Warrior Morality and Passive-Aggressive Morality

The use of a term like 'commander' suggests that though he never explicitly formulates it as such, Nietzsche conceives Morality to be a type of Warfare.  So, if that is its fundamental nature, 'Master' Morality is, more precisely, 'Warrior' Morality.  However, it does not follow that 'Slave' Morality is simply 'Pacifist' Morality, for Morality is still essentially Warfare.  Instead, the doctrine that opposes Warrior Morality can be only a Warrior Morality in the guise of Pacifist values, or, to adopt a term from contemporary Psychology, 'Passive-Aggressive' Morality.  Likewise, 'Slave' Morality is no more than a species of Master Morality, employing a ruse the effectiveness of which Nietzsche admires, at the same time that he tries to unmask it.

Evaluation, Pathos of Distance, Slave Morality

As has been previously discussed, according to Nietzsche, the act of Evaluation involves a "pathos of distance", i. e. a feeling of superiority, which thereby distinguishes it from Emotivist utterances that merely report a mechanical effect of pleasure or pain.  Now, the sentences that constitute 'Slave Morality' are either Evaluations proper, or Emotivist utterances.  Likewise, the Ressentiment that, according to e. g. the Genealogy of Morals, I, 13, is the ground of those sentences, is constituted by either a pathos of distance, ore else is simply a mechanical response.  But, if the former, then Ressentiment possesses a strength lacking in the latter, in which case 'Slave Morality' is a Political classification, and not a Psychological one, i. e. the rubric denotes Political, but not Psychological weakness.  If so, then, Nietzsche's concern with the 'Nihilism' that he diagnoses as rooted in Ressentiment, is Oligarchical, as many have interpreted his fundamental orientation.  So, if, in contrast, his concern is general and medical, as he at least sometimes presents himself, then he seemingly needs to either debunk the 'Slave's' 'feeling of superiority', or else deny that sentences that constitute Slave Morality, e. g. 'X is evil', are properly 'Evaluations'.  Whether or not he can accomplish that without recanting his concept of a "slave rebellion in morals" (Beyond Good and Evil, #195) is unclear.

Pathos of Distance

According to Nietzsche, the act of Evaluation entails a "pathos of distance", i. e. a feeling of superiority.  Now, while in #257 of Beyond Good and Evil, he presents such a sense of Mastery as a psychological phenomenon derived from the Will to Power, in I,2 of the Genealogy of Morals he asserts its priority as a political fact, i. e. as an expression of a primordial Master class.  Accordingly, 'Slave' Morality can be interpreted as either a Psychological or a Political phenomenon, but with differing implications for his critique of it.  On the one hand, if it is a Psychological condition, then its value utterances are merely mechanical reactions to feelings of pleasure or of displeasure, e. g. Emotivism, in which case it lacks the capacity for detachment that constitutes true acts of Evaluation.  On the other hand, if is a Political condition, then it is an historically contingent one that does not preclude the possibility of the possession of Psychological strength sufficient for the expression of Mastery via such true acts of Evaluation.  In other words, Nietzsche's challenge to Slave Morality compromises a more profound Psychological diagnosis, i. e. that it lacks the capacity to judge, with a contingent Political accusation, i. e. that its Egalitarian, non-Egoist judgments are disingenuous.

Dionysian Genealogy of Morals

In I, 2 of the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche argues that Consequentialism falsifies the fundamental scenario of Morality by abstracting the effects of an action from the performance of it, thereby deriving an Axiology of non-Egoism, i. e. the imposition on an agent of an impersonal criterion.  Accordingly, his subsequent alternative incorporates the agent into the scenario, from which he develops, his 'Master' Morality.  However, he overlooks that also abstracted out by the Consequentialist analysis is the performance of an action qua dynamic process, thereby facilitating the establishment of what might be termed a 'Morality of Passivity' as paradigmatic.  From that perspective, his doctrine of Power-relations relatively calcifies his original Dionysian vision, according to which a more proper 'Genealogy of Morals' might begin with a Morality of Vitality, and be threatened by a Morality of Inertia, as Bergson suggests.

