The Philosophers

Jakob · February 8, 2018, 6:05pm

Dude, yes.

Thats not my claim. I am in Nietzsches lineage, not the other way around. I am doing what he needed done, what he instructed me to do.
Where I trump Nietzsche is… here and here. Wherever I happen to, wherever progress was possible. But VO doesn’t trump WtP any more than rocket trumps its own fuel. Though the fuel can’t get to the moon without the rocket, a more fundamental issue is with the rocket not doing shit without the fuel.

Balancing on the egde of where language can go. VO is a means to transcend the idiocies that modern grammar implies. The idiocies of subject, object and action as segregate entities, which by some mysterious God-force are united. VO replaces the god force and shows these three agents of modern thought to be faces of the same usurper.

Because survival wouldn’t be happening otherwise. Only that which finds things (and by implication itself) to matter, self-values, exists.

It is in my best interest to keep the source clear. VO can’t be seen as constraining the meaning of WtP to flow into a specific direction. Its just a gift for those that already know the world is will to power and nothing besides. A way of using that given to greater power.

iambiguous · February 8, 2018, 6:10pm

Pedro I Rengel:

Damn, looks like I’m late. Good to see Zoot Allures is out of jail.

I guess I’ll just post my own problems with Value Ontology.

Firstly, I’ll say that in pure terms of word association, it’s a pretty beautiful thing. Where does the world start? At value. Sitting in the grass, at night, a little mist, and letting the world begin there, purely by what one can immdediately value, no self, no “grass…” like turning Buhdda on his head, replacing Nirvana with a flurry of judgement.

It works. VO works, and happens to do what it says it does.

My issue begins with where Jakob places it in the genealogy of philosophy: he presents it as an advancement, perfection even, and superior replacement of will to power. A completion of what Nietzsche saw, and above it in hierarchical terms.

Now these are highly elevated concepts in philosophy, and it is hard to approach them individually, let alone in relation to eachother. But let’s start here: the problem is hierarchical.

VO I have explained as best I can. An approach to what is in front of us, and ourselves as we stand in front of ourselves. And anything as it stands in front of anything and in front of itself.

But why do I care about the possibility of seeing everything as emergent value, or as value, or as valuing, when before I did I saw them some other way?

Why do I care about anything? Why does anything even matter?

Will to power. This is the irreducible beginning of anything, because it never seems to exist until it begins to matter.

Will to power is the way to VO, yes, but also an unscrutable infinity of other things.

From my frame of mind, a classic example of philosophy embedded in [or reduced down to] “highly elevated concepts”. But, for all practical purposes, how relevant is this argument pertaining to our day to day interactions with others?

You tell me.

And the world starts for mere mortals not in “value” so much as in the need to subsist from day to day. And folks like Adam Smith and Karl Marx, it would seem, had a hell of lot more to say about the “human condition” than folks like Nietzsche. Nietzsche “kills God” and then reconfigures the “uberman” into the closest it is said that mere mortals can [philosophically or otherwise] come to being one.

As though human values necessarily revolve more around “I” than “we”.

Jakob · February 8, 2018, 6:15pm

Iamb, the part I asked Sauwelios to translate (Part VI) contains a reference to Dasein as that before which the suicidal one fails.
In a phrase: The fruit of Dasein is the higher goal.

Like in mathematics you can integrate Nietzsches logics with each other.
A second statement he makes is: Power sets goals.

Dasein is that which births the power to set higher goals.
Athens and Rome, but also the USA is a great Dasein.

Nietzsche is an anti-individualist. He does not believe that meaning can exist without a structure of power that comprises many humans and employs each of them to serve and enjoy their greater whole. The flip side is that such forged wholes of power-relations are the only wholes he believes in. There is no “the” world. Only this world. And thus, no one is equal, equality cant be fought for, one can only fight for rank and privilege. Because everyone likes to be a merciful king, but mercy doesn’t make kings, it requires them.

iambiguous · February 8, 2018, 6:19pm

Is this true?

In other words, is it true as an “intellectual construct” or can Jacob actually note instances from his own interactions with others in which he came to embody the conclusions proposed?

