Will to power

[GrowingSmaller]

IIRC Neitzsche said the living being was invested with a "will to power" where it strove to control and dominate it's environment for it's own ends. Is this an obvious tautology, a blatant error, or just more cheese in the sandwich?

 

[AlexBP]

I will let G. K. Chesterton answer this one:

They see that reason destroys; but Will, they say, creates. The ultimate authority, they say, is in will, not in reason. The supreme point is not why a man demands a thing, but the fact that he does demand it. I have no space to trace or expound this philosophy of Will. It came, I suppose, through Nietzsche, who preached something that is called egoism. That, indeed, was simpleminded enough; for Nietzsche denied egoism simply by preaching it. To preach anything is to give it away. First, the egoist calls life a war without mercy, and then he takes the greatest possible trouble to drill his enemies in war. To preach egoism is to practise altruism. But however it began, the view is common enough in current literature. The main defence of these thinkers is that they are not thinkers; they are makers. They say that choice is itself the divine thing. Thus Mr. Bernard Shaw has attacked the old idea that men’s acts are to be judged by the standard of the desire of happiness. He says that a man does not act for his happiness, but from his will. He does not say, “Jam will make me happy,” but “I want jam.” And in all this others follow him with yet greater enthusiasm. Mr. John Davidson, a remarkable poet, is so passionately excited about it that he is obliged to write prose. He publishes a short play with several long prefaces. This is natural enough in Mr. Shaw, for all his plays are prefaces: Mr. Shaw is (I suspect) the only man on earth who has never written any poetry. But that Mr. Davidson (who can write excellent poetry) should write instead laborious metaphysics in defence of this doctrine of will, does show that the doctrine of will has taken hold of men. Even Mr. H. G. Wells has half spoken in its language; saying that one should test acts not like a thinker, but like an artist, saying, “I FEEL this curve is right,” or “that line SHALL go thus.” They are all excited; and well they may be. For by this doctrine of the divine authority of will, they think they can break out of the doomed fortress of rationalism. They think they can escape.
But they cannot escape. This pure praise of volition ends in the same break up and blank as the mere pursuit of logic. Exactly as complete free thought involves the doubting of thought itself, so the acceptation of mere “willing” really paralyzes the will. Mr. Bernard Shaw has not perceived the real difference between the old utilitarian test of pleasure (clumsy, of course, and easily misstated) and that which he propounds. The real difference between the test of happiness and the test of will is simply that the test of happiness is a test and the other isn’t. You can discuss whether a man’s act in jumping over a cliff was directed towards happiness; you cannot discuss whether it was derived from will. Of course it was. You can praise an action by saying that it is calculated to bring pleasure or pain to discover truth or to save the soul. But you cannot praise an action because it shows will; for to say that is merely to say that it is an action. By this praise of will you cannot really choose one course as better than another. And yet choosing one course as better than another is the very definition of the will you are praising.
The worship of will is the negation of will. To admire mere choice is to refuse to choose. If Mr. Bernard Shaw comes up to me and says, “Will something,” that is tantamount to saying, “I do not mind what you will,” and that is tantamount to saying, “I have no will in the matter.” You cannot admire will in general, because the essence of will is that it is particular. A brilliant anarchist like Mr. John Davidson feels an irritation against ordinary morality, and therefore he invokes will—will to anything. He only wants humanity to want something. But humanity does want something. It wants ordinary morality. He rebels against the law and tells us to will something or anything. But we have willed something. We have willed the law against which he rebels.
All the will-worshippers, from Nietzsche to Mr. Davidson, are really quite empty of volition. They cannot will, they can hardly wish. And if any one wants a proof of this, it can be found quite easily. It can be found in this fact: that they always talk of will as something that expands and breaks out. But it is quite the opposite. Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else. That objection, which men of this school used to make to the act of marriage, is really an objection to every act. Every act is an irrevocable selection exclusion. Just as when you marry one woman you give up all the others, so when you take one course of action you give up all the other courses. If you become King of England, you give up the post of Beadle in Brompton. If you go to Rome, you sacrifice a rich suggestive life in Wimbledon. It is the existence of this negative or limiting side of will that makes most of the talk of the anarchic will-worshippers little better than nonsense. For instance, Mr. John Davidson tells us to have nothing to do with “Thou shalt not”; but it is surely obvious that “Thou shalt not” is only one of the necessary corollaries of “I will.” “I will go to the Lord Mayor’s Show, and thou shalt not stop me.” Anarchism adjures us to be bold creative artists, and care for no laws or limits. But it is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called “The Loves of the Triangles”; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular. This is certainly the case with all artistic creation, which is in some ways the most decisive example of pure will. The artist loves his limitations: they constitute the THING he is doing. The painter is glad that the canvas is flat. The sculptor is glad that the clay is colourless.
...
It may be added that the same blank and bankruptcy can be observed in all fierce and terrible types of literature, especially in satire. Satire may be mad and anarchic, but it presupposes an admitted superiority in certain things over others; it presupposes a standard. When little boys in the street laugh at the fatness of some distinguished journalist, they are unconsciously assuming a standard of Greek sculpture. They are appealing to the marble Apollo. And the curious disappearance of satire from our literature is an instance of the fierce things fading for want of any principle to be fierce about. Nietzsche had some natural talent for sarcasm: he could sneer, though he could not laugh; but there is always something bodiless and without weight in his satire, simply because it has not any mass of common morality behind it. He is himself more preposterous than anything he denounces. But, indeed, Nietzsche will stand very well as the type of the whole of this failure of abstract violence. The softening of the brain which ultimately overtook him was not a physical accident. If Nietzsche had not ended in imbecility, Nietzscheism would end in imbecility. Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot. Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain.

