. It is also supposed to ground the principle, and establish the ground, from which the valuation is to spring and in which it must remain rooted. For "will to power" is already in itself an estimating and valuing. If beings are grasped as will to power, the "should" which is supposed to hang suspended over them, against which they might be measured, becomes superfluous. If life itself is will to power, it is itself the ground, principium, of valua- tion. Then a "should" does not determine Being; Being determines a "should. " "When we talk of values we are speaking under the inspira- tion or optics of life: life itself compels us to set up values; life itself
values through us whenever we posit values. . . . " (VIII, 89). *
To exhibit the principle of the new valuation therefore first of all means to display will to power as the basic character of beings through- out all groups and regions of beings. With a view to that task the editors
of The Will to Power divided the third book into four divisions:
I. Will to Power as Knowledge. II. Will to Power in Nature.
III. Will to Power as Society and Individual. IV. Will to Power as Art.
Several of Nietzsche's sets of instructions could have been used for such a division, for example, Plan I, 7, dated 1885 (XVI, 415): "Will to Power. Attempt at an interpretation of all occurrence. Foreword on the 'meaninglessness' that threatens. Problem of pessimism. " Then comes a list of topics arranged vertically: "Logic. Physics. Morals, Art. Politics. " These are the customary disciplines of philosophy; the only one that is missing, and not by accident, is speculative theology. For
*To this analysis of the "should" compare that in Heidegger's lecture course during the summer semester of 1935, published as Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik (Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1953), pp. 149-52; in the English translation, Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, tr. Ralph Manheim (Carden City, N. Y. : Doubleday- Anchor, 1961), pp. 164-67.
The Structure of the "Major Work" 33
the decisive stance vis-a-vis Nietzsche's interpretation of beings as will to power it is important to know that from the very start he saw beings as a whole in the perspectives of traditional disciplines of academic philosophy.
As a further aid in apportioning the aphorisms which appear in the handwritten notebooks into the chapters mentioned, the editors em- ployed an index in which Nietzsche himself numbered 372 aphorisms and divided them into particular books cited in a plan which, it is true, originates at a later date (Plan III, 6; XVI, 424). The index is printed in volume XVI, 454-67; it stems from the year 1888. *
The disposition of the third book of The Will to Power, as it lies before us today, is accordingly as well grounded as it could be on the basis of the extant handwritten materials.
However, we shall begin the interpretation of Book III not with the first chapter, "Will to Power as Knowledge," but with the fourth and final one, "Will to Power as Art. "
This chapter consists of aphorisms 794 to 853. Why we are begin- ning with the fourth chapter will soon become clear on the basis of that chapter's contents. Our immediate task must be to ask in what way Nietzsche perceives and defines the essence of art. As the very title of the chapter suggests, art is a configuration of will to power. If art is a configuration of will to power, and if within the whole of Being art is accessible in a distinctive way for us, then we should most likely be able to grasp what will to power means from the Nietzschean concep- tion of art. But lest the expression "will to power" remain an empty term any longer, let us delineate our interpretation of the fourth chapter by means of a preliminary observation. This we will do by asking, first, what does Nietzsche mean by the expression "will to power"; and second, why should it not surprise us that the basic. character of beings is here defined as will?
*Karl Schlechta indicates that the list of 372 aphorisms could apply to a number of plans other than that dated March 17, 1887. See Schlechta, Der Fall Nietzsche (Munich: C. Hanser, 2nd ed. , 1959), pp. 74 ff. and 88 ff.
.
6. The Being of beings as Will ID Traditional Metaphysics
We shall begin with the second question. The conception of the Being of all beings as will is very much in line with the best and greatest tradition of German philosophy. When we look back from Nietzsche our glance falls immediately upon Schopenhauer. His main work, which at first impels Nietzsche toward philosophy but then later repels him, bears the title The World as Will and Representation. But what Nietzsche himself understands by "will" is something altogether differ- ent. Nor is it adequate to grasp Nietzsche's notion of will as the reversal of the Schopenhauerian.
