No More Learning

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. In feeling, a state opens up, and stays open, in which we stand related to things, to ourselves, and to the people around us, always simultaneously. Feel- ing is the very state, open to itself, in which our Dasein hovers. Man is not a rational creature who also wills, and in addition to thinking and willing is equipped with feelings, whether these make him admirable or despicable; rather, the state of feeling is original, although in such a way that thinking and willing belong together with it. Now the only
important matter that remains for us to see is that feeling has the character of opening up and keeping open, and therefore also, depend- ing on the kind of feeling it is, the character of closing off.
But if will is willing out beyond itself, the "out beyond" does not imply that will simply wanders away from itself; rather, will gathers itself together in willing. That the one who wills, wills himself into his will, means that such willing itself, and in unity with it he who wills and what is willed, become manifest in the willing. In the essence of will, in resolute openness, will discloses itself to itself, not merely by means of some further act appended to it, some sort of observation of the willing process and reflection on it; on the contrary, it is will itself that has the character of opening up and keeping open. No self-obser- vation or self-analysis which we might undertake, no matter how pene- trating, brings to light our self, and how it is with our self. In contrast,
52 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
in willing and, correspondingly, in not willing, we bring ourselves to light; it is a light kindled only by willing. Willing always brings the self to itself; it thereby finds itself out beyond itself. It maintains itself within the thrust away from one thing toward something else. Will therefore has the character of feeling, of keeping open our very state of being, a state that in the case of will-being out beyond itself-is a pulsion. Will can thus be grasped as a "compelling feeling. " It is not only a feeling of something that prods us, but is itself a prodding, indeed of a sort that is "quite pleasant. " What opens up in the will- willing itself as resolute openness-is agreeable to the one for whom it is so opened, the one who wills. In willing we come toward ourselves, as the ones we properly are. Only in will do we capture ourselves in our most proper essential being. He who wills is, as such, one who wills out beyond himself; in willing we know ourselves as out beyond ourselves; we sense a mastery over . . . , somehow achieved; a thrill of pleasure announces to us the power attained, a power that enhances itself. For that reason Nietzsche speaks of a "consciousness of difference. "
If feeling and will are grasped here as "consciousness" or "knowl- edge," it is to exhibit most clearly that moment of the opening up of something in will itself. But such opening is not an observing; it is feeling. This suggests that willing is itself a kind of state, that it is open in and to itself. Willing is feeling (state of attunement).
Now since the will possesses that manifold character of willing out beyond itself, as we have suggested, and since all this becomes manifest as a whole, we can conclude that a multiplicity of feelings haunts our willing. Thus in Beyond Good and Evil (VII, 28-29) Nietzsche says:
. . . in every willing there is in the first place a multiplicity of feelings, namely, the feeling of the state away from which, the feeling of the state toward which, the feeling of this very "away" and "toward"; then there is also an accompanying feeling in the musculature that comes into play by force of habit as soon as we "will," even if we do not set "arms and legs" in motion.
That Nietzsche designates will now as affect, now as passion, now as feeling should suggest that he sees something more unified, more
Will as Affect, Passion, and Feeling 53
original, and even 1pore fertile behind that single rude word, "will. " If he calls will an affect, it is not a mere equation, but a designation of will with regard to what distinguishes the affect as such. The same is true for the concepts of passion and feeling. W e have to go even further and reverse the state of affairs. What we otherwise recognize as affect, passion, and feeling, Nietzsche recognizes in its essential roots as will to power. Thus he grasps "joy" (normally an affect) as a "feeling- stronger," as a feeling of being out beyond oneself and of being capable of being so (WM, 917):
To feel stronger-or, to express it differently, joy-always presupposes comparison (but not necessarily with others; rather, with oneself, within a state of growth, and without first knowing to what extent one is com- paring-). .
This is a reference to that "consciousness of difference" which is not knowledge in the sense of mere representation and cognition.
