Manifestations of the Will to Power: From Ressentiment and Bad Conscience to Zarathustra and Deleuze
A reading of the will to power as the governing force of life; from bad conscience and ressentiment, as decribed in 'The Genealogy of Morality', to a Deleuzean reading of the will to power, 'Zarathustra' and a philosophy of the future.
By Marc Muehlenbach
The will to power cannot be known. It must be understood by its multiplicity of manifestations. For Nietzsche, the will to power is that which governs all the world?s behaviour and all the world?s history. Nietzsche has inherited the following idea, most notably from the pre-Socratic thinker Heraclitus, that being, when perceived as merely being, is a reactive and stagnant outlook upon life. Being must consequently be rethought as becoming-a perception that acknowledges the altering nature of life and is able to stress the importance of constantly rethinking and revaluing a relationship between thought and life. Given that Nietzsche asserts that the will to power governs all forms of life, it will be necessary to examine its manifestation in both an affirmative, creative fashion, as a philosophy of the future, that is, for Nietzsche, the philosophy of Zarathustra and the Overman, as well as in a reactive fashion, that is as ressentiment. Given the implication within a Nietzschean philosophy of the future that it can be picked up and related to other philosophies, it will be interesting to at least briefly mention how more recent thought has perceived Nietzsche?s doctrine of will to power to gain a deeper understanding of it in relation to the contemporary world. This has been most notably carried out by Gilles Deleuze who will be referred to later.
Ressentiment, for Nietzsche, is rooted in impotence, in vengefulness and regret. It is not rooted in an inability to act per se, it is rooted in an inability to act first. It comes to represent a symbolic feeling of power unavailable in reality. A familiar example would be Freud?s ?fort-da? allegory, where a young child assumes power, auto-authorises itself in other words, when left alone by its mother by throwing away a toy on a string, saying in effect, ?I don?t need you, see; I don?t care if you go away-I?ll throw you away myself?[1]. The threat of having been deemed nonbeing is compensated for by an activity of vengeance. A recompense of powerlessness is taking place through cruelty. This lies at the root of, above all, slave morality.
Slave morality, as depicted in the first essay of Nietzsche?s {On the Genealogy of Morality} can be seen as a revenge to life itself. ?Morality has protected life against despair and the leap into nihilism, among men and classes who were violated and oppressed by men: for it is the experience of being powerless against men, not against nature, that gives rise to the most desperate embitterment against existence. Morality treated the violent despots, the doers of violence, the ?masters? in general, as the enemies against whom the common man must be protected?Morality consequently taught men to hate and despise most profoundly what is the basic character trait of those who rule: their will to power?[2]. Morality, according to Nietzsche, stands in denial of one?s own nature if it used for the defense of the weak. Slave morality, in particular, is an example of defending the weak since it preaches egalitarianism which inherently cannot support the emergence of strong individuals. Furthermore, slave morality can only define itself in form of a negation, through enmity towards what operates outside of it. It is, thus, reactive, since it must be second to act. It does notably, however, act in that it prescribes moral codes and gives birth to values-?saying no is its creative deed?[3]. It denies a view back onto itself and therefore cannot further or revaluate itself. Furthermore, since slave morality is born out of a negation, it is necessarily pessimistic. It is an example of ressentiment {par excellence}.
The no of ressentiment is, in other words, a no to life itself. It is in denial of an affirmation of becoming since is has been born out of a negation and is, therefore, in no way creative. The will to power in this example is manifested in the priest, who, through preaching self-denial has given degenerate life a reason for its existence. The self-denying will, that is the ascetic ideal, administered by the ascetic priest, is a destructive one, primarily because it seeks to master life itself: ?here an attempt is made to employ force to block up the wells of force; here physiological well-being itself is viewed askance, and especially the outward expression of this well-being, beauty and joy; while pleasure is felt and sought in ill-constitutedness, decay, pain, mischance, ugliness, voluntary deprivation, self-mortification, self-flagellation, self-sacrifice. All this is highly paradoxical: we stand before a discord that wants to be discordant, that enjoys itself in this suffering and even grows more self-confident and triumphant the more its own presupposition, its physiological capacity decreases?[4]. The ascetic ideal clearly seeks a distance to life. The inherent contradiction within the structure of this ideal is personified in the ascetic priest. It is just simply impossible to have a figure advocating self-denial out of self-denial. Nietzsche rightly remarks at this stage that where the priest can ?he compels acceptance of his evaluation of existence?[5]. In terms of the will to power, then, what this means is that the will to power cannot be denied or evaded. The will to power is still that which is governing the priest?s advocation of self-denial and unegoism; it is simply a degenerate or life-negating advocation, which makes it one of ressentiment ?without equal?, as Nietzsche states.