Schopenhauer's major work appeared in the year 1818. It was pro- foundly indebted to the main works of Schelling and Hegel, which had already appeared by that time. The best proof of this debt consists in the excessive and tasteless rebukes Schopenhauer hurled at Hegel and Schelling his life long. Schopenhauer called Schelling a "windbag," Hegel a "bumbling charlatan. " Such abuse, directed repeatedly against philosophy in the years following Schopenhauer, does not even have the dubious distinction of being particularly "novel. "
In one of Schelling's most profound works, the treatise On the Essence of Human Freedom, published in 1809, that philosopher writes: "In the final and ultimate instance there is no other Being at all than Willing. Willing is Primal Being" (I, VII, 350). *And in his
*During the previous semester (summer 1936) Heidegger had lectured on Schelling. See Martin Heidegger, Schellings Abhandlung iiber das Wesen der menschlichen Frei- heit (1809}, ed. Hildegard Feick (Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1971). Especially useful in
The Being of beings 35
Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) Hegel grasps the essence of Being as knowing, but grasps knowing as essentially identical to willing.
Schelling and Hegel were certain that with the interpretation of Being as will they were merely thinking the essential thought of another great German thinker-the concept of Being in Leibniz. Leibniz de- fined the essence of Being as the original unity of perceptio and ap- petitus, representation and will. Not accidentally, Nietzsche himself referred to Leibniz in two decisive passages of The Will to Power: "German philosophy as a whole-Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, to name the great ones-is the most thoroughgoing kind of romanti- cism and homesickness that has ever existed: the longing for the best there ever was" (WM, 419). And: "Handel, Leibniz, Goethe, Bismarck -characteristic of the strong German type" (WM, 884).
Now, to be sure, one should not assert that Nietzsche's doctrine of will to power is dependent upon Leibniz or Hegel or Schelling, in order by such a pronouncement to cancel all further consideration. "De- pendence" is not a concept by which we can understand relationships among the greats. But the small are always dependent on the great; they are "small" precisely because they think they are independent. The great thinker is one who can hear what is greatest in the work of other "greats" and who can transform it in an original manner.
Reference to Nietzsche's predecessors with regard to the doctrine of Being as will is not meant to calculate some sort of dependence; it is rather to suggest that such a doctrine within Western metaphysics is not arbitrary but perhaps even necessary. Every true thinking lets itself be determined by what is to be thought. In philosophy the Being of beings is to be thought. For philosophy's thinking and questioning there is no loftier and stricter commitment. In contrast, all the sciences think always only of one being among others, one particular region of beings. They are committed by this region of beings only in an indirect manner, never straightforwardly so. Because in philosophical thought
the context of Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche are the notes sketched five years later for a seminar on that same treatise. The notes appear in an appendix to Heidegger's Schelling. See esp. pp. 224-25.
36 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
the highest possible commitment prevails, all great thinkers think the same. Yet this "same" is so essential and so rich that no single thinker exhausts it; each commits all the others to it all the more strictly. To conceive of beings according to their basic character as will is not a view held by particular thinkers; it is a necessity in the history of the Dasein which those thinkers ground.
7. Will as Will to Power
But now, to anticipate the decisive issue, what does Nietzsche himself understand by the phrase "will to power"? What does "will" mean? What does "will to power" mean? For Nietzsche these two questions are but one. For in his view will is nothing else than will to power, and power nothing else than the essence of will. Hence, will to power is will to will, which is to say, willing is self-willing. But that requires elucida- tion.
With our attempt, as with all conceptual definitions elaborated in a similar fashion which claim to grasp the Being of beings, we must keep two things in mind. First, a precise conceptual definition that ticks off the various characteristics of what is to be defined remains vacuous and false, so long as we do not really come to know in an intimate way what is being talked about and bring it before our mind's eye. Second, in order to grasp the Nietzschean concept of will, the following is espe- cially important: if according to Nietzsche will as will to power is the basic character of all beings, then in defining the essence of will we cannot appeal to a particular being or special mode of Being which would serve to explain the essence of will.
