Will to Power

Nietzsche's name for the essential character of reality: "the world is will to power, and that alone" (BGE 36). In Nietzsche's texts it names at once a psychological principle (drives seeking their discharge), a biological principle (life as increase), and — in later texts — a cosmological-metaphysical principle (the essence of the world). Chouraqui 2014 offers a distinctive reading: the will to power is metaphysical, not ontological. That is, it describes all the beings accurately, but it cannot provide an account of Being as such, because it is essentially relational and oppositional — it requires external resistance to be anything at all. The will to power is therefore the warrant of becoming, not of Being. Being must be thought otherwise — as self-falsification, the very movement through which will to power presents itself as something more than it is.

Key Points

  • Will to power is end-directedness without representation: it has a direction but does not thematize or represent its target. Not Kantian teleology
  • The quantum of power is constant within an organism and within the world as a whole — only direction changes
  • Will to power operates through incorporation (Einverleibung): assimilation of external drives, redirection of internal drives, expansion at the expense of what is overcome
  • Resistance is prior to striving, not derived from it: "the will to power can only express itself against resistances; it seeks what will resist it" (IX [151]). There is no will to power "before" its resistance — they are co-original
  • Will to power describes the beings but not Being: it is a statement about what-there-is, not about what-it-is-to-be. Chouraqui reads it as metaphysical in Nietzsche's pejorative sense (a "two-world theory" of sorts), not ontological
  • For Chouraqui, will to power's failure to reach ontology is why Nietzsche's ultimate thesis is Being as self-falsification — will to power is how falsification happens; the movement of falsification is Being

Details

Will to power as metaphysical, not ontological

This is Chouraqui's most counterintuitive specific claim (Ch. 3, "Will to Power as Metaphysics"). Most readers take the will to power to be Nietzsche's ontology — the thesis that what-there-really-is is a swarm of power-seeking drives. Chouraqui argues the opposite: the will to power is metaphysical because it can only describe the beings, not Being.

The argument hinges on the relational character of will to power. A will to power is always a will to power against something — against a resistance, against an opposition. Nietzsche is explicit: "the will to power can only express itself against resistances" (IX [151]); "there is no will to power without resistance" (paraphrased from various notebook entries).

Now suppose, Chouraqui asks, that we ask: what is it for a totally self-identical world (i.e., Being attained to unity) to be will to power? The question is unanswerable. A totally unified world has nothing external to oppose; so it has no resistance; so it has no will to power; so it has no being in Nietzsche's sense. The concept collapses at the moment it reaches its completion.

Chouraqui puts it sharply: "The will to power is not, strictly speaking, ontological but metaphysical. That is to say, it is a doctrine that describes accurately the world not in its Being but as it actually is. Indeed, for a theory to give a truly ontological account of the world as we describe it, it should be able to give us an account of what it would be for the world to 'be' self-identical. Yet, an account of self-identity in terms of will to power is impossible because a will to power exists only against another will to power" (Ch. 3).

The implication: will to power is the warrant of becoming

If will to power cannot describe a fully self-identical Being, it also cannot describe a Being that is not becoming. What it describes is the movement between oppositions — what Nietzsche calls becoming. "The will to power stands for the whole realm of becoming" (Ch. 3, paraphrasing Nietzsche and the Transition).

This means the will to power is how becoming happens. It is the structural engine of all change: drives seeking discharge, assimilating, redirecting, resisting. It describes every event — but in principle, it cannot describe what it would be for there to be no events.

This is what Chouraqui means by calling will to power "metaphysical": it is a doctrine of the beings and their motions, not a doctrine of Being.

The structure: quantum and direction

For both Nietzsche and Chouraqui, the internal structure of will to power is two-fold:

  1. Quantum of power: a constant magnitude. Within an organism, it is fixed. Within the world as a whole, it is fixed (Nietzsche endorses conservation of energy; the world's "overall quantum of power" is discussed at WP, 639 and WP, 708). This means no power is ever created or destroyed — only reorganized.
  2. Direction: a variable vector. The direction of a drive determines whether it discharges outward (against a resistance) or inward (against other drives within the same organism). Direction is the modal feature of drives; it is what makes a drive this drive rather than that one.