With the emergence of Christianity, a new and highly important concept of ressentiment is constructed; guilt. The origin of guilt is to be found in the necessary ?bad conscience? that arises, according to Nietzsche, once the wandering life has been confined to the walls of society. This is because ?all instincts which are not discharged outwardly turn inwards?[6]. Old instincts that have no place in a peaceful society still remain, but cannot be discharged. The result is what Nietzsche calls the ?internalization of man?, which is simultaneously the birth of man?s soul. The discharging of the ?old instincts? is obstructed in order for state organizations to protect themselves against what Nietzsche calls ?the old instincts of freedom?[7]. This is predominantly done by punishment and the establishment of institutions such as madhouses and prisons. In a reading close to the doctrine of the will to power, it should be noted that these measures of obstruction are manifestations of the state?s own will to power which manages only all the more to unremittingly proliferate itself by establishing institutions and teachings fitting precisely the purposes of arresting or itself incorporating the will to power of its subjects. Nietzsche remarks: ?Animosity, cruelty, the pleasure of pursuing, raiding, changing and destroying-all this was pitted against the person who had such instincts: that is the origin of bad conscience?[8]. Of course, the ultimate victory for any governing structure of morality is to not only give it a name-?guilt?-but to teach a people that one is born into that state (the concept of ?original sin?) and must adhere to a given structure of moral codes to be redeemed of it.
By exposing and psychologising morality, and in particular Christianity, as Nietzsche does, he is almost left without a choice but to proclaim the death of God and, in the same breath, say that God has always already been dead. What follows this recognition, which, undoubtedly, mankind cannot be ready to accept yet? What follows is nihilism. Nihilism is Un-Wert, valeur de n?ant or will to nothingness. ?That the highest values are devalued?[9], Nietzsche writes. Nihilism marks the disillusionment when all absolute values have been dismantled. Nihilism, on the one hand, is a danger and poses a threat-that of a void. It is, in Maurice Blanchot?s words, ?a moment in history?it is like a shedding off of history, a moulting period, when history changes its direction and is indicated by a negative trait: that values no longer have value by themselves?[10]. Nietzsche offers an approach to nihilism that demands the will to power be of an affirmative and creative nature, because for Nietzsche nihilism marks the beginning of a period of exploration. He writes ?the sea, our sea, again lies open before us?There is yet another world to be discovered-and more than one! Embark philosophers?[11]. Keith Ansell-Pearson states that, according to Nietzsche the greatest thing we can experience is the ?hour of contempt in which our happiness, justice, reason and virtue grow loathsome to us?Nietzsche refers to man as a rope tied between animal and Overman, he is referring our attention to the historical possibilities of man?s evolution, to the dialectic of nihilism, to man?s present ambiguous condition of danger and promise?[12].
What remains to be said about this adventurous life affirming philosophy, in contrast to the vastness of the history of ressentiment, when considering that what is needed at the moment in history that nihilism lurks is a revaluation of all values? A life-affirming philosophy can be understood as a philosophy acknowledging the need to act, to create, even to destroy and to reconstruct, and thus to transvalue. Importance is laid on action, since it is action that incorporates (verkoerpert ) the complex or network of forces-physiological, psychological, social, economic and historical alike-that have been at play-restricted or not-in the process of human becoming as such. This process of human becoming can be labeled hominisation. This unknowable complex of forces is stressed because it incorporates forces that lie behind morality, when it is precisely morality that is offering the codes by which to judge and restrict action. Emphasis is also laid upon the strength of each individual, as values are no longer resting on the comfort of absolute or eternal foundations. A life-affirming philosophy will necessarily be a philosophy of the future, since the creative will must will the future. Only a vengeful, regretful will, one of ressentiment, is one that wills the past. The adventure, indeed, about a philosophy of the future, is that it must will the indeterminate. This is the basis of Nietzsche?s idea of fate-{amor fati}-creatively willing, or indeed, loving one?s fate as a fate that has not yet been determined.