Hence, will as the pervasive character of all beings does not yield any immediate sort of directive from which its concept, as a concept of Being, might be derived. Of course, Nietzsche never explicated this state of affairs systematically and with attention to principles; but he knew quite clearly that here he was pursuing an unusual question.
Two examples may illustrate what is involved. According to the usual view, will is taken to be a faculty of the soul. What will is may be determined from the essence of the psyche. The latter is dealt with in
38 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
psychology. The psyche is a particular being, distinct from body and mind. Now, if in Nietzsche's view will determines the Being of every sort of being, then it does not pertain to the psyche; rather, the psyche somehow pertains to the will. But body and mind too are will, inasmuch as such things "are. " Furthermore, if will is taken to be a faculty, then it is viewed as something that can do something, is in a position to do it, possessing the requisite power and might. Whatever is intrinsically power, and for Nietzsche that is what will is, thus cannot be further characterized by defining it as a faculty or power. For the essence of a faculty is grounded in the essence of will as power.
A second example. Will is taken to be a kind of cause. We say that a man does something not so much by means of his intellect as by sheer willpower. Will brings something about, effects some consequence. But to be a cause is a particular mode of Being; Being as such cannot be grasped by means of causation. Will is not an effecting. What we usually take to be a thing that effects something else, the power of causation, is itself grounded in will (cf. VIII, 80).
If will to power characterizes Being itself, there is nothing else that will can be defined as. Will is will-but that formally correct definition does not say anything. It is in fact quite deceptive if we take it to mean that things are as simple as the simple phrase suggests.
For that reason Nietzsche can declare, "Today we know that it [i. e. , the will] is merely a word" (Tw1light of the Idols, 1888; VIII, 80). Corresponding to this is an earlier assertion from the period of Zara- thustra: "I laugh at your free will and your unfree one too: what you call will is to me an illusion; there is no will" (XII, 267). It is remarkable that the thinker for whom the basic character of all beings is will should say such a thing: "There is no will. " But Nietzsche means that there is no such will as the one previously known and designated as "a faculty of the soul" and as "striving in general. "
Whatever the case, Nietzsche must constantly repeat what will is. He says, for example, that will is an "affect," a "passion," a "feeling," and a "command. " But do not such characterizations of will as "affect," "passion," and so on speak within the domain of the psyche and of states of the soul? Are not affect, passion, feeling, and command each
Will as Will to Power 39
something different? Must not whatever is introduced in order to illuminate the essence of will itself be adequately clear at the outset? But what is more obscure than the essence of affect and passion, and the distinction between the two? How can will be all those things simultaneously? We can hardly surmount these questions and doubts concerning Nietzsche's interpretation of the essence of will. And yet, perhaps, they do not touch on the decisive issue. Nietzsche himself emphasizes, "Above all else, willing seems to me something complicat- ed, something that is a unity only as a word; and precisely in this one word a popular prejudice lurks which has prevailed over the always meager caution of philosophers" (Beyond Good and Evil; VII, 28). Nietzsche here speaks primarily against Schopenhauer, in whose opin- ion will is the simplest and best-known thing in the world.
But because for Nietzsche will as will to power designates the essence of Being, it remains forever the actual object of his search, the thing to be determined. What matters-once such an essence is discovered- is to locate it thoroughly, so that it can never be lost again. Whether Nietzsche's procedure is the sole possible one, whether the singularity of the inquiry concerning Being became sufficiently clear to him at all, and whether he thought through in a fundamental manner the ways that are necessary and possible in this regard, we leave open for now. This much is certain: for Nietzsche there was at the time no other alternative-given the ambiguity of the concepts of will and the multi- plicity of prevailing conceptual definitions-than to clarify what he meant with the help of what was familiar and to reject what he did not mean. (Cf. the general observation concerning philosophical concepts in Beyond Good and Evil; VII, 31 ff. )
If we try to grasp willing by that peculiarity which, as it were, first forces itself upon us, we might say that willing is a heading toward . . . , a going after . . . ; willing is a kind of behavior directed toward some- thing. But when we look at something immediately at hand, or observ- antly follow the course of some process, we behave in a way that can be described in the same terms: we are directed toward the thing by way of representation-where willing plays no role. In the mere obser- vation of things we do not want to do anything "with" them and do
40
THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
not expect anything "from" them; we let things be just as they are. To be directed toward something is not yet a willing, and yet such directed- ness is implied in willing. . . .