Joy does not simply presuppose an unwitting comparison. It is rather something that brings us to ourselves, not by way of knowledge but by way of feeling, by way of an away-beyond-us. Comparison is not pre- supposed. Rather, the disparity implied in being out beyond ourselves is first opened up and given form by joy.
If we examine all this from the outside rather than the inside, if we judge it by the standards of customary theories of knowledge and consciousness, whether idealistic or realistic, we proceed to declare that Nietzsche's concept of will is an emotional one, conceived in terms of our emotional lives, our feelings, and that it is therefore ultimately a biological notion. All well and good. But such explanations pigeonhole Nietzsche in that representational docket which he would like to es- cape. That is also true of the interpretation that tries to distinguish Nietzsche's "emotional" concept of will from the "idealistic" one.
9. The Idealistic Interpretation of Nietzsche's Doctrine of Will
We have now arrived at the second of the questions posed above [p. 43], which asks: if we believe we have found that the idealistic concept of will has nothing to do with Nietzsche's, how are we understanding
"Idealism"?
Generally we can call "idealistic" that mode of observation which
looks to ideas. Here "idea" means as much as representation. To rep- resent means to envisage in the widest sense: idein. To what extent can an elucidation of the essence of will see in will a trait of representa- tion?
Willing is a kind of desiring and striving. The Greeks call it orexis. In the Middle Ages and in modern times it is called appetitus and inclinatio. Hunger, for example, is sheer compulsion and striving, a compulsion toward food for the sake of nourishment. In the case of animals the compulsion itself as such does not have explicitly in view what it is being compelled toward; animals do not represent food as such and do not strive for it as nourishment. Such striving does not know what it will have, since it does not will at all; yet it goes after what is striven for, though never going after it as such. But will, as striving, is not blind compulsion. What is desired and striven for is represented as such along with the compulsion; it too is taken up into view and co-apprehended.
To bring something forward and to contemplate it is called in Greek noein. What is striven for, orekton, in the willing is at the same time
The Idealistic Interpretation 55
something represented, noeton. But that does not at all mean that willing is actually representation of such a kind that a striving tags along after what is represented. The reverse is the case. We shall offer as unequivocal proof a passage from Aristotle's treatise Peri psyches, "On the Soul. "
When we translate the Greek psyche as "soul" we dare not think of it in the sense of "life experiences," nor may we think of what we know in the consciousness of our ego cogito, nor finally may we think of the "unconscious. " For Aristotle psyche means the principle of living creatures as such, whatever it is that makes living things to be alive, what pervades their very essence. The treatise just mentioned discusses the essence of life and the hierarchy of living creatures.
The treatise contains no psychology, and no biology either. It is a metaphysics of living creatures, among which man too belongs. What lives m9ves itself by itself. Movement here means not only change of place but every mode of behavior and self-alteration. Man is the highest form of living creature. The basic type of self-movement for him is action, praxis. So the question arises: what is the determining ground, the arche, of action, i. e. , of proceeding in a considered fashion and establishing something? What is determinative here, the represented as such or what is sought? Is the representing-striving determined by representation or desire? To ask it another way: is will a representing, and is it therefore determined by ideas, or not? If what is taught is that will is in essence a representing, then such a doctrine of will is "idealis- tic. "
What does Aristotle teach concerning will? The tenth chapter of Book III deals with orexis, desiring. Here Aristotle says (433a 15 ff. ):
Kai he orexis heneka tou pasa · hou gar he orexis, haute arche tou praktikou nou · to d' eschaton arche tes praxeos. Hoste eulogos dyo tauta phainetai t~ kinounta, orexis kai dianoia praktike · to orekton gar kinei, kai dia touto he dianoia kinei, hoti arche autes esti to orekton.
And every desire has that on account of which it is desire [what the desire aims at]; it is that on the basis of which the considering intellect as such
56 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
determines itself; the terminal point is that by which the action is deter- mined. Therefore these two, desiring and the considering intellect, show themselves with good grounds to be what moves; for what is desired in the desiring moves, and the intellect, representation, moves only because it represents to itself what is desired in the desiring.
