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Nietzsche and Philosophy

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Imported: 2025-06-05 9:30 pm

Foreword

Foreword Page 10

Key Concepts: Multiplicity, Becoming, Affirmation

The three most important concepts in this book are multiplicity, becoming, and affirmation Page 10

In Nietzsche's concept of multiplicity Deleuze finds a notion of difference that does not refer back to (and thus depend on) a primary identity, a difference that can never be corralled into an ultimate unity. Multiplicity is precisely this expanding, proliferating set of differences that stand on their own, autonomous. At the most basic level, one can recognize Nietzsche's profound betrayal of the primacy of identity and unity in his famous pronouncement that God is dead: there is no identity from which all the differences of the world emanate, nor any unity to which they fall back. Instead of any divine ordering principles Nietzsche proposes the will to power as a perpetual motor that proยญduces differences. What the will wills is difference. The will to power is a machine of multiplicities. Page 10

They place the emphasis on becoming to highlight the fact that being itself is an act of creยญation, and that creation can only be understood as the production of differences, of multiplicities. Page 10

It is a mistake to understand the eternal return as simยญply a repetition of the past, a return of the same. Nietzsche's notion, Deleuze explains, points in the opposite direction: "It is not being that returns, but rather the returning itself that constitutes being insofar as it is affirmed of becoming and of that which passes. It is not some one thing which returns but rather returning itself is the one thing which is affirmed of diversity or multiplicity" (48) . What Deleuze is working to develop, once again, is an autonomous conception of difference and its constant proliferation in a creative process of becoming. Page 11

Deleuze finds an ethics and even a politics of multiplicity and becoming in Nietzsche's notion of affirmation. He begins with Nietzsche's typology of active and reactive forces. Active forces, like becoming itself, are deemed superior because they are creative: they produce differences, whereas reactive forces produce nothing. Reacยญ tive forces only lead to ressentiment and bad conscience. Nietzsche poses this as an ethical guide and a principle of selection: always seek out the active forces in life and avoid the reactive ones. The typology of active and reactive is then extended in Nietzsche's distinction beยญ tween affirmation and negation. Deleuze explains this distinction, for example, in the contrast between master and slave mentalities. Both, of course, involve affirmation and negation. The contrast dramatized in these two Nietzschean categories, however, lies in the priority and order given to affirmation and negation in each. The slave mentality says, "You are evil, therefore I am good," whereas the master mentality says, "I am good, therefore you are evil." The slave mentality, Deleuze explains, is purely reactive. It needs to pass through two negations to arrive at an affirmation: since you are evil and I am not you, thereยญfore I am good. The master mentality, in contrast, is purely active. Its affirmation of itself is autonomous and the negation of the other merely secondary. This affirmation, I should emphasize, has nothing to do with acceptance of or acquiescence to how things are, what is, but rather purely an act of creation. This is indeed how Deleuze reads the eternal return as an ethical principle of selection oriented toward the future: "whatever you will, will it in such a way that you also will its eternal return" (68). To complete the ethical proposition, then, Deleuze links affirmative practices and their acts of creation to a life of joy, which stands opposed to all the reactive forces and sad passions. Page 11

This section introduces the three core concepts Deleuze identifies in Nietzsche's philosophy: multiplicity, becoming, and affirmation. Multiplicity refers to difference itself, autonomous and proliferating, driven by the will to power. Becoming highlights that existence is a creative process of producing differences. Affirmation is presented as an ethical principle of selecting active forces and creating, linked to joy, in contrast to reactive forces and ressentiment.

#on/deleuze #on/nietzsche

Against the Dialectic

Deleuze's primary charge against dialectical thinking is that, despite its claims, dialectics mystifies and destroys difference and is thus incapable of recognizing multiplicities. The dialectic pushes all differences to the extreme of contradiction so that it then can subsume them back into a unity. Real differences, according to Deleuze, are more subtle and nuanced than dialectical oppositions, and they do not rely on any negative founยญdation. On the basis of this proposition Deleuze can then contrast the double negations of dialectical thinking with Nietzsche's notion of affirmation. Page 12

Deleuze critiques dialectical thinking, arguing that it fails to grasp true difference by reducing it to contradiction and forcing it into unity, contrasting this with Nietzsche's concept of autonomous difference and affirmation.

#on/deleuze #on/nietzsche

Preface to the English Translation

Preface to the English Translation Page 16

First Axis of Nietzsche's Philosophy: Force and Semeiology

The first is concerned with force, with forces, and forms of general semeiology. Phenomena, things, organisms, societies, consciousness and spirits are signs, or rather symptoms, and themselves reflect states of forces. Page 17

What is the mode of existence of the person who utters any given proposition, what mode of existence is needed in order to be able to utter it? The mode of existence is the state of forces insofar as it forms a type which can be expressed by signs or symptoms. Page 17

Res sentiment and bad conscience are expressions of the triumph of reactive forces in man and even of the constitution of man by reactive forces: the man-slave . This shows the extent to which the Nietzschean notion of the slave does not necessarily stand for someone dominated, by fate or social condition, but also characterises the dominators as much as the dominated once the regime of domination comes under the sway of forces which are reactive and not active . Page 17

Deleuze outlines the first major theme in Nietzsche's philosophy: force and semeiology. All phenomena are seen as symptoms of underlying forces, and the mode of existence of a person is determined by the type of forces at play. Ressentiment and bad conscience are presented as expressions of dominant reactive forces.

#on/nietzsche #on/force

Second Axis: Will to Power and Ethics

Nietzsche is most misunderstood in relation to the question of power. Every time we interpret will to power as "wanting or seeking power" we encounter platitudes which have nothing to do with Nietzsche's thought. If it is true that all things reflect a state of forces then power designates the element, or rather the differential relationship, of forces which directly confront one another . This relationship expresses itself in the dynamic qualities of types such as "affirmation" and "negation" . Power is therefore not what the will wants, but on the contrary, the one that wants in the will. And "to want or seek power" is only the lowest degree of the will to power, its negative form, the guise it assumes when reactive forces prevail in the state of things. Page 18

The one that ... does not refer to an individual, to a person, but rather to an event, that is, to the forces in their various relationships in a proposition or a phenomenon, and to the genetic relationship which determines these forces (power). "The one that" is always Dionysus, a mask or a guise of Dionysus, a flash of lightning. Page 18

The eternal return is the strict opposite of this since it cannot be separated from a selection, from a double selection. Firstly, there is the selection of willing or of thought which constitutes Nietzscht's ethics: only will that of which one also wills the eternal return (to eliminate all half-willing, everything which can only be willed with the proviso "once, only once"). Secondly, there is the selection of being which constitutes Nietzsche's ontology: only that which becomes in the fullest sense of the word can return, is fit to return. Only action and affirmation return: becoming has being and only becoming has being. That which is opposed to becoming, the Page 18

same or the identical, strictly speaking, is not. The negative as the lowest degree of power, the reactive as the lowest degree af force, do not return because they are the opposite of becoming and only becoming has being. We can thus see how the eternal return is linked, not to a repetition of the same, but on the contrary, to a transmutaยญtion. It is the moment or the eternity of becoming which eliminates all that resists it . It releases, indeed it creates, the purely active and pure affirmation. Page 19

the Overman; he is the joint product of the will to power and the eternal return, Dionysus and Ariadne. This is why Nietzsche says that the will to power is not wanting, coveting or seeking power, but only "giving" or "creating" . Page 19

The second axis explores the will to power and its ethical dimension, particularly through the concept of the eternal return. Will to power is defined as the differential relationship of forces, not the desire for dominance. The eternal return is presented as a principle of selection that affirms becoming and creates the active and affirmative, leading to the emergence of the Overman as a symbol of creation and giving.

#on/nietzsche #on/willtopower #on/eternalreturn

Debunking Misinterpretations

As long as the reader persists in: 1) seeing the Nietzschean "slave" as someone who finds himself dominated by a master, and deserves to be; 2) understanding the will to power as a will which wants and seeks power; 3) conceiving the eternal return as the tedious return of the same; 4) imagining the Overman as a given master race - no positive relationship between Nietzsche and his reader will be possible . Nietzsche will appear a nihilist, or worse , a fascist and at best as an obscure and terrifying prophet. Page 19

The Overman is the focal point, where the reactive (ressentiment and bad conscience) is conquered, and where the negative gives way to affirmation. Page 20

Deleuze highlights common misreadings of Nietzsche's core concepts (slave, will to power, eternal return, Overman) that lead to inaccurate and negative portrayals, emphasizing that the Overman represents the overcoming of reactive forces and affirmation, not dominance or repetition.

#on/nietzsche #on/misinterpretations

Nietzsche's Aphorisms and Thought-Movement

A Nietzschean "aphorism" is not a mere fragment, a morsel of thought: it is a proposition which only makes sense in relation to the state of forces that it expresses, and which changes sense, which must change sense , according to the new forces which it is "capable" (has the power) of attracting. Page 20

Nietzsche snatches thought from the element of truth and falsity. He turns it into an interpretation and an evaluation, interpretation of forces, evaluation of power . - It is a thoughtยญmovement, not merely in the sense that Nietzsche wants to reconcile thought and concrete movement, but in the sense that thought itself must produce movements, bursts of extraordinary speed and slowยญness (here again we can see the role of the aphorism, with its variable speeds and its "projectile-like" movement). As a result philosophy has a new relationship to the arts of movement: theatre, dance and music . Page 20

Nietzsche's aphorisms are dynamic expressions of forces, not static fragments. His philosophy transforms thought into an interpretive and evaluative process (of forces and power), conceiving of thought itself as a form of movement with affinities to arts like dance and music.

#on/nietzsche #on/aphorism #on/thought

To Think is To Create

To think is to create: this is Nietzsche's greatest lesson. To think, to cast the dice ... : this was already the sense of the eternal return. Page 21

Nietzsche's fundamental teaching is that thinking is synonymous with creation, linking the philosophical act to the generative process inherent in the eternal return.

#on/nietzsche #on/creation #on/thought

The Tragic

The Tragic Page 24

Genealogy: The Value of Origin and the Origin of Values

1. The Concept of Genealogy Page 24

This is the crucial point; high and low , noble and base , are not values but represent the differential element from which the value of values themselves derives. Page 25

Nietzsche creates the new concept of genealogy. The philosopher is a genealogist rather than a Kantian tribunal judge or a utilitarian mechanic . Page 25

Genealogy means both the value of origin and the origin of values. Genealogy is as opposed to absolute values as it is to relative or utilitarian ones. Genealogy signifies the differential element of values from which their value itself derives. Genealogy thus means origin or birth, but also difference or distance in the origin. Genealogy means nobility and baseness, nobility and vulgarity, nobility and decadence in the origin. The noble and the vulgar, the high and the low - this is the truly genealogical and critical element. Page 25

Genealogy, as a key Nietzschean concept, investigates both the inherent worth found in the origin of values and the historical emergence of values themselves. It focuses on the differential element (noble/base) rather than absolute or relative judgments.

#on/genealogy #on/values

Critique as Active Creation

critique is also at its most positive . The differential element is both a critique of the value of values and the positive element of a creation. Page 25

Critique is not a re-action of re-sentiment but the active expression of an active mode of existence; attack and not revenge, the natural aggression of a way of being, the divine wickedยญness without which perfection could not be imagined (EH I 6-7). This way of being is that of the philosopher precisely because he intends to wield the differential element as critic and creator and therefore as a hammer. Page 26

Nietzschean critique is an active, positive force of creation and evaluation, stemming from an active mode of existence rather than reactive ressentiment. The philosopher uses this critical-creative capacity like a hammer to evaluate values.

#on/critique #on/creation

Sense: Interpretation of Forces

2. Sense Page 26

We will never fmd the sense of something (of a human, a biological or even a physical phenomenon) if we do not know the force3* which appropriates the thing, which exploits it, which takes possession of it or is expressed in it. A phenomenon is not an appearance or even an apparition but a sign, a symptom which finds its meaning in an existing force. Page 26

All force is appropriation, domination, exploitation of a quantity of reality. Even perception, in its divers aspects, is the expression of forces which appropriate nature. That is to say that nature itself has a history . The history of a thing, in general, is the succession of forces which take possession of it and the co-existence of the forces which struggle for possession. Page 26

The Gods are dead but they have died from laughing, on hearing one God claim to be the only one, "Is not precisely this godliness, that there are gods but no God?" (Z III 'Of the Apostates" , p. 201). And the death of this God, who claimed to be the only one, is itself plural; the death of God is an event with a multiple sense Page 27

There is no event, no phenomenon, word or thought which does not have a multiple sense . A thing is sometimes this, sometimes that, sometimes something more compliยญ cated - depending on the forces (the gods) which take possession of it. Page 27

The pluralist idea that a thing has many senses, the idea that there are many things and one thing can be seen as "this and then that" is philosophy's greatest achievement, the conquest of the true concept, its maturity and not its renunciation or infancy. Page 27

To grasp the "sense" of phenomena, one must identify the forces that appropriate and exploit them. Everything is a symptom of force, and the history of things is a history of forces taking possession. This leads to a pluralistic understanding where things have multiple senses depending on the dominant forces.

#on/sense #on/force #on/interpretation

Life Imitates Matter

To begin with life must imitate matter merely in order to survive. A force would not survive if it did not first of all borrow the feature of the forces with which it struggles (GM III 8, 9, 10) Page 28

For survival, life must initially mimic the qualities of the material forces it contends with.

#on/life #on/force

The Far-Sighted Eye

The difference in the origin does not appear at the origin - except perhaps to a particularly practised eye, the eye which sees from afar, the eye of the far-sighted, the eye of the genealogist Page 28

True differences at the origin of things are not immediately apparent; they require the perceptive, far-sighted gaze of the genealogist.

#on/genealogy #on/difference

Focus on Higher Degrees

In all things only the higher degrees matter!" (PTG). Page 28

Nietzsche suggests that in evaluating things, one should focus on their highest degrees or intensities, not the commonplace.

#on/evaluation

The Philosophy of the Will

3. The Philosophy of the Wil Page 29

Will to Power as Differential Element of Force

There is no object (phenomenon) which is not already possessed since in itself it is not an appearance but the apparition of a force . Every force is thus essentially related to another force Page 29

A force is domination, but also the object on which domination is exercised. A plurality of forces acting and being affected at distance, distance being the differential element included in each force and by which each is related to others - this is the principle of Nietzsche's philosophy of nature. Page 29

the notion of atom cannot in itself contain the difference necessary for the affirmation of such a Page 29

Nietzsche's concept of force is therefore that of a force which is related to another force: in this form force is called will. The will (will to power) is the differential element of force Page 30

" 'Will' can of course operate only on 'will' - and not on 'matter' (not on 'nerves' for example): enough, one must venture the hypothesis that wherever 'effects' are recognised, will is operating on will" (BGE 36 p. 49). Page 30

Nietzsche's break with Schopenhauer rests on one precise point; it is a matter of knowing whether the will is unitary or multiple . Everything else flows from this. Page 30

Nietzsche's philosophy of the will posits that everything is an expression of forces, and forces are always related to other forces. The will to power is not a substance but the differential element within force that determines its relation to others. Will only acts upon will, and Nietzsche's view emphasizes the multiplicity of will, contrasting with Schopenhauer's unitary concept.

#on/willtopower #on/force #on/pluralism

Sense and Value as Hierarchy of Forces

The sense of something is its relation to the force which takes possession of it, the value of someยญ thing is the hierarchy of forces which are expressed in it as a complex phenomenon. Page 31

The sense of a thing is determined by the force possessing it, while its value is determined by the hierarchy of forces expressed within it.

#on/sense #on/value #on/force #on/hierarchy

Against the Dialectic

4. Against the Dialectic Page 31

Pluralism vs. Dialectics

Pluralism someยญtimes appears to be dialectical - but it is its most ferocious enemy, its only profound enemy. Page 31

Nietzschean pluralism is presented as the fundamental antagonist to dialectical thinking.

#on/pluralism #on/dialectic

Affirmation of Difference vs. Dialectical Negation

In Nietzsche the essential relation of one force to another is never conceived of as a negative element in the essence . In its relation with the other the force which makes itself obeyed does not deny the othe Page 31

or that which it is not, it affirms its own difference and enjoys this difference. The negative is not present in the essence as that from which force draws its activity: on the contrary it is a result of activity, of the existence of an active force and the affirmation of its difference . Page 32

For the speculative element of negation, opposition or contradiction Nietzsche substitutes the practical element of differยญence , the object of affirmation and enjoyment. Page 32

What a will wants is to affirm its difference . In its essential relation with the "other" a will makes its difference an object of affirmation. "The pleasure of knowing oneself different", the enjoyment of difference (BGE 260) Page 32

Nietzsche's "yes" is opposed to the dialectical "no"; affirยญmation to dialectical negation; difference to dialectical contradiction; joy, enjoyment, to dialectical labour; lightness, dance, to dialectical responsibilities. The empirical feeling of difference, in short hierarยญchy, is the essential motor of the concept, deeper and more effective than all thought about contradiction. Page 32

Unlike dialectics which relies on negation and contradiction, Nietzsche's philosophy of forces is centered on the active affirmation and enjoyment of difference. Negation is merely a consequence of this primary affirmation, and Nietzsche's fundamental stance is one of "yes" to difference, joy, and lightness, in contrast to the dialectical emphasis on negativity.

#on/affirmation #on/difference #on/dialectic

Misunderstanding Will and Power: Hegel vs. Nietzsche

The famous dialectical aspect of the masterยญslave relationship depends on the fact that power is conceived not as will to power but as representation of power, representation of superiority, recognition by "the one" of the superiority of "the other" . What the wills in Hegel want is to have their power recognised, to represent their power. Page 33

The slave only conceives of power as the object of a recognition, the content of a representation, the stake in a competition, and therefore makes it depend, at the end of a fight, on a simple attribution of established values. Page 33

Underneath the Hegelian image of the master we always fmd the slave. Page 33

Deleuze argues that the Hegelian master-slave dialectic operates based on a misunderstanding of power, viewing it as representation and the desire for recognition of pre-established values โ€“ a perspective inherently limited by the slave mentality.

#on/hegel #on/nietzsche #on/willtopower #on/dialectic

The Problem of Tragedy

5. The Problem of Tragedy Page 33

Dialectical vs. Nietzschean Tragedy

The dialectic proposes a certain conception of the tragic : linking it to the negative, to opposition and to contradiction. The contradiction of suffering and life, of fmite and infinite in life itself, of particular destiny and universal spirit in the idea, the movement of contradiction and its resolution - this is how tragedy is represented. Page 34

Dionysus and Apollo are therefore not opposed as the terms of a contradiction but rather as two antitheยญtical ways of resolving it; Apollo mediately, in the contemplation of the plastic image, Dionysus immediately in the reproduction, in the musical symbol of the will. 7 Dionysus is like the background on which Apollo _embroiders beautiful appearances; but beneath Apollo Dionysus rumbles. The antithesis of the two must therefore be resolยญved, "transformed into a unity" . 8 Page 35

While dialectics views tragedy through the lens of negation and contradiction, Nietzsche's conception, particularly in Birth of Tragedy (via Apollo and Dionysus), understands it through antithetical resolutions and affirmations rather than fundamental negativity.

#on/tragedy #on/dialectic #on/nietzsche

Nietzsche's Evolution

6. Nietzsche's Evolution Page 35

Dionysus: The Affirmative God

From ๏ฟฝhe outset Dionysus is insistently presented as the affirmative and affirming god. He is not content with "resolving" pain in a higher and supra personal pleasure but rather he affirms it and turns it into someone's pleasure . This is why Dionysus is himself transformed in multiple affirmations, rather than being dissolved in original being or reabsorbing multiplicity into primeval depths. He affirms the pains of growth rather than reproducing the sufferings of individuation . He is the god who affirms life, for whom life must be affirmed, but not justified or redeemed. Page 36

Dionysus represents pure affirmation, not only accepting pain but transforming it into pleasure and embodying a multiplicity of affirmations. He is the god who unconditionally affirms life, contrasting with philosophies that seek to justify or redeem suffering.