But we can also "want" [i. e. , will-to-have] some thing, e. g. , a book or a motorbike. A boy "wills" to have a thing, that is, he would like to have it. This "would like to have" is no mere representation, but a kind of striving after something, and has the special characteristic of wishing. But to wish is not yet to will. Whoever only wishes, in the strict sense of the word, does not will; rather, he hopes that his wish will come true without his having to do anything about it. Is willing then a wishing to which we add our own initiative? No, willing is not wishing at all. It is the submission of ourselves to our own command, and the resoluteness of such self-command, which already implies our carrying out the command. But with this account of willing we have suddenly introduced a whole series of definitions that were not given in what we first discussed, namely, directing oneself toward something.
Yet it seems as though the essence of will would be grasped most purely if this "directing oneself toward," as pure willing, were canceled abruptly in favor of a directing oneself toward something in the sense of sheer desire, wishing, striving, or mere representing. Will would thus be posited as the pure relation of a simple heading toward or going after something. But this approach is misconceived. Nietzsche is con- vinced that Schopenhauer's fundamental error is his belief that there is such a thing as pure willing, a willing that becomes purer as what is willed is left more and more indeterminate and the one who wills left more and more decisively out of the picture. Much to the contrary, it is proper to the essence of willing that what is willed and the one who wills be brought into the willing, although not in the extrinsic sense in which we can say that to every striving belongs something that strives and something that is striven for.
The decisive question is this: how, and on what grounds, do the willed and the one who wills belong to the willing to will? Answer: on the grounds of willing and by means of willing. Willing wills the one who wills, as such a one; and willing posits the willed as such. Willing is resoluteness toward oneself, but as the one who wills what is posited
Will as Will to Power 41
in the willing as willed. In each case will itself furnishes thoroughgoing determinateness to its willing. Someone who does not know what he wants does not want anything and cannot will at all. There is no willing-in-general. "For the will, as an affect of command, is the deci- sive distinguishing mark of self-mastery and force" (The Gay Science, Bk. V, 1886; V, 282). In contrast, striving can be indeterminate, both with respect to what is actually striven for and in relation to the very one who strives.
In striving and in compulsion we are caught up in movement toward something without knowing what is at stake. In mere striving after something we are not properly brought before ourselves. For that reason it is not possible for us to strive beyond ourselves; rather, we merely strive, and get wholly absorbed in such striving. By way of contrast, will, as resolute openness to oneself, is always a willing out beyond oneself. If Nietzsche more than once emphasizes the character of will as command, he does not mean to provide a prescription or set of directions for the execution of an act; nor does he mean to characterize an act of will in the sense of resolve. Rather, he means resoluteness-that by which willing can come to grips with what is willed and the one who wills; he means coming to grips as a founded and abiding decisiveness. Only he can truly com- mand-and commanding has nothing to do with mere ordering about -who is always ready and able to place himself under command. By means of such readiness he has placed himself within the scope of the command as first to obey, the paragon of obedience. In such decisive-
ness of willing, which reaches out beyond itself, lies mastery over . . . , having power over what is revealed in the willing and in what is held fast in the grips of resoluteness.
Willing itself is mastery over . . . , which reaches out beyond itself; will is intrinsically power. And power is willing that is constant in itself. Will is power; power is will. Does the expression "will to power" then have no meaning? Indeed it has none, when we think of will in the sense of Nietzsche's conception. But Nietzsche employs this expression any- how, in express rejection of the usual understanding of will, and espe- cially in order to emphasize his resistance to the Schopenhauerian notion.
