Monday, September 23, 2013

Power and Certainty

Nietzsche's characterization, in Beyond Good and Evil #10, of "nihilism" as consisting in a preference of "a certain nothing to an uncertain something", seems to anticipate his formulation, at the end of Genealogy of Morals, of Asceticism as that "man would rather will nothingness than not will". Perhaps he would explain the implied correspondence between Certainty and Power as expressing that the Will to Certainty is a special case of the Will to Power.  But, if so, then he would also need to explain his apparent advocacy, suggested in BGE #1, of the Will to Uncertainty, which he assimilates there to the Will to Falsehood.  Now, one possible explanation of that latter that is inadequate in that regard is the proposition that Uncertainty is a means to Certainty, since the theme of #1 is the elevation of Uncertainty and Falsehood over Certainty and Truth.  Furthermore, the value of Uncertainty is plain in the event of boredom or stagnation, examples that suggest that the relative value of Certainty and Uncertainty is not constant.  So, if the value of Power is constant, there is no correspondence between Power and Certainty, which poses to Nietzsche the challenge of deriving both a Will to Certainty and a Will to Uncertainty from the Will to Power.

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