Or does “serious philosophy” [on this thread] revolve more around making that crucial distinction between words and worlds?

Jakob · February 8, 2018, 6:24pm

Jakob believes that you are wasting your time.
The whole point here is that philosophy is a reward for the excellent, not an instruction manual for those prone to failing at life to fall back on. Thats what slave-religions are for.

iambiguous · February 8, 2018, 6:39pm

Let’s just say that when Dasein reconfigures into dasein, there are other ways in which to construe/embody it out in the world. For example, historically, culturally and experientially.

Power embedded in political economy? In the narratives of folks like Freud? And in what particular context construed from what particular point of view? Or, philosophically, are we able to derive the optimal or the only rational consideration of it?

Are we to actually take this seriously? As though we can follow, say, the arguments of the Trump administrations and Nancy Pelosi regarding DACA and intertwine your argument here into it.

Let’s just say that, among the intellectuals, the jury is still out: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosoph … ividualism

While he had a dislike of the state in general, which he called a “cold monster” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche also spoke negatively of anarchism, communism, socialism and liberalism, and made it clear that only certain individuals could attempt to break away from the herd mentality.

Nietzsche never spoke much of the ubermasses.

So, does this revolve more around “I” or “we”? And the closest most objectivists come to “we” is when they distinguish between “one of us” and “one of them”. But, invariably [as with Satyr at KT], there is almost always one or another “alpha male” to lead the pack.

iambiguous · February 8, 2018, 6:50pm

Jakob:

iambiguous:

Jakob:

Balancing on the egde of where language can go. VO is a means to transcend the idiocies that modern grammar implies. The idiocies of subject, object and action as segregate entities, which by some mysterious God-force are united. VO replaces the god force and shows these three agents of modern thought to be faces of the same usurper.

Is this true?

In other words, is it true as an “intellectual construct” or can Jacob actually note instances from his own interactions with others in which he came to embody the conclusions proposed?

Or does “serious philosophy” [on this thread] revolve more around making that crucial distinction between words and worlds?

Jakob believes that you are wasting your time.
The whole point here is that philosophy is a reward for the excellent, not an instruction manual for those prone to failing at life to fall back on. Thats what slave-religions are for.

Well, it’s my time to waste. And, besides, in the act of waiting for godot, what does that even mean?

And my whole point is merely to suggest that your whole point is but one more rendition of this:

In the end it is dishonesty that breeds the sterile intellectualism of contemporary speculation. A man who is not certain of his mental integrity shuns the vital problems of human existence; at any moment the great laboratory of life may explode his little lie and leave him naked and shivering in the face of truth. So he builds himself an ivory tower of esoteric tomes and professionally philosophical periodicals; he is comfortable only in their company…he wanders farther and farther away from his time and place, and from the problems that absorb his people and his century. The vast concerns that properly belong to philosophy do not concern him…He retreats into a little corner, and insulates himself from the world under layer and layer of technical terminology. He ceases to be a philosopher, and becomes an epistemologist. Will Durant.

Unless of course we’re both wrong. And it sure won’t be the first time. At least not for me.

Jakob · February 8, 2018, 10:06pm

Meaning you wish to value VO in terms of your own powers, your own familiar universe, in which your ego feels comfortable.
A major feature that VO adds to working WtP grammar is its explicative power in the reflexive side of things.

I.e. it allows concepts (including that of the “I”) to compute with themselves.
Now if that’s not practical, I don’t know what is.

And Annie, this aint no bus stop.

Mitra-Sauwelios · February 8, 2018, 11:50pm

Zoot Allures:

“there is always the possiblity that one of them may in fact come up with an argument that does in fact manage to yank me up out of this hole.”- iambiguous

to get out of that hole you have to dismiss any motivist or deontological theory of ethics and just become a consequentialist. now all these have their own problems, but the latter is completely free of any objectivism so long as you don’t try to evaluate a specific consequence according to whether or not it’s good or bad… rather useful or not useful, convenient or not convenient, advantageous or not advantageous.

don’t ask yourself ‘would it be wrong to rob this bank’, since that’s a nonsensical question. instead ask yourself ‘what kind of risk is this and what are the possible consequences.’