42 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
Nietzsche's expression "will to power" means to suggest that will as we usually understand it is actually and only will to power. But a possible misunderstanding lurks even in this explanation. The ex- pression "will to power" does not mean that, in accord with the usual view, will is a kind of desiring that has power as its goal rather than happiness and pleasure. True, in many passages Nietzsche speaks in that fashion, in order to make himself provisionally understood; but when he makes will's goal power instead of happiness, pleasure, or the unhinging of the will, he changes not only the goal of will but the essential definition of will itself. In the strict sense of the Nietzschean conception of will, power can never be pre-established as will's goal, as though power were something that could first be posited outside the will. Because will is resolute openness toward itself, as mastery out beyond itself, because will is a willing beyond itself, it is the strength that is able to bring itself to power.
The expression "to power" therefore never means some sort of appendage to will. Rather, it comprises an elucidation of the essence of will itself. Only when we have clarified Nietzsche's concept of will in these respects can we understand those designations Nietzsche often chooses in order to exhibit the complicated nature of what that simple word "will" says to him. He calls will-therefore will to power-an "affect. " He even says, "My theory would be that will to power is the primitive form of affect, that all other affects are but its configura- tions" (WM1 688). * Nietzsche calls will a "passion" as well, or a "feeling. " If we understand such descriptions from the point of view of our common psychology-something that always seems to happen-then we might easily be tempted to say that Nietzsche abandons the essence of will to the "emotional," or that he rescues it from the rationalistic misinterpretations perpetrated by Idealism.
Here we must ask two things. First, what does Nietzsche mean when
*Walter Kaufmann notes that the phrase "My theory would be" stems from the editors, not from Nietzsche himself. See his edition of The Will to Power, p. 366, n. 73.
Will as Will to Power 43
he emphasizes the character of will as affect, passion, and feeling? Second, when we believe we have found that the idealistic conception of will has nothing to do with Nietzsche's, how are we understanding "Idealism"?
8. Will as Affect, Passion, and Feeling
In the passage last cited Nietzsche says that all affects are "configura- tions" of will to power. If we ask what will to power is, Nietzsche answers that it is the original affect. Affects are forms of will; will is affect. That is called a circular definition. Common sense feels itself superior when it discovers such "errors of logic" even in a philosopher. Affect is will and will is affect. Now, we already know-at least roughly -that the question of will to power involves the question concerning the Being of beings; Being itself can no longer be determined by any given beings, since it is what determines them. Therefore, if any desig- nation of Being is brought forward at all, and if it is supposed to say the same as Being, yet not in a merely empty way, then the determina- tion brought to bear must of necessity be drawn from beings-and the circle is complete. Nevertheless, the matter is not all that simple. In the case at hand Nietzsche says with good grounds that will to power is the original form of affect; he does not say that it is simply one affect, although we often find such turns of phrase in his hastily composed argumentative presentations.
To what extent is will to power the original form of affect, i. e. , that which constitutes the Being of an affect in general? What is an affect? To this, Nietzsche provides no clear and precise answer. Just as little does he answer the questions as to what a passion or a feeling may be. The answer ("configurations" of will power) does not immediately conduct us any farther. Rather, it assigns us the task of divining what it is in what we know as affect, passion, and feeling that signifies the essence of will to power. In that way we could derive particular char- acteristics which are suitable for making clearer and richer the previous
Wl11 as Affect, Passion, and Feeling 45
attempts to define the essential concept of will. This work we must do ourselves. Yet the questions (what are affect, passion, and feeling? ) remain unanswered. Nietzsche himself often equates the three; he follows the usual ways of representing them, ways still accepted today. With these three words, each an arbitrary substitute for the others, we depict the so-called irrational side of psychic life. For customary repre- sentational thought that may suffice, but not for trite knowledge, and certainly not if our task is to determine by such knowledge the Being of beings. Nor is it enough to revamp the current "psychological" explanations of affects, passions, and feelings. We must above all see that here it is not a matter for psychology, nor even for a psychology undergirded by physiology and biology. It is a matter of the basic modes that constitute Dasein, a matter of the ways man confronts the Da, the openness and concealment of beings, in which he stands.