Aristotle's conception of the will becomes definitive for all Western thought; it is still today the common conception. In the Middle Ages voluntas is interpreted as appetitus intellectualis, i. e. , orexis dianoetike, the desiring which is proper to intellectual representation. For Leibniz agere, doing, is perceptio and appetitus in one; perceptio is idea, representation. For Kant the will is that faculty of desire which works according to concepts, which is to say, in such a way that what is willed, as something represented in general, is itself determinative of action. Although representation sets in relief the will as a faculty of desire over against sheer blind striving, it does not serve as the proper moving and willing force in will. Only a conception of will that would ascribe to representation or the idea such an unjustified preeminence could be classified as idealistic in the strict sense. Indeed we do find such concep- tions. In the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas inclines toward such an interpretation of the will, although even with him the question is not decided so unequivocally. Viewed as a whole, the great thinkers have never assigned to representation the highest rank in their conceptions of the will.
If by an "idealistic interpretation of the will" we understand every conception that in any way emphasizes representation, thought, knowl- edge, and concept as essential components of will, then Aristotle's interpretation of will is undoubtedly idealistic. So in the same way are those of Leibniz and Kant; but then so too is that of Nietzsche. Proof for this assertion is quite easy to come by: we need only read a bit farther into that passage where Nietzsche says that will consists of a multiplicity of feelings.
Therefore, just as we must acknowledge feeling, and indeed many types of feelings, as ingredients of the will, so must we also in the second place
The Idealistic Interpretation 57
acknowledge thinking: in every act of the will there is a commandeering thought; - a n d one should not think that he can sever this thought from the "willing," as though will would be what were left over! (VII, 29).
That is spoken clearly enough, not only against Schopenhauer, but against all those who want to appeal to Nietzsche when they defy thinking and the power of the concept.
In the light of these clear statements by Nietzsche, an outright rejection of the idealistic interpretation of his doctrine of will seems futile. But perhaps one might argue that Nietzsche's conception of will differs from that of German Idealism. There too, however, the Kantian and Aristotelian concept of will is adopted. For Hegel, knowing and willing are the same, which is to say, true knowledge is also already action and action is only in knowledge. Schelling even says that what actually wills in the will is the intellect. Is that not unclouded Idealism, if one understands by that a tracing of will back to representation? But by his extravagant turn of phrase Schelling wants to emphasize nothing else than what Nietzsche singles out in the will when he says that will is command. For when Schelling says "intellect," and when German Idea. lism speaks of knowing, they do not mean a faculty of representa- tion as the discipline of psychology would think it; they do not mean the kind of behavior that merely accompanies and observes the other processes of psychic life. Knowing means opening upon Being, which is a willing-in Nietzsche's language, an "affect. " Nietzsche himself says, "To will is to command: but commanding is a particular affect (this affect is a sudden explosion of energy)-intent, clear, having one thing exclusively in view, innermost conviction of its superiority, cer- tain that it will be obeyed-" (XIII, 264). To have one thing clearly, intently, exclusively in view: what else is that than, in the strict sens~ of the word, holding one thing before oneself, presenting it before oneself? But intellect, Kant says, is the faculty of representation.
No designation of will is more common in Nietzsche than the one just cited: to will is to command; in the will lies a commandeering thought. But at the same time no other conception of will emphasizes
58
THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
more decisively than this one the essential role of knowledge and representation, the role of intellect, in the will.
Hence, if we want to get as close as we can to Nietzsche's conception of the will, and stay close to it, then we are well advised to hold all the usual terminology at a distance. Whether we call his conception idealis- tic or nonidealistic, emotional or biological, rational or irrational-in each case it is a falsification.