so you don’t want to go to jail, but not because going to jail is right or wrong. going to jail is a big pain in the ass, that’s why you don’t want to go. you need not wonder whether or not you are right in not wanting to go; you don’t want to go because the food sucks, the mats are flat and worn out, and you have to ask a deputy like seven times to bring you a request form.

just listen to your ego and it will tell you what you want and don’t want. and the beauty of it is, you don’t have to explain anything to yourself or others. you don’t need to provide any more justification for what you do other than that you do it because you like to do it.

who the fuck knows why we like to do what we do? that discussion would go on forever. consider only the immediacy of your desires and the possible consequences of your actions.

an objectivist is what stirner might call an involuntary egoist; they are motivated by their own selfish desires just like a voluntary egoist, but they aren’t aware of it.

show me any altruistic act and i’ll show you how that act either benefits the person directly or indirectly (e.g., in the case of kin altruism).

“Sacred things exist only for the egoist who does not acknowledge himself, the involuntary egoist … in short, for the egoist who would like not to be an egoist, and abases himself (combats his egoism), but at the same time abases himself only for the sake of “being exalted”, and therefore of gratifying his egoism. Because he would like to cease to be an egoist, he looks about in heaven and earth for higher beings to serve and sacrifice himself to; but, however much he shakes and disciplines himself, in the end he does all for his own sake… [on] this account I call him the involuntary egoist.”- mad-max stirner

an objectivist theory of ethics is an example of this ‘sacred thing’; the objectivist wants to do what he thinks is ‘right’, so he can be exalted for disregarding what he REALLY wants to do (which wouldn’t be right). but, the desire to be exalted is again just another form of egoism. he simply exchanges one advantage (doing the wrong thing, which he would rather do) for another; the praise, respect and admiration he gets for doing what’s right. he makes a compromise, but he does not act selflessly.

Mitra-Sauwelios · February 9, 2018, 1:06am

Thanks for the faith in me. For what it’s worth, I think I’ve been doing pretty good work recently–though much of it is, as of yet, still behind the scenes, so to say.

My approach is very different from yours. And in actual, spoken conversation, Zoot and I have had some pretty intensive philosophical discussions. Yesterday, I among other things introduced the issues surrounding logic’s self-identical “A”. Zoot was then reminded of GS 111, and I was glad to be reminded of it by him. Anyway, so I explained to him that for all we know the axioms of logic are false, but we have to treat them as true. Then I tried to explain that the doctrine of the will to power, no less than VO, does the same thing everyone does who treats reality as logical, except that it goes much further, is much more complete, in projecting subjects everywhere; and that VO beautifully starts right “before the logic”, with the circularity of a valuing which is a valuing of that very valuing. Zoot does seem to understand this last bit (i.e., self-valuing) on a human and even animal level (for example, that encounter of mine with the three-legged cat), but not on a (pre-)logical level (yet).

I don’t think I’ve ever read that before. I will, in the very near future.

Pedro_I_Rengel · February 9, 2018, 2:08am

"But, for all practical purposes, how relevant is this argument pertaining to our day to day interactions with others?

You tell me.

And the world starts for mere mortals not in “value” so much as in the need to subsist from day to day."

Well, you say subsist, in my experience there are a good number of other things that matter to the most subsistentist of mortals. And I’m near certain I’ve lived more precarious situations of subsistence with people that have been living that way for more generations than you.

You were in Nam? More people murder more people brutally in the streets of Caracas than ever did in Vietnam. Not to mention the simple to-dos of poverty sans killing.

I agree it’s not “value.” There must already be something there for it to be valued. It’s not a genesis. Genesis is will to power. I wake up and make some coffee. Prepare to go to work. Wonder about that pretty girl and that guy who wants to kill me because he didn’t feel I appropriately shared the loot from that mango tree he told me about. All of this is already instantly willing to power.

As is one of Sawelios’s considerations on whether Heidegger was a philosopher or a thinker because Lampard noted this depended on whether he wondered about the emptyness aside from being in the genesis of something or other.

Or Nancy Pelosi confering with her strategic network on what to opine on this or that bill.

