Willing Nothing

The phrase 'Will to Power' most immediately suggests a elucidation of the exercise of strength, but the greater value of Nietzsche's doctrine is perhaps better demonstrated at the other end of the spectrum. First, it easily explains a phenomenon with which Aristotle struggles--'weakness of the will'. Because of the Aristotle's commitment to bi-valence, he can not accommodate the process of resolving to do something, but failing to actualize the resolution, i. e. the process of knowing what to do, but not doing it. In contrast, the multi-valence of Will to Power shows how a resolution can be the expression of any of a varying degrees of strength, not all of which may suffice for carrying out the action. Second, Will to Power offers an alternative interpetation of the 'willlessness' that is central to a long tradition, most lately to Schopenhauer's Philosophy--it is a relatively weak expression of Will to Power, not a privation of 'will'. Third, and perhaps most important, it is a response to the profound thesis that only Spinoza seems to have understood--if all human motivation is based on a self-preservative drive, then suicide is logically impossible. Spinoza, accordingly, argues that apparent acts of self-killing are actually the internalizations of external destructive forces. The doctrine of Will to Power counters that explanation with the thesis that suicide is an act in which one 'would rather will nothing than not will at all', as Nietzsche puts it. In other words, one mode of Will to Power is a Will to Nothingness, i. e. self-destructiveness, and, perhaps, what Freud would later call the 'Thanatos' Principle. Of especial use to Nietzsche is the application of the Will to Nothingness to the contagion that he calls 'Nihilism', which facilitates his diagnosis of pervasive phenomena as symptoms of declining strength. In any case, the doctrine of Will to Power is more than a mere alternative to the Will to Live thesis of human motivation; these examples demonstrate its superior explanatory power. Perhaps if Nietzsche had managed to produce a focused version of his 'Will to Power' fragments, the doctrine would not have become as obscured by his provocative rhetoric as it is.