To: <nietzsche-AT-lists.driftline.org>
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 17:43:51 -0700
Subject: Re: [Nietzsche] Will to power and will to truth


One way of looking at the will to power is to see it in relation to the will 
to knowledge or truth. The latter seeks sufficient foundations for 
scientific assertions, that is, assertions that are universal and can 
explain multitudes of particulars. With the generation of "truth," divergent 
truths become discredited as lacking the proper foundations; allowing 
multiple, divergent truths to play freely would lead to chaos. This is 
precisely what Plato and Aristotle sought to do in relation to the sophists, 
who they saw as dealing with a world of doxa, or opinion, rather than 
episteme, grounded assertions. Rhetoric becomes the outcast in the polis of 
philosophy.

The will to power, on the other hand operates as the agon, or contest, where 
no single perspective posseses foundations that can trump any other. Such a 
situation would be tyranny, although from the point of view of the will to 
truth, this maintenance of order and knowledge leads to the preservation of 
the present order which serves and protects those laborers after truth in 
their efforts against the arbitrary and capricious world of the will to 
power. The will to truth is also understood as the product of the slave 
morality that re-values the "good" of the contest into "evil" in order to 
exact revenge on the will to power in its boundless generativity. From the 
point of view of the will to power, however, those driven by the will to 
truth are "bad," that is, weak and incapable of controlling themselves, 
which is why they need systems and rules set up for them to follow. One who 
would contravene any such system would be a pharmakos, the scapegoats who 
are cast out of the polis in order to maintain the "truth" of the polis.

Drew

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kelly Timothy Lynch" <ktlynch-AT-vex.net>
To: <nietzsche-AT-lists.driftline.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2006 10:42 PM
Subject: Re: [Nietzsche] Psychoanalysis & the Strategies of Resistance


> On Thu, 9 Mar 2006, Steve Armstrong wrote:
>
>> I agree, Heidegger is always about Heidegger.
>>
>> Steve Armstrong
>> www.wegway.com
>>
>
> Which is why I said "don't read Heidegger" if you are
> looking to learn about Nietzsche's "Will to Power"--
> which is what the original query was.
>
>
>      Kelly Timothy Lynch     ||    "Dei potentia est
>        ktlynch-AT-vex.net       ||  ipsa ipsius essentia."
>    Toronto, Ontario, Canada  ||         Spinoza
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