The Will to Power Is Giving and Creating
Yesterday I bought and started reading Two Regimes of Madness. Texts and Interviews 1975-1995, by Deleuze. In this collection of his writings there’s the preface to the American edition of Nietzsche and Philosophy. Here are a few quotes,Ressentiment and bad conscience express the triumph of negative forces in humankind, and even constitutes the human, i.e. the human-slave. This shows precisely to what extent the Nietzschean conception of slave does not necessarily designate someone who is dominated, whether by destiny or by social condition, but characterizes both dominant and dominated, ruler and ruled, whenever a regime of domination works through reactive forces rather than active ones…
Misunderstanding has plagued The Eternal Return no less than The Will to Power…what returns, or is apt to return, is only that which becomes in the fullest sense of the word. Only action and affirmation return: Being belongs to becoming and only to becoming. Whatever is opposed to becoming – the Same or the Identical – is not, rigorously speaking. The negative as the lowest degree of power, the reactive as the lowest degree of form, these do not return, because they are the opposites of becoming, and becoming constitutes the only Being.
One can see how the Eternal Return is tied not to a repetition of the Same, but to a transmutation. The Eternal Return is the instant or the eternity of becoming, eliminating whatever offers resistance. It brings out, or better yet, it creates the active, the pure active, and pure affirmation. The overman has no other meaning; it is what the Will to Power and the Eternal Return, Dionysos and Adriadne, produce together. This is why Nietzsche says the the Will to Power has nothing to do with wanting, coveting, or seeking, but only “giving”, “creating”.
posted by Orla Schantz at 7:21 PM
4 Comments:
Orla, what is your background? A degree in english, you read a little Deleuze, looked up Nietzsche in a philosophical dictionary and thought "it's all good .."
Orla wrote "The Eternal Return is the instant or the eternity of becoming, eliminating whatever offers resistance."
Orla seems to have some serious misunderstandings going, believing that 'resistance' is something that is offered and thus can be refused.
As I have pointed out earlier Orla has a tendency to think 'difference ' as 'opposition' or 'resisting'. But as a 'pseudo difference': one that really doesnt matter, since in in the end the difference is eliminated and thus we have 'pure affirmation' or 'the pure active'.
It is clear that Orla has not read Nietzsche. All the more a sorry display of impotence that he refers his own discourse to Nietzsches thinking, having not studied it.
The real question is, why are we (why am I) bothering to reply to Orla? Maybe in hope that he will go away since he has become a nuisance. I dont think I am alone in feeling that way, where did everyone else go?
I've been away at my cabin for the last ten days. With any luck, I'll soon be back there. However, it is good to come here and see there's been some activity.
I think there's a problem in that Orla isn't being specific enough about who or what's being addressed here.
In the US, there's a very real and very active prohibition upon expressions of negativity--upon those who are deemed or labeled "negative"-- to be negative is to be shunned socially.
Those doing the shunning would explain themselves as I think Orla would, as being necessary to get rid of those who merely want to put everyone else on a downer, to get rid of those who offer nothing "constructive."
As a matter of fact, I don't like to put a downer on people, and I do like to be constructive. However, it is not crystal clear obvious that in those cases where I am being deemed "negative" that I am being negative. In many of these cases I am being positive and active and hopefully creative, while those who condemn me are trying to ward off the extra effort or the extra pain or whatever it is which does accompany creativity and giving.
Not that I want to put myself as the expert of what is or is not negative. What I would like to see would be for us to see that what is or is not negative is open for questioning: we can't and must not simply assume that what we think is affirmation, creation, and giving IS unambiguously and without thinking to be understood as affirmation, creation, and giving.
There could be a kind of "identification" with affirmation, etc. going on here. This, I think, must be avoided at all cost. " I am rational. What I do is rational. What I understand as rational is what the rational is, etc." This kind of thing is garbage--dangerous garbage.
--Yusef
For example, why is this not negative, reactive, life denying,
“When Yusef is battling the concepts of totality and rationality he is trying to stop, isolate, and freeze the flow of emerging streams of creativity.”
Is it because when Orla says something of this nature, it is to be considered affirming and active, but when someone else says something in a similar vein, then it is not? When Orla does something it is good, but when someone else does the same thing, it is bad?
--Yusef
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