Nietzsche's Will to Power
What is Nietzsche's general, philosophical view about the relation between value and the will, or, more particularly, the will to power?
This piece explains what he means when he has Zarathustra say in Thus Spoke Zarathustra that "a table of values hangs over every people... It is the voice of its will to power... Man first implanted values into things to maintain himself... Only through evaluation is there value." Why does he believe that this conception alone makes the nature of value comprehensible? Is he right?
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche outlines his philosophical views on the relation between value and the will, especially through his conception of the “Will to Power.” The “Will to Power” can be understood as one’s personal desire and ability to recreate the world in the image of one’s will, where value is not discovered but self-made. This arises out of Nietzsche’s premise that objective values do not exist, and directly conflicts with three schools of thought whose supporters he has coined the “Defenders of Orthodoxy,” the “Ultimate Man”, and the “Spirit of Gravity.”
For Nietzsche, the “Defenders of Orthodoxy” are proponents of a “Slave Morality”, one that establishes a system of values that defines objective goods and evils. These objective “oughts” are stressed to be binding on anyone regardless of time, race, sex, and are used by the weak to convince the strong they should not exercise their free will. In the past, this was done so through the Church, who established the objective nature of its cardinal values by defining it as mandated by God. A life of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, in addition to faith, hope and charity would lead to a Christian good life, and those who did not follow the same moral code were deemed enemies of the Church and denounced as “evil.” By containing the strong’s ability to use their own agency within these defined boundaries of morality, the weak were able to exercise their own power. A school of thought that preaches objective goods and evils thus creates a standard and rational through which people can be compared, praised but also denounced; as a result, it can be wielded as a weapon, and one personal example is like condemning your younger brother, who successfully got to the candy jar before you did, of being an “evil” and disrespectful sibling. Our justice systems and our holier-than-thou morality thus becomes an underhand last defense, after strength and might have failed.
Nietzsche’s belief that our objective definitions of justice and goodness is just a means to power also spurs him to claim that equality, defined through Christianity as the ultimate virtue of a successful and just society, is simply a means through which the powerless attempt to level the playing field. Everyone longs and strives for power, but the weak disguise it through a call for equality. An example is hosting a runner’s race and giving a slower runner a head start in the name of equality of opportunity. Instead, Nietzsche believes that the strong should be allowed to thrive, and that direct conflict between the strong should be fostered because it allows humanity to continuously surpass itself. Justice is simply a furtherance of conflict by the weak when strength has failed. As a result, persecution in the name of justice is inspired by vengeance and not a spirit to live life to the fullest.
Because the imposition of objective values is simply a reaction against external threat, it does not allow us to fully take advantage of our creative capacities to choose our own set of values. Furthermore, because it is reactive, the compliance to objective values is also seen as a form of cowardice where one does not have the courage to blaze ones own path. In fact, the biggest hypocrisy in this case is that the followers of these objective values are still recognized by others as virtuous, whereupon this cowardice is masked as virtue. The concept of objective values impedes the creation of values, and denies ones affirmation of life. Nietzsche is encouraging readers to escape group think, and a modern application of this idea is going into investment banking as a college student. A job on wall street is objectively defined as a “successful” career path because of its selectivity and high salaries, and because of the security that this objective recognition brings, is often pursued by confused, and perhaps cowardly college students like myself who shy away from blazing trails into careers that will reap unknown results. Very few have a true “passion” for work in the financial industry, yet this cowardice, or perhaps more appropriately, confusion over what one wants, is still masked as extreme success.
Furthermore, the lack of objective values entails the possible argument that consequently, nothing is valuable. Nihilism, which is this belief that nothing in the world has real meaning and a result, nothing is valuable, becomes a threat to our will to live and our ability to create purposeful meaning in our life. Nietzsche has coined proponents of this thought as the “Ultimate Man”, people who do not acknowledge and seize their ability in creating their own values but simply succumb to inevitability of the lack of meaning in life. Thus, while the Ultimate Man shares part of Nietzsche’s truth and acknowledges openly the lack of objective values, that is the extent to their similarities; Nietzsche believes that precisely because there are no objective values, we must create our own to banish this nihilism.
The culmination of these two points is embodied in the “Spirit of Gravity,” which is when our attachment to universal ideas of good and evil compels us to become too serious as we miss out on the joy of creating our own good and evil. The Spirit of Gravity is also a lack of ownership over our past; we can act in the present to alter our future, but there is nothing we can do to change our past. This thought can enslave us, as the past becomes a permanent, immobile reminder of our seeming powerlessness. Hence, Nietzsche proposes that we adapt our thinking from “it was” to “it will”, where the acting of willing sets us free from this confinement. Until we can take full responsibility for our actions in the present by gaining complete power over ourselves, we cannot redeem our past. Our life and wisdom are constantly changing, like lighthearted dancers, and an unwillingness to embrace that will only result in powerlessness.