Pascal's Wager and the Ascetic Ideal

In III, 17 of the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche briefly alludes to what is widely known as 'Pascal's wager', but without taking advantage of the opportunity to explain how the entire context stands as a response to that proposition.  The 'wager', from the pioneer of Probability theory, is that to believe in the existence of his God is a risk-free gamble--if that deity does in fact exist, then eternal life is to be gained, but if that deity does not exist, then there is no afterlife, so nothing is lost in believing otherwise.  However, not only #17, but the entire examination of the 'Ascetic Ideal' in part III, exposes what loss is entailed by that religious commitment--one's health prior to death.  So, while Nietzsche might not succeed in reversing the odds of Pascal's wager, he, at minimum, evens them.

Will to Nothingness, Naturalism, Super-Naturalism

Nietzsche's thesis that "man would rather will nothing than not will", presented in the Genealogy of Morals, is significant in two main respects.  First, as has been previously discussed, the thesis expresses a Will to Die, and, so, poses a counter-example to the standard Will to Live.  Second, it reinforces Nietzsche's Naturalism.  For, one of the traditionally accepted strengths of Super-Naturalism is its thesis that Naturalism can be derived from it, but not conversely, a proposition that is at the heart of various 'Cosmological' arguments.  However, as he explains in the Genealogy, a Will to Nothingness can be the source of concepts of  an 'after-world', which is tantamount to demonstrating that a Super-Natural realm can be derived from a Naturalistic principle.

Revaluation of Pity

The first of Nietzsche's 'revaluation of all values', i. e. his critique of Pity, in The Antichrist, is seemingly less innovative than the title is provocative.  For, as he is undoubtedly well aware, Spinoza's more rigorous, more concise version predates this effort by two centuries.  Instead, what radically diverges from Spinoza's presentation is the thesis that grounds this critique, formulated at the end of Genealogy of Morals--man "would rather will nothingness than not will."  For, while, according to Spinoza, self-destructiveness is impossible, i. e. contradicts the premise that Self-Preservation is the fundamental conatus of all behavior, Nietzsche's thesis, which anticipates Freud's 'Thanatos', explains how it is possible, i. e. how destructive tendencies can be generated from within.  Thus, if, as Spinoza proposes, Pity is a contagious disease, one's susceptibility to it is due to more than an instinct to bond with others, according to Nietzsche's diagnosis.

Morality and Principle of Individuation

According to #9 of Daybreak, Christianity is an "evil" from the perspective of Roman society, because it promotes the individual's "own salvation", i. e. because it constitutes a diverge of a Morality of Individual Self-Cultivation from the given Morality of Custom.  In contrast, in I, 16 of Genealogy of Morals, the Judaeo-Christian divergence from Roman society is classified by Nietzsche as "ressentiment" towards the "noble and strong", which it characterizes as "evil".  Now, any of the following might be offered to account for the apparent inconsistency between the two passages--'Indifference to formal logic'; 'Increasing hostility to Judaoe-Christianity'; 'Greater insight in the later passage'; and 'Deterioration of the mental faculties of an increasingly ill man'.  However, these, and others, miss the underlying issue common to the two passages--the problem of the relation between the few strong and the numerous weak--in which, in terms of calculation according to the Will to Power, the Individual, no matter how strong, has no privileged status.  Accordingly, Nietzsche's floundering in the two passages, as well as elsewhere, is an expression of the lack in his system of a substantive Principle of Individuation which might confer in-itself value on the Individual, e. g. the thesis that the self-overcoming of a species always begins with the self-overcoming of some individual member.  Without such a Principle, Nietzsche's various histories and genealogies remain arbitrary, inconclusive fictions.

