Deleuze and Nietzsche 1
Perspectives on Deleuze: Perspectivism
If you have been reading some of my articles on Gilles Deleuze, his interpretation of Nietzsche’s project should be coming into full relief.
From Plato to Kant and Hegel, the west has been in the grips of a tyranny of truth, which leads to the nihilism of Schopenhauer.
The abstracted and universalized concept, or will, characterized by negativity or lack, whether posited as rational and ordered (Apollo) or chaotic and irrational (Dionysus), denies life, forces us to turn away from life, separates us from our innate power to embrace life.
Creativity over Truth
Nietzsche builds up a very different vision of the will, one that affirms. But before arriving there, he first walks us through his thoughts on values and how they come into being.
For Nietzsche, values are created not discovered; they are the product of drives and forces.
Values are created to aid in the survival and growth of the species.
Over time they become accepted and are handed down, and we often forget they have been created.
But from time to time, values must be destroyed and recreated to fit the changing circumstances of humanity. It is at these moments, man must activate the innate value-positing perspective and create new values that serve the species.
Values
Nietzsche lived through an era that he thought was in the grips of a crisis in values.
The values inherited from an old world order had transformed from a morality of the strength of the warrior to a morality of the weak; the latter denigrating naturalistic values of human vitality. Further, the morality of the weak had been codified and constructed over time such that it had become disguised under a veil of transcendent truth.
The progress of science and technology, and political reform, during the Enlightenment had led to a situation in which values were in deep crisis, because they were ultimately grounded in a transcendent God.
The search for truth had led to its logical conclusion: to question the very ground of truth itself.
The internal logic of scientific enquiry, based on the discovery of truth, had come to question the ultimate foundation of the truth about values: God as the source of meaning and value, the source of objective truth, right and wrong, good and evil.
Nietzsche then declares, “God is dead.”
When the search for truth undermines absolutes, when values crumble in the face of progress, the meaninglessness of values sets in: nihilism, an emptying of the world.
Nihilism
Nihilism can be of two forms:
Nihilism. It is ambiguous: A. Nihilism as a sign of increased power of the spirit: as active nihilism. B. Nihilism as decline and recession of the power of the spirit: as passive nihilism. (The Will to Power)
Active nihilism inspires the destruction of values in order to create new values, the inner strength of positing new values and living life as a work of art, as a free spirit.
Passive nihilism leads to a retreat from life, asceticism, the nihilism of Schopenhauer, a will to nothingness, a retreat from all value in life.
Nietzsche takes up the former, and proposes not only a devaluation of current values, but a revaluation of values; breathing new life into life, enhancing life through creativity.
The Will to Power
The power we possess to create new values and embrace life, Nietzsche calls the “will to power”.
Nietzsche’s project is the de-deification of nature:
When will all these shadows of God cease to darken our minds? When will we complete our de-deification of nature? When may we begin to “naturalize” humanity in terms of a pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature? (The Gay Science)
To once again cast light on a natural world of life and experience, and to cast away an abstract world of transcendent being.
Casting away the supernatural realm clears the path for a flourishing of human creativity, and a re-evaluation of values.
The will to power, from at least one perspective, is his basis for understanding human behavior: we are not primarily motivated by conservation, not in a struggle for existence, not striving for happiness; these are all consequences only.
We are motivated to affirm life, creativity, the vitality of life.
The Eternal Return
The will is not some transcendent, undifferentiated, mystical force.
The will is the real, innate power in nature that enables and compels us to exercise freedom of spirit, self-determination and autonomy.
It is not a unified force, but a play of transformative forces, of self-asserting power relations.
The will to power is a multiplicity of forces organizing and expressing themselves in a pluralism of values, virtues, perspectives.
And the will to power has a temporal basis in the eternal return: the wish for the eternal return is the ultimate affirmation of life, creating the new over time in which history is neither linear nor teleological.
The will to power is the pure process of value creation and life affirmation, the immanent force of change in everything.
Over time, the Übermensch, the overmen, rise above objective standards of good and evil, external values, objective truths, and transvalue the values. They will the eternal return, the eternal creation of new values, and go to the limit of what they can be.
I hope you enjoyed this article. Thanks for reading!
Tomas
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Excerpt from my forthcoming book, Becoming: A Life of Pure Difference (Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of the New) Copyright © 2021 by Tomas Byrne. Learn more here.