Thus, when Nietzsche mentions a “table of values that hangs over every people,” he is stating his belief that there are an infinite number of values to choose from, and it is up to each individual herself to create and curate her own selection of values. “Man first implanted values into things to maintain himself” speaks to the weak’s use of objective values to repress the strong’s exercise of free will, and it is only through individually evaluating the many values that are often imposed upon us and curating our own selection can we find true value in life.
With the rise of nihilism, Nietzsche proposes the introduction of a new character, the “Übermensch” ––– anyone who is able to impose his own set of values on the earth through the exercise of his free will. However, while Nietzsche is about asserting values, he decries doing so by claiming they are objective and transcendental of all circumstances; values cannot be systematically established, but individually recognized. Because everything is created by oneself, the Übermensch thus becomes the very meaning of existence. The Übermensch create values for her own sake, and valuing something is thus orienting yourself to what you are aiming to become. Thus attitude towards life is represented by the innocence of a child, where one is able to view the world through completely new lens, and completely recreate the world in ones will.
While I believe Nietzsche’s conception of value is extremely affirming and even empowering on an individual’s level, I raise questions on its feasibility and desirability on a societal scale. A critique of Nietzsche must begin by evaluating the premise on which he bases his reasonings, namely that objective values do not exist. My first point on feasibility thus revolves around the potential existence of objective cognitive and intellectual values. Like mathematical axioms, these norms are accepted as the starting point of our logical reasonings. They include values like our devotion to avoiding contradiction, believing only what is true, and believing only what we have good evidence and reason to believe. These intellectual norms are the preconditions to being a coherent agent, and one cannot coherently think and have reputable opinions if one is not committed to these same logical beginnings. For example, if a friend started making decisions on who to keep as friends based purely on the color of shirts his friends wore on a daily basis, you would likely discount him as a reasonable and intelligible friend. As a result, to effectively participate in society as a coherent agent and live up to ones function as a human being, these norms cannot be considered optional. If they are not optional, they thus become objective.
If we have established the potential existence of objective values, we must then ask if there is a specific issue about objective moral values that does not allow us to define some of them as objective. A potential argument can be that while coherent logic is a universal language intrinsic to our reasoning capabilities, and hence, humanity, morality is a social construct; it governs our interactions with fellow human beings, and the multifaceted nature of it does not allow for an objective right or wrong. To put it analogically, reason, like mathematical equations, has a definitive correct answer, while morality is like a philosophy paper: one person’s cup of tea can be drastically different from another’s.
However, regardless of whether objective values do or do not indeed exist, my second point on the desirability in a lack of objective values revolves around the importance of a belief in the existence objective moral values in the functioning of society. “Objective” can be understood as something that transcends our very existence, and it can be argued that when enough people around us believe in this common value, it enters the space of shared knowledge and we perceive it as “objective.” It is upon these objective values that we establish our justice systems and our government, without which society would not have been able to achieve half of the success it has today. Of course, these objective value systems have been abused by the weak in power to persecute their strong enemies, but in that same way, it is the system that has allowed the powerful to peacefully persecute the weak in power to achieve long-term change. Justice when served right should be a double edged sword, and a world that is based purely on might as right would be anarchy; a society needs objective definitions of benevolent and punishable acts to maintain peace.
Hence, even if objective values do not actually exist, I argue that the belief that they do is essential for the functioning of society. Humans are social creatures, and our unity requires a common storyline: our individual friendships are built on shared values, and our nationality, culture, and interests forming our identity and allowing us to be part of a bigger group are just an extension of this shared values system. The trust and collaboration generated from these shared value systems that we ultimately take on as objectively true allow us to do much more than we can do ourselves.
Even if one did believe they had the power to create their own values, I believe that those values would actually not drastically differ from what is ubiquitously believed for the simple matter that we have been conditioned through childhood, education, and our formative years to emulate the beliefs of those around us. When we do arrive at a point in life where we can formulate our own reasonings, we must be able to coherently evaluate the information that is given to us, but I believe it is fundamentally impossible for us to do so without consideration for our past experiences and identity. Even the great people of past centuries who have led to paradigm shifts in arts, sciences, and technology have stood on the shoulders of giants. The point here is thus that we should always evaluate values first before taking them on as true, but we must also recognize that the table of values we choose from have already been preconditioned since birth.
In many ways, I believe Nietzsche’s Will to Power becomes an ideal that we must strive to achieve in the abstract. It is a personal and passionate call for each and every one of us to seek change and evaluate the systems of values that are often imposed upon us and accepted as status quo. We must be open to ethical and intellectual revolutions, and realize that we ourselves also have the power to bring about widespread change in what a society values. Nietzsche was right about Carpe Diem, but fundamentally, I think we must still accept that we exist in a society of shared knowledge and a united storyline that thrives on systems built off of objective values.