Morality of Custom and Individuality

According to #9 of Daybreak, Master Morality and Slave Morality are two perspectives on one and the same Morality of Custom.  Furthermore, clearly distinguished from both, later in the passage, is the "morality of self-control and temperance", which can be classified as what might be called the 'Morality of Individual Self-Cultivation'. In contrast, #19 of Beyond Good and Evil conflates the Master Morality of Custom and the Morality of Individual Self-Cultivation, while #2 of the second essay of the Genealogy of Morals subsumes the latter as a special case of the Morality of Custom.  Now, underlying these shifting accounts is a deeper problem than an explanation for an apparent lack of consistency.  For, a Morality of Custom has no capacity to recognize Individuality, so Nietzsche's derivation of any individualistic Morality, as each of the accounts entails, is groundless in all the cases.  The difficulty is illustrated in current American Morality of Custom, in which the 'Individual' is based merely on the concept of the 'Consumer'. 

Morality of Custom and Slave Morality

In # 9 of Daybreak (aka The Dawn), Nietzsche proposes that 'Morality' originates as a "Morality of Custom", constituted by obedience to "tradition", which is a "higher authority which one obeys . . . because it commands . . . an incomprehensible, indefinite power, of something more than personal".  Participating in such a system is "whoever wanted to elevate himself above it . . . to become lawgiver . . . to make customs", i. e. to become 'commanders'.  Now, though Nietzsche does not use the terms in this context, it is no stretch of their usual connotations to characterize the Morality of Custom as 'Slave' Morality, with the maker of custom a 'Master'.  In contrast, according to the passage, are "moralists. . . following in the footsteps of Socrates", who "offer the individual a morality of self-control and temperance".  Thus, on this account, the "genuine philosophers" of Beyond Good and Evil #211, i. e. "commanders" and "philosophers of the future", are non-Socratic purveyors of the Morality of Custom, in which case the "slave rebellion in morals", that he ascribes to "the Jews", in "195 of BGE, is a piece of fiction.  That is, Jewish society is unarguably predated by others, each of which is constituted by its customs, and, so, it is not the origin of Slave Morality

Will to Power, Obedience, Slave Rebellion

According to #19 of Beyond Good and Evil, a "well-constructed and happy commonwealth" is constituted by relations of mutually satisfied Commanding and Obedience, that express comparative degrees of strength.  Now, in #195, Nietzsche refers to the "beginning of the slave rebellion in morals", a concept that he later develops into a 'genealogy of morals' based on the difference between "master" Morality and "slave" Morality.  However, there is a profound lacuna in this genealogy as derived--the transition of an underclass from a happy to a dissatisfied condition.  For rebellion cannot occur so long as the mutually satisfactory comparative degrees of strength are maintained, so its occurrence presupposes that the power relation has already shifted, in which case the erstwhile Obeyers are already no longer 'slaves'.  In other words, the Will to Power, at least as elucidated in passages such as #19, does not sufficiently ground both a Will to Obey and a Will to Disobey.

Will to Power and Weakness of the Will

Nietzsche's model, presented in #19 of Beyond Good and Evil, of the hierarchical individual soul, is, of course, derived from Plato and Aristotle, and is implicit in Kant's concept of Action, as well.  Hence, he also inherits the problem of 'Weakness of the Will'.  Now, whereas Aristotle explains the latter as a deficiency of knowledge, thereby entailing that the 'lower' soul always conforms to the dictates of the upper, Kant allows that 'Evil' can insinuate itself between Reason and Inclination, and, so, can lead the latter astray.  In contrast with both, Nietzsche's theory of the Will to Power seems, in general, to imply that 'weakness' connotes a relative deficiency of 'strength'.  Accordingly, any act of disobedience must be constituted by an increase in strength on the part of a hitherto weaker entity, with respect to a previously stronger one that had been controlling it.  But, if so, then, by implication, any act of 'obedience' is adequately explained as the mechanical consequence of the stronger overpowering the weaker.  Thus, if Nietzsche had applied, as he does in #36 of BGE, Occam's Razor, to his analysis in #19, he might have dispensed entirely with his conclusion that the 'obedient undersoul' is "happy".