#on/dionysus #on/affirmation

Socrates vs. The Tragic Man

Socrates is the first genius of decadence. He opposes the idea to life, he judges life in Page 36

terms of the idea, he posits life as something which should be judged, justified and redeemed by the idea. He asks us to feel that life, crushed by the weight of the negative, is unworthy of being desired for itself, experienced in itself. Socrates is "the theoretical man" , the only true opposite of the tragic man (BT 1 5). Page 37

It will therefore be necessary for the tragic man, at the same time as he discovers his own element in pure affirmation, to discover his deepest enemy as the one who carries out the enterprise of negation in a true, defmitive and essential manner Page 37

Socrates, as the "theoretical man," is characterized as an enemy of the tragic man by opposing abstract ideals to life and judging life as something needing justification, embodying a fundamental enterprise of negation.

#on/socrates #on/tragedy #on/negation

Dionysus and Christ

7. Dionysus and Christ Page 37

Christianity, Suffering, and Nihilism

For Christianity the fact of suffering in life means primarily that life is not just, that it is even essentially unjust, that it pays for an essential injustice by suffering, it is blameworthy because it suffers. Page 38

These two aspects of Christianity form what Nietzsche calls "bad conscience" or the interยญnalisation of pain (GM II). They define truly Christian nihilism, that is to say the way in which Christianity denies life; on the one side the machine for manufacturing guilt, the horrible pain-punishment equaยญtion, on the other side the machine to multiply pain, the justification by pain, the dark workshop. Page 38

Christianity is critiqued for its interpretation of suffering as inherent injustice and blameworthiness, leading to the "bad conscience" and Christian nihilism which ultimately denies life itself through mechanisms of guilt and pain multiplication.

#on/christianity #on/suffering #on/nihilism

Affirmation vs. Christian/Dialectical Negation

The opposition of Dionysus or Zarathustra to Christ is not a dialectical opposition, but opposition to the dialectic itself: differential affirmation against dialectical negaยญtion, against all nihilism and against this particular form of it. Page 40

The contrast between Dionysus/Zarathustra and Christ is framed as a fundamental opposition to the dialectic and nihilism, emphasizing differential affirmation over negation.

#on/dionysus #on/christ #on/dialectic #on/affirmation

The Essence of the Tragic

8. The Essence of the Tragic Page 40

Tragic as Joy of Multiplicity

Dionysus affirms all that appears, "even the most bitter suffering" , and appears in all that is affirmed. Multiple and pluralist affirmation ยญ this is the essence of the tragic . Page 40

We must fmd, for each thing in tum, the special means by which it is affirmed, by which it ceases to be negative.12 The tragic is not to be found in this anguish or disgust, nor in a nostalgia for lost unity. The tragic is only to be found in multipยญlicity, in the diversity of affirmation as such . What defmes the tragic is the joy of multiplicity, plural joy. This joy is not the result of a sublimation, a purging, a compensation, a resignation or a reconciliaยญtion. Page 40

The tragic is the aesthetic form of joy, not a medical phrase or a moral solution to pain, fear or pity. 13 It is joy that is tragic. Page 40

The tragic is not Page 40

founded on a relation of life and the negative but on the essential relation of joy and multiplicity, of the positivity and multiplicity, of affirmation and multiplicity. Page 41

Contrary to interpretations linking it to suffering or the negative, the tragic, for Nietzsche, is fundamentally defined by multiple and pluralist affirmation and the joy found in multiplicity. It is an aesthetic concept of joy, not a moral solution to pain.

#on/tragedy #on/affirmation #on/multiplicity #on/joy

Dionysus, Ariadne, and the Dicethrow

Dionysus carries Ariadne up to the sky; the jewels in Ariadne's crown are the stars. Is this the secret of Ariadne? The bursting constellation of a famous dicethrow? It is Dionysus who throws the dice . It is he who dances and transforms himself, who is called "Polygethes", the god of a thousand joys. Page 41

The symbolism of Dionysus and Ariadne is connected to the act of throwing the dice, representing the affirmative power of multiplicity and chance embodied by Dionysus.

#on/dionysus #on/ariadne #on/dicethrow #on/symbolism

Existence Justifies All That It Affirms

What therefore is the other way of understanding the question, the truly tragic way, in which exisยญ tence justifies all that it affirms, including suffering, instead of being itself justified by suffering, or in other words, sanctified and deified? Page 42

The tragic perspective is one where existence justifies whatever it affirms, including suffering, reversing the traditional view that existence is justified through suffering.

#on/tragedy #on/existence #on/affirmation

The Problem of Existence

9. The Problem of Existence Page 42

Suffering, Guilt, and Irresponsibility

suffering was used as a way of proving the injustice of existence, but at the same time as a way of finding a higher and divine justification for it. (It is blameworthy because it suffers, but because it suffers it is atoned for and redeemed.) Page 42

Nietzsche does not see ressentiment (it's your fault) and bad conscience (it's my fault) and their common fruit (responsibility) as simple psychological events but rather as the fundamental categories of semitic and Christian thought, of our way of thinking and interpreting existence in general. Nietzsche takes on the tasks of providing a new ideal, a new interpretation and another way of thinking (GM II 23). "To give irresponsibility its positive sense ", "I wished to conquer the feeling of a full irresponsibility, to make myself independent of praise and blame , of present and past" (VP III 383, 465). Irresponsibility - Nietzsche's most noble and beautiful secret. Page 44

Suffering is often used to condemn life and then justify it divinely through atonement. Nietzsche challenges this perspective, viewing ressentiment, bad conscience, and responsibility as pervasive categories of thought rooted in reactive resentment, and proposes a positive sense of "irresponsibility" that liberates from blame and guilt.

#on/suffering #on/ressentiment #on/badconscience #on/responsibility #on/irresponsibility

Existence is Innocent

In fact the question is not: is blameworthy existence responsible or not? But is existence blameworthy ... or innocent? At this point Dionysus has found his multiple truth: innocence, the innocence of plurality, the innocence of becoming and of all that is. Page 45

Nietzsche reframes the question about existence from one of blameworthiness/responsibility to one of innocence, aligning with the Dionysian affirmation of plurality and becoming.

#on/existence #on/innocence #on/dionysus

Existence and Innocence

10. Existence and Innocence Page 45

Affirmation is Innocent

Every thing is referred to a force capable of interpreting it; every force is referred to what it is able to do, from which it is inseparable . It is this way of being referred, of affirming and being affrrmed, which is particularly innoยญ cent. Whatever does not let itself be interpreted by a force nor evaluated by a will calls out for another will capable of evaluating it, another force capable of interpreting it. Page 45

Innocence is the game of existence, of force and of will. Existence affirmed and appreciated, force not separated, the will not divided in two - this is the first approximation to innocence (VP III 457-496). Page 46

The process of interpretation and evaluation by forces and will, centered on affirmation, is presented as inherently innocent. Innocence is the joyful game of existence where force and will are unified and affirmative.

#on/innocence #on/affirmation #on/existence #on/will

Heraclitus, Becoming, and Multiplicity

Heraclitus denied the duality of worlds, "he denied being itself'. Moreover he made an affirmation of becoming. Page 46

Multiplicity is the inseparable manifestation, essential transformation and constant symptom of unity . Multiplicity is the affirmation of unity; becoming is the affirmation of being. The affirยญ mation of becoming is itself being, the affirmation of multiplicity is itself one . Multiple affirmation is the way in which the one affirms itself. "The one is the many, unity is multiplicity." Page 47

Heraclitus is obscure because he leads us to the threshold of the obscure: what is the being of becoming? What is the being inseparable from that which is becoming? Return is the being of that which becomes. Return is the being of becoming itself, the being which is affirmed in becoming. The eternal return as law of becoming, as justice and as being.2 Page 47

Drawing on Heraclitus, Deleuze emphasizes the affirmation of becoming and multiplicity, arguing that the "being of becoming" is the Eternal Return itself, where unity is found in multiplicity and being in becoming.

#on/heraclitus #on/becoming #on/multiplicity #on/eternalreturn

The Player-Artist-Child

The player temporarily abandons himself to life and temporarily fixes his gaze upon it; the artist places himself provisionally in his work and provisionally above it; the child plays, withdraws from the game and returns to it. Page 47

The figures of the player, artist, and child exemplify a mode of existence that embraces and affirms the dynamic process of becoming and its inherent being.

#on/symbolism #on/becoming

Not Hubris, But Play and Innocence

the secret of Heraclitus interpretation; he opposes the instinct of the game to hubris; "It is not guilty pride but the ceaselessly reawoken instinct of the game which calls forth new worlds." Not a theodicy but a cosmodicy, not a sum of injustices to be expiated but justice as the law of this world; not hubris but play, innocence . [Page 48](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/Q48](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/Q46U7QUM?page=48&annotation=LEBMM9RB)

Heraclitus's perspective is one of the "instinct of the game," emphasizing play and innocence as foundational principles of the cosmos, rather than hubris, a theodicy, or expiation of injustice.

#on/heraclitus #on/play #on/innocence

The Dicethrow

11. The Dicethrow Page 48

Affirmation of Chance and Necessity

"0 sky above me, you pure and lofty sky! This is now your purity to me, that there is no eternal reason-spider and spider's web in you; that you are to me a dance floor for divine chances, that you are to me a god's table for divine dice and dicers" (Z III "Before Sunrise" p. 1 86). Page 48

The dice which are thrown once are the affirmation of chance , the combination which they form on falling is the affirmaยญtion of necessity. Page 49

"I have found this happy certainty in all things: that they prefer to dance on the feet of chance" (Z III "Before Sunrise" p. 1 86); Page 49

The dicethrow symbolizes the affirmation of both chance (the act of throwing) and necessity (the resulting combination), suggesting a universe that embraces the unpredictable dance of possibilities.

#on/dicethrow #on/chance #on/necessity #on/symbolism

Affirming Chance and Necessity

There are many numbers with increasing or decreasing probabilities, but only one number of chance as such, one fatal number which reunites all the fragments of chance, like midday gathers together the scattered parts of midnight. This is why it is sufficient for the player to affirm chance once in order to produce the number which brings back the diceยญthrow. Page 49

To abolish chance by holding it in the grip of causality and finality, to count on the repetition of throws rather than affirming chance, to anticipate a result instead of affirming necessity - these are all the operations of a bad player. Page 50

That the universe has no purpose, that it has no end to hope for any more than it has causes to be known - this is the certainty necessary to play well (VP III 465). Page 50

Not a probability distributed over several throws but all chance at once; not a final, desired, willed combination, but the fatal combination, fatal and loved, amor fati; not the return of a combination by the number of throws, but the repetition of a dicethrow by the nature of the fatally obtained number. Page 50

Playing well the "game" of existence requires the affirmation of both chance and necessity, embracing the unpredictable throw and its fated outcome (amor fati), rejecting attempts to control or eliminate chance through causality, finality, or statistical probability.

#on/chance #on/necessity #on/play #on/amorfati

Consequences for the Eternal Return

12. Consequences for the Eternal Return Page 50

Eternal Return as Result and Repetition of the Dicethrow

The eternal return is the second moment, the result of the Page 50

dicethrow, the affirmation of necessity, the number which brings together all the parts of chance. But it is also the return of the first moment, the repetition of the dicethrow, the reproduction and reยญaffirmation of chance itself. Page 51

The Eternal Return is understood as both the necessary outcome (result) and the active repetition (return) of the dicethrow, embodying the simultaneous affirmation of chance and necessity.

#on/eternalreturn #on/dicethrow #on/chance #on/necessity

Probabilities vs. Fatal Number

the fragments of chance are slaves who want to speak as masters Page 51

affirm the number which is not probable but fatal and necessary. Page 51

Focusing on statistical probabilities is seen as a superficial, reactive approach ("slaves speaking as masters") compared to affirming the singular, fatal, and necessary outcome of chance.

#on/chance #on/probability #on/necessity

Circular Movement and Chaos as Original Law

"There was not first of all chaos, then little by little a regular and circular movement of all the forms: on the contrary, all this is eternal, removed from becoming; if there ever was a chaos of forces the chaos was eternal and has reappeared in every cycle . Circular movement has not come into being, it is the original law, in the same way as the mass of force is the original law without exception or possible infraction. All becoming happens inside of the cycle and the mass of force" (VP II 325 - circular movement = cycle, mass of force = chaos). Page 52

Nietzsche's cosmology posits circular movement (the cycle) and the mass of force (chaos) as original, eternal laws, not evolutionary outcomes. All becoming unfolds within this framework.

#on/cosmology #on/chaos #on/cycle #on/becoming

Nietzsche's Symbolism

13. Nietzsche's Symbolism Page 52

Fire as the Element of Affirmation and Transformation

This power, not of suppression of multiplicity but of affirmation of it all at once, is like fire . Fire is the element which plays, the element of transformations which has no opposite . The earth which is broken under the dice therefore projects "rivers of flame" . Page 52

Fire is used as a symbol for the affirmative power that embraces multiplicity and transformation, embodying the dynamic, unopposed element of play in the universe.

#on/symbolism #on/fire #on/affirmation

Creating a Dancing Star from Chaos

The formula of the game is: give birth to a dancing star with the chaos that one has in oneself (Z Prologue S p. 46). Page 53

A key Nietzschean formulation is to use one's internal chaos as the raw material for creative transformation, symbolized by giving birth to a "dancing star."

#on/creation #on/chaos #on/symbolism

Interpreting Aphorisms

An aphorism, properly stamped and moulded, has not been 'deciphered' when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its exegesis" (GM Preface 8 p. 23). Page 54

Aphorisms demand deep interpretation (exegesis) beyond mere reading, requiring engagement with their underlying forces and senses.

#on/aphorism #on/interpretation

Interpretation of the Eternal Return and Dicethrow

The interpretation of the eternal return begins with the dicethrow but it has only just begun. We must still interpret the dicethrow itself, at the same time as it returns. Page 54

Understanding the eternal return is an ongoing process that starts with but does not end at the concept of the dicethrow, requiring continuous re-interpretation as it "returns."

#on/eternalreturn #on/dicethrow #on/interpretation

Nietzsche and Mallarme

14. Nietzsche and Mallerme Page 55

Mallarme's Dicethrow and Nihilism

1) To think is to send out a dicethrow Page 55

2) Man does not know how to play. Page 55

3) Not only is the throwing of the dice an unreasonable and irrational, absurd and superhuman act, but it constitutes the tragic attempt and the tragic thought par excellence Page 55

4) The number-constellation is, or could be, the book, the work of art as outcome and j ustification of the world. Page 55

The dice throw is nothing when detached from innocence and the affirmation of chance . The dicethrow is nothing if chance and necessity are opposed in it. Page 57

This section compares Nietzsche's ideas to Mallarme, noting parallels in the symbolism of the dicethrow, but highlighting that Mallarme's interpretation is colored by nihilism, bad conscience, and ressentiment, unlike Nietzsche's affirmative perspective.

#on/mallarme #on/dicethrow #on/nihilism

Tragic Thought

IS. Tragic Thought Page 57

Revenge and the Impress of Nihilism

The instinct of revenge has gained such a hold on humanity over the centuries that the whole of metaphysics, psychology, history and above all morality bear its imprint. As soon as man began thinking he Page 57

introduced the bacillus of revenge into things" (VP III 45 8). Page 58

To have ressentiยญment or not to have res sentiment - there is no greater difference, beyond psychology, beyond history, beyond metaphysics. It is the true differยญence or transcendental typology - the genealogical and hierarchical difference . Page 58

Revenge is identified as a pervasive instinct that has corrupted key areas of human thought and history. The distinction between having or not having ressentiment is presented as a fundamental, genealogical difference determining type.

#on/revenge #on/ressentiment #on/nihilism

Affirmative Thought and Eternal Return

The phrase "a new way of thinking" means an affirmaยญtive thought, a thought which affirms life and the will to life, a thought which fmally expels the whole of the negative; to believe in the innocence of the future and the past, to believe in the eternal return. Page 58

A fundamental "new way of thinking" is characterized by affirmation of life and the will to life, rejecting negativity and embracing the innocence of time and the eternal return.

#on/thought #on/affirmation #on/eternalreturn

Willing = Creating, Joyful Destruction

"Will, this is what the liberator and the messenger of joy is called" (Z II "Of Redemption"). Page 59

to will = to create . We have not understood that the tragic is pure and multiple positivity, dynamic gaeity . Affirmation is tragic because it affirms chance and the necessity of chance; because it affirms multiplicity and the unity of multiplicity. The dicethrow is tragic . All the rest is nihilism, Christian and dialectic pathos, caricaยญture of the tragic , comedy of bad conscience . Page 59

Willing is fundamentally creative and joyful. The tragic is understood as pure, dynamic affirmation of chance, necessity, multiplicity, and unity (embodied by the dicethrow), contrasting sharply with the negative pathos of nihilism, Christianity, and dialectics.

#on/willing #on/creation #on/tragedy #on/affirmation #on/dicethrow

The Touchstone

16. The Touchstone Page 59

Philosophy from Happiness, Not Dissatisfaction

"It is not necessary to wait", Nietzsche says, "for unhappiness, as those who make philosophy derive from dissatisยญfaction think. It is in happiness that one must begin, in full virile Page 59

maturity, in the fire of this burning joy which is that of the adult and victorious age" (PTG 1 ) Page 60

True philosophy, according to Nietzsche, springs from a position of strength, happiness, and mature joy, not from dissatisfaction or suffering.

#on/philosophy #on/happiness #on/joy

Playing vs. Betting, Dancing vs. Leaping

Zarathustra, without preconceptions, opposes playing to betting and dancing to leaping: it is the bad player who bets and above all it is the buffoon who leaps, who thinks that leaping means dancing, overยญ coming, going beyond Page 60

Zarathustra distinguishes between authentic engagement (playing, dancing) and superficial actions (betting, leaping) which mistake mere effort or calculation for genuine affirmation and transcendence.

#on/zarathustra #on/play #on/dance

Overcoming Chaos and Nihilism

This prophecy we have fulfilled" (VP III 42/WP 83). Nietzsche means that we have managed to discover another game , another way of playing: we have discovered the Overman beyond two human-all-too-human ways of existing; we have managed to make chaos an object of affirmaยญ tion instead of positing it as something to be denied. Page 60

Nietzsche suggests a new, affirmative way of engaging with existence ("another game") that embraces chaos rather than denying it, leading to the emergence of the Overman.

#on/overman #on/chaos #on/affirmation

Active and Reactive

2 Active and Reactive Page 62

The Body

1. The Body Page 62

What a Body Can Do

we do not even know what a body can do Page 62

Citing Spinoza, the text notes the profound, often unrealized potential of the body.

#on/body #on/spinoza

Consciousness and the Self

consciousness is defined less in relation to exteriority (in terms of the real) than in relation to superiority (in terms of values). Page 62

Conยญsciousness is never self-consciousness, but the consciousness of an ego in relation to a self which is not itself conscious. It is not the master's consciousness but the slave's consciousness in relation to a master who is not himself conscious. Page 62

Consciousness is understood not in relation to external reality but to values and a sense of superiority. It is characterized as the ego's relation to an unconscious Self, specifically compared to the slave's perspective relative to a non-conscious master.

#on/consciousness #on/body #on/self

Body as Relation of Forces

There are nothing but quantities of force in mutual "relations of tension" (VP II 373/WP 635). Every force is related to others and it either obeys or commands. What defines a body is this relation between dominant and dominated forces. Every relationship of forces constitutes a body - whether it is chemical, biological, social or political . Page 63

A body, in a broad sense, is defined by the dynamic relationship and hierarchy between dominant and dominated forces, existing as quantities of force in relations of tension.

#on/body #on/force #on/hierarchy

The Distinction of Forces: Active vs. Reactive

In a body the superior or dominant forces are known as active and the inferior or dominated forces are known as reactive . Page 63

difference between forces qualified according to their quantity as active or reactive will be called hierarchy Page 63

The Distinction of Forces

2. The Distinction of Forces Page 63

Within any "body" (system of forces), dominant forces are termed "active" and dominated forces are "reactive." The quantitative difference between forces, resulting in these qualities, is called hierarchy.