Will to power is itself the death of God. Because it explains everything from the grandest to the mundanest to the subtlest. It takes the weight of God, of an external measure, off. It shifts the responsibility from Him to us. And the freedom.

What can you figure matters? What can anyone?

Forget useful. What is rewarding? The specific thing you find to be rewarding doesn’t matter. What matters is that you can always determine it. Because will to power doesn’t will power. It wills will to power. The mango guy doesn’t want coffee for taste and alertness, he wants the state of wanting coffee for taste and alertness.

Mitra-Sauwelios · February 9, 2018, 10:04pm

Zoot Allures:

saully and i had a delightful conversation earlier. we were discussing some of the basis for VO and logic, and i felt compelled to reference these following quotes. the line of conversation went something like this: VO’s self-valuing logic as an expression of WTP > WTP as an expression of the survival instinct (in humans)> survival instinct as a substantiation of logic > substantiation of logic through application of law of identity and excluded middle in human reasoning. it was here that i referenced nietzsche… because ‘nobody does it better’, as carly simon says…

“Origin of the logical.-- How did logic come into existence in man’s head? Certainly out of illogic, whose realm originally must have been immense. Innumerable beings who made inferences in a way different from ours perished; for all that, their ways might have been truer. Those, for example, who did not know how to find often enough what is “equal” as regards both nourishment and hostile animals–those, in other words, who subsumed things too slowly and cautiously–were favored with a lesser probability of survival than those who guessed immediately upon encountering similar instances that they must be equal.”- nietzsche

this is a brilliant insight. what he means is that those humans who generalized or stereotyped their experiences, were too cautious, responded too slowly, and were therefore put in greater danger than those for whom the principle of the law of identity was an unconscious instinct; while this tiger is different from the last tiger by whatever degree (so A does not equal A), a consideration of these differences would cost him precious time and put him in danger. his instinct of self-preservation forces him to posit an identical case immediately (A does equal A; particular tigers are instances of general tigers), and he reacts to the tiger as he reacts to any tiger. he gets the fuck outta there and pays no attention to the fact that this tiger might be a little different than the last one he encountered.

now the point here is not that the law of identity isn’t true- A certainly IS A, whatever A is, because it can’t both be A and not A (law of excluded middle)- but that the origins of logic began with identifying individual cases as general cases on a conscious level.

“The dominant tendency, however, to treat as equal what is merely similar–an illogical tendency, for nothing is really equal–is what first created any basis for logic.”- nietzsche

what he means is that logic cannot exist without such error in reasoning existing FIRST… the assumption of identical cases. he is mistaken, here. now look:

“In order that the concept of substance could originate–which is indispensible for logic although in the strictest sense nothing real corresponds to it–it was likewise necessary that for a long time one did not see or perceive the changes in things.”- nietzsche

replace ‘substance’ with ‘property’, but first consider hume’s thoughts: we have no impression or idea of ‘substance’ (something that can be conceived apart from everything else, as spinoza put it):

“what possibility then of answering the question, whether perceptions inhere in a material or immaterial substance, when we do not so much as understand the meaning of the question?”- hume

now then, the concept of the tiger is not a concept of a substance, so nietzsche is mistaken in asserting that the idea of the A, which would be the tiger, assumes a substance ‘tiger’ in order to then assume an identical case. the idea of substance is not at all required for logic. indeed, it’s a nonsensical concept to begin with and does not detract from the law of identity as nietzsche believes it does, BECAUSE it’s nonsensical. nietzsche’s correct, but for the wrong reasons.

a tiger is a set of properties, and while individual tigers may possess different properties, the properties themselves cannot both be what they are and not be what they are (regardless of whether they’re perceived or not). despite failing to conceive of a ‘general’ tiger-type, which is what nietzsche claims was the problem of those pre-logical reasoners, the law of identity still persists in, or for, rather, the properties of the individual tigers.

the fact that an infinite regress would be involved in the properties of the properties, etc., makes no difference.

so the law of identity and excluded middle certainly apply, and while it is a mistake to posit identical cases as experiences of an A-tiger, the properties of the unidentical tigers MUST BE what they are, and can’t also be what they aren’t at the same time.

nietzsche is right, but not because ‘the concept of substance… which is indispensible for logic’ is true. this assertion isn’t true or false, but nonsensical.