Within Nietzsche?s work, the figure that is first to begin tackling this quandary is Zarathustra. Zarathustra will only promote a philosophy that can be related to or taken up by other philosophies, one the interpreter must leave at one point, which is, obviously, one of the qualities of a philosophy of the future. Zarathustra does not seek disciples or others that rely on him since his teaching proclaims man to be something that must be overcome. Man is a bridge that must be crossed. A bridge that leads from the life of the weighed-down servitude of the Camel with it?s ?I should? to the untamed freedom-sniffing of the lion with his ?I will? and finally to the born again child which marks a newfound innocence and a new beginning of new values. This will be the values of the Overman (or Uebermensch). Zarathustra emphasizes this self-overcoming continuously: ?I have found my ways, where are yours??. He also remarks ?the way does not exist?good for all, evil for all do not exist?[13]. Zarathustra recognizes that the creators of new values ?are always the first ones to be despised and labeled as destroyers of good and evil when in reality they are the harvesters and rejoicers of new seeds?[14]. This poses the difficulty of the figure of Zarathustra, which Nietzsche was all too aware of when giving his work the subheading ?A Book for All and None?. If Zarathustra were to speak a language that was, in Nietzsche?s terms, human, all too human, he would be speaking a language that has constrained the human. Speaking a language approaching that of the Overman means risking not being understood. Perhaps Zarathustra does not want to be understood by all, and more likely, Zarathustra knows that man is not ready for him yet either way.
How, then, does one become what one is? {Lento}, Nietzsche would respond. In order to become what one is, one must first understand how one arrived at where one is. A history of ressentiment cannot be understood in terms of ressentiment alone and would not allow for a very profound understanding of what will be, or already is, governing the revaluation of values. This is precisely where a deeper understanding of the will to power will be needed.
French philosopher Gilles Deleuze has elaborated on many Nietzschean themes to provide us with an understanding of their possible contemporary appropriation. Deleuze reminds us that Nietzsche claims that ?to will means to create new values?[15]. He continues by stating that will to power is not equatable with a will for power: ?power is that which wills the will to will?power will never be represented, nor interpreted or valued-for it is that which interprets, which values, which wills?[16]. The will to power is just as much the power to will as it is the will to power, in other words. For Deleuze, ?force is what can exercise power; will to power is what wills it be exercised?[17]. That is to say, the ?dynamism? of force depends entirely on the will to power. Deleuze explains this through the will to power?s ?double aspect?: ?it is the determining factor of the relation between forces from the standpoint of their genesis or reproduction, but it is determined by the relating forces from the standpoint of its own manifestation. This is why the will to power is always and at the same time determined and determining, qualified as well as qualifying?[18]. Following Spinoza, this argument suggests that a body will have all the more force if it can be affected by other forces in all the more ways. Insofar as these other forces affecting the initial one have been propagated by the initial force, one can finally begin to understand the will to power as the ultimate illustration of self-aggrandizement: as a maximizing of forces both internal and external to any organism for self-proliferation to take place. The will to power is manifested as a capacity, thus. What enables this, according to Deleuze, is its essentially plastic quality. That is to say, it is no ?wider than its field of application; it metamorphoses itself within this field and determines itself, in each case, along with what it determines. The will to power, in fact, is always inseparable from any such set of determined forces, from their quantities, qualities, and directions. It is never superior to the determinations it brings about in a relation between forces; it is always plastic and metamorphic?[19]. This is essentially the reason it cannot be known or represented or valued, but will always remain that which represents or interprets.
In light of social structures, past and present, the will to power, as plastic and metamorphic, can be used to understand the proliferation of governing institutions, be they ones of decadence and ressentiment or ones of nobility. The capacity to include and appropriate other?s forces, other?s wills, within one?s own aggrandizement is precisely what is taking place when state?s employ the use of institutions. And so, when Nietzsche is discussing ressentiment in terms of Christian moral codes and bad conscience in terms of obstructions by state organizations, he is already discussing their will to power. Their will to power is the determining factor in the genesis and reproduction of these organizations or institutions and, in turn, being determined by these institutions is what permits Nietzsche to call these social structures ones of ressentiment. What is at stake, and this is the reason why institutions such as the church, the law, the state and most notably today, the market are able to operate and grow to the extent they have in the past or still do today, is that these institutions are able to affirm themselves whether or not they are being adhered to. The state, for example, can affirm itself through punishment (i.e. prisons in its institutional manifestation) when a subject breaks the law. The law?s ability to amorphously adapt to an individual act of criminality asserts Deleuze?s notion of plasticity. The law is no wider than its field of application, in this sense-it has the ability to adapt to any particular relation of forces that it itself will determine as an act of criminality.