#on/force #on/active #on/reactive #on/hierarchy

Consciousness and Reactive Functions

Consciousness is essentially reactive; this is why we do not know what a body can do, or what activity it is capable of (GS 354). And what is said of consciousness must also be said of memory and habit. Furthยญ ermore we must also say it of nutrition, reproduction, conservation and adaptation. These are reactive functions, reactive specialisations, expressions of particular reactive forces Page 64

Consciousness and fundamental biological functions like memory, habit, nutrition, reproduction, and adaptation are identified as essentially reactive, expressions of reactive forces.

#on/consciousness #on/reactive #on/body

The Self and Active Forces

The body's active forces make it a self and define the self as superior and astonishing: "A most powerful being, an unknown sage - he is called Self. He inhabits your body, he is your body" Page 65

The active forces within the body are what constitute the Self, portraying it as a powerful and unknown entity.

#on/self #on/active #on/body

Science and Consciousness

there can only be science where there is no consciousness, where there can be no consciousness. Page 65

The text suggests science is possible only in the absence of consciousness, implying a fundamental incompatibility or limitation imposed by consciousness on scientific inquiry.

#on/science #on/consciousness

Active Force: Reaching Out for Power

"What is active? - reaching out for power" Page 65

Active force is characterized by an expansive movement or "reaching out for power."

#on/active #on/force

Reactive Force Needs the Active for Interpretation

The reactive is a primordial quality of force but one which can only be interpreted as such in relation to and on the basis of the active . Page 65

Reactive force is a basic quality but can only be interpreted and understood in the context of and relative to active force.

#on/reactive #on/active #on/force

Quantity and Quality

3. Quantity and Quality Page 65

Quality Derived from Quantitative Difference

Forces have quantity, but they also have the quality which corresยญ ponds to their difference in quantity: the qualities of force are called "active" and "reactive" Page 65

Quantity itself is therefore inseparable from difference in quantity . Difference in quantity is the essence of force and of the relation of force to force . Page 66

Quality is nothing but difference in quantity and corresponds to it each time forces enter into relation. Page 67

The quality (active or reactive) of a force is not inherent but derives entirely from the quantitative difference between forces when they relate. This quantitative difference is fundamental to the essence of force itself.

#on/force #on/quantity #on/quality #on/difference

Nietzsche and Science

4. Nietzsche and Science Page 67

Against the Undifferentiated in Science

his whole critique operates on three levels; against logical identity, against mathematical equality and against physical equilibยญ rium. Against the three forms of the undifferentiated Page 68

The attempt to deny differยญences is a part of the more general enterprise of denying life, depreยญ ciating existence and promising it a death ("heat" or otherwise) where the universe sinks into the undifferentiated. Page 68

Nietzsche's critique extends to scientific concepts like logical identity, mathematical equality, and physical equilibrium, viewing them as forms of "the undifferentiated" that ultimately align with a denial of life and difference.

#on/nietzsche #on/science #on/difference

Nihilism and Reactive Forces in Thought

The instrument of nihilistic thought is the triumph of reactive forces. Page 68

Nihilistic thought is identified as a manifestation of the victory of reactive forces.

#on/nihilism #on/reactive

Eternal Return as Repetition of Difference

the eternal return is in no sense a thought of the identical but rather a thought of synthesis, a thought of the absolutely different which calls for a new principle outside science . This principle is that of the reproduction of diversity as such, of the repetition of difference; the opposite of "adiaphoria". (VP II 374 "There is no adiaphoria although we can imagine it.") Page 69

The eternal return is not the permanence of the same, the equilibrium state or the resting place of the identical . It is not the 'same' or the 'one' which comes back in the eternal return but return is itself the one which ought to belong to diversity and to that which differs. Page 69

The eternal return is clarified as the repetition of difference and the reproduction of diversity, fundamentally distinct from a return of the identical or a state of equilibrium. The return itself is the unity found in diversity.

#on/eternalreturn #on/difference #on/repetition

First Aspect of the Eternal Return: Cosmology and Physics

5. First Aspect of the Eternal Return: as cosmological and physical doctrine Page 70

Eternal Return: Being of Becoming, Identity of Returning

What is the being of that which becomes, of that which neither starts nor fmishes becoming? Returยญning is the being of that which becomes (Revenir, l'etre de ce qui devient). "That everything recurs is the closest approximation of a world of becoming to a world of being - high point of the meditation" (VP II 1 70/WP 617). Page 71

We misinterpret the expression "eternal return" if we understand it as "return of the same" . It is not being that returns but rather the returning itself that constitutes being insofar as it is affirmed of becoming and of that which passes. It is not some one thing which returns but rather returning itself is the one thing which is affirmed of diversity or multiplicity. In other words, identity in the eternal return does not describe the nature of that which returns but, on the contrary, the fact of returning for that which differs. Page 71

The first aspect of the eternal return, as a cosmological/physical principle, defines "being" as the act of "returning" itself, inherent in becoming. Identity lies in the fact of returning for that which differs, not in the return of identical things.

#on/eternalreturn #on/becoming #on/being

Against Cycles, Towards Will to Power

The cyclical hypothesis is incapable of accounยญting for two things - the diversity of co-existing cycles and, above all, the existence of diversity within the cycle. 9 This is why we can only understand the eternal return as the expression of a principle which serves as an explanation of diversity and its reproduction, of differยญ ence and its repetition. Nietzsche presents this principle as one of his most important philosophical discoveries. He calls it will to power. By will to power "I express the characteristic that cannot be thought out of the mechanistic order without thinking away this order itself'' (VP II 374/WP 634*). Page 72

The eternal return is not simply a cyclical return, as cycles cannot account for diversity. Instead, it is grounded in the principle of the will to power, which explains the repetition of difference and the reproduction of diversity, even within a mechanistic framework.

#on/eternalreturn #on/willtopower #on/cycle #on/difference

What is the Will to Power?

6. What is the Will to Power? Page 72

Will to Power as Genealogical Element of Force

"The victorious concept 'force', by means of which our physicists have created God and the world, still needs to be completed: an inner will must be ascribed to it, which I designate as 'will to power' " (VP II 309/WP 619). The will to power is thus ascribed to force , but in a very special way: it is both a complement of force and something internal to it. It is not ascribed to it as a predicate. Indeed, if we pose the question "which one", we cannot say that force is the one that wills. The will to power alone is the one that wills, it does not let itself be delegated or alienated to another subject, even to force (VP I 204, II 54; "Who therefore will power? An absurd question, if being is by itself will to power ... ") Page 72

This is what the will to power is; the genealogical element of force, both differential and genetic . The will to power is the element from which derive both the quantitative difference of related forces and the quality that devolves into each force in this relation . The will to power here reveals its nature as the principle of the synthesis of forces. Page 73

Force is what can, will to power is what wills (La force est ce qui peut, la volonte de puissance est ce qui veut). Page 73

Will to power is presented not as a property of force but as the inner, differential, and genetic element within force that constitutes its nature and relations. It is "what wills" in force, determining the quantitative differences and qualitative outcomes (active/reactive) and acting as the principle synthesizing forces.

#on/willtopower #on/force #on/genealogy

Nietzsche's Terminology

7. Nietzsche's Terminology Page 75

Will to Power, Chance, and Qualities

The will to power as a principle does not suppress chance but, on the contrary, implies it, because without chance it would be neither plastic nor changing. Page 76

Forces are said to be dominant or dominated depending on their difference in quantity . Forces are said to be active or reactive depenยญding on their quality . There is will to power in the reactive or domiยญnated force as well as in the active or dominant force Page 76

Affirming and denying, appreciating and depreciating, express the will to power just as acting and reacting express force . (And just as reactive forces are still forces, the will to deny, nihilism, is still will to power: " ... a will to nothingness, an aversion to life, a rebellion against the most fundaยญ mental presuppositions of life; but it is and remains a will!" GM III 28 p. 1 63) Page 77

Affirmation is not action but the power of becoming active, becoming active personified. Negation is not simple reaction but a becoming reactive . It is as if affirmation and negation were both immanent and transcendent in relation to action and reacยญtion; out of the web of forces they make up the chain of becoming. Page 77

Will to power incorporates chance, is present in both active and reactive forces, and expresses itself through the qualities of affirming and denying (nihilism being a mode of denying). Affirmation is the power behind becoming active, while negation is a becoming reactive, together forming the dynamic chain of becoming.

#on/willtopower #on/chance #on/active #on/reactive #on/affirmation #on/negation

Interpretation and Evaluation

To interpret is to determine the force which gives sense to a thing. To evaluate is to determine the will to power which gives value to a thing. Page 77

Interpretation seeks the force underlying sense, while evaluation seeks the will to power underlying value.

#on/interpretation #on/evaluation #on/force #on/willtopower

Origin and Inverted Image

8. Origin and Inverted I mage Page 78

Reactive Forces Create Inverted Images

seen from the side of reactive forces the differential and genealogical element appears upside down, difference has become negation, affirยญmation has become contradiction. Page 79

Genealogy is the art of difference or distinction, the art of nobility; but it sees itself upside down in the mirror of reactive forces. Page 79

they do not see themselves as forces and prefer to turn against themselves rather than seeing themselves in this way and accepting difference. Page 79

The perspective of reactive forces inverts the true genealogical element, perceiving difference as negation and affirmation as contradiction, thereby distorting the nature of genealogy and the will to power.

#on/reactive #on/genealogy #on/inversion #on/difference

Reactive Forces Decompose Active Forces

even by getting together reactive forces do not form a greater force, one that would be active . They proceed in an entirely different way - they decompose; they separate active force from what it can do ; they take away a part or almost all of its power . In this way reactive forces do not become active but, on the contrary, they make active forces join them and become reactive in a new sense. Page 80

an active force becomes reactive (in a new sense) when reactive forces (in the first sense) separate it from what it can do . Page 80

The triumph of reactive forces does not involve them becoming active; rather, they gain dominance by decomposing active forces, separating them from their potential and rendering them reactive in turn.

#on/reactive #on/active #on/force

The Problem of the Measure of Forces

9. The Problem of the Measure of Forces Page 81

The Weak Prevail by Separating Force from its Capacity

"The strong always have to be defended against the weak" (VP I 395). Page 81

The slave does not stop being a slave by being triumphant; when the weak triumph it is not by forming a greater force but by separating force from what it can do. Page 82

The weak achieve dominance not by increasing their own strength but by diminishing the capacity of the strong, separating force from its power to act. Their triumph is a victory of reactive force, not a transformation into active force.

#on/force #on/weakness #on/reactive #on/triumph

Hierarchy

10. Hierarchy Page 82

Facts Used by the Weak

Because it does not take the qualities offorces into account free thought is, by vocation, at the service of reactive forces and expresses their triumph. For the fact is always something used by the weak against the strong; "the fact is always stupid, having at all times resembled a calf rather than a god" (UM II "Use and Abuse of History" 8). Page 83

"There are no facts, nothing but interpretations" (VP II 1 33). Page 83

"Facts" are not neutral but can be tools wielded by the weak against the strong. Nietzsche's perspectivism, stating there are only interpretations, aligns with the idea that even what is considered a "fact" serves a particular power dynamic.

#on/facts #on/interpretation #on/reactive #on/weakness

Two Senses of Hierarchy

hierarchy has two senses. It signifies, firstly, the difference between active and reactive forces, the superiority of active to reactive forces. Page 83

hierarchy also designates the triumph of reactive forces, the contagion of reactive forces and the complex organisation .which results Page 83

Hierarchy can refer either to the inherent superiority of active forces or to the artificial dominance and organization achieved by reactive forces.

#on/hierarchy #on/active #on/reactive

Relative Accomplishment and Strength

The least strong is as strong as the strong if he goes to the limit, because the cunning, the subtelty, the wit and even the charm by which he makes up for his lesser strength are part of this strength so that it is no longer the least. (Zarathustra's two animals are the eagle and the serpent. The eagle is strong and proud but the serpent being crafty and charming is no less strong.) Page 84

Strength is not a simple measure of quantity but includes qualities like cunning and wit. Maximizing one's unique capacities, regardless of conventional strength, constitutes a form of power, exemplified by the serpent alongside the eagle.

#on/strength #on/quality #on/symbolism

Definitions of Reactive and Active Force

reactive force is: 1) utilitarian force of adaptation and partial limitaยญ tion; 2) force which separates active force from what it can do, which denies active force (triumph of the weak or the slaves); 3) force separated from what it can do, which denies or turns against itself (reign of the weak or of slaves). Page 84

active force is: 1) plastic , dominant and subjugating force; 2) force which goes to the limit of what it can do; 3) force which affirms its difference, which makes its difference an object of enjoyment and affirmation. Page 84

This provides explicit definitions: reactive force is utilitarian, limiting, and self-negating, while active force is plastic, maximizing its potential, and affirming its own difference.

#on/reactive #on/active #on/force #on/definition

Will to Power and Feeling of Power

I I. Will to Power and Feeling of Power Page 84

Will to Power as Genealogical Element and Capacity for Being Affected

genealogical element which determines the relation offorce with force and produces their quality . Page 85

the will to power is manifested as the capacity for being affected, as the determinate capacity of force for being affected. Page 85

the capacity for being affected is not necessarily a passivity but an affectivity, a sensibility, a sensation. Page 85

the will to power is "the primitive affective form" from which all other feelings derive (VP II 42). Or better still: "The will to power is not a being not a becoming, but a pathos" (VP II 3 1 1 /WP 635). That is to say: the will to power manif Page 85

ests itself as the sensibility of force; the differential element of forces manifests itself as their differential sensibility. Page 86

Will to power is re-emphasized as the genealogical element determining force relations and quality. It is also presented as fundamentally linked to the "capacity for being affected," manifesting as the "primitive affective form" or "pathos" and the differential sensibility of forces.

#on/willtopower #on/force #on/affect #on/pathos

Will to Power in the Inorganic World

will to power rules even in the inorganic world, or rather that there is no inorganic world. Action at a distance cannot be eliminated, for one thing attracts another and a thing feels itself attracted. This is the fundamental fact ... In order for the will to power to be able to manifest itself it needs to perceive the things it sees and feel the approach of what is assimilable to it" (VP II 89). Page 86

Will to power is not limited to the organic; it is present even in what is considered "inorganic," manifesting as attraction and a basic form of sensibility, suggesting the pervasive nature of will to power.

#on/willtopower #on/nature #on/affect

Will to Power, Sensibility, and Becoming Sensible

The active and the reactive are qualities of force that derive from the will to power. But the will to power itself has qualities, sensibilia , which are like the becomings of forces. The will to power manifests itself, in the first place, as the sensibility of forces and, in the second place, as the becoming sensible of forces: pathos is the most elementary fact from which a becoming arises (VP II 3 1 1 /WP 635 ) Page 86

Will to power is the source of force qualities (active/reactive) but also possesses its own "sensibilia" or qualities of sensation, which are the becomings of forces. Pathos is the most elementary level from which becoming emerges.

#on/willtopower #on/force #on/affect #on/pathos #on/becoming

The Becoming-Reactive of Forces

12. The Becoming-Reactive of Forces Page 87

Triumph of Reactive Forces as Nihilism

It must not be said that active force becomes reactive because reactive forces triumph; on the conยญtrary, they triumph because, by separating active force from what it can do, they betray it to the will of nothingness, to a becoming-reactive deeper than themselves. This is why the figures of triumph of reactive forces (ressentiment, bad conscience, and the ascetic ideal) are primarily forms of nihilism. Page 87

Reactive forces gain dominance not by becoming strong themselves, but by weakening active forces and leading them towards a "becoming-reactive" rooted in the will to nothingness. The triumph of reactive forces is therefore fundamentally a triumph of nihilism.

#on/reactive #on/active #on/force #on/nihilism #on/ressentiment #on/badconscience #on/asceticideal

The Eternal Return of the Small Man

"The great disgust at man - it choked me and had crept into my throat . . . The man of whom you are weary, the little man recurs eternally ... Alas man recurs eternally! ... And eternal return, even for the smallest - that was my disgust at all existence! Ah, disgust! Disgust! Disgust!" (Z III "The Convalescent" pp. 235-6). Page 88

Zarathustra's "great disgust" reflects the terrifying possibility of the eternal return of the "little man," symbolizing the perpetual recurrence of reactive, contemptible human existence.

#on/eternalreturn #on/reactive #on/zarathustra

Overcoming Nihilism: Becoming the Overman

In order to affirm the eternal return it is necessary to bite off and spit out the snake's head. Then the shepherd is no longer either man or shepherd, "he was transformed, surยญrounded with light, he was laughing! Never yet on earth had any man laughed as he laughed" (Z III "Of the Vision and the Riddle" p. 1 80*). Another becoming, another sensibility: the Overman. Page 88

To truly affirm the eternal return requires overcoming the nihilism represented by the "snake's head." This act leads to a profound transformation, a new becoming and sensibility that transcends conventional humanity, giving rise to the Overman.

#on/eternalreturn #on/nihilism #on/overman #on/transmutation

Ambivalence of Sense and of Values

13. Ambivalence of Sense and of Values Page 88

Dangerous Power of Reactive Forces

They separate us from our power but at the same time they give us another power, "dangerous" and "interesting" . They bring us new feelings and teach us new ways of being affected. There is something admirable in the becoming-reactive of forces, admirable and dangerous. Page 89

"Human history would be altogether too stupid a thing without the spirit that the impotent have introduced into it" (GM I 7 p. 33). Page 89

While reactive forces limit active potential, they also introduce a unique, ambivalent form of power that creates new affects and complexity, suggesting a dual nature that is both dangerous and "interesting."

#on/reactive #on/force #on/power #on/affect

Different Types of Reactive Forces

One reactive force both obeys and resists, another separates active force from what it can do; a third contaminates active force, carries it along to the limit ofbecoming-reactive, into the will to nothingness; a fourth type of reactive force was originally active but became reactive and separated from its power, it was then dragged into the abyss and turned against itself Page 90

Reactive forces manifest in diverse ways, including simple obedience/resistance, actively debilitating active forces, driving towards nihilism, or representing forces that were once active but turned reactive and self-negating.

#on/reactive #on/force #on/typology

Affirmation as Becoming-Active

There are reactive forces that become grandiose and fascinating by following the will to nothingness and there are active forces that subside because they do not know how to follow the powers of affirmatio Page 90

in order to become active it is not sufficient for a force to go to the limit of what it can do, it must make what it can do an object of affirmation. Becoming-active is affirming and affirmative, just as becomingยญreactive is negating and nihilistic . Page 91

Becoming active is not merely a function of capacity but requires a deliberate act of affirming that capacity. This ties becoming-active directly to affirmation, contrasting with becoming-reactive's link to negation and nihilism.

#on/active #on/reactive #on/affirmation #on/becoming

Second Aspect of the Eternal Return: Ethical and Selective Thought

14. Second Aspect of the Eternal Return: as ethical and selective thought Page 91

Becoming-Active through Selection

becoming-active can only be thought as the product of a selection . A simultaneous double selection by the activity of force and the affirmation of the will. Page 91

"If, in all that you will you begin by asking yourself: is it certain that I will to do it an infinite number of times? This should be your most solid centre of gravity" (VP IV 242). Page 91

The second aspect of the eternal return is its ethical dimension, functioning as a principle of selective thought where only that which can be willed infinitely is affirmed, driving a selection towards becoming active.

#on/eternalreturn #on/ethics #on/selection #on/becoming

Eternal Return Transmutes Nihilism into Affirmation

The thought of the eternal return eliminates from willing everything which falls outside the eternal return, it makes willing a creation, it brings about the equation "willing = creating" . Page 92

Only the eternal return can complete nihilism because it makes negation a negation of reactive forces themselves. By and in the eternal return nihilism no longer expresses itself as the conservation and victory of the weak but as their destruction, their self-destruction . Page 93

"it is the condition of strong spirits and wills, and these do not fmd it possible to stop with the negative of 'judgement'; their nature demands active negation" (VP III 1 02/WP 24). This is the only way in which reactive forces become active . Page 93

"eternal joy of becoming ... that joy which includes even joy in destroying", "The affirmation of passing away and destroying, which is the decisive feature of a Dionysian philosophy" (EH III Page 93

the eternal return produces becoming-active . Page 94

The small, petty, reactive man will not return. In and through the eternal return negation as a quality of the will to power transmutes itself into affirmation, it becomes an affirmation of negation itself, it becomes a power of affirming, an affirmative power. This is what Nietzsche presents as Zarathustra's cure and Dionysus' secret. "Nihilism vanยญquished by itself'' thanks to the eternal return (VP III). Page 94

The eternal return is presented as the force that purifies willing into creation and overcomes nihilism by turning its destructive energy back onto reactive forces. This process transmutes negation into an affirmative power, leading to "becoming-active" and the vanquishing of nihilism from within itself.