Drives are therefore vectors: quantum × direction. Health and sickness are directional conditions — health is the unison of drives under a single direction; sickness is antagonism (drives working against each other). Power is neither created nor destroyed; only its availability varies based on internal alignment. See self-differentiation for how the reversibility of drives makes this possible.

Contra Reginster

Chouraqui rejects Bernard Reginster's influential definition of the will to power as "the will to the overcoming of resistances" (Reginster 2006). The objection: if will to power is defined as overcoming resistance, then striving must presuppose resistance — but Nietzsche is clear that resistance presupposes striving, not the other way around. "We should not think of the will to power moving toward resistances, as if it existed prior to them. On the contrary, we must stop thinking of resistance in relational terms, as an encounter" (Ch. 1).

For Chouraqui, Reginster's view makes will to power circular at best. The concept that Chouraqui adopts instead: will to power and resistance are co-original. Neither precedes the other. The "line of contact" between opposing wills to power is the primary fact, not the collision of pre-existing terms.

End-directedness without representation

Will to power has direction but not aim. This is a subtle distinction Chouraqui draws in Ch. 2 (following Nietzsche's RL of 1872–73): "That something may be finalized without consciousness is the essence of instincts." Drives discharge in a direction without representing that direction, without thematizing a target.

Chouraqui uses this to argue against readings (e.g., the "teleological" Reginster-Richardson-esque readings) that give will to power an internal representation of its end. No: the direction is derived analytically from the movement, not pre-given in it. This makes will to power asymptotic rather than teleological.

Incorporation as the basic mechanism

Will to power's operation is incorporation (Einverleibung). "It is part of the concept of the living that it must grow — that it must extend its power and consequently incorporate alien forces" (WP 702). Incorporation is assimilation: the stronger will to power absorbs the weaker, which is not annulled but redirected — its drives now serve the incorporator's direction.

This is why Nietzsche's ethics and his ontology are the same project. To become healthy (ethical) is to redirect one's internalized drives outward (which is the basic operation of will to power); to understand will to power correctly (ontological) is to grasp that this redirection is what Being is. See incorporation-of-truth for the methodological side.

The upshot: Being as self-falsification

Chouraqui's overall argument in Ch. 3 is that will to power's metaphysical-not-ontological character is why Nietzsche's final ontological thesis must be Being as self-falsification. The argument:

  1. Will to power is how the world moves (metaphysics).
  2. Will to power cannot attain a self-identical completion (because it requires resistance).
  3. Therefore, Being cannot be thought as self-identical.
  4. But Being must be thought as something. What remains?
  5. The answer: Being is the very movement of will to power as it presents itself as more than it is — the self-identical objects, the subject-object split, the metaphysical two-world theories. Being is the falsification that the will to power produces as its condition of operation.

"It is plausible that the will to power itself acts as a falsifier of itself (there is 'nothing besides' will to power to falsify)" (Ch. 1, quoting Nietzsche IX [106]). The will to power falsifies itself as the phenomenal world of subjects and objects — because this falsification is the condition under which will to power can operate at all. The falsification is Being.

This is why will to power, for Chouraqui, is not Nietzsche's ontology but the vehicle of Nietzsche's ontology. The ontology is self-falsification; will to power is the metaphysical mechanism through which self-falsification occurs.

Positions

The wiki records two opposing primary-source readings of will to power as well as several secondary-source positions:

  • Heidegger 1936-1939, *Nietzsche I* (primary source): will to power is the Vollendung der Metaphysik — the completion of Western metaphysics. Its essence is the Beständigung des Werdens in die Anwesenheit: the willed making-stand-fast of becoming into presence. The "highest" will to power commands becoming to remain, willing it into the Anwesenheit-form that is the Greek determination of Being. Hence Nietzsche is the letzter Metaphysiker: his thought preserves the originary Greek determination of Sein als Beständigkeit des Anwesens at maximum extremity. Will to power is also the truth-character (as *Gerechtigkeit*) of Nietzsche's metaphysical Grundstellung. Heidegger's reading is the basis of much Anglo-American Nietzsche reception (Sallis, Krell, Schurmann).
  • Chouraqui 2014 (primary source for the opposing reading): will to power is metaphysical but not ontological. It describes all the beings accurately, but it cannot describe Being-as-self-identical because it is essentially relational and oppositional — it requires external resistance to be valid at all. A will to power attained to total unity would not be will to power at all. Therefore will to power is the warrant of becoming, not of Being. Nietzsche's actual ontology is self-falsification — Being as the very movement of falsification — not Beständigung. Heidegger's reading is rejected as re-substantializing what Nietzsche de-substantializes.
  • Reginster (2006, The Affirmation of Life) defines will to power as "the will to the overcoming of resistances." Chouraqui rejects this as circular.
  • Richardson (1996, Nietzsche's System) treats the will to power as genuinely teleological with "telic" structure. Chouraqui accepts the direction but rejects the representational aspect.
  • Müller-Lauter (1971, Nietzsche) reads will to power as a pluralism of internal drives in perpetual struggle. Chouraqui is broadly sympathetic but adds the metaphysics/ontology distinction.
  • Deleuze (1962, Nietzsche et la philosophie) reads will to power as affirmation and difference. Distances itself from Heidegger's "metaphysics of absolute subjectivity" reading. Chouraqui engages less directly but distances himself from the Deleuzian pairing of Nietzsche+Foucault vs. Heidegger+MP.

The Heidegger/Chouraqui disagreement is one of the wiki's standing open questions: does will to power complete metaphysics (Heidegger) or evade it (Chouraqui)? See claims#heidegger-vs-chouraqui-on-nietzsche-leitfrage (live).

Connections

  • is the metaphysical vehicle of self-falsification — will to power is how falsification happens; the falsification is what Being is
  • operates through incorporation-of-truth at the methodological level — the symbiosis of truth and will
  • is structured by self-differentiation — the reversibility of drives' directions
  • has the form of asymptotic-intentionality — direction without represented aim
  • is blocked from self-identical completion by eternal-recurrence — the "fact" that any possible state must already have occurred
  • contrasts with ontologies of presence (Heidegger), plenitude (Sartre's Being), and positive infinity (Cartesian rationalism)
  • requires resistance as co-original, not derivative
  • is the engine of sickness and health (as directional conditions of drives)
  • is mispresented as ontological by many readers (Heidegger, Reginster, etc.) — Chouraqui's distinctive move is to demote it to metaphysics

Open Questions

  • Chouraqui's metaphysics/ontology distinction uses Heideggerian vocabulary against Heidegger. Is this sustainable, or does it implicitly rely on the distinction it rejects?
  • If will to power cannot describe Being, why does Nietzsche sometimes seem to say the world is will to power (e.g., BGE 36)? Chouraqui reads these passages as describing "all the beings," not Being. Is this reading defensible?
  • How does Chouraqui's will-to-power relate to Nietzsche's later perspectivism? If perspectivism is also a view about what-there-is, is it also metaphysical-not-ontological?
  • Does the critique of Reginster succeed? Reginster has responded; Chouraqui does not engage with later Reginster.

Sources

  • chouraqui-2014-ambiguity-and-absolute — will to power is developed across the Nietzsche half (Chs. 1–3), most sharply in Ch. 3's "Will to Power as Metaphysics" section. Ch. 1's "Self-Differentiation" and "The Primacy of Intentionality" establish the relational character. Ch. 2's discussion of drives, redirection, and symbiosis develops the quantum/direction structure. Ch. 3's critique of the pyramidal-teleological cosmology (via eternal recurrence) is the decisive move. The Transition chapter is where Chouraqui most clearly articulates why will to power is metaphysical-not-ontological, in opposition to Heidegger's reading
  • heidegger-1961-nietzsche-i — primary site of the opposing reading. Three lecture courses (1936/37, 1937, 1939) construct will to power as the Vollendung der Metaphysik. Key sites: I.7-9 (analysis of Wille as Über-sich-Herrsein), I.10-12 (Five Theses on Art with Hauptsatz "art = greatest stimulus of life"), III.20 (climactic Beständigung-thesis, lines 4944-5037). Textual anchor: WP 617 "Dem Werden den Charakter des Seins aufzuprägen — das ist der höchste Wille zur Macht."