We cannot deny that the things physiology grapples with-particu- lar states of the body, changes in internal secretions, muscle flexions, occurrences in the nervous system-are also proper to affects, passions, and feelings. But we have to ask whether all these bodily states and the body itself are grasped in a metaphysically adequate way, so that one may without further ado borrow material from physiology and biology, as Nietzsche, to his own detriment, so often did. The one fundamental point to realize here is that no result of any science can ever be applied immediately to philosophy.
How are we to conceive of the essence of affect, passion, and feeling, indeed in such a way that in each case it will be fruitful for an interpre- tation of the essence of will in Nietzsche's sense? Here we can conduct our examination only as far as illumination of Nietzsche's characteriza- tion of will to power requires.
Anger, for instance, is an affect. In contrast, by "hate" we mean something quite different. Hate is not simply another affect, it is not an affect at all. It is a passion. But we call both of them "feelings. " W e speak of the feeling of hatred and of an angry feeling. W e cannot plan or decide to be angry. Anger comes over us, seizes us, "affects" us. Such a seizure is sudden and turbulent. Our being is moved by a kind of excitement, something stirs us up, lifts us beyond ourselves, but in
46 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
such a way that, seized by our excitement, we are no longer masters of ourselves. We say, "He acted on impulse," that is to say, under the influence of an affect. Popular speech proves to be keensighted when it says of someone w'ho is stirred up and acts in an excited manner, "He isn't altogether himself. " When we are seized by excitement, our being "altogether there" vanishes; it is transformed into a kind of "falling apart. " We say, "He's beside himself with joy. "
Nietzsche is obviously thinking of that essential moment in the affect when he tries to characterize will in its terms. Such being lifted beyond ourselves in anger, the seizure of our whole being, so that we are not our own master, such a "not" does not at all mean to deny that in anger we are carried beyond ourselves; such "not being master" in the affect, in anger, distinguishes the affect from mastery in the sense of will, for in the affect our being master of ourselves is transformed into a manner of being beyond ourselves where something is lost. Whatever is contrary we call "counter. " We call anger a counter-will
that subsists beyond us, in such a way that in anger we do not remain together with ourselves as we do when willing, but, as it were, lose ourselves. Here will is a counter-will. Nietzsche turns the state of affairs around: the formal essence of the affect is will, but now will is visualized merely as a state of excitement, of being beyond oneself.
Because Nietzsche says that to will is to will out beyond oneself, he can say that, in view of such being beyond oneself in the affect, will to power is the original form of affect. Yet he clearly wants to add the other moment of the affect for the sake of the essential characterization of will, that moment of seizure in the affect by which something comes over us. That too, and precisely that, in a manifold and Protean sense of course, is proper to the will. That we can be beyond or outside ourselves in this or that way, and that we are in fact constantly so, is possible only because will itself-seen in relation to the essence of man-is seizure pure and simple.
Will itself cannot be willed. We can never resolve to have a will, in the sense that we would arrogate to ourselves a will; for such resolute- ness is itself a willing. When we say, "He wants to have his will carried out in this or that matter," it means as much as, he really wants to stand
Will as Affect, Passion, and Feeling 47
firm in his willing, to get hold of himself in his entire being, to be master over his being. But that very possibility indicates that we are always within the scope of will, even when we are unwilling. That genuine willing which surges forward in resoluteness, that "yes," is what instigates the seizure of our entire being, of the very essence within us.
Nietzsche designates will as passion just as often as affect. W e should not automatically conclude that he identifies affect and passion, even if he does not arrive at an explicit and comprehensive clarification of the essential distinction and connection between these two. We may surmise that Nietzsche knows the difference between affect and pas- sion. Around the year 1882 he says regarding his times, "Our age is an agitated one, and precisely for that reason, not an age of passion; it heats itself up continuously, because it feels that it is not warm- basically it is freezing. I do not believe in the greatness of all these 'great events' of which you speak" (XII, 343). "The age of the greatest events will, in spite of all that, be the age of the most meager effects if men are made of rubber and are all too elastic. " "In our time it is merely by means of an echo that events acquire their 'greatness'-the echo of the newspapers" (XII, 344).