#on/eternalreturn #on/willing #on/creation #on/nihilism #on/transmutation #on/affirmation #on/reactive

Eternal Return as Selective Being

It is no longer a question of the simple thought of the eternal return eliminating from willing everything that falls outside this thought but rather, of the eternal return making something come into being which cannot do so without changing nature. It is no longer a question of selective thought but of selective being; for the eternal return is being and being is selection. (Selection = hierarchy) Page 94

Moving beyond merely selective thought, the eternal return, as the principle of being itself, embodies a selective force that determines what exists and gives rise to new natures (selective being = hierarchy).

#on/eternalreturn #on/being #on/selection #on/hierarchy

The Problem of the Eternal Return

15ยท. The Problem of the Eternal Return Page 94

Transmutation of Values

transmutation of values, or transvaluaยญtion , means affirmation instead of negation - negation transformed into a power of affirmation, the supreme Dionysian metamorphosis. Page 94

Transmutation of values is presented as a core concept: the transformation of negation itself into a force of affirmation, a Dionysian process that replaces a negative orientation with a positive one.

#on/transmutation #on/values #on/affirmation #on/negation #on/dionysian

Double Affirmation

affirmation is twofold: the being of becoming cannot be fully affirmed without also affirming the existence of becomingยญ active . Page 95

eternal return thus has a double aspect: it is the universal being of becoming, but the universal being of becoming ought to belong to a single becoming. Only becoming-active has a being which is the being of the whole of becoming. Returning is everything but everything is affirmed in a single moment. Page 95

the complete formula of affirmation is: the whole, yes, universal being, yes, but universal being ought to belong to a single becoming, the whole ought to belong to a single moment. Page 95

Affirmation is understood as a double process: affirming the being inherent in all becoming and affirming the specific emergence of becoming-active. The eternal return encompasses this double affirmation, linking universal being to the singular moment of becoming-active.

#on/affirmation #on/eternalreturn #on/becoming #on/being #on/active

Critique

3 Critique Page 96

Transformation of the Sciences of Man

I. Transformation of the Sciences of Man Page 96

Active Philology and Linguistics

The secret of the word is no more on the side of the one who hears than the secret of the will is on the side of the one who obeys or the secret of force on the side of the one who reacts. Page 97

Nietzsche's active philology has only one principle: a word only means2* something insofar as the speaker wills something by saying it; and one rule: treating speech as a real activity, placing oneself at the point of view of the speaker. Page 97

Active linguistics looks to discover who it is that speaks and names. "Who uses a particular word, what does he apply it to first of all; himself, someone else who listens, something else, and with what intention? Page 97

What does he will by uttering a particular word?" Page 98

Nietzsche's approach to the "sciences of man" (like philology and linguistics) is "active," focusing on the creative agency and will of the speaker or agent, rather than the passive reception or reaction of the listener or object. Meaning resides in the wielder of force or will.

#on/philology #on/linguistics #on/active #on/will

Three Forms of Active Science and the Philosopher of the Future

A symptomatology, since it interprets phenomena, treating them as symptoms whose sense must be sought in the forces that produce them. A typology, since it interprets forces from the standpoint of their quality, be it active or reactive . A genealogy, since it evaluates the origin of forces from the point of view of their nobility or baseness, since it discovers their ancestry in the will to power and the quality of this will. Page 98

the "philosopher of the future": the philosopher-physician (the physician interprets symptoms), the philosopher-artist (the artist moulds types), the philosopher-legislator (the legislator determines rank, genealogy) (cf. PTG, VP IV). Page 98

Nietzsche's vision for a transformed "science of man" involves three active forms: symptomatology (phenomena as symptoms of forces), typology (forces by quality), and genealogy (origin of forces by will to power quality). The future philosopher embodies these roles.

#on/science #on/philosophy #on/symptomatology #on/typology #on/genealogy

The Form of the Question in Nietzsche

2. The Form of the Question in Nietzsche Page 98

Asking "Which One?"

Asking which one is beautiful, which one is j ust and not what beauty is, what j ustice is, was therefore the result of a worked-out method, implying an original conception of essence and a whole sophistic art which was opposed to the dialectic . An empirical and pluralist art. Page 99

"which one?" (qui) means this: what are the forces which take hold of a given thing, what is the will that possesses it? Which one is expressed, manifested and even hidden in it? Page 100

essence is merely the sense and value of the thing; essence is determined by the forces with affinity for the thing and by the will with affinity for these forces Page 100

Nietzsche's distinctive philosophical method is characterized by asking "Which one?" rather than "What is...?" This approach aims to uncover the specific forces and will expressed in a phenomenon, revealing its essence as a matter of sense and value determined by these dynamics, in opposition to dialectical universalism.

#on/method #on/question #on/force #on/will #on/essence

Nietzsche's Method

3. Nietzsche's Method Page 101

Relating Concepts to Will to Power

Any given conยญcept, feeling or belief will be treated as symptoms of a will that wills something. What does the one that says this, that thinks or feels that, will? It is a matter of showing that he could not say, think or feel this particular thing if he did not have a particular will, particular forces, a particular way of being. Page 101

The method is as follows: relating a concept to the will to power in order to make it the symptom of a will without which it could not even be thought (nor the feeling experienced, nor the action undertaken). Page 101

What a will wants is not an object, an objective or an end. Ends and objects, even motives, are still symptoms. What a will wants, depenยญding on its quality, is to affirm its difference or to deny what differs. Page 101

What a will wants is always its own quality and the quality of the corresponding fore๏ฟฝ๏ฟฝ. Page 101

We are demanding that the question be answered not by examples but by the determination of a type . And, a type is in fact constituted by the quality of the will to power, the nuance of this quality and the corresponding relation of forces: everything else is symptom. Page 102

A type can only be defined by determining what the will wants in the exampยญlars of this type . What does the one that seeks truth want? This is the only way of knowing which one seeks truth Page 102

Nietzsche's method involves interpreting all concepts, feelings, and beliefs as symptoms of an underlying will to power. This method seeks to determine the "type" of will and forces at play, defining a type not by its objects or ends, but by its fundamental quality (affirmation/denial of difference).

#on/method #on/willtopower #on/type #on/symptom #on/difference

Against his Predecessors

4. Against his Predecessors Page 102

Misunderstanding 1: Power as Representation

" For what does not exist cannot will; but that which is alive , how Page 102

could it still will to live?" Page 103

1) Power is interpreted as the object of a representation . In the expresยญ sion "the will wants power or desires domination", the relation of representation and power is so close that all power is represented and every representation is of power. The aim of the will is also the object of representation and vice versa. Page 103

Nietzsche critiques predecessors for misunderstanding power as a representational object that the will desires, thereby limiting its true nature.

#on/willtopower #on/misunderstanding #on/representation

Misunderstanding 2: Recognition and Established Values

What we present to ourselves as power itself is merely the representation of power formed by the slave. What we present to ourselves as the master is the idea of him formed by the slave , the idea formed by the slave when he imagines himself in the master's place, it is the slave as he is when he actually triumphs Page 104

When we make power an object of representation we necessarily make it dependent upon the factor according to which a thing is represented or not, recognised or not. Now, only values which are already current, only accepted values, give criteria of recognition in this way. Page 104

the whole conception of the will to power, from Hobbes to Hegel, presupposes the existence of establish values that wills seek only to have attributed to themยญ selves. Page 104

A second misunderstanding is linking power to recognition, which ties it to existing, conventional values. This is seen as the slave's perspective, where wills seek only attribution within a pre-established value system.

#on/willtopower #on/misunderstanding #on/recognition #on/values

Misunderstanding 3: Struggle

It is characterisยญtic of established values to be brought into play in a struggle, but it is characteristic of the struggle to be always referred to established values: whether it is struggle for power, struggle for recognition or struggle for life - the schema is always the same. One cannot over emphasise the extent to which the notions of struggle, war, rivalry or even comparison are foreign to Nietzsche and to his conception of the will to power. Page 105

Struggle is never the active expression of forces, nor the manifestation of a will to power that affirms - any more than its result expresses the triumph of the master or the strong. Struggle, on the contrary is the means by which the weak prevail over the strong because they are the greatest" number. Page 105

Darwin confused struggle and selection. He failed to see that the result of struggle was the opposite of what he thought; that it does select, but it selects only the weak and assures their triumph (VP I 395 , TI). Page 105

A third misunderstanding is interpreting will to power through concepts like struggle, war, or rivalry. These are seen not as active expressions of force but as mechanisms by which the weak (often in numbers) gain dominance, contrasting sharply with Nietzsche's affirmative will to power.

#on/willtopower #on/misunderstanding #on/struggle #on/darwin

Against Pessimism and against Schopenhauer

5. Against Pessimism and against Schopenhauer Page 105

Fettered Will and Appearance

Hobbes the will to power is as if in a dream from which only the fear of death will rescue it. Hegel insists on the unreality of the situation of the master, for the master depends on the slave for recognition. Everyone puts contradiction into the will and also the will into conยญtradiction. Represented power is only appearance; the essence of the will does not establish itself in what is willed without losing itself in appearance . Page 106

Philosophers who portray will as limited or contradictory (like Hobbes' will constrained by fear or Hegel's master's will dependent on the slave) reduce true power to mere appearance.

#on/will #on/philosophy #on/hegel #on/hobbes

Schopenhauer's Will, Representation, and Denial

Schopenhauer is not content with an essence of the will, he makes the will the essence of things, "the world seen from the inside" . The will has become essence in general and in itself. But, on this basis, what it wants (its objectification) has become representation, appearยญance in general. Its contradiction become the basic contradiction: as essence it wills the appearance in which it is reflected. "The fate which awaits the will in the world in which it is reflected" is just the suffering of this contradiction. This is the formula of the will to live; the world as will and representation. Page 106

By making will the essence of the world Schopenhauer continues to understand the world as an illusion, an appearance, a representation (BGE 36, VP I 216 and III 325). Limiting the will is therefore not going to be enough for Schopenhauer. The will must be denied, it must deny itself. The Schopenhauerian choice: "We are stupid beings or, at best, beings who suppress themselves" (VP III 40). Page 106

Schopenhauer, by making will the essence of reality, paradoxically condemns the world of its manifestations as mere suffering appearance, leading him to advocate for the self-denial of the will, a path Nietzsche rejects.

#on/schopenhauer #on/will #on/representation #on/pessimism

Principles for the Philosophy of the Will

6. Principles for the Philosophy of the Will Page 107

Willing = Creating, Will = Joy

"willing = creating" and "will = joy" Page 107

Against this fettering of the will Nietzsche announces that willing liberates; against the suffering of the will Nietzsche announces that the will is joyful. Against the image of a will which dreams of having established values attributed to it Nietzsche announces that to will is to create new values. Page 108

The foundational principles of Nietzsche's philosophy of the will are that willing is synonymous with creation and that will is inherently joyful, liberating itself from constraints and generating new values.

#on/will #on/creation #on/joy #on/values

Will to Power is Creative and Bestowing

power is never measured against representation: it is never represented, it is not even interpreted or evaluated, it is "the one that" interprets, "the one that" evaluates, "the one that" wills. Page 108

What the will to power wills is a particular relation of forces, a particular quality of forces. And also a particular quality of power: affirming or denying. Page 108

the will to power is essentially creative and giving: it does not aspire, it does not seek, it does not desire, above all it does not desire power . It gives: power is something inexpressible in the will (something mobile, variable, plastic); power is in the will as "the bestowing virtue" , through power the will itself bestows sense and value . Page 108

Will to power is defined as the inherent, creative force that bestows sense and value, rather than being an object of desire or representation. It is the source of interpretation and evaluation, willing specific qualities of forces and affirmation/denial.

#on/willtopower #on/creation #on/values #on/sense

Critique, Transmutation, and Nobility

The element which creates sense and values must also be defined as the critical element. Page 109

High and noble designate, for Nietzsche, the superiority of active forces, their affmity with affirmaยญ tion, their tendency to ascend, their lightness. Low and base designate the triumph of reactive forces, their affmity with the negative, their heaviness or clumsiness. Page 109

The test of the eternal return will not let reactive forces subsist, any more than it will let the power of denying subsist. The eternal return transmutes the negative: it turns the heavy into something light, it makes the negative cross over to affirmation, it makes negation a power of affirming. Page 109

Critique is destruction as joy, the aggression of the creator. The creator of values cannot be distinguished from a desยญ troyer, from a criminal or from a critic : a critic of established values, reactive values and baseness. Page 110

The creative element is also critical, evaluating based on the distinction between noble (active, light) and base (reactive, heavy) forces. The eternal return facilitates a transmutation where the negative is transformed into affirmative power. Critique is the joyful destruction required for creation.

#on/critique #on/creation #on/values #on/transmutation #on/eternalreturn

Plan of The Genealogy of Morals

7. Plan of The Genealogy of Morals Page 110

Ressentiment, Bad Conscience, Ascetic Ideal

ressentiment, bad conscience and the ascetic ideal are the figures of the triumph of reactive forces and also the forms of nihilism. Page 110

Nietzsche presents ressentiment as "an imagiยญnary revenge", "an essentially spiritual vindication" (GM I 7 and 1 0). Moreover, the constitution of ressentiment implies a paralogism that Nietzsche analyses in detail: the paralogism of force separated from what it can do (GM I 1 3). Page 110

bad conscience is inseparable from "spiritual and imaginary events" (GM II 1 8). Bad conscience is by nature antinomic , expressing a force which is turned against itself. 15 In this sense it is the basis of what Nietzsche calls "the inverted world" (GM III 14 p. 1 24). Page 110

the ascetic ideal refers to the deepest mystification - that of the /deal, which includes all the others, all the fictions of morality and knowledge. Elegantia syllogismi, Nietzsche says. Here we are dealing with a will that wants nothingness, "but it is at least, and always remains, a will" (GM III 28). Page 111

Deleuze outlines the three main figures analyzed in Genealogy of Morals (ressentiment, bad conscience, ascetic ideal) as the manifestations of the triumph of reactive forces and core forms of nihilism, each based on a specific distortion or self-negation of force/will.

#on/genealogyofmorals #on/ressentiment #on/badconscience #on/asceticideal #on/nihilism #on/reactive

Critique of Dialectic's Anthropocentrism

dialectic , this new critique, carefully avoids asking the preliminary question: "Who must underยญtake critique, who is fit to undertake it?" They talk of reason, spirit, self-consciousness and man; but to whom do all these concepts refer? They do not tell us who man or spirit is. Page 111

Dialectical critique is limited by its failure to address the fundamental question of the "who" or the type of force/will that performs the critique, relying instead on abstract concepts like 'man' or 'reason'.

#on/dialectic #on/critique #on/who

Nietzsche and Kant from the Point of View of Principles

8. Nietzsche and Kant from the Point of View of Principles Page 112

Kant's Limited Critique

Kant merely pushed a very old conception of critique to the limit, a concepยญtion which saw ๏ฟฝritique as a force which should be brought to bear on all claims to knowledge and truth, but not on knowledge and truth themselves; a force which should be brought to bear on all claims to morality, but not on morality itself. Page 112

Three ideals are distinguished: what can I know? what should I do? what can I hope for? Page 112

Critique is nothing and says nothing insofar as it is content to say that true morality makes fun of morality. Critique has done nothing insofar as it has not been brought to bear on truth itself, on true knowledge, on true morality, on true religion. Page 113

Kant's critique, while significant, is seen as limited because it only judges claims about knowledge, morality, and religion, rather than turning its critical force upon these fundamental concepts themselves. His focus is on the limits of human faculties.

#on/kant #on/critique #on/limitation

Nietzsche's Total Critique and Perspectivism

Nietzsche, in this domain as in others, thinks that he has found the only possible principle of a total critique in what he calls his "perspecยญ tivism" : there are no moral facts or phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena (VP II 5 50); there are no illusions of knowledge, but knowledge itself is an illusion; knowledge is an error, or worse, a falsification. Page 113

Nietzsche's "perspectivism" is presented as the basis for a total critique that challenges the very foundation of concepts like morality and knowledge, arguing they are interpretations or illusions rather than objective facts or truths.

#on/nietzsche #on/perspectivism #on/critique #on/knowledge #on/morality

Realisation of Critique

9. Realisation of Critique Page 114

Will to Power as Legislative Principle

Only the will to power as genetic and genealogical principle, as legislative principle, is capable of realising internal critique . Only the will to power makes a transmutation possible . Page 114

that the philosopher, as philosopher, is not a sage, that the philosopher, as philosopher, ceases to obey, that he replaces the old wisdom by command, that he destroys the old values and creates new ones, that the whole of his science is legislative in this sense . Page 115

"Their 'knowing' is creating, their creating is a law-giving, their will to truth is - will to power" Page 115

The realization of total critique and transmutation is possible only through the will to power operating as a legislative, genetic, and genealogical principle. The philosopher embodies this by creating new values and commanding rather than obeying.

#on/willtopower #on/critique #on/transmutation #on/philosophy #on/values

Nietzsche and Kant from the Point of View of Consequences

10. Nietzsche and Kant from the Point of View of Consequences Page 116

Critique Aims at the Overman and a New Sensibility

The aim of critique is not the ends of man or of reason but in the end the Overman, the overcome, overtaken man. The point of critique is not justification but a different way of feeling: another sensibility. Page 117

In terms of consequences, Nietzschean critique aims beyond the limits and goals of conventional humanity (man/reason), striving instead for the emergence of the Overman and the development of a new, affirmative sensibility.

#on/critique #on/overman #on/sensibility

The Concept of Truth

11. The Concept of Truth Page 117

Will to Truth as Will to Nothingness

What really is it in us that wants 'the truth'? Page 118

If someone wills the truth it is not in the name of what the world is but in the name of what the world is not. Page 119

Nietzsche questions the origins of the "will to truth," suggesting it is motivated by a desire for something other than the world as it is.

#on/truth #on/willtotruth

Truth, Morality, and the Ascetic Ideal

the opposition of knowledge and life, the distinction between worlds, reveals its true character: it is a distincยญ tion of moral origin, an opposition of moral origin Page 119

"It has gradually become clear to me ... that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy have every time constituted the real germ of life out of which the entire plant has grown . . . I accordingly do not believe a "drive to knowledge" to be the father of philosophy" (BGE 6 p. 1 9) Page 119

The will to nothingness and reactive forces, these are the two constituent eleยญments of the ascetic ideal. Page 120

The apparent opposition between knowledge and life (or between different realms of existence) is fundamentally driven by moral intentions. The will to truth, tied to the ascetic ideal, is rooted in reactive forces and a will to nothingness.

#on/truth #on/morality #on/knowledge #on/asceticideal #on/willtonothingness

Knowledge, Morality and Religion

12. Knowledge, Morality and Religion Page 120

Succession of Religion, Morality, and Knowledge

Morality is the continuation of religion but by other means; knowledge is the continuation of morality and religion but by other means. Page 121

Religion, morality, and knowledge are viewed as interconnected, with morality and knowledge continuing the underlying impulses of religion through different means.

#on/religion #on/morality #on/knowledge

The Will to Truth and the Perishing of Morality

"After Christยญian truthfulness has drawn one inference after another, it must end by drawing its most striking inference , its inference against itself; this will happen, however, when it poses the question 'what is the meaning of all will to truth ?' And here again I touch on my problem, on our problem, my unknown friends (for I as yet know of no friend): what meaning would our whole being possess if it were not this, that in us the will to truth becomes conscious of itself as a problem? As the will to truth thus gains self-consciousness - there can be no doubt of that - morality will gradually perish now: this is the great spectacle in a hundred acts reserved for the next two centuries in Europe - the most terrible, most questionable and perhaps also the most hopeful of all spectacles" Page 122

Nietzsche suggests that the internal logic of Christian truthfulness will inevitably lead to a critical questioning of the "will to truth" itself. When the will to truth becomes self-aware of its problematic nature, it signals the eventual demise of traditional morality, a prospect both terrible and hopeful.