The best example for a more contemporary understanding of the will to power, however, would be the market. Being able to turn use value into exchange value can be seen as plasticity par excellence. Anyone?s input, even an input critical of the market, can be assumed or appropriated and forwarded or furthered by the market, in terms of the market. As with the state, the market is the determining factor that allows for a space for the input of forces, which in the case of modern capitalism could literally take the shape of almost anything, in order for exchange to take place, and is at the same time determined by these forces. In other words, whether or not a market is doing well or not is not determined by the market as such, but by the forces the market has qualified. The market is pure capacity in this sense since it potentially affirms itself by anything it qualifies. The market is pure will to power, in other words, which can continue to manifest itself unceasingly since it will not ever have to rely on moral codes that will necessarily have to be overcome at one moment in time. This, on the other hand, is precisely why it cannot be the determining factor of cultural values in the first place. And so, even if it makes little sense to speak of the present as a period of nihilism, what is left, so far, of a revaluation of all values is the belief in a structure that has no place in determining values (other than use and exchange value, perhaps). Nietzsche claimed his own philosophy to be ready to be appreciated about three-hundred years after his death. After a mere hundred, Zarathustra?s voice seems no more than an echo of which one cannot tell whether it is growing fainter or stronger.
[u]Endnotes[/u]
[!1] Staten, Henry, Nietzsche?s Voice, Cornell Univ. Press, Ithaca and London, 1990.
[!2] Nietzsche, Friedrich, On the Genealogy of Morality, Translated by Caroll Diethe, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1994.
[!3] Nietzsche, Friedrich, quoted by Keith Ansell-Pearson in Nietzsche Contra Rousseau, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1991.
[!4] Nietzsche, Friedrich, On the Genealogy of Morality, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1994.
[!5] Nietzsche, Friedrich, quoted by Keith Ansell-Pearson in Nietzsche Contra Rousseau, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1991.
[!6] Nietzsche, Friedrich, On the Genealogy of Morality, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1994.
[!7] Ibid. p. 62.
[!8] Ibid. p. 61.
[!9] Nietzsche, Friedrich, quoted by Keith Ansell-Pearson in Nietzsche Contra Rousseau, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1991.
[!10] Blanchot, Maurice, ?The Limits of Experience: Nihilism?, translated by John Leavy, in The New Nietzsche, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., London, 1985.
[!11] Nietzsche, Friedrich, quoted by Maurice Blanchot in ?The Limits of Experience: Nihilism?, translated by John Leavy, in The New Nietzsche, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., London, 1985.
[!12] Ansell-Pearson, Keith, Nietzsche Contra Rousseau, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1991.
[!13] Nietzsche, Friedrich, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Translated by Walter Kaufmann, Penguin Books, New York, 1954.
[!14] Nietzsche, Friedrich quoted my Keith Ansell-Pearson in Nietzsche Contra Rousseau, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1991.
[!15] Deleuze, Gilles, ?Active and Reactive?, Translated by Richard Cohen in The New Nietzsche, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, London, 1985.
[!16] Deleuze, Gilles, Nietzsche und die Philosophie, Translated into German by Bernd Schwibs, Eva Taschenbuch Band, Frankfurt, 1985. Quotation translated into English by Marc Muehlenbach.
[!17] Deleuze, Gilles, ?Active and Reactive?, Translated by Richard Cohen in The New Nietzsche, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, London, 1985.
[!18] Ibid. p. 94.
[!19] Ibid. p. 88.
[u]Bibliography[/u]
On the Genealogy of Morality, Friedrich Nietzsche, Translated by Carol Diethe, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1994.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche, Translated by Walter Kaufmann, Penguin Books, New York, 1954.
The New Nietzsche, Edited by David B. Allison, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., London, 1985.
Nietzsche und die Philosophie, Gilles Deleuze, Translated by Bernd Schwibs, Eva Taschenbuch Band, Frankfurt, 1985.
Nietzsce Contra Rousseau, Keith Ansell-Pearson, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1991.
Nietzsche?s Voice, Henry Staten, Cornell Univ. Press, Ithaca and London, 1990.
