By square one, do you mean Nietzsche’s critique of Schopenhauer’s metaphysical notion of will and his rejection of the pessimism than it implies?
Yea, I think Nietzsche was trying to a take a step forward from Schopenhauer as opposed to outright rejection of his insights.
You are basically referring to the fact that in another discussion people seemed to understand you, and now you are redirecting that expectation to me. But the point of philosophical discussion is precisely to clarify formulations.
In your post, the reference to the will to power looks like a decoration: a reference to a classic thinker for weight, but it does not really participate in the reasoning itself.
If we look further at the structure of your premises, we see references to the UN and to “saving lives.” So it looks less like an abstract Nietzschean question and more like a hint at a modern political conflict. Are you suggesting, for example, that Putin should strike Ukraine in order to “save Ukrainian lives,” or that Trump should strike Iran in order to “save Iranian lives”?
In both cases, nuclear strikes do not automatically lead to “saving lives.” They are more likely to create the risk of even greater escalation and possibly world war. Nietzsche has nothing to do with this.
That’s a bit more complicated than it seems. You’re right that he saw herd values like the meek shall inherit the world as the weakness or sickness of will to power turned against itself. But a strong and healthy will to power is not the preserving of the will of one’s ‘self’ against the needs of others. Rather, it is about assenting to the sacrifice of the fiction of the self in favor of becoming.
Nietzsche’s critique of pity is not that it privileges the other over the self. It is that it freezes both self and other into reactive identities. A healthy will to power affirms the dissolution of such fixed identities in favor of continual becoming.
This looks more like a modern post-structuralist rereading of Nietzsche, especially in the spirit of Deleuze.
Nietzsche’s life-force was quite definite: it was not about self-preservation in a narrow egoistic sense, but neither did it imply self-sacrifice for the sake of some alien abstract morality.
This is not at all what I’m saying. By “sacrifice of the self” I did not mean self-sacrifice for the sake of others or for some abstract moral ideal. Nietzsche rejects that. What I had in mind was closer to Nietzsche’s notion of self-overcoming. The “self” that is sacrificed is the fixed identity that seeks to preserve itself unchanged.
The will to power is not a will to maintain what one already is, but a willingness to overcome what one is in favor of what one might become. So I wasn’t opposing egoism to altruism and choosing the latter. I was questioning the framework itself. Both egoistic self-preservation and altruistic self-sacrifice can become reactive when they freeze the distinction between self and other into something fixed.
My point was that Nietzsche’s emphasis falls on becoming rather than on the preservation of either term. Nietzsche writes:
To wish to preserve oneself is a sign of distress, of a limitation of the truly basic life-instinct, which aims at the expansion of power and in so doing often enough risks and sacrifices self-preservation.
Here Nietzsche is speaking about weakness, about cowardly self-preservation, which contradicts the more warlike spirit of his philosophy. This is logical, because will also implies the overcoming of the fear of death.
But the context of the original post was different. The question there was whether one should sacrifice the will to power for the sake of saving lives and abstract morality. That does not seem to be in the spirit of Nietzsche.
I’d appreciate it you’d stop relentlessly mischaracterizing the OP. Just ask what I meant and stop inserting utter nonsense.
I apologize, my mistake. A little earlier I pointed out that your mention of Nietzsche was simply an inappropriate decoration. Nietzsche has nothing to do with your question at all.
What do you prefer to call the drive to live?
I do not see any connection between the drive to live and starting a nuclear war. Such questions are decided in a completely different way.
I do not see how philosophy can be attached to this. These are practical political questions, and they are not decided on the basis of morality or life-force.
Where are you from? Knowing that would help me make the OP clear to you.
If you are arguing within the framework of logic, it does not matter who I am or where I am from.
If what you need is not analysis but moral support, then I am simply not interested in such dialogues, regardless of the camp.
I think you need to take your preoccupation with nuclear war to the Current Affairs chat room. Click on the speech bubble at the top right. Then join that chat group.
We don’t generally debate military policy on the main page. Thanks.
Thank you, I know about that chat. It did not interest me, because the dialogue there does not proceed through philosophical theories, but rather through moral support for one position or another.
I do not want to mix politics into a philosophy forum, because I prefer neutral communication, without positioning myself as a member of any camp.
That was cute, but all together a misplacing of Nietzsche’s consideration for “immortality.” That is that morality presupposes a perfect type, which often denies many their own fundamental instincts, and this causes a divide in the weaker person who draws their values from external sources… Nietzsche is an immoralist simply because he’s not an idealist, and doesn’t presuppose a single type as the perfect type…
Let us at last consider how exceedingly simple it is on our part to say: “Man should be thus and thus!” Reality shows us a marvellous wealth of types, and a luxuriant variety of forms and changes: and yet the first wretch of a moral loafer that comes along cries “No! Man should be different!” He even knows what man should be like, does this sanctimonious prig: he draws his own face on the wall and declares: “ecce homo!” But even when the moralist addresses himself only to the individual and says “thus and thus shouldst thou be!” he still makes an ass of himself.
We can see Nietzsche’s a multiplicity himself, and consequently this makes him his own complement…
For, apart from the fact that I am a decadent, I am also the reverse of such a creature. Among other things my proof of this is, that I always instinctively select the proper remedy when my spiritual or bodily health is low; whereas the decadent, as such, invariably chooses those remedies which are bad for him…This double thread of experiences, this means of access to two worlds that seem so far asunder, finds in every detail its counterpart in my own nature—I am my own complement: I have a “second” sight, as well as a first. And perhaps I also have a third sight. By the very nature of my origin I was allowed an outlook beyond all merely local, merely national and limited horizons; it required no effort on my part to be a “good European.”
Nietzsche’s not limited to idealistic horizons… which morality is.
That you need morality to tell you how to act… well… that’s merely your own admission. (Rhetorical you).
But whatever is injurious to me is injurious period, morality be damned.
1 Like
Right. The goals of morality are actually beyond this world, so to speak. The perfect person. The perfect country. The perfect history. None of that exists in this muddy world. Reaching for that is to reach for oblivion.
The highest smoke of evaporating reality so to say.
I like that. Where is that from?
Reason in Philosophy from Twilight when he talks about how they kill something and stuff it and make concept mummies out of things…
1 Like