#on/truth #on/willtotruth #on/morality #on/christianity

Thought and Life

13. Thought and Life Page 123

Thought as Affirmative Power of Life

But does not critique, understood as critique of knowledge itself, express new forces capable of giving thought another sense? A thought that would go to the limit of what life can do, a thought that would lead life to the limit of what it can do? A thought that would affirm life instead of a knowledge that is opposed to life. Life would be the active force of thought, but thought would be the affirmative power of life. Both would go in the same direction, carrying each other along, smashing restrictions, matching each other step for step, in a burst of unparalยญ leled creativity. Thinking would then mean discovering, inventing, new possibilities of life . Page 124

life goes beyond the limits that knowledge fixes for it, but thought goes beyond the limits that life fixes for it. Thought ceases to be a ratio ,26* life ceases to be a reaction. The thinker thus expresses the noble affinity of thought and life: life making thought active, thought making life affirmative. In Nietzsche this general affinity is not only the pre-Socratic secret par excellence , but also the essence of art. Page 124

A critical approach can reveal a new relationship between thought and life: life becomes the active force of thought, and thought becomes the affirmative power of life. This mutual enhancement leads to unparalleled creativity and the invention of new ways of living, echoing a pre-Socratic wisdom and forming the essence of art.

#on/thought #on/life #on/critique #on/affirmation #on/creation #on/art

Art

14. Art Page 125

Art as Stimulant of Will to Power

Firstly, art is the opposite of a "disinterested" operation: it does not heal, calm, sublimate or pay off, it does not "suspend" desire, instinct or will. On the contrary, art is a "stimulant of the will to power", "something that excites willing" . Page 125

Art is understood as a powerful stimulant for the will to power, directly engaging and exciting willing rather than being a detached or disinterested activity.

#on/art #on/willtopower

Affirmation and Active Life

Affirmation is the product of a way of thinking which presupposes an active life as its condition and concomitant Page 125

Affirmation as a mode of thought is contingent upon an active life, suggesting a reciprocal relationship where active living supports affirmative thinking.

#on/affirmation #on/life #on/thought

Art, Falsehood, and Affirmation of Appearance

The second principle of art is as follows: art is the highest power of falsehood, it magnifies the "world as error" , it sanctifies the lie; the will to deception is turned into a superior ideal. 2 Page 125

It is art which invents the lies that raise falsehood to this highest affirmative power, that turns the will to deceive into something which is affirmed in the power of falsehood. For the artist, appearance no longer means the negation of the real in this world but this kind of selection, correction, redoubling and affirmation. 28 Then truth perhaps takes on a new sense . Truth is appearance . Truth means bringing of power into effect, raising to the highest power . In Nietzsche , "we the artists" = "we the seekers after knowledge or truth" = "we the inventors of new possibilities of life" . Page 126

Art embodies the highest power of falsehood, transforming the will to deception into an affirmative force. It treats appearance not as a negation of reality but as a means of selection and affirmation, suggesting a new understanding where truth resides in appearance and the actualization of power. Artists are equated with those who seek truth and create new possibilities for life.

#on/art #on/falsehood #on/truth #on/appearance #on/affirmation #on/creation

New Image of Thought

15. New Image of Thought Page 126

The Dogmatic Image of Thought Critiqued

the thinker as thinker wants and loves truth (truthfulness of the thinker) Page 126

we are "diverted" from the truth but by forces which are foreign to it (body, passions, sensuous interests) Page 126

all we need to think well, to think truthfully, is a method . Method is an artifice but one through which we are brought back to the nature of thought, through which we adhere to this nature and ward off the effect of the alien forces which alter it and distract us. Through method we ward off error. Page 126

When we speak of "plain truth" , of truth "in itself', "for itself' or even "for us", we must ask what forces are hiding themselves in the thought of this truth, and therefore what its sense and value is. Page 127

Nietzsche challenges the traditional "dogmatic image of thought" which assumes thought's inherent desire for truth, its distraction by external forces, and the sufficiency of method. Instead, he insists on questioning the forces and values behind the very concept of truth.

#on/thought #on/truth #on/critique #on/dogmatism

New Image: Thought as Sense and Value

A new image of thought means primarily that truth is not the element of thought. The element of thought is sense and value . The categories of thought are not truth and falsity but the noble and the base , the high and the low , depending on the nature of the forces that take hold of thought itself. Page 127

The "new image of thought" replaces truth/falsity with sense/value as the primary elements. Thought is understood in terms of the forces that possess it, categorizing concepts as noble or base.

#on/thought #on/sense #on/value #on/force #on/newimage

Thinking Actively and Untimely

Thinking actively is "acting in a non-present fashion, therefore against time and even on time, in favour (I hope) of a time to come" Page 130

Eternity, like the historicity of philosophy amounts to this: philosophy always untimely, untimely at every epoch. Page 130

Active thinking operates against the current time, oriented towards a future. Philosophy's relationship to time is defined by its untimeliness across all epochs.

#on/thought #on/time #on/philosophy

Thought Requires Violence and Forces

Thinking is never the natural exercise of a faculty . Thought never thinks alone and by itself; moreover it is never simply disturbed by forces which remain external to it. Thinkยญing depends on forces which take hold of thought. Page 131

We are awaiting the forces capable of making thought something active, absolutely active, the power capable of making it an affirmation. Thinking, like activity, is always a second power of thought, not the natural exercise of a faculty, but an extraordinary event in thought itself, for thought itself. Thinking is the n-th power of thought. It is still necessary for it to become "light", "affirmative", "dancing" . But it will never attain this power if forces do not do violence to it. Violence must be done to it as thought, a power, the force of thinking, must throw it into a becoming-active . Page 131

Thinking is not a passive or natural faculty but an active process requiring specific forces to "do violence" to it. It's a heightened state of "becoming-active" for thought itself, not its ordinary function, driven by external forces.

#on/thought #on/force #on/active #on/violence

Culture as Training and Selection by Force

Culture, on the contrary, is a violence undergone by thought, a process of formation of thought through the action of selective forces, a training which brings the whole unconscious of the thinker into play. Page 131

Culture is interpreted as a process of violent training and formation of thought by selective forces, actively shaping the thinker's unconscious towards specific ends.

#on/culture #on/thought #on/force #on/selection

Topology of Truth and Thought's Paideia

The theory of forces depends on a typology of forces. And once again a typology begins with a topology . Thinking depends on certain coordinates. We have the truths that we deserve depending on the place we are carrying our existence to, the hour we watch over and the element that we frequent. There is nothing more false than the idea of "founts" of truth. We only find truths where they are, at their time and in their element. Every truth is truth of an element, of a time and a place: the minotaur does not leave the labyrinth (VP III 408). We are not going to think unless as we are forced to go where the forces which give food for thought are, where the forces that make thought something active and affirmative are made use of. Thought does not need a method but a paideia, a formation, a culture . Method in general is a means by which we avoid going to a particular place, or by which we maintain the option of escaping from it (the thread of the labyrinth). "And we, we beg you earnestly, hang yourselves with this thread!" Page 133

Nietzsche says that three anecdotes are sufficient to define the life of a thinker (PTG) - one for the place, one for the time and one for the element. The anecdote is to life what the aphorism is to thought: something to interpret. Empedocles and his volcano - this is an anecdote of a thinker . Page 133

The height of summits and caves, the labyrinths; midday-midnight; the halcyon aerial element and also the element of the subterranean. It is up to us to go to extreme places, to extreme times, where the highest and the deepest truths live and rise up. The places of thought are the tropical zones frequented by the tropical man, not temperate zones or the moral, methodical or moderยญ ate man. Page 133

The "new image of thought" emphasizes that thinking and truth are bound to specific locations and elements (a topology of thought) and are not universally accessible via method. True thought requires a formation or paideia achieved by being forced into the extreme environments where activating and affirmative forces reside.

#on/thought #on/truth #on/topology #on/paideia #on/method

From Ressentiment to the Bad Conscience

4 From Ressentiment to the Bad Conscience Page 134

Reaction and Ressentiment

1. Reaction and Ressentiment Page 134

Ressentiment as Triumph of Reactive Forces Escaping Action

The active type therefore includes reactive forces but ones that are defined by a capacity for obeying or being acted. The active type expresses a relation between active and reactive forces such that the latter are themselves acted. Page 134

a reaction alone cannot constitute ressentiment. Ressentiment designates a type in which reactive forces prevail over active forces. But they can only prevail in one way: by ceasing to be acted. Above all we must not define ressentiment in terms of the strength of a reaction. Page 134

Reactive forces prevail over active forces because they escape their action. Page 134

Ressentiment is characterized by a state where reactive forces overcome active forces, not through superior strength or activity, but by disengaging and refusing to be acted upon by the active forces.

#on/ressentiment #on/reactive #on/active #on/force

Principle of Ressentiment

2. Principle of Ressentiment Page 135

Reactive Unconscious, Consciousness, and Forgetting

Our memories are by nature unconยญscious"; and conversely, "Consciousness is born at the point where the mnemonic trace stops" . Page 135

The reactive unconยญscious is defined by mnemonic traces, by lasting imprints. It is a digestive, vegetative and ruminative system, which expresses "the purely passive impossibility of escaping from the impression once it is received" Page 135

This second kind of reactive forces is inseparable from consciousness: that constantly renewed skin surยญrounding an ever fresh receptivity, a milieu "where there is always room for new things" . Page 136

when reactive forces take conscious excitation as their object, then the corresponding reaction is itself acted. Page 136

A specific active force must be given the job of supporting consciousness and renewing its freshness, fluidity and mobile, agile chemistry at every moment. This active super-conscious faculty is the faculty of forgetting. Page 136

"no mere vis inertiae as the superficยญial imagine; it is rather an active and in the strictest sense positive faculty of repression", "an apparatus of absorption", "a plastic, regenerative and curative force . " Page 136

Ressentiment involves the interplay between the reactive unconscious (passive mnemonic traces) and reactive consciousness (fresh receptivity). Forgetting, an active faculty, is crucial to prevent the reactive unconscious from overwhelming consciousness and rendering reactions un-acted, which is key to preventing ressentiment.

#on/ressentiment #on/unconscious #on/consciousness #on/memory #on/forgetting #on/reactive #on/active

Ressentiment as Sickness

as if the wax of consciousness were hardened, excitation tends to get confused with its trace in the unconscious and conversely, reaction to traces rises into consciousness and overruns it. Thus at the same time as reaction to traces becomes perceptible, reaction ceases to be acted. The consequences of this are immense: no longer being able to act a reaction, active force are deprived of the material conditions of their functioning, they no longer have the opportunity to do their job, they are separated from what they can do . We can thus finally see in what way reactive forces prevail over active forces: when the trace takes the place of the excitation in the reactive apparatus, reaction itself takes the place of action, reaction prevails over action. Page 137

ressentiment is a reaction which simultaneously becomes perceptible and ceases to be acted: a formula which defines sickness in general . Nietzsche is not simply saying that ressentiment is a sickness, but rather that sickness as such is a form of ressentiment Page 137

Ressentiment is fundamentally linked to the failure of forgetting, where past mnemonic traces overwhelm present excitation. This leads to reactions that are felt but not acted upon, crippling active forces and defining ressentiment as a form of sickness where reaction replaces action.

#on/ressentiment #on/sickness #on/reactive #on/forgetting

Typology of Ressentiment

3. Typology of Ressentiment Page 137

Ressentiment and the Spirit of Revenge

The man of ressentiment is characยญterised by the invasion of consciousness by mnemonic traces, the ascent of memory into consciousness itself. Page 137

the man of ressentiment is like a dog, a kind of dog which only reacts to traces (a bloodhound). He only invests traces: for him excitation is locally confused with the trace, the man of ressentiment can no longer act his reaction. Page 138

Whatever the force of the excitation which is received, whatever the total force of the subject itself, the man of ressentiment only uses the latter to invest the trace of the former, so that he is incapable of acting and even of reacting to the excitation. There is therefore no need for him to have experienced an excessive excitation. This may happen, but it is not necessary. He does not need to generalise in order to see the whole world as the object of his ressentiment. As a result of his type the man ofressentiment does not "react": his reaction is endless, it is felt instead of being acted. This reaction therefore blames its object, whatever it is, as an object on which revenge must be taken, which must be made to pay for this infinite delay. Page 138

"One cannot get rid of anything, one cannot get over anything, one cannot repel anything - everything hurts. Men and things obtrude too closely; experiences strike one too deeply; memory becomes a fesยญtering wound" (EH I 6 p. 320) Page 139

This essential link between revenge and memory resembles the Freudian anal-sadistic complex. Nietzsche himself presents memeory as an unfinished digestion and the type of res sentiment as an anal type . 7 This intestinal and venomous memory is what Nietzsche calls the spider, the tarantula, the spirit of reveng Page 139

The man of ressentiment is characterized by a reactive memory overwhelmed by traces, leading to an endless, un-acted reaction that fixates on blame and seeks revenge. This state is likened to an inability to digest the past and is tied to the "spirit of revenge."

#on/ressentiment #on/memory #on/revenge #on/sickness

Characteristics of Ressentiment

4. Characteristics of Ressentiment Page 139

Ressentiment as Revolt of the Weak

It gives revenge a means: a means of reversing the normal relation of active and reactive forces. This is why ressentiment itself is always a revolt and always the triumph of this revolt. Ressentiment is the triumph of the weak as weak, the revolt of the slaves and their victory as slaves. It is in their victory that the slaves form a type . Page 140

Ressentiment serves as the vehicle for the weak to enact revenge and achieve triumph, not by becoming strong, but by reversing the active-reactive power dynamic and solidifying their identity as the victorious weak/slaves.

#on/ressentiment #on/revenge #on/weakness #on/reactive #on/triumph

Other Characteristics of Ressentiment

Inability to admire, respect or love (BGE 260, GM I 1 0). The memory of traces is itself full of hatred. Page 140

"Passivity". In ressentiment happiness "appears essentially as a narcoยญ tic drug, rest, peace, 'sabbath' , slackening of tension and relaxing of Page 140

The only thing that is passive is reacยญtion insofar as it is not acted. Page 141

The man of ressentiment does not know how to and does not want to love, but wants to be loved Page 141

the man of ressentiment is extremely touchy: faced with all the activities he cannot undertake he considers that, at the very least, he ought to be compensated by benefiting from them. Page 141

ressentiยญment could only be imposed on the world through the triumph of the principle of gain, by making profit not only a desire and a way of thinking but an economic, social and theological system, a complete system, a divine mechanism. Page 141

A failure to recognise profit - this is the theological crime and the only crime against the spirit. It is in this sense that slaves have a morality , and that this morality is that of utility Page 141

The imputation of wrongs, the distribution of responsibilities, perpetual accusation . All this replaces aggression. "The aggressive pathos belongs just as necessarily to strength as vengefulness and rancour belong to weakness" (EH I 7 p. 232). Page 141

the dreadful feminine power of ressentiment: it is not content to denounce crimes and criminals, it wants sinners, people who are responsible . We can guess what the creature of ressentiment wants: he wants others to be evil, he needs others to be evil in order to be able to consider himself good. You are evil, therefore I am good; this is the slave's fundamental formula Page 142

the essence of ressentiment: in order to exist, slave morality always first needs a hostile world" (GM I 10 pp. 36-37). The slave needs, to set the other up as evil from the outset. Page 142

Key characteristics of ressentiment include inability to love, treating happiness as passive rest, seeking to be loved, touchiness, belief in compensation, and a morality of utility based on gain. It replaces active aggression with accusation and fundamentally requires designating an external "evil" to affirm its own (reactive) "goodness."

#on/ressentiment #on/slavemorality #on/reactive #on/revenge

Is he Good? Is he Evil?

5. Is he Good? Is he Evil? Page 142

Master Morality: Good vs. Bad

Here are the two formulae: "I am good, therefore you are evil" - "You are evil therefore I am good" Page 142

"Good" qualifies activity, affirmation and the enjoyment which is experienced in their Page 142

exercise: a certain quality of the soul, "some fundamental certainty which a noble soul possesses in regard to itself, something which may not be sought or found and perhaps may not be lost either" (BGE 287 p. 1 96) Page 143

distinction is the eternal character of what is affirmed (it does not have to be looked for), of what is put into action (it is not found), of what is enjoyed (it cannot be lost). Page 143

He who affirms and acts is at the same time the one who is: "The root of the word coined for this, esthlos signifies one who is, who possesses reality, who is actual, who is true" Page 143

"He knows himself to be that which in general first accords honour to things, he creates values. Everything he knows to be part of himself, he honours: such a morality is self-glorification. In the foreground stands the feeling of plenitude, of power which seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the consciousness of a wealth which would like to give away and bestow" . Page 143

enjoy. "Good" primarily designates the master. "Evil" means the consequence and designates the slave . What is "evil" is negative, passive, bad, unhappy. Page 143

the good "only looks for its antithesis in order to affirm itself with more joy" (GM I 10). Page 144

aggression: it is the negative, but the negative as the conclusion of positive premises, the negative as the product of activity, the negative as the consequence of the power of affirming. Page 144

Master morality defines "good" positively based on active, affirmative existence, self-glorification, and the overflowing power of creation. "Evil" is merely the reactive consequence. The negative arises as a product of this primary affirmation, not its foundation.

#on/mastermorality #on/good #on/evil #on/affirmation #on/reactive

Dialectic as Ideology of Ressentiment

The dialectic, as the ideology of ressentiment. Page 144

The dialectic is identified as the philosophical framework that gives voice to the reactive impulses of ressentiment.

#on/dialectic #on/ressentiment #on/ideology

Slave Morality: Evil vs. Good

"And he is good who does not outrage , who harms nobody, who does not attack, who does not requite, who leaves revenge to God, who keeps himself hidden as we do, who avoids evil and desires little from life, like us, the patient, humble and j ust" (GM I 13 p. 46) Page 144

Good and evil are new values, but how strangely these values are created! They are created by reversing good and bad. They are not created by acting but by holding back from acting, not by affirming, but by beginning with denial. This is why they are called un-created, divine, transcendent, superior to life. Page 145

No moral values would survive for a single instant if they were separated from the premises of which they are the conclusion. And, more profoundly, no religious values are separable from this hatred and revenge from which they draw the consequences. Page 145

Slave morality defines "good" reactively based on the "evil" of the master, emphasizing harmlessness and inaction. Its values are created by reversing master values and are fundamentally rooted in ressentiment, hatred, and revenge, claiming transcendence precisely because they deny life.

#on/slavemorality #on/good #on/evil #on/ressentiment

The Paralogism

6. The Paralogism Page 145

The Fiction of Force Separated from Capacity

the paralogism of ressentiment: the fiction of a force separated from what it can do . Page 146

The process of accusation in ressentiment fulfills this task: reactive forces "project" an abstract and neutralised image of force; such a force separated from its effects will be blameworthy if it acts, deserving, on the contrary, if it does not. Moreover it is thought that more (abstract) force is needed to hold back than is needed to act. Page 146

The "paralogism of ressentiment" is the central fiction that force can be separated from its capacity to act. Reactive forces use this fiction to morally condemn active force and value inaction.

#on/ressentiment #on/force #on/paralogism

Moments of the Paralogism

1) Moment of causality: force is split in two. Page 146

Force is first repressed into itself, then its manifestation is made into a different thing which finds its distinct, efficient cause in the force . Page 146

2) Momerยท t of substance: force, which has been divided in this way, is projected into a substrate, into a subject which is free to manifest it or not. Page 146

All subjects - the Epicureans' atom, Descartes' substance or Kant's thing-in-itself - are the projection of "little imaginery incubuses" (GM I 13 p. 141). Page 146

3) Moment of reciprocal determination: the force thus neutralised is moralised. Page 147

For the concrete distinction between forces, for the original difference between qualified forces (the good and the bad), is substituted the moral opposition between substantialised forces (good and evil). Page 147

The paralogism of ressentiment unfolds in three moments: splitting force from its effect, projecting it onto a fictional subject/substance, and finally moralizing this abstracted force, replacing the true distinction of forces (good/bad) with the moral judgment (good/evil).