“The beings that did not see so precisely had an advantage over those who saw everything “in flux.” At bottom, every high degree of caution in making inferences and every skeptical tendency constitute a great danger for life. No living beings would have survived if the opposite tendency–to affirm rather than suspend judgement, to err and make up things rather than wait, to assent rather than negate, to pass judgement rather than be just-- had not been bred to the point where it became extraordinarily strong.”- nietzsche

excellent point, again. however, NOT that logic did not exist until this tendency had been bred (a naturally selected behavior), but because logic hadn’t yet come into the foreground of reasoning, had not yet been recognized AS logic, hadn’t yet emerged out of unconscious instinct.

the fact that pre-logical man might have had a better fitness level is a remarkable irony. spontaneous man at one point was more successful than the calculating man. what has changed, then? the speed with which the mind now works; modern man’s frontal cortex has evolved, enabling him to process information faster and with logical consistency- he now can make a logical snap-judgment and waste fractions of a second doing so.

the last time i encountered a tiger, i was able to instinctively assume an identical case, critique that assumption, recognize the law of identity and excluded middle still remained in spite of that, AND get away from him… all in the blink of an eye.

…

VO advocates such self-valuing logic in human behavior, and is correct in doing so. really, this idea is nothing revolutionary and goes without saying. what is problematic is the notion that all things express the same self-valuing logic, like urgod’s rock, for example. i won’t get into that again right now.

what i might suggest here is that the self-valuing of the human being is an emergent property that makes of the human a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts; the atomic, chemical and molecular parts of the human do not possess self-valuing, but when combined, self-valuing emerges from the system.

saully seems to go another way with this idea, as he explained yesterday. for him, self-valuing might be an emergent property of even these smaller parts… but this implies that idea of panpsychism or proto-consciousness. he does seem to admit that ‘valuing’ is not just action, but involves a complex of action AND reasoning- this consisting of phenomenological structures requiring the necessary attribute ‘intentionality’ (consciousness is consciousness OF something [brentano, husserl, sartre]). without being conscious, a being isn’t able to differentiate between values and non-values. without being able to do this, any action is arbitrary and can’t be described as either. saully would have to surmise that each of these parts possess such structural capacities in order to ‘value’ anything. i don’t think they do, personally, for many reasons.

Mitra-Sauwelios · February 9, 2018, 11:04pm

We see here that Zoot’s still a metaphysician. He sincerely be-lieves that logic, which evolved so contingently in man’s head, necessarily applies to all reality; whereas there is no good reason to suppose so, except that we humans are incapable of contradicting in the sense of the law of non-contradiction.

I don’t think the line of our delightful conversation went like this, by the way: “VO’s self-valuing logic as an expression of WTP > WTP as an expression of the survival instinct (in humans)> survival instinct as a substantiation of logic > substantiation of logic through application of law of identity and excluded middle in human reasoning.” That is, we definitely went beyond the survival instinct, with Zoot spontaneously granting that Spinoza’s conatus is not just concerned with survival but also with expansion, and me introducing the idea of altruism and the like as a fitness indicator. Zoot was then reminded of the concept of the “selfish gene”, and I pointed out to him that the carrier of such a gene does not have to be selfish (all the time). Also, I pointed out that such genes are only selfish so-called, because conceiving them as “selfish” is an anthropomorphism, in analogy with a selfish person. This then allowed me to make the same suggestion for “self-valuing”.

Also, I think the self-valuing logic is rather at the bottom of WTP than the other way round; that the survival instinct in humans is an expression of WTP, not the other way round (if only in humans, and probably animals in general); and that logic is a substantiation or expression of survival instinct (possibly not (so much) of the gene-carrier, so this also means reproductive instinct).

I think Zoot’s just missing a link in the chain of reasoning here. That missing link is the concept of the subject. Thus Nietzsche writes:

“The concept of substance is a consequence of the concept of the subject: not the reverse!” (WP 485, opening sentence.)