10. Will and Power. The Essence of Power
Now we can-indeed it seems we must-gather together the series of determinations of the essence of will which we have elaborated and conjoin them in a single definition: will as mastery over something, reaching out beyond itself; will as affect (the agitating seizure); will as passion (the expansive plunge into the breadth of beings); will as feeling (being the state of having a stance-toward-oneself); and will as com- mand. With some effort we certainly could produce a formally proper "definition" bristling with all these attributes. All the same, we will forego that. Not as though we laid no value on strict and univocal concepts-on the contrary, we are searching for them. But a notion is not a concept, not in philosophy at any rate, if it is not founded and grounded in such a way as to allow what it is grasping to become its standard and the pathway of its interrogation, instead of camouflaging it under the net of a mere formula. But what the concept "will," as the basic character of beings, is to grasp, i. e. , Being, is not yet in our vicinity; better, we are not close enough to it. To be cognizant, to
know, is not mere familiarity with concepts. Rather, it is to grasp what the concept itself catches hold of. To grasp Being means to remain knowingly exposed to its sudden advance, its presencing. If we consider what the word "will" is to name, the essence of beings themselves, then we shall comprehend how powerless such a solitary word must remain, even when a definition is appended to it. Hence Nietzsche can say, "Will: that is a supposition which clarifies nothing else for me. For those who know, there is no willing" (XII, 303). From such statements
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we should not conclude that the whole effort to capture the essence of will is without prospect, nothing worth, and that therefore it is a matter of indifference and arbitrariness what words or concepts we use when speaking of "will. " On the contrary, we have to question, right from the start and continually, on the basis of the matter itself. Only in that way do we arrive at the concept and at the proper use of the word.
Now, in order from the outset to avoid the vacuity of the word "will," Nietzsche says "will to power. " Every willing is a willing to be more. Power itself only is inasmuch as, and so long as, it remains a willing to be more power. As soon as such will disappears, power is no longer power, even if it still holds in subjection what it has overmas- tered. In will, as willing to be more, as will to power, enhancement and heightening are essentially implied. For only by means of perpetual heightening can what is elevated be held aloft. Only a more powerful heightening can counter the tendency to sink back; simply holding onto the position already attained will not do, because the inevitable consequence is ultimate exhaustion. In The Will to Power Nietzsche says (WM, 702):
-what man wants, what every smallest part of a living organism wants, is an increase of power. . . . Let us take the simplest case, that of primitive nourishment: the protoplasm stretches its pseudopodia in order to search for something that resists it-not from hunger but from will to power. It then attempts to overcome this thing, to appropriate it, to incorporate it. What we call "nourishment" is merely a derivative appearance, a practical appli- cation of that original will to become stronger. *
To will is to want to become stronger. Here too Nietzsche speaks by way of reversal and at the same time by way of defense against a contemporary trend, namely, Darwinism. Let us clarify this matter briefly. Life not only exhibits the drive to maintain itself, as Darwin
*Walter Kaufmann notes that all editions omit a sentence from this note. It should be inserted after the phrase "not from hunger but from will to power. " In translation it reads: "Duality as the consequence of too weak a unity. " See Kaufmann's edition of The Will to Power, p. 373, n. 80.
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thinks, but also is self-assertion. The will to maintain merely clings to what is already at hand, stubbornly insists upon it, loses itself in it, and so becomes blind to its proper essence. Self-assertion, which wants to be ahead of things, to stay on top of things, is always a going back into its essence, into the origin. Self-assertion is original assertion of es- sence.