#on/ressentiment #on/paralogism #on/force #on/morality #on/subject

Development of Ressentiment: the Judaic priest

7. Development of Ressentiment: the Judaic priest Page 147

Two Aspects of Ressentiment

When Nietzsche speaks of bad conscience he explicitly distinguishes two aspects: a first in which bad conscience is in a "raw state", pure matter or a "question of animal psychology, no more"; a second, without which bad conscience would not be what it is, a moment which takes advantage of this previous content and makes it take form (GM HI 20). Page 147

Ressentiment also has two aspects or moments. The one , topologยญ ical, a question of animal psychology, constitutes ressentiment as raw content: it expresses the way in which reactive forces escape the action of active forces (displacement of reactive forces, invasion of consciousยญness by the memory of traces). The second, typological, expresses the way in which ressentiment takes on form: the memory of traces becomes a typical character because it embodies the spirit of revenge and engages in an enterprise of perpetual accusation; reactive forces are then opposed to active forces and separate them from what they can do (reversal of the relation of forces, projection of a reactive image). It should be noted that the revolt of reactive forces would still not be a complete triumph without this second aspect of res sentiment. Page 147

Ressentiment has a dual nature: a raw psychological content involving reactive forces escaping action and flooding consciousness with traces, and a formal, typological aspect where this content takes the form of the spirit of revenge and perpetual accusation, reversing force relations through projected fictions. The latter is crucial for its triumph.

#on/ressentiment #on/badconscience #on/reactive #on/revenge #on/typology

Fiction of Reactive Projection

It presides over the whole evolution of ressentiment, that is to say, over the operations by which active force is, simultaneously, separated from what it can do (falsification), accused and treated as blameworthy (depreciation), and the corresยญ ponding values are reversed (negation). Page 148

The progression of ressentiment is fueled by its underlying fiction, which systematically weakens, accuses, and negates active forces and their corresponding values.

#on/ressentiment #on/fiction #on/reactive #on/values #on/negation

Bad Conscience and Interiority

8. Bad Conscience and Interiority Page 150

Active Force Turned Inward

The objective of both forms of ressentiment is to deprive active force of its material conditions of operation, to keep it strictly separate from what it can do. Page 150

whatever the reason that an Page 150

active force is falsified, deprived of its conditions of operation and separated from what it can do, it is turned back inside , turned back against itself. Being interiorised, being turned back against itself- this is the way in which active force becomes truly reactive . Page 151

. "All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward - that is what I call the internalisation of man . . . that is the origin of the 'bad conscience' " (GM II 16 pp. 84-5). Page 151

The separation of active force from its capacity to act, facilitated by ressentiment, leads to its internalization and being turned against itself. This process is identified as the origin of bad conscience and the becoming-reactive of what was once active.

#on/badconscience #on/ressentiment #on/active #on/reactive #on/internalization

Bad Conscience and False Love

It hides its hatred under a tempting love: I who accuse you, it is for your own good; I love you in order that you will join me, until you are joined with me, until you yourself become a painful, sick, reactive being, a good being Page 151

Bad conscience can disguise its underlying hatred with a manipulative form of "love" that aims to assimilate others into its own state of reactive suffering.

#on/badconscience #on/ressentiment #on/reactive #on/love #on/hatred

Bad Conscience Multiplies Pain

Bad conscience is the conscience that mulยญtiplies its pain, which has found a technique for manufacturing pain by turning active force back against itself: the squalid workshop. The multiplication of pain by the interiorisation or introjection of force - this is the first definition of bad conscience . Page 152

Bad conscience is defined as a mechanism that actively multiplies pain by turning internalized active force against itself, acting as a "squalid workshop" for manufacturing suffering.

#on/badconscience #on/pain #on/internalization

The Problem of Pain

9. The Problem of Pain Page 152

Pain, Guilt, and Interpretation

Pain conceived as the consequence of an inward fault and the interior mechanism of salvation, pain being interiorised as fast as it is produced, "pain transformed into feelings of guilt, fear and punishment": (GM III 20) this is the second aspect of bad conscience, its typological moment, bad conscience as feeling of guilt. Page 152

exisยญtence is meaningful only to the extent that the pain of existence has a meaning (UM III, 5). Page 152

The masters have a secret. They know that pain has only one meaning: giving pleasure to someone, giving pleasure to someone who inflicts or contemplates pain. If the active man is able not to take hi Page 152

own pain seriously it is because he always imagines someone to whom it gives pleasure. Page 153

"The passion of the most savage": pain is made the consequence of a fault and the means of a salvation; pain is healed by manufacturing yet more pain, by internalising it still further; one tries to forget, that is to say, one cures oneself of pain by infecting the wound (GM III 1 5 ). Page 153

tragedy dies at the same time as drama becomes an inward conflict and suffering is internalised. Page 153

Bad conscience, in its form as guilt, interprets pain as punishment and a path to salvation. This stands in contrast to the master's perspective, which sees pain as a source of pleasure for the one inflicting or observing it. Reactive responses to pain intensify suffering through internalization, contributing to the shift from external tragedy to internal drama.

#on/pain #on/badconscience #on/guilt #on/interpretation #on/tragedy

Development of Bad Conscience: the Christian priest

10. Development of Bad Conscience: the Christian priest Page 154

Priest Changes Direction of Ressentiment to Create Guilt

the man of ressentiment, who is by nature full of pain, is looking for a cause for his suffering. He accuses, he accuses everything that is active in life. Page 154

It is in bad conscience that ressentiment comes into its own and reaches the summit of its cont๏ฟฝgious power: by changing direction. It cries "It is my fault, it is my fault" until the whole world takes up this dreary refrain, until everything active in life develops this same feeling of guilt. Page 155

The definition of the first aspect of the bad conscience was: the multiplication of pain by the internalisation of force . The definition of the second aspect is: the internalisation of pain by the change of direction of ressentiment. Page 155

The Christian priest facilitates the development of bad conscience by redirecting the ressentiment-fueled search for blame from external active forces inward. This internalization of blame as guilt ("It is my fault") allows bad conscience to become contagious and reach its full power.

#on/badconscience #on/ressentiment #on/guilt #on/priest

Culture Considered from the Prehistoric Point of View

11. Culture Considered from the Prehistoric Point of View Page 156

Culture as Training and Selection

Culture means training and selection. Nietzsche calls the movement of culture the "morality of customs" (D9); Page 156

1) That which is obeyed, in a people, race or class, is always historical, arbitrary, grotesque, stupid and limited; this usually represents the worst reactive forces. 2) But in the fact that something, no matter what it is, is obeyed, appears a principle which goes beyond peoples, races and classes. To obey the law because it is the law: the form of the law means that a certain activity, a certain active force, is exercised on man and is given the task of training him. Page 156

Every historical law is arbitrary, but what is not arbitrary, what is prehistoric and generic , is the law of obeying laws. Page 156

The activity of culture is, in principle, exercised on reactive forces, it gives them habits and imposes models on them in order to make them suitable for being acted. Page 157

its principal object is to reinforce consciousness. Page 157

From a prehistoric perspective, culture is understood as a process of training and selection (morality of customs). Despite the arbitrary content of specific laws, the act of obeying the law itself represents an active force that trains reactive forces and strengthens consciousness.

#on/culture #on/training #on/selection #on/law #on/reactive #on/active

The Sovereign Individual and the Faculty of Promising

This is precisely the selective object of culture: forming a man capable of promising and thus of making use of the future, a free and powerful man. Only such a man is active; he acts his reactions, everything in him is active or acted. The faculty of promising is the effect of culture as the activity of man on man; the man who can promise is the product of culture as species activity . Page 157

The selective purpose of culture is to produce the "sovereign individual" capable of making promises, who is fully active and able to shape the future. This capacity for promising is a key outcome of culture as a species-level activity.

#on/culture #on/sovereignindividual #on/promising #on/active

Justice and Punishment in Culture

Culture has always used the following means: it made pain a medium of exchange, a currency, an equivalent; precisely the exact equivalent of a forgetting, of an inquiry caused, a promise not kept (GM II 4). Culture, when related to this means, is calledjustice ; the means itself is called punishment. "Injury caused = pain undergone" - this is the equation of punishment Page 157

relationship of a creditor and a debtor: justice makes man responsible for a debt . Page 158

1) Culture as prehistoric or generic activity, an enterprise of training and selection; 2) The means used by this activity, the equation of punishment, the relationship of debt, the responsible man; 3) The product of this activity: the active man, free and powerful, the man who can promise . Page 158

Culture employs mechanisms like justice and punishment, which utilize pain as a form of exchange to enforce responsibility and create the capacity for promising by establishing a creditor-debtor relationship.

#on/culture #on/justice #on/punishment #on/debt

Culture Considered from the Post-Historic Point of View

12. Culture Considered from the Post-Historic Point of View Page 158

Sovereign Individual Beyond Morality of Customs

However we consider culture or justice we always see in them the exercise of a formative activity, the opposite of ressentiment and bad conscience. Page 159

"If we place ourselves at the end of this tremendous process, where the tree at last brings forth fruit, where society and the morality of customs at last reveal what they have Page 159

simply been the means to: then we discover that the ripest fruit is the sovereign individual, like only to himself, liberated again from morality of customs, autonomous and supramoral (for 'autonomous' and 'moral' are mutually exclusive), in short, the man who has his own independent, protracted will and the right to make promises" (GM II 2 p. 59). Page 160

The product of culture is not the man who obeys the law, but the sovereign and legislative individual who defmes himself by power over himself, over destiny, over the law: the free, the light, the irresponsible . Page 160

the autonomous individual is no longer responsible to justice for his reactive forces, he is its master, the sovereign, the legislator, the author and the actor. It is he who speaks, he no longer has to answer. Page 160

From a post-historic viewpoint, the culmination of culture's formative activity is the sovereign individual. This autonomous figure transcends the morality of customs and external law, embodying freedom, lightness, and positive irresponsibility, asserting mastery over self and destiny.

#on/culture #on/sovereignindividual #on/autonomy #on/irresponsibility

Means Disappearing in the Product

This is the general movement of culture: the means disappearing in the product. Responsibility as responsibility before the law, law as the law of justice, justice as the means of culture - all this disappears in the product of culture itself. The morality of customs, the spirit of the laws, produces the man emancipated from the law. Page 160

The developmental logic of culture leads to its means becoming obsolete in its product: the individual formed by law and responsibility ultimately transcends them, becoming emancipated from the very framework that shaped them.

#on/culture #on/law #on/freedom

Culture Considered from the Historical Point of View

13. Culture Considered from the Historical Point of View Page 161

History as Perversion of Culture by Reactive Forces

We must say of culture both that it diappeared long ago and that it has not yet begun. Species activity disappears into the night of the past as its product does into the night of the future. Page 161

history is this very perversion, it is identical to the "degeneration of culture" . - Instead of species activity, history presents us with races, peoples, classes, Churches and States. Onto species activity are grafted social organisations, associations, communities of a reactive character, parasites which cover it over and absorb it. By means of species activity - the movement of which they falsify - reactive forces form collectivities, what Nietzsche calls "herds" (GM III 1 8). Page 161

history presents us with societies which have no wish to perish and which cannot imagine anything superior to their own laws. Page 161

Instead of the sovereign individual as the product of culture, history presents us with its own product, the domesticated man in whom it finds the famous meaning of history: "the sublime abortion", "the gregarious animal, docile, sickly, mediocre being, the European today" (BGE 62 . GM I 1 1). - History presents all the violence of culture as the legitimate property of peoples, States and Churches, as the manifestaยญtion of their force. Page 161

From a historical perspective, culture appears as a perverted or degenerated process. Reactive forces (states, churches, herds) hijack and falsify the inherent activity of culture, producing the domesticated, mediocre "last man" instead of the sovereign individual, and presenting their own reactive dominance as legitimate force.

#on/history #on/culture #on/reactive #on/lastman #on/perversion

History Selects for the Weak

Selection becomes the opposite of what it was from the standpoint of activity, it is now only a means of preserving, organising and propagating the reactive life (GM III 1 3-20 BGE 62). Page 162

Historical selection is the inverse of active selection; it functions to perpetuate and organize reactive forms of life.

#on/history #on/selection #on/reactive

Triumph of Reactive Forces as Principle of Universal History

History thus appears as the act by which reactive forces take possession of culture or divert its course in their favour . The triumph of reactive forces is not an accident in history but the principle and meaning of "universal history" . Page 162

Culture is inseparable from the history of the movement which perverts it and puts it at the service of reactive forces; but culture is also inseparable from history itself. Page 163

man is essentially reactive; there is nevertheless a species activity of man, but one that is necesยญsarily deformed, necessarily missing its goal, leading to the domestiยญcated man; this activity must be taken up again on another plane, the plane on which it produces, but produces something other than man Page 163

The historical narrative, particularly "universal history," is defined by the systematic triumph and perversion of culture by reactive forces. Despite man's reactive nature, there is a species activity that history distorts, necessitating a re-engagement on a different level to create something other than domesticated man.

#on/history #on/reactive #on/culture #on/man #on/speciesactivity

Bad Conscience, Responsibility, Guilt

14. Bad Conscience, Responsibility, Guilt Page 164

Mechanisms of Bad Conscience and Guilt

We said: the priest is the one who internalises pain by changing the direction ofressentiment; in this way he gives bad conscience form. We asked: how can ressentiment change direction whilst keeping its properties of hate and revenge? Page 165

1) Under the cover of species activity and by usurping this activity, reactive forces constitute associations (herds). Certain reactive forces appear to act, others serve as material Page 165

2) It is in this milieu that bad conscience is formed. Abstracted from species activity, debt is projected into reactive association. Debt becomes the relation of a debtor who will never fmish paying to a creditor who will never fmish using up the interest on the debt: " Debt toward the divinity" . Page 165

3) But the priest does not only corrupt the herd, he organises it, he protects it. He invents the means which enable us to endure multipยญ lied, internalised pain. Page 165

4) It will be noted in all this that the form of bad conscience, just like the form ofressentiment, implies a fiction. Bad conscience rests on the diverting of species activity, on the usurping of this activity, on the projection of debt. Page 166

The priest, by redirecting ressentiment inward, shapes bad conscience. This involves reactive forces usurping species activity, projecting the concept of debt onto a divine creditor, and creating mechanisms to manage internalized pain. Bad conscience, like ressentiment, is based on fictions that distort genuine activity and responsibility.

#on/badconscience #on/ressentiment #on/priest #on/guilt #on/debt #on/fiction

The Ascetic Ideal and the Essence of Religion

15. The Ascetic Ideal and the Essence of Religion Page 166

Typology and Higher Degrees

the only good typology is one that takes the following principle into account: the higher degree or affmity of forces. ("In everything only the higher degrees matter.") Page 166

A valid typology must prioritize the highest degrees or affinities of forces, not merely categorize all instances equally.

#on/typology #on/force

Ascetic Ideal: Triumph of Reactive Forces and Nihilism

In its initial sense the ascetic ideal designates the complex of ressentiment and bad conscience: it crosses the one with the other, it reinforces the one with the other . Secondly, it expresses all the ways in which the sickness of ressentiment, the suffering of bad conscience become livable , or rather, are organised and propagated; the ascetic priest is simultaneously gardener, breeder, shepherd and doctor. Finally, and this is its deepest sense, the ascetic ideal expresses the will which makes reactive forces triumph. Page 167

The fiction of a world-beyond in the ascetic ideal: this is what accompanies the steps ofressentiment and bad conscience, this is what permits the depreciation of life and all that is active in it, this is what gives the world a value of appearance or of nought. Page 168

The sense of the ascetic ideal is thus as follows: to express the affinity of reactive forces with nihilism, to express nihilism as the "motor" of reactive forces. Page 168

The ascetic ideal is the ultimate expression of reactive forces, combining ressentiment and bad conscience and providing mechanisms for their propagation. Its deepest meaning is the will that causes reactive forces to triumph, relying on the fiction of a transcendent realm to devalue earthly, active life and embodying the affinity between reactive forces and nihilism.

#on/asceticideal #on/reactive #on/nihilism #on/fiction #on/priest

Triumph of Reactive Forces

16. Triumph of Reactive Forces Page 168

Visualizing the Triumph of Reactive Forces

Extras/Attachments/Zotero/deleuzeNietzschePhilosophy2006/deleuzeNietzschePhilosophy2006-169-x44-y14.png Page 169

This image likely serves as a diagram or visualization to help understand the complex relationships and dynamics of forces, particularly in the context of the triumph of reactive forces.

#on/reactive #on/force #on/visualization

The Overman: Against the Dialectic

5 The Overman: Against the Dialectic Page 170

Nihilism

1. Nihilism Page 170

Nihilism as Will to Nothingness

The idea of another world, of a supersensible world in all its forms (God, essence, the good, truth), the idea of values superior to life, is not one example among many but the constitutive element of all fiction. Page 170

It is not the will that denies itself in higher values, it is higher values that are related to a will to deny, to annihilate life. "Nothingness of the will" : this Schopenhauerian concept is only a symptom; it means primarily a will to annihilation, a will to nothingness ... "but it is and always remains a will!" (GM III 28 p. 163). Page 170

Nihil in "nihilism" means negation as quality of the will to power. Thus, in its primary and basic sense, nihilism signifies the value of nil taken on by life, the fiction of higher values which give it this value and the will to nothingness which is expressed in these higher values. Page 170

Nihilism is fundamentally linked to the fiction of a transcendent world and values superior to life. This fiction expresses a "will to nothingness," which is identified as the primary sense of nihilism โ€“ a mode of will to power defined by negation that devalues life.

#on/nihilism #on/fiction #on/willtonothingness #on/willtopower #on/negation

Negative, Reactive, and Passive Nihilism

Previously life was depreciยญated from the height of higher values, it was denied in the name of these values. Here, on the contrary, only life remains, but it is still a depreciated life which now continues in a world without values, stripped of meaning and purpose, sliding ever further towards its nothingness. Previously essence was opposed to appearance , life was turned into an appearance . Now essence is denied but appearance is retained: everything is merely appearance, life which is left to us remains for itself an appearance . The first sense of nihilism found its principle in the will to deny as will to power . The second sense , "the pessimism of weakness", fmds its principle in the reactive life comยญ pletely solitary and naked, in reactive forces reduced to themselves. The first sense is a negative nihilism; the second sense a reactive nihilism . Page 171

Nihilism is described in different forms: negative nihilism devalues life based on transcendent values; reactive nihilism retains a devalued life after the loss of transcendent values; passive nihilism is implied as a state of exhaustion preferring non-willing. These stages are driven by variations in reactive forces and the will to nothingness.

#on/nihilism #on/negative #on/reactive #on/passive #on/willtonothingness

Analysis of Pity

2. Analysis of Pity Page 171

God Died of Pity

God is dead, but what did he die of? He died of pity Page 172

Nietzsche provocatively suggests that the death of God was caused by pity, implying that excessive compassion is incompatible with the divine.

#on/god #on/pity

Pity as Practical Nihilism

What is pity? It is this tolerance for states of life dose to zero. Page 172

"Pity is practical nihilism . . . pity persuades to nothingness! . . . One does not say 'nothingness": one says 'the Beyond'; or 'God' ; or 'true life'; or Nirvana, redemption, blessedness . . . This innocent rhetoric from the domain of religio-moral idiosyncracy at once appears much less innocent when one grasps which tendency is here draping the mantle of sublime words about itself: the tendency hostile to life" (AC 7 pp. 1 1 8-1 19). Page 173

Pity is identified as a form of "practical nihilism" because it tolerates and validates weak, suffering states of life. By disguising a fundamental hostility to life with seemingly positive religious and moral language, it ultimately persuades towards a denial of robust existence.