The substance “tiger” is the subject “tiger”; and the subject is the original form of logic’s self-identical “A”: the latter is an abstraction from the former.

This is certainly much more true or plausible than the notion that the law of identity applies to a “general” tiger-type. Now Nietzsche writes:

“The ‘thing-in-itself’ [is] nonsensical. If I remove all the relationships, all the ‘properties’, all the ‘activities’ of a thing, the thing does not remain over; because thingness has only been invented by us owing to the requirements of logic, thus with the aim of defining, communication (to bind together the multiplicity of relationships, properties, activities.” (WP 558 whole. Cf. ff., in George Morgan’s sense.)

No matter how plausible this may be, it’s an abstraction (literally: it ab-tracts properties from things until nothing remains) from our common-sense understanding. Please bear with me while I quote Michael Zuckert at length:

“Although more than a few critics have challenged Strauss’s notion of ‘common sense’ as hopelessly obscure, he quite precisely tells us that ‘common‐sense understanding is understanding in terms of “things possessing qualities”.’ […]
Empiricism is a theory based on recognition of the ‘naiveté’ or inadequacy of common sense or pre‐scientific awareness. Empiricism is the effort to look more carefully at what is actually given in experience than ‘our primary awareness of things as things and people as people’ does. ‘What is perceived or “given” is only sense data [compare Hume’s “impressions”!]; the “thing” emerges by virtue of unconscious or conscious construction. The “things” which to common sense present themselves as “givens” are in truth constructs’. ‘Scientific understanding’ comes into being when the naiveté of the prescientific is fully recognized, and understanding by means of ‘unconscious construction’ is replaced by ‘understanding by means of conscious construction’.
This science, the new political science included, intends to reject the prescientific understanding, but Strauss, following Husserl, maintains that this effort necessarily fails. One cannot, Strauss insists, ‘establish empiricism empirically: it is not known through sense data that the only possible objects of perception are sense data’ rather than ‘things’ or ‘patterns’. One can only establish or attempt to establish empiricism ‘through the same kind of perception through which we perceive things as things rather than sense data or constructs’. Empiricism, then, must begin with the naive prescientific awareness, and by a process of abstraction from that ‘sense data become known as sense data’. This act of abstraction both depends on and denies the legitimacy of such dependence on common sense. Strauss’s very Husserlian conclusion is that ‘there is no possible human thought which is not in the last analysis dependent on the legitimacy of that naiveté and the awareness or the knowledge going with it’.” (Zuckert, “Why Leo Strauss is Not an Aristotelian”, quoting from Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern 212-13. Cf. the “Conversations with Zoot Allures thread”, starting from this post: http://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2692334#p2692334)

You may want to reread my earlier post in this thread in this light: http://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2692205#p2692205–especially the two long quotes (Nietzsche and Picht). In the light of the Picht quote, I will now point out, following Picht, that a metaphysician is someone who sincerely believes in his unconscious pro-jection of himself into all being, whereas the Nietzschean is aware of his “automorphism”, as I once called it; is aware that he’s no mere theorist, but a poet; that his worldview is no immaculate perception of a world that’s “out there”, but a pro-creation.

Pedro_I_Rengel · February 10, 2018, 1:13am

“…that his worldview is no immaculate perception of a world that’s “out there”, but a pro-creation.”

Hi Oliver. You sent me a PM over on btl, which I answered, but recieved no further reply. The subject you presented was good: is there a supreme will to power? If so, which one?

This was regarding a thread there in which I mentioned something key about will to power: the emptyness about it. By this, as I explained in my reply to your message, I meant precicely that there is no supreme anything. Will to power wills will to power, and this creates all hierarchies. I did admit that, of course, will to power implies verticality, hierarchy. But that #1 this isn’t what matters about it and #2 that verticality is the wrong term, because it is two dimensional.

You suggested that there is something you consider to be the supreme will to power.

Regarding the quote:

What is it that creates? The poet? This is at the bottom of the subject at hand. Because will to power is constantly creation. As I wrote before, things don’t exist until they matter.

For instance: is it the case only for the poet that he doesn’t percieve an immaculate world that’s out there but rather brings one into being?

