Saturday, March 2, 2019

Will to Power and Morality

Will to Power qua Self-Overcoming, as it is originally defined, is also Self-Mastery.  So, what Nietzsche later calls Master Morality is, more accurately, Self-Mastery Morality.  Correspondingly, therefore, Slave Morality signifies an inability to Self-Overcome, or, equivalently, a deficient Will to Power.  Now, since 'over' = 'super', in some contexts, Self-Overcoming is Supererogatory action, i. e. action that is beyond the 'good vs. evil' conformist Morality to which one has hitherto submitted.  And, yet, because Supererogatory action can be exemplary, it is not necessarily antithetical to Universalist Morality, i. e. it is antithetical to only the conformist Morality that it surpasses.  So, Will to Power qua Self-Overcoming, as Nietzsche originally defines it, connotes a Morality of indefinite elevation, perhaps even beyond traditional nobility, contrary to interpretations based on passages that are actually diagnoses of relative weakness.

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