 

[Eudaimonist]

IIRC Neitzsche said the living being was invested with a "will to power" where it strove to control and dominate it's environment for it's own ends. Is this an obvious tautology, a blatant error, or just more cheese in the sandwich?

Tell me, what are you typing your post on? What is that if not a result of such a will?


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[KCfromNC]

IIRC Neitzsche said the living being was invested with a "will to power" where it strove to control and dominate it's environment for it's own ends. Is this an obvious tautology, a blatant error, or just more cheese in the sandwich?

An organism which didn't find a way to exploit their environment for their own survival in some way or another is going to be on the wrong end of natural selection as some point. But I'm thinking Nietzsche is doing a bit of anthropomorphizing as to the nature of that exploitation in most organisms. How much control does a tree exert, in the sense of e.g. wolves controlling one another through force? I guess the terms are vague enough to pretend that they fit both cases, but I see a fairly significant difference between them.

 

[AlexBP]

Tell me, what are you typing your post on? What is that if not a result of such a will?

In the late nineteenth century, a lot of influential European thinkers taught that there was no free will, that the world contained nothing other than particles that moved according to physical laws, no human could ever break free from inherent or social programming, and so forth. Nietzsche's philosophy was partially a reaction to this nonsense. He correctly observed that while some human beings do spend their lives in submission to natural urges and social pressures, others have the mental strength to break free and act upon their own choices, generated internally. Up to that point, Nietzsche was correct.

Where he erred was in lifting up "will" to the highest good, and denying that there was a higher good ordered by a source higher than man. As Chesterton said in the passage I posted above, this is why Nietzsche went horribly insane in the end. He was above the level of following the rabble; he could never be happy with that. But he was below the level of following God. Caught between the two, he had no solid basis for his mentation.

 

[Eudaimonist]

[...] this is why Nietzsche went horribly insane in the end.

Not that I'm a Nietzschean, but I don't find that speculation credible.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[variant]

Is this an obvious tautology, a blatant error, or just more cheese in the sandwich?

It's an observation from human history.

 

[philosophik]

IIRC Neitzsche said the living being was invested with a "will to power" where it strove to control and dominate it's environment for it's own ends. Is this an obvious tautology, a blatant error, or just more cheese in the sandwich?