Will to Power and Obedience

Among the important theses in Nietzsche's doctrine of the Will to Power is that an act of Obedience is an instance of the fundamental principle.  Conversely, if it is not such an instance, then the Will to Power is inadequate as an exclusive principle, and, accordingly, the Command-Obey structure is not inherent in Nature, contrary to what he asserts in places.  Also notably dependent on the thesis is his conclusion in On the Genealogy of Morals, that "men would rather will nothing than not will", which is central to his diagnosis of Nihilism.  Now, his apparently strongest defense of the thesis, from 'Of Self-Overcoming', in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is that "the will of the weaker persuades it to serve the stronger", because "its will wants to be master over the weaker still."  However, while this is an unarguably accurate observation in many cases, it seems only to reduce the apparent 'will to serve' to the will to master, thereby essentially denying the reality of Obedience, rather than explaining  it.  It thus leaves unaddressed his diagnosis elsewhere that Obedience is frequently the product of a Will-quelling anodyne illusion, which seems to agree with Marx's famous statement about an "opiate", as well as common examples where one simply wants to 'let go'.  The defense also has little relevance to his writ small examples of 'Obedience', e. g. the exercise of the muscles, analyzed in #19 of Beyond Good and Evil.  So, Obedience remains problematic, at best, for Nietzsche's doctrine of the Will to Power.

Philosopher, Commander, Sculptor

To modify what was previously proposed here, Artist and Commander are not necessarily antithetical.  For, insofar as a Sculptor molds inert material, it is both.  Likewise, insofar as a Composer or a Playwright molds a musical or a dramatic piece, each is a Commander of the performers involved.  Now, according to the Birth of Tragedy, Sculpture is the paradigm of an Apollinian Art.  In contrast, the Dionysian Art that Nietzsche describes in section #2 of BT inspires the creativity of other participants in the festivities, in a relation the classification of which as Commander-Obeyer is inappropriate.  So, it is the specifically Dionysian Philosopher-Artist to which the Philosopher-Commander is antithetical, and is conspicuously absent in #211 of Beyond Good and Evil.

Philosopher, Artist, Commander

Conspicuously absent in #211 of Beyond Good and Evil, from the writer who previously asserts that "it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world is eternally justified", is any consideration of the concept of the Philosopher as an Artist.  Readily available from the Birth of Tragedy are three possible alternatives to the image of the Philosopher as "Commander"--composer/conductor, composer/choreographer, and playwright/director, none of which is to be confused with the illusion-weaving "tragedian" of The Gay Science #1.  For, each of those three inspire and harmonize actual creative energies, a Dionysian ideal, at least according to Birth of Tragedy.  Furthermore, insofar as the Will to Power is a principle of the maximization of Power, they are consistent with its ideal, as well.  In contrast, Obedience involves a relative deficit of creative energies, so the system constituted by a Commander-Obeyer structure is less consistent with the Will to Power than one constituted by an Artist-Performer relation.  Likewise, a standard Oligarchical thesis--that some humans are inferior 'by Nature', and, hence, need to be commanded--is not derived from a principle of the maximization of Power.

Experiment, Art, Philosophy of the Future

The essence of the experimental process is the creation of exemplary data, of which the testing of an hypothesis is a special case.  But, the creation of exemplary data is equivalent to the generation of communicable novelty, which is why Dewey, the preeminent 'Experimentalist' Philosopher, equates Art and Experiment, in Art as Experience.  In contrast, while Nietzsche's "commanders" and "legislators", of #211 of Beyond Good and Evil, may "create values", they do not communicate them, i. e. they merely impose them, which may be why Nietzsche does not also characterize them as 'artists'.  So, if, as he suggests in #42, #44, and #210, Experimentalism is the 'Philosophy of the Future', these 'commanders' and 'legislators' are not necessarily the Philosophers of the Future.

