“I don’t have a right to anything that someone else has a right to take away from me.” – Thomas Jefferson
Notice how messy this thread became, very quickly.
Part of the reason is that it is very far from obvious what the Will to Power is.
We might do well to admit that it is many things to different people.
And so, not all that helpful.
For a start, is it a thing, or is it a slogan? Does it have some determinate content, that various folk understand in different ways? Or is it a rhetorical device, a flourish of the hand intended only for emphasis?
We might note that it is not a term used in psychology or politics.
What does what he said have to do with our discussion? Do you feel good when a criminal is tortured or killed miserably? Yes, or no?
No. What follows from that?
I don’t feel good either for a strong reason: The rights of the criminal are violated. As I mentioned, a wrong act is committed when the right of an individual is prohibited, regardless of whether the individual is a criminal or not.
I think you need to look closer at what Jefferson said about rights.
If I have a right to take your life, then you do not have a right to life.
I am so sorry for him. But he is miserably wrong. Life is the main right of each individual. Violating this right is wrong. We are, however, granted to violate this right sometimes because our action is somehow justified. Having justification, however, does not make a wrong act/crime right!
What does it even mean to call a justified action a crime? It’s meaningless.
If it’s justified, it’s not a crime.
A justified crime is only a justified wrong act. Killing or torturing a criminal is wrong since it violates his rights, but sometimes it is only justified. We have to avoid wrong acts, those acts that violate the rights of individuals, to the best we could. Why? Because we know that they are wrong! But sometimes we cannot help it and have to do something that is wrong, violating their right.
That doesn’t really make any sense though.
Let me give you an example then. Suppose that you arrested a terrorist who put a nuclear bomb in the middle of New York. Suppose that you are the police in charge of getting the information about the location of the bomb. You have two options to get information from him: either by asking him questions or by torturing him. Both acts are justified, but you don’t start with torturing him, I suppose, because you know that something is wrong with torturing. It is his right that we should respect the best we can, since otherwise we would violate his right to life. But what if he does not collaborate? Then you are allowed to torture him; your act is justified, but still wrong.
You’re basically morally ambiguous. You have rules, but you break them as needed. That’s pretty much the same as having no rules.
Fair. Even if it refers just to Nietzsche, the term seems fecund with competing interpretive frames.
My pet AI listed nine, three of which were compatible with Foot’s virtue ethic.
A doctrine that allows anything is not useful.
This thread wasn’t intended to be Nietzsche kindergarten. If you aren’t familiar with Nietzsche or Freud, go your merry way.
You claim there is a canonical way to understand Will to Power?
Do tell.
Your bite presumably contributed to the flourishing of the ant colony… a very moral act for a soldier ant.
If you’re talking specifically about Nietzsche’s concept of Will to Power, there are a recognized family of interpretations from Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault , Klossowski and Heidegger, which, while differing from each other in significant ways, agree that Will to Power places into question fundamental assumptions concerning the basis of morality by decoupling becoming from truth.
But obviously, one cannot draw guidance from these accounts if one is not familiar with them.
It doesn’t allow anything. You’ll find just as many interpretations of Kant, Hegel, Heidegger and Kierkegaard. That doesn’t mean that the author didn’t intend something very specific, and the existence of multiple camps of readers shouldn’t stand in the way of choosing a reading and defending it. The ‘correct’ reading is less important than what a reading allows us to do with the world.
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This says that you have a preferred interpretation. Fine.
On your interpretation is an ant bite an expression of the ant’s will to power?