Usually Nietzsche employs the word "passion" interchangeably with "affect. " But if anger and hate, for example, or joy and love, not only are different as one affect is from another, but are distinct as affects and passions respectively, then here too we need a more exact defini- tion. Hate too cannot be produced by a decision; it too seems to overtake us-in a way similar to that when we are seized by anger. Nevertheless, the manner in which it comes over us is essentially differ- ent. Hate can explode suddenly in an action or exclamation, but only because it has already overtaken us, only because it has been growing within us for a long time, and, as we say, has been nurtured in us. But something can be nurtured only if it is already there and is alive. In contrast, we do not say and never believe that anger is nurtured. Because hate lurks much more deeply in the origins of our being it has a cohesive power; like love, hate brings an original cohesion and perdur- ance to our essential being. But anger, which seizes us, can also release
48 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
us again-it "blows over," as we say. Hate does not "blow over. " Once it germinates it grows and solidifies, eating its way inward and consum- ing our very being. But the permanent cohesion that comes to human existence through hate does not close it off and blind it. Rather, it grants vision and premeditation. The angry man loses the power of reflection. He who hates intensifies reflection and rumination to the point of "hardboiled" malice. Hate is never blind; it is perspicuous. Only anger is blind. Love is never blind: it is perspicuous. Only infatua- tion is blind, fickle, and susceptible-an affect, not a passion. To passion belongs a reaching out and opening up of oneself. Such reach- ing out occurs even in hate, since the hated one is pursued everywhere relentlessly. But such reaching out in passion does not simply lift us up and away beyond ourselves. It gathers our essential being to its proper ground, it exposes our ground for the first time in so gathering, so that the passion is that through which and in which we take hold of our- selves and achieve lucid mastery over the beings around us and within us.
Passion understood in this way casts light on what Nietzsche calls will to power. Will as mastery of oneself is never encapsulation of the ego from its surroundings. Will is, in our terms, resolute openness, in which he who wills stations himself abroad among beings in order to keep them firmly within his field of action. * Now the characteristic traits are not seizure and agitation, but the lucid grip which simultaneously gathers that passionate being.
Affect: the seizure that blindly agitates us. Passion: the lucidly gath- ering grip on beings. We talk and understand only extrinsically when we say that anger flares and then dissipates, lasting but a short time,
*Perhaps a word is needed concerning the traditional translation of Entschlossenheit, "resoluteness. " Heidegger now hyphenates the German word to emphasize that Ent- schlossenheit, far from being a sealing-off or closing-up of the will in decision, means unclosedness, hence a "resolute openness. " The word thus retains its essential ties to Erschlossenheit, the disclosure of Being in Dasein. On Entschlossenheit see Martin Heidegger, Sein undZeit, 12th ed. (Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1972), esp. p. 297; "Yom Wesen der Wahrheit," in Wegmarken (Frankfurt/Main: V. Klostermann, 1967), p. 90; and Celassenheit (Pfullingen: C. Neske, 1959), p. 59. Cf. Martin Heidegger: Basic
Writings, ed. D. F. Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 133 n.
Will as Affect, Passion, and Feeling 49
while hate lasts longer. No, hate and love not only last longer, they bring perdurance and permanence for the first time to our existence. An affect, in contrast, cannot do that. Because passion restores our essential being, because it loosens and liberates in its very grounds, and because passion at the same time reaches out into the expanse of beings, for these reasons passion-and we mean great passion-possesses ex- travagance and resourcefulness, not only the ability but the necessity to submit, without bothering about what its extravagance entails. It displays that self-composed superiority characteristic of great will.