Pedro_I_Rengel · February 10, 2018, 1:37am

“the idea of substance is not at all required for logic.”

What are the properties then? What goes for “tiger” goes for “whiskers,” “violent” and “four legged.” You can split properties appart all you want, but there will always be an assumed substance. If one could only split one’s way to the atom, the irreducible substance.

You pointed out before that you can even split sub-atomic particles. That this is a big problem for the idea of a unit.

I don’t think Nietzsche meant that logic logically needed this or that, I think he was explaining what it needed genealogically, what led to its existence.

URUZ · February 10, 2018, 3:21am

Exactly.

URUZ · February 10, 2018, 3:27am

In the will to power, one does not need to bear the burden of oneself, not really. One only bears partial burdens of oneself, here and there. And does a lot of outsourcing of this burden to other things. Indeed, WtP is in no small measure a means to the distribution of oneself across many disparate areas and experiences, for the purpose of lifting the burden of oneself ‘here and there’. A redirection, as catharsis and new focus.

Whereas with VO one must bear the absolute entirety of oneself, if one is to even be capable of approaching VO at all. You might be able to will yourself in entirety to power, to some power or another, but to truly value yourself in entirety is very different than that. It is not “utilitarian” and therefore gains access to all potential utilities, precisely because it adopts them to itself rather than allows itself to be adapted to them.

VO is internal, WtP is external expression. But VO is also externality.

And besides, self-valuing is already a deeper (more fundamental) concept than is will to power. Where do you think power-willing begins, from where do you think the standards for what constitutes power come? The self sets these terms; the very thing which is said to act according to these terms of will to power, is itself that which sets and indeed must set the very terms, a priori, for that very same acting-willing. “You” are an abstraction or other distillation of this process, which we simply call valuation for lack of a better term.

Really it is just supreme standard-setting, which requires a goal, and intimate awareness of an encounter; necessity, the hardest kind in existence. Much harder than gravity, or nuclear force.

URUZ · February 10, 2018, 3:33am

But this is also sublimating subjectivity to its highest level, and most people are not too comfortable with that. They think this means forgoing something about the earthiness in themselves, when in reality it is ouroboros-like, you come around full circle much further along from where you began. But only when you have learned to create the earth in your own soul. VO can teach you how to do that, WtP cannot. But WtP can offer great reverence for the earthiness that already exists, and can offer channels of potential power-expression and regulation-constrainment for the sublimating-subjectivity I mentioned above, which is basically what philosophy already is.

I see VO and WtP as working together, it is not one against the other. I am very much a WtP-ist, and this does not refute or refuse or cancel my also being a VO-ist, rather it enhances it a thousand-fold.

Mitra-Sauwelios · February 10, 2018, 3:55am

Pedro I Rengel:

“…that his worldview is no immaculate perception of a world that’s “out there”, but a pro-creation.”

Hi Oliver. You sent me a PM over on btl, which I answered, but recieved no further reply. The subject you presented was good: is there a supreme will to power? If so, which one?

This was regarding a thread there in which I mentioned something key about will to power: the emptyness about it. By this, as I explained in my reply to your message, I meant precicely that there is no supreme anything. Will to power wills will to power, and this creates all hierarchies. I did admit that, of course, will to power implies verticality, hierarchy. But that #1 this isn’t what matters about it and #2 that verticality is the wrong term, because it is two dimensional.

You suggested that there is something you consider to be the supreme will to power.

Right, and thank you for your reply (belated, I know; at first I didn’t know what to answer and then I just forgot).

I was alluding to the will to the eternal recurrence. Strauss writes:

“Nature, the eternity of nature, owes its being to a postulation, to an act of the will to power on the part of the highest nature.” (Leo Strauss, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil”.)

About this highest nature, he says:

“His supremacy is shown by the fact that he solves the highest, the most difficult problem.” (ibid.)

That problem is the problem of the absence of nature, of there being only art (and law being art, not nature: not physis, but only nomos, “convention, custom, habit”). And about this solution, this act of the will to power, Strauss says:

“His [i.e., the philosopher-of-the-future’s] action constitutes the highest form of the most spiritual will to power and therewith the highest form of the will to power.” (ib. Cf. BGE 9 and WP 617.)