Experimentalism and Beyond True and False

Given the allusions to Experimentalism in #42, #44, and #210 of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche's use of an experimental method in #36 suggests that the 'Philosophy of the Future' is already one of his Present.  But, since, as has been previously discussed, such a doctrine is irreducible to the Will to Power, one alternative formulation of it in his terms is 'the Self-Overcoming of the Will to the Truth'.  Now, in an experimental context, that 'Overcoming' has two meanings.  First, it indicates that Truth is always provisional, and is always subject to further testing.  Second, it connotes that what is traditionally conceived as a process of seeking, now includes one of creation as well, e. g. the fabrication of facts in a laboratory.  In other words, Experimentalism is 'beyond True and False', insofar as those two values gauge the correspondence between propositions and pre-given phenomena.  Now, while Nietzsche's appreciation of Falsity approaches the transcendence of that traditional duality, it remains constrained by it.  So, Experimentalism may indeed be a Philosophy of the Present for him, but in an embryonic stage.

Will to Power, Experimental Method

In #36 of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche conducts an "experiment"--the testing of the hypothesis that all causality, volitional, organic, and inorganic, alike, are manifestations of the Will to Power.  In the process, he  implicitly demonstrates that intellectual causality, i. e. inference between propositions, is another such manifestation.  To that extent, the passage covers much of the same ground as does Schopenhauer's exposition of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, i. e. it proposes that the Will to Power suffices as the ground of mechanical, biological, logical, and volitional relations.  However, one process that he cannot validly claim is derived from the Will to Power is the very procedure by which he first establishes that it is a universal ground--the experimental "method".  In other words, by submitting the Will to Power to that method, he presupposes the acceptance of a principle that is independent of it and prior to it, thereby undermining the purported purpose of the passage.

Success, Dionysian, Will to Power

The correlation of Power and Success, suggested in Beyond Good and Evil #19, expresses a betrayal of the Dionysian principle.  For, the latter entails an affirmation of all Life, even of suffering, and, hence, of Failure.  Hence, the Will to Power. at least as characterized in that passage, not only deviates from the Dionysian principle, but conflicts with it, i. e. regarding the value of Failure.  But, this discrepancy is no one-time anomaly.  Rather, it is only one manifestation of an ongoing groundless vacillation, between Growth and Dominance, as the fundamental principle of Nature, that appears throughout the later phase of Nietzsche's oeuvre.

The Ephemerality of Power

Nietzsche's intensive examination of Will in #19 of Beyond Good and Evil is in contrast with a merely passing reference to Power, "an increase in the sensation of which" "accompanies all success".  However, it is unclear if Power can survive the same degree of scrutiny as one which dissolves the apparent unity of Will.  For, all success is fleeting, so, if the feeling of Power is a function of success, than it, too, is ephemeral.  Furthermore, he would be hard pressed to present an example in which the successful execution of a command is completely independent of circumstantial factors, e. g. the successful execution of a command to raise one's arm presupposes that certain ambient gravitational conditions obtain.  Likewise in cases of institutional 'Power', the continuation of which is always contingent.  So, if he were less eager in this passage to foist a Command-Obey structure on the phenomena under examination, he might have come to the conclusion that the fundamental component of his system, 'Power' is no more unitary than is 'Will'.

Will to Power and Know-How

In #19 of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche distinguishes Will as the issuer of a command, from Power as an awareness that "accompanies all success".  But, 'success' entails more than an accidental correlation of outcome to command.  In other words, the awareness of Power is one of Ability.  Thus, in this passage, at least, Will and Power are distinguished as Command and Know-How.

