Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 10:38:10 -0600
From: allen scult <allen.scult-AT-drake.edu>
Subject: Re: will the real will-to-power please stand up


>Contrary to some interpretations of the (Nietzsche's concept) will-to-power
>as a will (to power) or power-mad will, etc, I should like to suggest that
>the will-to-power is nothing whatsoever to do with human (or non-human) will
>(in the sense of a psychological facility of consciousness, etc); this will
>not do. Rather, will-to-power is the name given to what beings are; the
>whatness of beings and beings-as-a-whole; and thus, a dimension' of the
>metaphysical nature of being itself (the other 'dimension' being its
>thatness, the eternal return of the same, the way beings and
>beings-as-a-whole are). Thus one can not, in this interpretation, speak of
>will-to-power in psychological or sociological or political terms, since
>these (terms) depend upon a plethora of precisely the *effects and
>manifestations* of the will-to-power (as I understand it) and not the
>will-to-power itself. Of course, will-to-power rules invisibly, silently,
>in these psychological, sociological, etc, discourses, but is not unearthed
>and revealed by these discourses that claim to have grasped it.
>
>regards
>
>michaelP
>

Hi Michael,

Some "concepts" are endlessly worth clarifying, trying to get right, 
especially in
view of the ways in which they are commonly misunderstood.  It's almost as if
their capacity to be misunderstood in these ways which opens up  the 
possibility
for certain corrections is part and parcel of their conceptuality, 
their value as
concepts.

Thinking of will- to -power as the whatness of beings is a nice 
correction of the
"psychological" misinterpretation of will-to-power as either will or 
power.  It  is
rather a will-to-power, the  force by which a being which has the 
power to  make it-
self what it is,  does so.  My German is too weak to have any firm 
etymological sense of
how words come to be, so I can too easily read machen  into Macht in 
this way, and then connect
the connection between machen and Macht to the Greek Poiesis, and so 
conclude that for human-
being, will-to-power is the degree to which the self is willing  to 
be free, to give itself into the hands
of its own capacity for making, and so  to make of its own making a 
distinctive " what-is," an  incomparable creation of its ownmost 
potentiality for being a self.

Best regards,

Allen


     --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---