Passion has nothing to do with sheer desire. It is not a matter of the nerves, of ebullition and dissipation. All of that, no matter how excited its gestures, Nietzsche reckons as attrition of the will. Will is what it is only as willing out beyond itself, willing more. Great will shares with great passion that serenity of unhurried animation that is slow to answer and react, not out of insecurity and ponderousness, but out of the broadly expansive security and inner buoyancy of what is superior.
Instead of "affect" and "passion" we also say "feeling," if not "sensa- tion. " Or, where affects and passions are distinguished, the two are conjoined in the genus "feeling. " Today if we apply the term "feeling" to a passion, it is understood as a kind of reduction. For we believe that a passion is not a mere feeling. Nevertheless, the simple fact that we refrain from calling passions feelings does not prove that we possess a more highly developed concept of the essence of passion; it may only be a sign that we have employed too paltry a concept of the essence of feeling. So it is in fact. But it may seem that here we are merely inquiring into word meanings and their appropriate applications. Yet the matter that is here in question is, first, whether what we have now indicated as being the essence of affect and of passion exhibits an original, essential connection between these two, and second, whether this original connection can truly be understood if only we grasp the essence of what we call "feeling. "
Nietzsche himself does not shy from conceiving willing simply as feeling: "Willing: a compelling feeling, quite pleasant! It is the epi- phenomenon of all discharge ofenergy" (XIII, 159). To will-a feeling of pleasure? "Pleasure is only a symptom of the feeling of power
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attained, a consciousness of difference ( - i t [a living creature] does not strive for pleasure: rather, pleasure enters on the scene when it achieves what it is striving for: pleasure accompanies, it does not motivate-)" (WM, 688). Is will accordingly but an "epiphenomenon" of energy discharge, an accompanying feeling of pleasure? How does that jibe with what was said about the essence of will in general, and in particular with respect to the comparison with affect and passion? There will appeared as what properly sustains and dominates, being synonymous with mastery itself. Is it now to be reduced to a feeling of pleasure that merely accompanies something else?
From such passages we see clearly how unconcerned Nietzsche is about a unified, solidly grounded presentation of his teaching. We realize that he is only getting under way, that he is resolutely open. His task is not a matter of indifference to him; neither is it of only supple- mental interest. He knows, as only a creator can, that what from the outside looks like a summary presentation is actually the configuration of the real issue, where things collide against one another in such a way that they expose their proper essence. Nevertheless, Nietzsche remains under way, and the immediate casting of what he wants to say always forces itself upon him. In such a position he speaks directly the lan- guage of his times and of the contemporary "science. " When he does so he does not shy from conscious exaggeration and one-sided formula- tions of his thoughts, believing that in this way he can most clearly set in relief what in his vision and in his inquiry is different from the run-of-the-mill. Yet when he proceeds in such a manner he is always able to keep his eye on the whole; he can make do, as it were, with one-sidedness. The results are fatal when others, his readers, latch onto such statements in a superficial way and, depending on what Nietzsche
just then is offering them, either declare it his sole opinion on the matter or, on the grounds of any given particular utterances, all too facilely refute him.
If it is true that will to power constitutes the basic character of all beings, and if Nietzsche now defines will as an accompanying feeling of pleasure, these two conceptions of will are not automatically compat- ible. Nor will one ascribe to Nietzsche the view that Being simply
Will as Affect, Passion, and Feeling 51
accompanies something else as a feeling of pleasure-that "something else" being yet another entity whose Being would have to be deter- mined. The only way out is to assume that the definition of will as an accompanying feeling of pleasure, which is at first so foreign to what was presented earlier, is neither the essential definition of will nor one such definition among others. It is much more the case that it refers to something altogether proper to the full essence of will. But if this is the case, and if in our earlier remarks we have sketched an outline of the essential structure of will, then the definition just mentioned must somehow fit into the general pattern we have presented.
"Willing: a compelling feeling, quite pleasant! " A feeling is the way we find ourselves in relationship to beings, and thereby at the same time to ourselves. It is the way we find ourselves particularly attuned to beings which we are not and to the being we ourselves are.