#on/pity #on/nihilism #on/reactive

Succession of Nihilism and the Last Man

negative nihilism is replaced by reactive nihilism , reactive nihilism ends in passive nihilism . From God to God's murderer, from God's murderer to the last man. Page 174

it is always the same type oflife which benefits from the depreciation of the whole of life in the first place, the type of life which took advantage of the will to nothingness in order to obtain its victory, the type of life which triumphed in the temples of God, in the shadow of higher values. Then, secondly, the type of life which puts itself in God's place, which turns against the principle of its own triumph and no longer recognises values other than its own. Finally, the exhausted life which prefers to not will, to fade away passively, rather than being animated by a will which goes beyond it. This still is and always remains the same type of life; life depreciated, reduced to its reactive form. Page 174

2XAVNYFX Page 175

Nihilism progresses through stages (negative, reactive, passive) and is the driving force of "universal history," perpetually manifesting the same type of depreciated, reactive life that ultimately leads to the exhausted state of the "last man."

#on/nihilism #on/history #on/reactive #on/lastman

God is Dead

3. God is Dead Page 175

Multiple Meanings of God's Death

It says at one and the same time: God existed and he is dead and he will rise from the dead, God has become Man and Man has become God. Page 175

The pronouncement "God is dead" is multilayered, encompassing God's historical presence, demise, potential return, and the shifting relationship between divine and human.

#on/godisdead

Stages of God's Death (Nihilism's History)

1 )From the point of view of negative nihilism: the moment of the Judaic and Christian consciousness. Page 175

"If one shifts the centre of gravity of life out of life into the 'Beyond' - into nothingness - one has deprived life as such of its centre of gravity" (AC 43 p. 1 5 5). Page 175

The Judaic consciousness of the consciousness of ressentiment (after the golden age of the kings of Isreal) presents these two aspects: the universal appears as a hatred for life, the particular as a love of life - provided that it is sick and reactive Page 175

The will to nothingness must be made more seductive by opposing one aspect to the other, by making love an antithesis of hate. The Jewish God puts his son to death to make him independent of himself and of the Jewish people . Page 176

This is the second sense of the death of God: the Father dies, the Son creates another God for us. The Son asks only that we believe in him, that we love him as he loves us, that we become reactive in order to avoid hate . Page 176

Third sense of the death of God: St Paul seizes hold of this death Page 176

Christ is said to have died for our sins ! Page 176

God put his son on the cross out of love; we respond to this love to the extent that we feel guilty, guilty of this death, and we redress it by accusing ourselves, by paying interest on the debt. Through the love of God, through the sacrifice of his son, the whole of life becomes reactive. - Life dies but it is reborn as reactive . Page 176

St Paul's other falsification, the resurrection of Christ and the afterlife for us, the unity of love and the reactive life. Page 177

It is no longer the father who kills the son, it is no longer the son who kills the father: the father dies in the son, the son is resurrected in the father, for us, because of us. "In fact ... St Paul could make no use at all of the redeemer's life - he needed the death on the Cross and something in addition" : the resurrection. Page 177

The death of God is traced through stages corresponding to forms of nihilism. It begins with shifting life's value to a transcendent realm (negative nihilism, Judaic/Christian consciousness). It progresses through the son creating a God based on love and reactivity, and finally through St. Paul's interpretation of Christ's death for sins, which internalizes guilt and makes life reactive through debt, ultimately leading to a reactive rebirth.

#on/godisdead #on/nihilism #on/christianity #on/judaism #on/ressentiment #on/reactive

God Suffocates from Pity

2) From the point of view of reactive nihilism: the moment of European consciousness. Page 177

Man killed God, but which man killed God? The reactive man, "the ugliest of men". The divine will, the will to nothingness, can not tolerate any other life but the reactive one and this no longer even tolerates God, it cannot bear God's pity, it takes his sacrifice literally, it suffocates him in the trap of his mercy. It prevents him from rising from the dead, it sits on the coffm-lid. Page 177

This is the fourth sense of the death of God: God suffocates through love of the reactive life, God is suffocated by the ungrateful one whom he loves too much. Page 177

From the perspective of reactive nihilism (European consciousness), God is killed by the reactive man, who, embodying the will to nothingness, cannot tolerate even God's pity and effectively suffocates the divine through its own excessive mercy towards reactive life.

#on/godisdead #on/reactive #on/nihilism #on/pity

Passive Nihilism: Buddhism and the True Christ

3) From the point of view of passive nihilism: the moment of Buddhist consciousness. Page 177

the true Christ is as follows; the glad tidings that he brings, the suppression of the idea of sin, the absence of all ressentiment and of all spirit of revenge, the consequent refusal of all war, the revelation of a kingdom of God on Earth as state of the heart and above all the acceptance of death as the proof of his doctrine . Page 178

Beyond bad conscience and ressentiment Jesus gave the reactive man a lesson: he taught him to die. Page 178

Buddhism is the religion of passive nihilism, "Buddhism is a religion for the end and fatigue of a civilisation; Christianity does not even find civilizaยญtion in existence - it establishes civilization if need be" (AC 22 p. 1 32). Page 178

Buddhism represents passive nihilism, characteristic of the end and fatigue of a civilization, whereas Christianity is depicted as establishing civilization. Jesus, in his true form, is seen as teaching the reactive man how to transcend himself by accepting death, aligning with a form of passive detachment akin to Buddhism.

#on/nihilism #on/buddhism #on/christ #on/reactive

Against Hegelianism

4. Against Hegelianism Page 179

Dialectic Misinterprets Sense, Essence, and Change

The dialectic does not even skim the surface of interpretation, it never goes beyond the domain of symptoms. It confuses interpretation with the development of the uninterpreted symbol. This is why, in questions of change and development, it conceives of nothing deeper than an abstract permutation where the subject becomes predicate and the predicate, subject. Page 180

Opposition can be the law of the relation between abstract products, but difference is the only principle of genesis or production; a principle which itself proยญduces opposition as mere appearance. Dialectic thrives on oppositions because it is unaware of far more subtle and subterranean differential mechanisms: topological displacements, typological variations. Page 180

Considering symptoms abstractly, making the movement of appearance into the genetic law of things and retaining only an inverted image of principle - the whole dialectic operates and moves in the element of[ution . Page 181

Nietzsche's work is directed against the dialectic for three reasons: it misinterprets sense because it does not know the nature of the forces which concretely appropriate phenomena; it misinterprets essence because it does not know the real element from which forces, their qualities and their relations derive; it misinterprets change and transformation because it is content to work with permutations of abstract and unreal terms. Page 181

Nietzsche fundamentally opposes the dialectic, arguing that it fails to grasp the true nature of things. It misinterprets sense by ignoring the forces at play, misunderstands essence by failing to recognize the differential element of will to power, and distorts change by relying on abstract oppositions rather than the dynamic principle of difference.

#on/dialectic #on/nietzsche #on/critique #on/difference #on/force #on/willtopower

Dialectic as Christian Ideology of Ressentiment

It is reactive forces that express themselves in opposition, the will to nothingness that expresses itself in the labour of the negative . The dialectic is the natural ideology of ressentiment and bad conscience. It is thought in the perspective of nihilism and from the standpoint of reactive forces. It is a fundamentally Christian way of thinking, from one end to the other; powerless to create new ways of thinking and feeling. The death of God is a grand, noisy, dialectical event; but an event which happens in the din of reactive forces and the fumes of nihilism. Page 182

The dialectic is exposed as the inherent ideology of ressentiment and bad conscience, deeply rooted in nihilism and reactive forces. It is seen as a fundamentally Christian mode of thought, unable to generate genuinely new perspectives and reducing even significant events like the death of God to the level of reactive noise.

#on/dialectic #on/ressentiment #on/badconscience #on/nihilism #on/christianity #on/ideology

The Avatars of the Dialectic

5. The Avatars of the Dialectic Page 182

The Dialectic's Practical Motor: Alienation and Reappropriation

the posing of the question "who?" is suffiยญcient to lead the dialectic to its true result: saltus mortalis. Page 183

The speculative motor of the dialectic is contradiction and its resolution. But its practical motor is alienation and the suppression of alienation, alienation and reappropriation. Page 183

Overcoming alienation thus means pure, cold annihilaยญtion, a recovery which lets nothing which it recovers subsist: "it is not that the ego is all, but the ego destroys all" (Stirner p. 1 82). Page 184

While dialectics is driven speculatively by contradiction, its practical engine is alienation and reappropriation. However, when faced with the question of "who," this process can lead to a destructive outcome where overcoming alienation results in annihilation rather than genuine transformation.

#on/dialectic #on/alienation #on/reappropriation

Nihilism as the Truth of the Dialectic

History in general and Hegelianยญism in particular found their outcome, but also their most complete dissolution, in a triumphant nihilism. Dialectic loves and controls history, but it has a history itself which it suffers from and which it does not control. The meaning of history and the dialectic together is not the realisation of reason, freedom or man as species, but nihilism, nothing but nihilism. Stirner is the dialectician who reveals nihilism as the truth of the dialectic . Page 184

Marx elaborates his famous doctrine of the conditioned ego: the species and the individual, species being and the particular, social order and egoism are reconciled in the ego conditioned by social and historical relations. Is this sufficient? What is the species and which one is the individual? Page 185

The historical trajectory and Hegelian philosophy are interpreted as culminating not in progress but in triumphant nihilism. Nihilism is identified as the underlying truth of the dialectic, exposed by figures like Stirner. Even Marxist attempts at reconciliation (conditioned ego) remain within a framework that ultimately fails to address Nietzsche's question of "who."

#on/nihilism #on/dialectic #on/history #on/hegel #on/stirner #on/marx

Nietzsche and the Dialectic

6. Nietzsche and the Dialectic Page 185

Nietzsche's Critique of German Philosophy and the Dialectic

Nietzsche never stops attacking the theological and Christian character of German philosophy (the "Tubingen seminary") - the powerlessness of this philosophy to extricate itself from the nihilistic perspective (Hegel's negative nihilism, Feuerbach's reactive nihilism, Stirner's extreme nihilism) - the incapacity of this philosophy to end in anything but the ego, man or phantasms of the human (the Nietzschean overman against the dialectic) - the mystifYing character of so-called dialectical transformaยญ tions (transvaluation against reappropriation and abstract permutaยญtions). Page 185

He makes use of the question "which one?" but only in order to dissolve the dialectic in the nothingness of the ego . He is incapable of posing this question in anything but the human perspecยญtive , under any conditions but those of nihilism. He cannot let this question develop for itself or pose it in another element which would give it an afftrmative response. Page 186

Overcoming is opposed to preserving but also to appropriating and reappropriating. Transvaluing is opposed to current values but also to dialectical pseudo-transformations Page 186

Nietzsche wages a multifaceted critique against German philosophy and the dialectic, exposing its Christian roots, inescapable nihilism, anthropocentric focus (ego, man), and the false nature of its transformations. Even thinkers like Stirner, who approach the "which one?" question, remain trapped in the human/nihilistic perspective, failing to achieve the true overcoming and transvaluation Nietzsche advocates.

#on/nietzsche #on/dialectic #on/germanphilosophy #on/nihilism #on/critique #on/transvaluation #on/overcoming

The Overman as a New Type

Neither ego nor man is unique Page 186

The overman is defined by a new way of feeling: he is a different subject from man, something other than the human type . A new way of thinking, predicates other than divine ones; for the divine is still a way of preserving man and of preserving the essential characยญteristic of God, God as attribute . A new way of evaluating: not a change of values, not an abstract transposition nor a dialectical reversal, but a change and reversal in the element from which the value of values derives, a "transvaluation" . Page 186

The cry of the higher man is manifold: "It was a strange, protracted, manifold cry, however, and Zarathustra clearly distinguished that it was composed of many voices: although, heard from a distance, it might sound like a cry from a single throat" Page 187

The Overman is a radically different type of being, defined by a new way of feeling, thinking (beyond theological/human categories), and evaluating (transvaluation). This figure transcends the limitations of the ego and conventional humanity.

#on/overman #on/type #on/sensibility #on/thought #on/transvaluation

Theory of the Higher Man

7. Theory of the Higher Man Page 187

Characters of the Higher Man

The characters which make up the higher man are: the prophet, the two kings, the man with the leeches, the sorcerer, the last pope, the ugliest man, the voluntary beggar and the shadow. Page 187

The higher man is the image in which the reactive man represents himself as "higher" , and, better still, deifies himself. At the same time, the higher man is the image in which the product of culture or species activity appears. Page 187

The prophet is the prophet of great weariยญness, representative of passive nihilism, prophet of the last man . He is looking for a sea to drink, a sea in which to drown himself; but every death seems to him still too active, we are too tired to die . He wills death but as a passive extinction (Z II "The Prophet", IV "The Cry of Distress"). Page 187

The sorcerer is the bad conscience, the "counterfeiter" , the "penitent of the spirit" , the "demon of melancholy" who fabricates his suffering in order to excite pity, in order to spread the contagion. Page 187

"You would deck out even your disease if you showed yourself naked to your physician" : the sorcerer fakes pain, he invents a new sense for it, he betrays Dionysus, he seizes hold of Ariadne's song, he, the falsely tragic one (Z IV "The Sorcerer"). Page 188

The ugliest of men represents reactive nihilism: the reactive man has turned his ressentiment against God, he has put himself in the place of the God that he has killed, but he does not stop being reactive, full of bad conscience and ressentiment (Z IV "The Ugliest of Men"). Page 188

The two kings are customs, the morality of customs and the two ends of this morality, the two extremities of culture . They represent species activity grasped in the prehistoric principle of determination of customs but also in the post-historic product where customs are suppressed. They lose hope because they witness the triumph of a "mob" : they see forces being grafted onto the customs themselves which distort species activity and deform both its principle and its product (Z IV "Conversation with the Kings"). Page 188

The man with leeches represents the product of culture as science . He is the "conscientious man of the spirit" . He wanted certainty and to appropriate science and culture . "Better to know nothing than to half-know many things" (Z IV "The Leech" p. 263). And through this striving for certainty he learns that science is not even an objective knowledge of the leech and of its primary causes, but only a knowledge of the leech's "brain", knowledge which is no longer knowledge because it must identify itself with the leech, think like it and surrender itself to it. Knowledge is life against life, the life which cuts into life, but only the leech cut into life, it alone is knowledge (Z IV "The Leech" - the importance of the brain in Schopenhauer's theories will also be recalled). Page 188

The last pope has turned his existence into a long service. He represents the product of culture as religion. He served God until the end and in doing so lost an eye . The lost eye is undoubtedly the eye which saw active, affirmative gods. The remaining eye followed the Jewish and Christian god through the whole of his history: he saw nothingness, the whole of negative nihilism and the replacement of God by man. The old lackey who depairs because he has lost his master: "I am without master and nevertheless I am not free; neither am I merry except in memories" (Z IV "Retired from Service"). Page 188

The voluntary beggar has gone through the whole human species, from rich to poor. He was seeking the "kingdom of heaven" , "happiness on earth", as a recompense but also as the product of human, species and cultural Page 188

activity. He wanted to know who this kingdom belonged to and what this activity represented; Science, morality or religion? Or something else again, poverty or work? But the kingdom of heaven is no more among the poor than among the rich: everywhere there is the mob, "mob above, mob below"! The voluntary beggar found the kingdom of heaven to be the only recompense and the true product of a species activity: but only among cows, only in the species activity of cows. For cows know how to ruminate and rumination is the product of culture as culture (Z IV "The Voluntary Beggar"). Page 189

The shadow is the wanยญderer himself, species activity itself, culture and its movement. The meaning of the wanderer and of his shadow is that only the shadow wanders. The wandering shadow is species activity, but only insofar as it loses its product and its principle and hunts for them desperately (Z IV "The Shadow"). - The two kings are the guardians of species activity, the man with leeches is the product of this activity as science, the last pope is the product of this activity as religion; the voluntary beggar, beyond science and religion, wants to know what the adequยญate product of this activity is; the shadow is this activity itself insofar as it loses its aim and searches for its principle Page 189

The section introduces the various figures that constitute the "higher man" in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. These characters represent different facets or outcomes of human culture and species activity, often embodying forms of reactive nihilism, bad conscience, or failed attempts at transcendence, serving as complex images both for reactive man's self-perception and the problematic products of history.

#on/higherman #on/zarathustra #on/typology #on/nihilism #on/culture

Is Man Essentially "Reactive"?

8. Is Man Essentially "Reactive"? Page 189

Man's Becoming-Reactive

What constitutes man and his world is not only a particular type of force, but a mode of becoming of forces in general, not reactive forces in particular, but the becoming-reactive of all forces. Now, such a becoming of forces always requires, as its terminus a quo, the presence of the opposite quality, which in becoming passes into its opposite. Page 190

There is therefore a human activity, there are active forces of man; but these particular forces are only the nourishment of all forces which defines man and the human world. Page 190

essentially. The movement of reapยญpropriations, dialectical activity, is nothing more or less than the becoming-reactive of man and in man. Page 191

Man's essence is not merely being reactive but rather embodying a process where forces in general undergo a "becoming-reactive." While active forces are present in man, they are ultimately subsumed or transformed within this dominant reactive process, which is also identified with dialectical movement.

#on/man #on/reactive #on/becoming #on/force #on/dialectic

Overman vs. Higher Man

The Overman is not a man who surpasses himself and succeeds in surpassing himself. The Overman and the higher man differ in nature; both in the instances which produce them and in the goals that they attain . Page 191

the condi tions which would make the enterprise of higher man viable are conditions which would change its nature : Dionysian affirmation rather than man's species activity. The element of affirmation is the superhuman element. The element ofaffirmation is what man lacks even and above all the higher man . Page 193

The Overman is a distinct type from the "higher man" and is not a mere self-overcoming of man. The higher man operates within human limits; his potential realization would require the incorporation of a superhuman element of Dionysian affirmation, which he inherently lacks.

#on/overman #on/higherman #on/difference #on/affirmation

Limitations of the Higher Man

1) There are things that the higher man does not know how to do: to laugh , to play and to dance ! Page 193

2) The higher men themselves recognise the ass as their "superior" . Page 193

3) The symbolism ofthe shadow has a related sense. The shadow is the activity of man, but it needs light as a higher instance; without light it vanishes; with light it is transformed and disappears in another way, changing in nature when it is midday Page 193

4) One of the two fire-dogs is the caricature of the other. One bustles about on the surface , in the din and the fumes . It feeds on the surface, Page 193

it makes the mud boil: that i s to say its activity only serves to nourish, warm up and maintain a becoming-reactive, a becoming cynical in the universe . But the other fire-dog is an affirmative animal: "Which really speaks from the heart of the earth . . . Laughter flutters from him like a motley cloud" Page 194

The limitations of the "higher man" are highlighted by his inability to laugh, play, and dance, his acknowledgment of the ass's superiority (in its passive affirmation of reality), and the superficial/reactive nature of his activity compared to the truly affirmative force symbolized by the other fire-dog.

#on/higherman #on/symbolism #on/reactive #on/affirmation #on/play #on/dance #on/laughter

Nihilism and Transmutation: the focal point

9. Nihilism and Transmutation: the focal point Page 194

Transvaluation and Defeating Nihilism

But when the element is changed, then , and only then , can it be said that all values known or knowable up to the present have been reversed . Nihilism has been defeated: activity recovers its rights but only in relation and in affnity with the deeper instance from which these derive . Becoming-active appears in the universe, but as identical with affirmation as will to power. Page 194

The defeat of nihilism and the true transvaluation of values occur through a change in the fundamental element (will to power as affirmation). This restores activity, which becomes synonymous with affirmative will to power and becoming-active.

#on/nihilism #on/transvaluation #on/affirmation #on/willtopower #on/active

Nihilism as Ratio Cognoscendi of Will to Power

The will to power is spirit, but what would we know of spirit without the spirit of revenge which reveals strange powers to us? The will to power is body, but what would we know of the body without the sickness which makes it known to us? Thus nihilism, the will to nothingness, is not only a will to power, a quality of the will to power, but the ratio cognoscendi ofthe will to power in genera/ .22* All known and knowable values are , by nature , values which derive from this ratio . - If nihilism makes the will to power known to us, then conversely, the latter teaches us that it is known to us in only one form, in the form of the negative which constitutes only one of its aspects, one of its qualities . Page 195

Nihilism, specifically the will to nothingness, functions as the ratio cognoscendi (reason for knowing) of will to power. We apprehend facets of will to power through its negative manifestations like revenge and sickness. Consequently, our understanding of will to power, and the values derived from it, are primarily based on its negative quality.

