Will, Evaluation, Power

Nietzsche sometimes characterizes Will to Power as 'form-imposing'. Thus, insofar as the process of Evaluation is, as he asserts, an expression of Will to Power, it functions in the constitution of ethical Self-Control as a Formal Cause. Now, higher Soul, Thought, and Reason, are the Formal Causes of the concepts of Self-Control of Aristotle, Spinoza, and Kant, respectively. Furthermore, just as form-imposition entails form-receiving Matter, in those concepts, lower Soul, Extension, and inclination, respectively are their Matters. In the case of Nietzsche, the constitution of the concept is uncertain--in his later work, Will to Power is ascribed to the Dionysian principle, but in his earliest phase, the Apollinian principle is the source of Form, which implies that the Dionysian is its corresponding Matter. Regardless, he agrees with his predecessors that the controlled part of the Self is inferior to, and a recipient of, Form, if not inert. In contrast, here, Will, the Material Principle of personal experience, is equipollent to the Formal Principle, Comprehension, and, hence, is as dynamic as the evaluation process that imparts Form to its exercise, i. e. that imparts Form to action. Thus, on this model, in contrast with Nietzsche's, Power is not exclusively form-imposing. So, if he had maintained his original Dionysian-Apollinian dichotomy, he might have arrived at a similar conclusion, one which is also implied by Deleuze's reading of Spinoza's Attributes as Powers, i. e. one that conceives Evaluation as empowering, not as constraining.