Will and Power

In 'Of Self-Overcoming', in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche proposes that the 'Will to Existence' is a meaningless formulation, since it entails that the Will already exists, in which case 'to Existence' is uninformative.  In the process, he takes for granted that 'Will to Power' is not similarly trivial, which implies a clear distinction between Will and Power.  Now, in #19 of Beyond Good and Evil, he seems to suggest that they are distinguished as command and execution.  However, he does not seem to consider that even a minimal stirring of that 'Will', whether muscular or ideational, itself constitutes an overcoming of its preconditions, and, so, is already an exercise of Power, independently of whatever further ensues.  Thus, what may be superfluous in the 'Will to Power', is not Power, but, as it might also be in the 'Will to Existence', is the 'Will'.

Will to Power, Will to Live, Teleology

In #13 of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche asserts of the "instinct of self-preservation" that it is a "superfluous teleological" principle.  However, that formulation is ambiguous, since it can entail either that 'all teleological principles are superfluous', or that 'some teleological principles are superfluous'.  Now, because of a subsequent reference to the "inconsistency" of the rigorously anti-teleological Spinoza, Kaufmann seems to opt for the former of the two possibilities, which implies that the focus of Nietzsche's criticism in the passage of the Will to Live is that it is a Teleological principle.  However, that criticism would leave unexplained Nietzsche's own equivalence to 'Will to Power' in the passage: "seeks . . . to discharge its strength", the teleological structure of which seems to difficult to deny.  Furthermore, his formulation of the relation between the Will to Power and the Will to Live, that he presents in #349 of The Gay Science--that the latter is a special case of the former--is independent of  any classification as Teleological.  So, the decisive term in #13 of BGE is "superfluous", not "teleological", as Kaufmann seems to suggest.

Will to Power, Command, Obey

In #19 of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche criticizes superficial interpretations of 'Will', but his own analysis is itself not incisive enough.  For, his assertion, that "in every will there is a ruling thought--let us not imagine it is possible to sever this thought from 'willing'", is refuted by another of his own theses.  That thesis--that a "living things seeks above all to discharge its strength" (BGE #13)--implies a fundamental severance between that impulse and the thought that provides the impulse with an outlet.  Accordingly, the immediate involvement of Thought in the exercise of Will is as an enabler, with respect to which Compulsion enters into that exercise only on the occasion of an intrusion into the process of an extrinsic factor of resistance.  Furthermore, it is only in Compulsion that Command and Obey are the fundamental relata.  Thus, Nietzsche's attribution of an essential Command-Obey structure to the Will to Power is less well-grounded by his analysis in #19 than he takes it to be.

Bestowing and Will to Empower

In 'Of the Bestowing Virtue', in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche asserts that the "highest virtue is a bestowing virtue."  Now, 'bestow' is closer to 'enhance' than it is to 'compel'.  Thus, the underlying process in this explicitly paradigmatic case is more appropriately 'Will to Empower' than 'Will to Power'.  Furthermore, since the bestow-receive relation does not easily reduce to a command-obey one, the latter inadequately interprets the structure of the fundamental Power-relation of Nature, despite Nietzsche's formulations to the contrary, e. g. in 'Of Self-Overcoming', in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and #19 of Beyond Good and Evil.  That shortcoming suggests that his more militaristic imagery does not necessarily do justice to the concepts that he uses it to represent.

Self-Overcoming and Janus-face.

"Janus-face" is a term that Nietzsche briefly uses in #37 of Human, All Too Human, in a passage that he re-cites in Ecce Homo.  Meaning 'looking both backwards and forwards', it could also apply to the "Moment", in the 'Vision and the Riddle' of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, i. e. to the Present that both looks back on the infinite Past, and looks forward to the infinite Future.  Likewise, the concept of Self-Overcoming, that has been previously proposed here, is Janus-faced, because it combines the past-directed affirmation of Eternal Recurrence and the future-oriented Will to Power.  So, though the phrase has occasionally been misused by commentators to characterize some of Nietzsche's peripheral opinions as merely 'two-faced', the proper connotation of it, i. e. entailing Temporal features, applies, on that analysis, to the very heart of his system.

