Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 23:49:38 -0600
From: "Daniel J. Dzenkowski" <djdzenko-AT-students.wisc.edu>
Subject: Truth and the enahncement of the quality of life


At 06:41 PM 1/19/00 +0000, John Wallisswrote:
>As I said, I'm interested in Ns ideas and have read both the sources and a
>few commentaries, however I'm stumped on one issue - the Will To Power.
>As far as I'm aware N is saying all attempts to truth are a reflection of
>WTP - the question then is therefore is this a version of the 'liar's
>paradox', i.e. Nietzsche the philosopher of the WTP saying that the WTP is
>the
>basis of all forms of truth?
>I'm also interested in his argument in BGE about willing 'untruth' and the
>relationship of truth to instinct. by this is he meaning that he doesn't
>object to Christianity because its 'wrong' as such but because its life
>negating in some way.

	I don't think that Nietzsche is so concerned with truth.  Plato was
looking for truth and pretty much from that point on mainstream philosophy
has concerned itself with finding truth.  Where has this gotten us?
	Philosophy has gotten away from discovering a way to make the quality of
life better by placing such a heavy emphasis on finding truth.  This goes
back at least to Socrates reason=happiness=virtue, and I am assuming here
that truth plays a heavy part in reason.  Nietzsche is fighting against
philosophy, much as Wittgenstein and Diogenes of Sinope did.  Nietzsche
does not say that un-truth is better than truth, but that through exploring
all of the possibilities of truth and untruth, instead of restricting
yourself to truth, that you will be more able to enhance the quality of
your life.
	Ok, onto the will to power.  In  Zarathustra On Self-Overcoming "And life
itself confided to me:'Behold' it said, 'I am that which must always
overcome itself.  Indeed, you call it a will to procreate or a drive to an
end, to something higher, farther, more manifold: but all this is one, and
one secret.' "
	The drive to overcome yourself over and over again to become something
greater than you previously were.  The will to power is the basic drive
that underlies every aspect of life.  Similar to Freud and with the forces
of Thanatos and Eros.  The will to power has nothing to do with truth it is
about life and in some strange way that is the highest truth, but the point
is to leave logic and reason out of the equation and place instinct as the
highest priority against them. 
	Nietzsche objects to Christianity, since it denies the value of the
instincts, which are based in part on the physical world.  Instinct is a
product of the body and the mind (Nietzsche does not see them separately).
Christianity solely wants to concentrate on the mind.  So Christianity is
life-denying, because it does not include the physical and devalues it
through its teachings.

LambdaC are you out there?
Daniel J. Dzenkowski



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