And:

“Philosophy, we have heard, is the most spiritual will to power (aph. 9): the philosophers of the future must possess that will to a degree which was not even dreamed of by the philosophy of the past; they must possess that will in its absolute form.” (ib.)

In the lecture course on which this essay drew most, Strauss had said:

“We start again from the premise that reality is will to power, and there is no essential difference between men and brutes; there is no nature of man strictly speaking. Given this premise, the doctrine of eternal return, which means, subjectively, transformation of the will into acceptance, is the only way there can be knowledge, as acknowledging of what is, and it is the only way in which there can be nature; that is to say, that which is by itself and not by being willed or posited. But precisely because acceptance is transformed will, will survives in the acceptance, in the contemplation. Contemplation is creative.” (Lecture transcript of May 18, 1959. Cf. my first post here: BTL, “The Hierarchies of Human Values”, page 2.)

And:

“If the will of an individual human being, say of Nietzsche, is to be the origin of meaning and value, and that will manifestly has a cause, the only way out in order to save his position is to say that this will is the cause of itself: eternal return.” (ibid.)

That Picht passage is pertinent to this. The poet, the entity, is itself that in which he/it believes. What really creates is the abyss “beneath” all semblance of entities. And no, all entities are poets; not just “the poet”.

“[M]an must be a liar by nature, he must above all be an artist. And he is one: metaphysics, religion, morality, science–all of them only products of his will to art, to lie, to flight from ‘truth’, to negation of ‘truth’. This ability itself, thanks to which he violates reality by means of lies, this artistic ability of man par excellence–he has it in common with everything that is. He himself is after all a piece of reality, truth, nature: how should he not also be a piece of genius in lying!” (WP 853, Kaufmann trans.)

Mitra-Sauwelios · February 10, 2018, 4:23am

Is it, though… Isn’t freedom the sole sufficient reason of “sufficient reason”, as Heidegger has it? Here’s the suppressed (originally) final paragraph of Strauss’s “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero”:

“The utmost I can hope to have shown in taking issue with Kojève’s thesis regarding the relation of tyranny and wisdom is that Xenophon’s thesis regarding that grave subject is not only compatible with the idea of philosophy but required by it. This is very little. For the question arises immediately whether the idea of philosophy is not itself in need of legitimation. Philosophy in the strict and classical sense is quest for the eternal order or for the eternal cause or causes of all things. It presupposes then that there is an eternal and unchangeable order within which History takes place and which is not in any way affected by History. It presupposes, in other words, that any ‘realm of freedom’ is not more than a dependent province within the ‘realm of necessity.’ It presupposes, in the words of Kojève, that ‘Being is essentially immutable in itself and eternally identical with itself.’ This presupposition is not self-evident. Kojève rejects it in favor of the view that ‘Being creates itself in the course of History,’ or that the highest being is Society and History, or that eternity is nothing but the totality of historical, i.e., finite time. On the basis of the classical presupposition, a radical distinction must be made between the conditions of understanding and the sources of understanding, between the conditions of the existence and perpetuation of philosophy (societies of a certain kind, and so on) and the sources of philosophic insight. On the basis of Kojève’s presupposition, that distinction loses its crucial significance: social change or fate affects being, if it is not identical with Being, and hence affects truth. On the basis of Kojève’s presuppositions, unqualified attachment to human concerns becomes the source of philosophic understanding: man must be absolutely at home on earth, he must be absolutely a citizen of the earth, if not a citizen of a part of the inhabitable earth. On the basis of the classical presupposition, philosophy requires a radical detachment from human concerns: man must not be absolutely at home on earth, he must be a citizen of the whole. In our discussion, the conflict between the two opposed basic presuppositions has barely been mentioned. But we have always been mindful of it. For we both apparently turned away from Being to Tyranny because we have seen that those who lacked the courage to face the issue of Tyranny, who therefore et humiliter serviebant et superbe dominabantur [“were themselves obsequiously subservient while arrogantly lording it over others”, like the Nazi Heidegger] were forced to evade the issue of Being as well, precisely because they did nothing but talk of Being.”