Will to power is never the willing of a particular actual entity. It involves the Being and essence of beings; it is this itself. Therefore we can say that will to power is always essential will. Although Nietzsche does not formulate it expressly in this way, at bottom that is what he means. Otherwise we could not understand what he always refers to in connection with his emphasis on the character of enhancement in will, of the "increase of power," namely, the fact that will to power is something creative. That designation too remains deceptive; it often seems to suggest that in and through will to power something is to be produced. What is decisive is not production in the sense of manufac- turing but taking up and transforming, making something other than. . . , other in an essential way. For that reason the need to destroy belongs essentially to creation. In destruction, the contrary, the ugly, and the evil are posited; they are of necessity proper to creation, i. e. , will to power, and thus to Being itself. To the essence of Being nullity belongs, not as sheer vacuous nothingness, but as the empowering "no. "
We know that German Idealism thought Being as will. That philos- ophy also dared to think the negative as proper to Being. It suffices to refer to a passage in the Preface to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Here Hegel avers that the "monstrous power of the negative" is the "energy of thinking, of the pure ego. " He continues:
Death, if we want to name that unreality so, is the most frightful thing, and to hold fast to what is dead requires the greatest force. Beauty without force hates the intellect because intellect demands of her something of which she is incapable. But the life of Spirit is not one that shies from death and merely preserves itself from corruption; it is rather the life that endures death and maintains itself in death. Spirit achieves its truth only inasmuch as it finds itself in absolute abscission. It is not this power as something positive that
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averts its glance from everything negative, as when we say of something that it is nothing, or false, and that now we are done with it and can leave it behind and go on to something else; rather, it is this power only insofar as it looks the negative in the eye and lingers with it. *
Thus German Idealism too dares to think evil as proper to the essence of Being. The greatest attempt in this direction we possess in Schelling's treatise On the Essence of Human Freedom. Nietzsche had a much too original and mature relation to the history of German metaphysics to have overlooked the might of thoughtful will in Ger- man Idealism. Hence at one point he writes (WM, 416):
The significance of German philosophy (Hegel): to elaborate a pantheism in which evil, error, and suffering are not felt to be arguments against divinity. This grandiose initiative has been misused by the existing powers (the state, etc. ), as though it sanctioned the rationality of those who hap- pened to be ruling.
In contrast, Schopenhauer appears as the stubborn moral-man who in order to retain his moral estimation finally becomes a world-denier, ulti- mately a "mystic. "
This passage also reveals clearly that Nietzsche was by no means willing to join in the belittling, denegrating, and berating of German Idealism which became common with Schopenhauer and others in the middle of the nineteenth century. Schopenhauer's philosophy, which had been available in its finished form since 1818, began to reach a broader public by mid-century. Richard Wagner and the young Nietzsche were also caught up in the movement. We obtain a vivid picture of the enthusiasm for Schopenhauer which moved young people at that time from the letters of the youthful Baron Carl von Gersdorff to Nietzsche. They were friends since their high school days at Schulpforta. Especial- ly important are the letters Gersdorff wrote to Nietzsche while at the front in 1870-71. (See Die Briefe des Freiherrn Carl von Gersdorff an
Friedrich Nietzsche, edited by Karl Schlechta, first part: 1864-71, Weimar, 1934; second part: 1871-74, Weimar, 1935. )
*C. W. F. Hegel, Phiinomenologie des Geistes (Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1952), pp. 29-30.
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Schopenhauer interpreted the state of affairs-that he was suddenly now being read by the educated classes-as a philosophical victory over German Idealism. But Schopenhauer advanced to the forefront of philosophy at that time not because his philosophy conquered German Idealism philosophically, but because the Germans lay prostrate before German Idealism and were no longer equal to its heights. Its decline made Schopenhauer a great man. The consequence was that the philos- ophy of German Idealism, seen from the point of view of Schopenhau- er's commonplaces, became something foreign, an oddity. It fell into oblivion. Only by detours and byways do we find our way back into that era of the German spirit; we are far removed from a truly historical relation to our history. Nietzsche sensed that here a "grandiose initia- tive" of metaphysical thought was at work. Yet for him it remained, had to remain, a mere glimmer. For the one decade of creative labor on his major work did not grant him the time and tranquillity to linger in the vast halls of Hegel's and Schelling's works.
Will is in itself simultaneously creative and destructive. Being master out beyond oneself is always also annihilation. All the designated mo- ments of will-the out-beyond-itself, enhancement, the character of command, creation, self-assertion-speak clearly enough for us to know that will in itself is already will to power. Power says nothing else than the actuality of will.