Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Vitalism, Will to Live, Will to Power

As has been previously discussed, Schopenhauer's Will to Live suggests a supplanting of Physics by Biology as the defining concept of Nature.  Now, Nietzsche's Dionysian principle continues that Vitalism, applied to specifically the Human species.  However, because his Will to Power does not inherently distinguish between inorganic and organic processes, it constitutes a relapse to Physicism.  Furthermore, he lacks an adequate definition of Life from that later principle. For, the one that he offers in #642 of the Will to Power collection, "an enduring form of processes of the establishment of force, in which the different contenders grow unequally", leaves undefined the decisive Vitalist term of the formulation--"grow".  Absent that adequacy, his various representations of human society are inherently de-humanizing, and the relation between the Dionysian and the Will to Power principles remains problematic.

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