#on/nihilism #on/willtopower #on/ratiocognoscendi

Affirmation as Ratio Essendi of Will to Power

The other side of the will to power, the unknown side, the other quality of the will to power, the unknown quality, is affirmation . And affirmation , in turn, is not merely a will to power, a quality of the will to power, it is the ratio essendi ofthe will to power in general. 23 * It is the ratio essendi of the will to power as a whole and therefore the ratio which expels the negative from this will , j ust as negation was the ratio cognoscendi of the whole will to power (thus the ratio which does not fail to eliminate the affirmative from the knowledge of this will). New values derive from affirmation : values which were unknown up to the present , that is to say up to the moment when the legislator takes the place of the " scholar" , creation takes the place of knowledge itself and affirmation takes the place of all negations . Page 196

Affirmation represents the unknown, affirmative quality of will to power, serving as its ratio essendi (reason for being). It is the fundamental principle that constitutes the being of will to power and gives rise to truly new values, contrasting with the negative knowledge provided by nihilism.

#on/affirmation #on/willtopower #on/ratioessendi #on/values #on/creation

Transmutation: From Ratio Cognoscendi to Ratio Essendi

L3SF92S5 Page 196

I love the one who makes use of nihilism as the ratio cognoscendi of the will to power, but who finds in the will to power a ratio essendi in which man is overcome and therefore nihilism is defeated . Page 197

The process of transmutation involves the negative knowledge provided by nihilism (ratio cognoscendi) being transformed into the affirmative being of will to power (ratio essendi). This Dionysian process overcomes both man and nihilism, replacing the negative principle with an affirmative one.

#on/transmutation #on/nihilism #on/affirmation #on/willtopower #on/dionysian #on/overcoming

Active Destruction and Affirmative Power

Active destruction means: the point, the moment of transmutation in the will to nothingness. Destruction becomes active at the moment when , with the alliance between reactive forces and the will to nothingness broken, the will to nothingness is converted and crosses over to the side ofaffirmation , it is related to a power ofaffirming which destroys the reactive forces themselves . Destruction becomes active to the extent that the negative is transmuted and converted into affirmative power: the "eternal joy of becoming" which is avowed in an instant , the "joy of annihilation" , the "affirmation of annihilation and destruction" (EH "Birth of Tragedy" 3 ) . Page 197

Active destruction is the transformative moment where the will to nothingness, breaking its alliance with reactive forces, is transmuted into an affirmative power that destroys those same reactive forces. This conversion of the negative leads to a joyful, affirmative destruction.

#on/destruction #on/transmutation #on/affirmation #on/willtonothingness #on/reactive #on/joy

Transmutation as Conversion

in transmu tation , we are not concerned with a simple substitution, but with a conversion . Page 198

Transmutation signifies a deep conversion or transformation in the nature of the negative, rather than a simple replacement.

#on/transmutation #on/conversion

Affinnation and Negation

1 0 . Affinnation and Negation Page 198

Aspects of Affirmation's Triumph

1 ) Change of quality in the will to power . Page 198

The element of values changes place and nature, the value ofvalues changes its principle and the whole of evaluation changes character. Page 198

2) The transitionfrom the ratio cognoscendi to the ratio essendi in the will to power . Page 198

We will only think the will to power as it is , we will only think it as having being, if we use the ratio for knowing as a quality which passes into its opposite and find in this opposite the ratio for being unknown . Page 198

3) Conversion ofthe element in the will to power . Page 199

In the man who wants to perish, the man who wants to be overcome, negation changes sense , it becomes a power of affirming Page 199

4) Reign ofaffirmation in the will to power . Page 199

There is no other power but affirmation, no other quality, no other element: the whole of negation is converted in its substance, transmuted in its quality, nothing remains ofits own power or autonomy . Page 199

5 ) Critique ofknown values . Page 199

Sovereign affirmation is inseparable from the destruc tion of all known values, it turns this destruction into a total destruc tion . Page 199

6) Reversal ofthe relation offorces . Page 199

Affirmation constitutes becoming active as the universal becoming of forces. Reactive forces are denied, all forces become active . Page 199

This section details six aspects of the transformative triumph of affirmation over negation. It describes a fundamental shift in the quality and element of will to power, a transition from a negative way of knowing to an affirmative way of being, the conversion of negation into affirmative power, the establishment of affirmation's reign, the total destruction of old values, and the reversal of force relations towards universal becoming-active.

#on/affirmation #on/negation #on/willtopower #on/transmutation #on/critique #on/reactive #on/active

Affirmation and Destruction

1 ) There is no affirmation which is not immediately followed by a negation no less tremendous and unbounded than itself. Page 200

Destruction as the active destruction ofall known values is the trail of the creator: " Look at the good and the j ust ! What do they hate the most? The one who breaks their tables of values, the destroyer, the criminal: but it is he, the creator. " Page 200

2 ) There is no affirmation which is not preceded by an immense negation: "One of the essential conditions of affirmation is negation and destruction . " Page 200

It is only under the sway of affirmation that the negative is raised to its higher degree at the same time as it defeats itself: it is no longer a power and a quality but the mode of being of the one who is powerful . Then , and only then, the negative is aggression, negation becomes active , joyful destruction Page 202

Affirmation and negation are intimately linked: immense negation precedes and follows affirmation. The creator is also a destroyer of old values. Under the dominance of affirmation, negation loses its independent power but becomes an active, joyful force of destruction for the powerful, a mere mode of their being.

#on/affirmation #on/negation #on/destruction #on/creation #on/joy

The Sense of Affirmation

1 1 . The Sense of Affirmation Page 203

False Affirmation: The Ass's Yes to Nihilism

we can guess the meaning of the ass' affirmation , of the yes which does not know how to say no : this kind ofaffirming is nothing but bearing, taking upon oneself, acquiescing in the real as it is , taking reality as it is upon oneself. Page 204

The men of the present still live under an old idea: that everything heavy is real and positive, that everything that carries it is real and affirmative . But this reality which unites the camel and its burden to the point of confusing them in a single mirage is only the desert , the reality of the desert, nihilism. Page 205

The ass does not know how to say no; but first and foremost he does not know how to say no to nihilism itself. He gathers all its products, he carries them into the desert and there christens them: the real as such. Page 205

The "ass's affirmation" is a false, passive affirmation that merely accepts reality as it is, failing to say "no" even to nihilism. It embodies the outdated idea that accepting burdens equates to affirmation, ultimately affirming the "desert" of nihilism.

#on/affirmation #on/falsehood #on/nihilism #on/symbolism #on/ass

Being, Real, True as Avatars of Nihilism

Hegelian being is pure and simple nothingness; and the becoming that this being forms with nothingness, that is to say with itself, is a perfectly nihilistic becoming; and affirmation passes through negation here because it is merely the affirmation of the negative and its products . Page 206

l) Being, the true and the real are the avatars of nihilism . Ways of mutilating life, of denying it, of making it reactive by submitting it to the labour of the negative, by loading it with the heaviest burdens . Nietzsche has no more belief in the self-sufficiency of the real than he has in that of the true: he thinks ofthem as the manifestations of a will , a will to depreciate life, to oppose life to life . Page 207

2) Affirmation conceived o f a s acceptance, a s affirmation o f that which is, as truthfulness of the true or positivity of the real, is a false affirmation . It is the yes of the ass . The ass does not know how to say no because he says yes to everything which is no . The ass or the camel is the opposite of the lion; in the lion negation becomes a power of affirming, but in them affirmation remains at the service of the negative , a simple power of denying . Page 207

3) This false conception of affirmation is still a way of preserving man . As long as being is a burden the reactive man is there to carry it . Where could being be better affirmed than in the desert? And where could man be better preserved. "The last man lives the longest. " Beneath the sun of being he loses even the taste for dying, disap pearing into the desert to dream at length of a passive extinction. Page 207

"Being," "truth," and "reality" are seen as manifestations of nihilism that serve to devalue and make life reactive by imposing burdens. The false affirmation of accepting "what is" (the "ass's yes") is a reactive stance that ultimately preserves the domesticated "last man" within the nihilistic landscape.

#on/nihilism #on/being #on/truth #on/reality #on/affirmation #on/falsehood #on/lastman

True Affirmation as Creation and Liberation

The world is neither true nor real but living. And the living world is will to power, will to falsehood , which is actualised in many different powers . To actualise the will to falsehood under any power whatever, to actualise the will to power under any quality whatever, is always to evaluate . To live is to evaluate . There is no truth of the world as it is thought , no reality of the sensible world , all is evaluation, even and above all the sensible and the real . Page 207

To affirm is still to evaluate, but to evaluate from the perspective of a will which enjoys its own difference in life instead of suffering the pains ofthe opposition to this life that it has itself inspired . To affirm is not to take responsibility for , to take on the burden ofwhat is, but to release, to setfree what lives . To affirm is to unburden: not to load life with the weight of higher values, but to create new values which are those of life , which make life light and active . There is creation, properly speaking, only insofar as we make use of excess in order to invent new forms of life rather than separating life from what it can do . Page 208

The sense of affirma tion can only emerge if these three fundamental points in Nietzsche's philosophy are borne in mind : not the true nor the real but evaluation; not affirmation as acceptance but as creation; not man but the Over man as a new form of life . Page 208

The Dionysian yes, on the contrary, knows how to say no: it is pure affirmation , it has conquered nihilism and divested negation of all autonomous power. But it has done this because it has placed the negative at the service of the powers of affirming. Page 208

True affirmation is not passive acceptance of "what is" but an active, creative process of evaluation that liberates life and invents new possibilities. It is the Dionysian "yes" that is powerful enough to incorporate and subordinate negation, stemming from the fundamental reality of the world as a living, evaluating will to power, leading to the emergence of the Overman.

#on/affirmation #on/creation #on/evaluation #on/willtopower #on/life #on/overman #on/dionysian

The Double Affirmation: Ariadne

1 2 . The Double Affirmation: A riadne Page 209

Affirmation is Being, Double Affirmation Constitutes Power

Affirmation itself is being, being is solely affirmation in all its power. Page 209

Being and nothingness are merely the abstract expression of affirmation and negation as qualities (qualia) of the will to power . Page 209

Affirmation has no object other than itself. To be precise it is being insofar as it is its own object to itself. Affirmation as object of affirma tion - this is being. In itself and as primary affirmation, it is becoming . But it is being insofar as it is the obj ect of another affirmation which raises becoming to being or which extracts the being of becoming. This is why affirmation in all its power is double: affirmation is affirmed . It is primary affirmation (becoming) which is being, but only as the object of the second affirmation . The two affirmations constitute the power of affirming as a whole. Page 209

Affirmation is equated with being. The full power of affirmation is double: a primary affirmation (becoming) which becomes being only when it is made the object of a second affirmation. This self-reflection and affirmation of affirmation is what constitutes being and the total power of affirming.

#on/affirmation #on/being #on/becoming #on/willtopower #on/doubleaffirmation

Symbolism of Double Affirmation

1) Zarathustra's two animals , the eagle and the serpent . Page 209

2) The divine couple , Dionysus-A riadne . Page 210

Dionysian becoming is being, eternity , but only insofar as the corresponding affirmation is itself affirmed : "Eternal affirmation of being, eternally I am your affirmation " Page 210

3 ) The -labyrinth or the ears . Page 211

from the perspective of the constitution of the eternal return, the labyrinth is becoming, the affirmation of becoming. Page 211

Dionysus teaches Ariadne his secret: the true labyrinth is Dionysus himself, the true thread is Jhe thread of affirmation . "I am your labyrinth . "35 Dionysus is the labyrinth and the bull, becoming and being, but becoming is only being insofar as its affirmation is itself affirmed . Page 211

The ear is labyrinthine, the ear is the labyrinth of becoming or the maze of affirmation . The labyrinth is what leads us to being, the only being is that of becoming, the only being is that of the labyrinth itself. Page 211

Affirmation is posited for the first time as multiplicity , becoming and chance . For multiplicity is the difference of one thing from another, becoming is difference from self and chance is difference " between all" or dis tributive difference . Page 212

The concept of double affirmation is expressed through key Nietzschean symbols: the eagle/serpent, Dionysus and Ariadne, and the labyrinth/ears. Dionysus represents primary affirmation (becoming), and Ariadne represents the second affirmation that reflects back and elevates becoming to being. The labyrinth symbolizes the process of navigating becoming through affirmation, leading to the realization that the only being is becoming itself.

#on/symbolism #on/doubleaffirmation #on/dionysus #on/ariadne #on/labyrinth #on/eternalreturn

Eternal Return as Synthesis of Affirmation

Becoming is being, multiplicity is unity, chance is necessity . The affirmation of becoming is the affirmation of being etc . - but only insofar as it is the obj ect of the second affirmation which raises it to this new power. Being ought to belong to becoming, unity to multiplicity, necessity to chance , but only insofar as becoming, multiplicity and chance are reflected in the second affirmation which takes them as its object . 36* It is thus in the nature of affirmation to return or of difference to reproduce itself. Return is the being of becoming, the unity of multiplicity, the necessity of chance: the being of difference as such or the eternal return . Page 212

Dionysus developed , reflected , raised to the highest power: these are the aspects of Dionysian willing which serve as principles for the eternal return . Page 212

The eternal return is the synthesis achieved through this double affirmation. The second affirmation elevates the primary affirmation (becoming, multiplicity, chance) so that becoming attains being, multiplicity attains unity, and chance attains necessity. The eternal return embodies this highest power of affirmed affirmation, which is the being of difference itself.

#on/eternalreturn #on/affirmation #on/doubleaffirmation #on/becoming #on/multiplicity #on/chance #on/synthesis

Dionysus and Zarathustra

1 3 . Dionysus and Zarathustra Page 212

Difference is Pure Affirmation

becoming, multiplicity and chance do not contain any negation; difference is pure affirmation; return is the being of difference excluding the whole of the negative . Page 213

difference is happy; that multiplicity, becoming and chance are ade quate objects of joy by themselves and that only joy returns. Page 213

Becoming, multiplicity, and chance, as forms of difference, are inherently positive and joyful, containing no negation. Difference itself is pure affirmation, and the eternal return, as the being of difference, is the realm where only joy returns.

#on/difference #on/affirmation #on/joy #on/eternalreturn #on/becoming #on/multiplicity #on/chance

Reign of the Negative

There is no unhappy consciousness which is not also man's enslavement, a trap for the will and an opportunity for all basenesses of thought. The reign of the negative is the reign of powerful beasts, Churches and States , which fetter us to their own ends. Page 213

Unhappy consciousness signifies the enslavement of man under the "reign of the negative," which is characterized by powerful institutions (Churches, States) that restrict the will.

#on/negation #on/will #on/institutions #on/unhappyconsciousness

Transmutation and Joyful Destruction

Transmutation relates the negative to affirmation in the will to power, it is turned into a simple mode of being of the powers of affirming. Instead of the labour of opposition or the suffering of the negative we have the warlike play of difference , affirmation and the j oy of destruc tion . The no stripped of its power, transformed into the opposite quality, turned affirmative and creative : such is transmutation . Page 214

Transmutation transforms the negative into a mere mode of being for the powers of affirmation, replacing the suffering of negation with the joyful, warlike play of difference and destruction. Negation becomes an affirmative, creative force.

#on/transmutation #on/negation #on/affirmation #on/joy #on/destruction #on/difference

Affirmative Powers: Dance, Play, Laughter

every Nietzschean concept lies at the crossing of two unequal genetic lines. Not only the eternal return and the Overman, but laughter, play and dance. In relation to Zarathustra laughter, play Page 216

and dance are affirmative powers of transmutation: dance transmutes heavy into light, laughter transmutes suffering into joy and the play of throwing (the dice) transmutes low into high . But in relation to Dionysus dance, laughter and play are affirmative powers of reflec tion and development . Dance affirms becoming and the being of becoming; laughter, roars of laughter, affirm multiplicity and the unity ofmultiplicity; play affirms chance and the necessity ofchance. Page 217

Laughter, play, and dance are central affirmative powers in Nietzsche's philosophy. From Zarathustra's perspective, they transmute negative states (suffering, heaviness). From Dionysus's perspective, they are powers of reflection that affirm fundamental aspects of reality like becoming, multiplicity, chance, and their corresponding "being" (eternal return, unity, necessity).

#on/laughter #on/play #on/dance #on/affirmation #on/transmutation #on/zarathustra #on/dionysus

Conclusion

Conclusion Page 218

Dialectic as Inverted and Reactive

The Hegelian dialectic is indeed a reflection on difference, but it inverts its image . For the affirmation of difference as such it substitutes the negation of that which differs; for the affirmation of self it substitutes the negation of the other, and for the affirmation of affirmation it substitutes the famous negation of the negation . Page 219

Opposition substituted for difference is also the triumph of the reactive forces that find their corresponding principle in the will to nothingness. Ressentiment needs negative premisses, two negations, in order to produce a phantom of affirmation; the ascetic ideal needs ressentiment itself and bad conscience, like the conjuror needs his marked cards. Page 219

The dialectic is, first of all, the thought of the theoretical man, reacting against life, claiming to judge life, to limit and measure it . In the second place, it is the thought of the priest who subjects life to the labour of the negative: he needs negation to establish his power, he represents the strange will which leads reactive forces to triumph . Dialectic in this sense is the authentically Christian ideology . Finally , it is the thought of the slave , expressing reactive life in itself and the becoming-reactive of the universe . Even the atheism that it offers us is a clerical atheism, even its image of the master is a slavish one . - It is not surprising that the dialectic only produces a phantom of affirma tion . Page 219

The conclusion reiterates the critique of Hegelian dialectics as an inverted form of thought that substitutes negation for true affirmation. It is presented as the philosophical expression and ideology of reactive forces, ressentiment, bad conscience, and the will to nothingness, ultimately rooted in the perspective of the theoretical man, the priest, and the slave, and incapable of genuine, affirmative creation.

#on/dialectic #on/negation #on/affirmation #on/reactive #on/ressentiment #on/badconscience #on/asceticideal #on/christianity

Nietzsche's Affirmative Alternative

They moved within the limits of the question "What is . . . ?" , the contradictory question par excellence . Nietzsche creates his own method : dramatic , typological and differential . He turns philosophy into an art , the art of inter preting and evaluating . In every case he asks the question "Which one?" The one that . . . is Dionysus . That which . . . is the will to power as plastic and genealogical principle . The will to power is not force but the differential element which simultaneously determines the relation of forces (quantity) and the respective qualities of related forces . It is in this element of difference that affirmation manifests itself and develops itself as creative . The will to power is the principle of multiple affirmation, the donor principle or the bestowing virtue . Page 220

We affirm chance and the necessity of chance; becoming and the being of becoming; multiplicity and the unity of multiplicity . Affirmation turns back on itself, then returns once more , carried to its highest power. Difference reflects itself and repeats or reproduces itself. The eternal return is this highest power, the synthesis of affirmation which finds its principle in the will . The lightness of that which affirms against the weight of the negative; the games of the will to power against the labour of the dialectic ; the affirmation of affirma tion against that famous negation of the negation . Page 220

Because the will to power only makes what is affirmed return: it is the will to power which both transforms the negative and reproduces affirmation . That the one isfor the other, that the one is in the other, means that eternal return is being but being is selection . Affirmation remains as the sole quality of the will to power, action as the sole quality of force , becoming-active as the creative identity of power and willing. Page 221

In contrast to traditional, dialectical philosophy's limiting questions and negative orientation, Nietzsche develops a new, affirmative philosophy based on interpretation, evaluation, and the question "Which one?". This method reveals the will to power as the principle of creative, multiple affirmation. Concepts like the eternal return embody the highest power of affirmation, where difference is reproduced and being is selection. This leads to a philosophy of lightness, play, and becoming-active, fundamentally opposed to the labor and negativity of the dialectic.

#on/nietzsche #on/philosophy #on/method #on/willtopower #on/affirmation #on/eternalreturn #on/critique #on/dialectic