Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Power and Uncertainty

In #10 of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche diagnoses that underlying an apparent Will to Uncertainty, e. g. Skepticism, may be a deeper Will to Certainty, e. g. Dogmatism.  Still, he expresses admiration for the initial instinct of its advocates "to get away.  A little more strength, flight, courage, and artistic power, and they would rise--not return", imagery that corresponds to other passages in which he illustrates the Will to Power as 'defying Gravity'.  Likewise, it anticipates the Value-creators and Experimenters who he later in the book introduces as 'philosophers of the future'.  So, plainly, he here conceives the Will to Power as a Will to Uncertainty, involving an adventurousness that seems difficult to reconcile with the earthbound domination, self- or other-directed, that he elsewhere derives from it.

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