Horst Hutter

Concordia University, Canadá
Full-time Professor

Raised in Graz, Austria, Horst Hutter received a Ph.D. from Stanford University. In 2006 he published Shaping the Future: Nietzsche’s New Regime of the Soul and Its Ascetic Practices (Lexington Books). He teaches Political Philosophy at Concordia University.

 

Abstract

 

Reshaping Human Conduct: Nietzsche’s «Doctrine» of Will-to-Power as Mythologema

A major ambiguity in Nietzsche’s teaching of will-to-power derives from the fact that it involves both an exoteric and an esoteric conceptual vision. Exoterically it functions as a mythologema that links up with the established Christian myth of free will and responsibility. As such, it is designed to contribute to the deconstruction of the Christian myth by showing its incoherence and its consequences that have become increasingly harmful for human life. Esoterically, however, the mythologema reveals the abyssal void at the heart of the human condition that the doctrine of free will had hidden from human consciousness. Nietzsche’s teaching thus is both the unveiling of the hidden, first step in the evolution of metaphysics, so central to Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche, and the beginning of a new and non-metaphysical understanding of human things. The following notebook entry from the summer and fall of 1887 explicitly distinguishes an exoteric aspect of the «doctrine» of will-to-power from its esoteric development:

Exoterisch ______ Esoterisch:
1___ alles ist Wille gegen Willen 2___ Es giebt gar keinen Willen
1___Causalismus
2___Es giebt nichts wie Ursache-Wirkung. (KSA 12, 5; 9; p. 187)

There is no unitary subject of free will, hence also no faculty of will dominating the soul and
thereby striving for power. The phrase will-to-power hence does not designate a unified force, a central principle from which everything would emanate. Rather, it refers to a latent plurality of drives, or to complexes of forces about to unite with, or repel each other, to associate with or dissociate themselves from each other. In defining itself, in any language (natural or artificial), the will-to-power harmonizes and hierarchizes the multiple forms of chaos; it does not destroy or reduce these, does not resolve their differences or their antagonisms. Affirmative and forceful, will-to-power appeals to variety, difference and plurality. Thus, power is not an aim or telos of will for Nietzsche, for will seeks nothing exterior to itself. Power is not the «object» of will, but its «subject». Power is that which is sought in will. Will-topower does not appropriate anything; it is not acquisitive but creative. Nietzsche’s teaching of will-to-power begins in a deconstruction of the Christian concept of free will, which, according to Nietzsche distorts the human understanding of human agency. Christian doctrine presents a picture of moral agency in terms of an incoherent notion of the voluntary subject, such that the feeling of power has no necessary relationship to our actual powers of agency. Morality obstructs the human powers of ethical reflection and evaluations in that it presents moral values as unconditional and independent of any human volition. This «perspective» then prevents us from critically appraising morality, since it is claimed to be universal and unconditional. If the teaching of will-to-power is interpreted to presuppose the Christian notion of free will, it becomes a fascistic «doctrine».

 

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