I think that statement is true for some, and false for others. That is to say, some beings have a will to power, while others can live harmoniously with the environment, taking only what they need to survive,

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Tell me, what are you typing your post on? What is that if not a result of such a will?

But is it tautologically true, like psychological hedonism, or even evolutionary theory, can be regarded as being? i.e. even suicide can be regarded as an expression of a "will to control".

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I think that statement is true for some, and false for others.

SO its not a tautology then.

That is to say, some beings have a will to power, while others can live harmoniously with the environment, taking only what they need to survive,

SO will to power is a bad thing, like unsustainable living?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

It's an observation from human history.

Is it a universal truth. If so, what could falsify it, or is it true of every human by definition?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

An organism which didn't find a way to exploit their environment for their own survival in some way or another is going to be on the wrong end of natural selection as some point.

So its possible for a living being not to have a will to power, but if thats the case it won't be alive for long?

 

[philosophik]

SO its not a tautology then.

No, its not.

SO will to power is a bad thing, like unsustainable living?

Depends on the perspective. The dominated and controlled may think it is, whereas the dominant and the controller may think its not. It's only truly a bad thing if ultimately everyone loses, including the dominant, as result of the dominant beings will to power.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Depends on the perspective. The dominated and controlled may think it is, whereas the dominant and the controller may think its not. It's only truly a bad thing if ultimately everyone loses, including the dominant, as result of the dominant beings will to power.

You mean like a mad drive for more more more that gets us all into trouble?

 

[KCfromNC]

So its possible for a living being not to have a will to power, but if thats the case it won't be alive for long?

After 3.5 billion years of evolution, you'd expect there to be at least some survival instinct in all creatures. Or if you look at it in genetics terms, the genes should exhibit some survival instinct even if it means the death of the organism carrying them. There's always the possibility of a mutation which eliminates this, but you'd imagine that mutation not surviving for long.

But I'm still not sure what a will to power means. How can we measure how much will to power a specific living being has? Do humans have more than algae? Can you sort the members of your family by how much they have this? Or are there degrees at all - is it a binary condition instead?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

But I'm still not sure what a will to power means. How can we measure how much will to power a specific living being has? Do humans have more than algae? Can you sort the members of your family by how much they have this? Or are there degrees at all - is it a binary condition instead?

I am not sure, *therefore* it might be the concept that falls apart under pressure.

 

[variant]

Is it a universal truth.

It is a general observation from historical data.

If so, what could falsify it

It could be falcefied by people displaying opposite behavior.

or is it true of every human by definition?

No, it is true of humanity as a whole, peoples personal need for control is variable.

 

[quatona]

So its possible for a living being not to have a will to power, but if thats the case it won't be alive for long?

Like always, the result is dictated by your definitions.
Either you define "will to survive" and "will to power" as synonyms (in which case the answer to your question will be "yes", or you work from definitions that allow a distinction between "will to survive" and "will to power" (e.g. in that "will to power" signifies all those desires/behaviours for control that go beyond the mere "will to survive". In which case the answer would be "no".

 

[philosophik]

You mean like a mad drive for more more more that gets us all into trouble?

Yes, something like that.

 

[Eudaimonist]

But is it tautologically true

No, it's biologically true. It's like observing that human beings are tool-using creatures, or language-using creatures, or story-telling creatures. We survive by manipulating the environment into the shape of our values. This is our mode of survival.

I don't know where you live, but look outside your window. If you don't live in a log cabin in the middle of a forest, you probably see houses, cars, one or more streets, and such. You wouldn't have seen exactly this sight at all times in history, of course, but this is the basic manner of our survival, and it's awfully difficult to see how this would arise without a natural will (some natural drives or motivations) to do such things.

But I am playing Devil's Advocate a bit here. I think we can certainly quibble about what sort of drives actually lead to this. The closer we get to a psychological theory, the more uncertainty there might be that we are right. But it does seem that Nietszche wasn't too far off.


eudaimonia,

Mark