Self-Overcoming, Will to Power, Eternal Recurrence

In #13 of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche asserts that a "living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life is will to power."  In contrast, in #349 of The Gay Science, he asserts that the "fundamental instinct of life . . . aims at the expansion of power."  Now, since the discharge of strength seems to constitute a momentary event that entails a decrease of strength, the two formulations are inconsistent, leaving his concept of Will to Power fundamentally incoherent.  To reconcile the two, i. e.to transform an exercise of strength into a gainful extension of it, an additional retentive factor is necessary.  One such retentive factor, and a very powerful one, available to Nietzsche, is the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence.  Thus, one resolution of the apparent discrepancy is to restrict the 'Will to Power' rubric to the BGE formulation, i. e. to the momentary discharge of strength, and to combine it with the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence, to yield the GS formulation, i. e. to the process of expansion, which is, thus, better termed 'Self-Overcoming'.  As a result, the fundamental principle of his system is, more accurately, Self-Overcoming, which is consistent with his assertion, in 'Of Self-Overcoming' in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, that the "secret" of life is--it is that "which must overcome itself again and again."

Inspiration, Will to Power, Creativity

Nietzsche's description of Inspiration, in the 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' section of Ecce Homo, is reminiscent of that of the Dionysian experience that he presents in Birth of Tragedy, one phase of which is "the collective release of all the symbolic powers." (BT, #2)  However, his exposition of how the Will to Power aims at the "expansion of power" (The Gay Science, #349), ignores that example, so he never seems to explicitly consider that Inspiration is an effective means in that expansion.  Thus, his exhortation, in #211 of Beyond Good and Evil, to philosophers to be "commanders and legislators" that "create values", falls short, according to Dionysian standards, of one that also calls for them to 'be inspirational', and to create values that specifically promote Creativity itself.  He thus misses an opportunity to more explicitly discourage some of those who have claimed to be inspired by him--Egoists, Fascists, Oligarchs, etc.--each of whom advocates the suppression of Creativity in one respect or another, and, hence, constrains, not liberates, the Will to Power.

Will to Truth and Self-Overcoming

'Of Self-Overcoming', in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, begins with a classification of the Will to Truth as an expression of the Will to Power, on the grounds, perhaps echoing Kant, that it involves the adaptation of its objects to itself.  However, Self-Overcoming per sedoes not emerge in that analysis, leaving Will to Truth a curious point of departure for that main theme.  Clearly, Nietzsche is not arguing here, as he does earlier in Human, All Too Human, that the exercise of the Will to Truth requires the overcoming of personal prejudices, and, so, involves Self-Overcoming.  Instead, implicit in this examination of the Will to Truth is that it is itself an object of the Will to Truth, and, hence, is itself being adapted by itself.  In other words, Nietzsche, in this chapter, illustrates, though does not explain, that any reflective inquiry, including his own method of psychological self-analysis, is an example of Self-Overcoming.

Will to Power, Will to Live, Evolution

In #349 of The Gay Science, written after Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche characterizes "the wish to preserve oneself" as a "symptom of distress, of a limitation of the really fundamental instinct of life which aims at the expansion of power."  In other words, the Will to Live is a special case of the Will to Power, in the same way that Velocity is a special case of Acceleration.  He proceeds to deride Darwinism as a "doctrine of the 'struggle for existence'", without considering one of the significant implications of that classification.  For, since the pattern of the Evolutionary process is Self-Overcoming, Evolution correlates to the Will to Power.  Thus, Nietzsche here identifies a fundamental internal flaw in Darwinism--its subordination of the Will to Power to the Will to Live, which is logically impossible, since the latter is derived from the former.  In other words, Darwin cannot posit the existence of Evolution without concomitantly establishing it as a principle that supersedes the Survival principle.  Likewise, attempts among Evolutionists to derive the former from the latter, e. g. 'Emergent' theories, are fundamentally misguided.