Will and Power

Vilm Flusser

The philosophical tradition knows, as far as the problem of knowledge
is concerned, two basic currents.
i
These could be referred to, roughly, as
empiricist and rationalist. The former believes that the senses transmit to the
intellect information about reality, which are, from the point of view of the
intellect, knowledge. The latter believes that knowledge is a product of the
intellect. At bottom, both currents represent two points of view about reality.
Empiricism tends to admit the reality of the sensorial world, and rationalism
tends towards scepticism in relation to this reality. It is therefore curious to
observe how the radical empiricism of the 18th century results in a desperate
rationalism (Hume), and how the radical rationalism of the 20th century, as
was practiced by the Vienna logicians, results in a type of deaf and mute
neopositivism (Wittgenstein). We face an apparently vicious circle: radical
empiricism ends up in rationalism and radical rationalism ends up in
empiricism. The more the circle turns, the farther we doubt our capability for
knowledge.

However, the circles vice is only apparent and not inherent. Each
revolution is followed by a critical re-evaluation that results in the restoration
of knowledge at a new level. The intellect does not surrender. Humes
scepticism is followed by Kants critique with his reformulation of the concept
knowledge. Wittgensteins desperate neo-positivism shall undoubtedly be
followed by an equivalent reformulation. Knowledge shall be saved, although
with some sacrifices. Hume destroyed our faith in the senses as instruments to
grasp reality. Very well, said Kant then this reality in itself does not interest
me. Wittgenstein destroyed our faith in the capacity of the intellect to
overcome the limits of language. Very well, someone shall soon say, then
that which is beyond language does not interest me. Schopenhauer
represents the starting point for a reformulation of the concept of knowledge.
For him knowledge is the inverse of lived experiences (to modernise his
terminology a little). Knowledge is the intellectual aspect of lived experiences,
that which accompanies these experiences in order to destroy them. The lived
experience, if and when it becomes known, is destroyed. To the cluster of lived
experiences Schopenhauer applies the term world as will and to the cluster
of knowledge he applies the term world as representation. Schopenhauer
detests life. Consequently, he values positively knowledge as the destroying
factor of life. However, it is clear that this perversely optimistic epistemology
cannot be maintained for long. Nietzsche inverts it. In valuing life he devalues
knowledge. From then on we see the start of a revaluation of values, the
results of which - until now tragic in their majority - we are still far from able
to evaluate. The first result of this revaluation in the field of theory is the
opposition: art versus truth. By valuing the first concept and devaluing the
second, and by creating a dialectic tension between both, Nietzsche prepares
the field for existentialism. The words art and truth as Nietzsche uses
them, will probably be the main themes of philosophical speculation of the
near future. They cannot, however, be fully grasped without a prior analysis of
the Nietzschian phrase: Wille zur Macht. Which has been inadequately
translated to Portuguese (and English) as Will to Power [Vontade de
Poder].
ii
As I believe this to be a basic problem for contemporary thought, I
shall try, in the course of this paper, to find a more adequate translation.

Nietzsche says that: alles ist Wille zur Macht. This is evidently an
ontological statement, a statement that concerns Being. However, shallow and
hollow spirits have interpreted this differently. The socio-political
interpretation resulted in the association of Nietzsche with a curious type of
Machiavellism, and is in part responsible for a type of dirt that is
euphemistically referred to as Nazi thought. The biological interpretation of
this statement has resulted in the several biologicisms, psychologicisms, and
vitalisms that brutalise our times, and whose least tragic representatives are
Bergson and Freud. The interpretation of the statement everything is will to
power within physics is only now beginning to be explored; energy would be
the will that tends towards power in the form of matter. This interpretation
can lead towards a scatological and para-scientific cosmology with a great
intellectual attraction, which makes it doubly tragic.

As we can see, Nietzsche is a dangerous thinker. When he stated that
everything is will to power, he played with all of the aforementioned
meanings. He liked to play with fire. Despite this, what he really had in mind
was something completely different. It was the attempt to formulate in one
phrase that Being is the cadaver of Becoming (werden). It was the attempt to
say explicitly, to therefore explain, that all that there is has been (das alles
was ist, wurde). Formulated in this way the statement seems banal, as is
common with every important thought. It is, however, an authentic revolution
in western thought. It is the definitive relinquishment of western metaphysics,
which operates consciously or subconsciously with an absolute Being. The
statement devalues Being and values becoming, transforming and appearing.
It values the world of appearances and annihilates the Platonic world of
eternal Ideas. It is in this sense that we may talk about Nietzsches Nihilism.
The truth as something that belongs to a Platonic world is devalued. Art as
something that produces, potentiates (werden macht), is valued.

Why does Nietzsche explain Becoming as Wille zur Macht? The reason
for this is certainly hidden within the fabric of the German language. The
word Wille comes from the verb wollen (to want), which has the sub
meaning to become, as we see in English: He will do = er wir machen. The
word art in German is Kunst and comes from the verb knnen (to be
able or the verb poder in Portuguese). Power as poder is therefore
ontologically equivalent to art in German. For Nietzsche art is the process
through which the will reaches potentiality. Art is the way in which reality
realises itself. In Portuguese we cannot follow this argument. For Nietzsche
art is potentiality, for us (Portuguese speakers) power (poder) is
potentiality. For Nietzsche power in this sense is potentiality already
overcome, realised and dead (done with). The will, once it reaches its
potentiality, has already been overcome, for having been realised. Here we
enter a second Nietzschian concept: the eternal return of the same, which
escapes the scope of this paper.

When Nietzsche says, alles ist Wille zur Macht he explains an implicit
ontology of the German language, that may be translated to Portuguese (and
English) approximately as follows: everything can be done, wiling, that is,
everything can become. Which is very close to the statement: nothing is.
One is the complement of the other. We could bring together both statements
into one: Everything is still nothing, or, is no longer more than nothing.
Nietzsche formulates it more poetically in his famous phrase: God is dead.
Far from being the statement of a sterile atheism, it is a statement of reality as
overcome potentiality. He does not say that God does not exist, but that the
He is dead. Nietzsche identifies therefore God with Macht (that which has
been done).

It is from this point that existentialism departs. The God that is dead,
the Nothingness towards which everything that becomes tends, Heideggers
Nichts, Sartres Nant, into which everything precipitates, therefore
Camus Fall, is at the centre of contemporary thought. It is a powerful and
active Nothingness, it nullifies. It is in fact the rebirth of religious faith,
however of an apparently inverted religiosity. This faith, this religiosity, has as
a consequence, a new theory of knowledge.

Wittgenstein demonstrated, irrevocably, I believe, that the intellect is
identical to language, and that thoughts are identical to phrases. All
knowledge is therefore purely verbal, and means nothing. This means a
desperate scepticism; this means the end of rationalism. Hence existentialism
emerges in order to provide an exit from this cul-de-sac. The concept
knowledge is being reformulated as the cluster of stations covered by the
will in its progress towards potentiality, or, to speak in a modern sense, as a
cluster of the products of existence in their projection towards death. What
does it matter if these products are words, as Wittgenstein demonstrated?
They are still authentic knowledge. What does it matter if these words mean
nothing? After all, everything means nothing, in the sense of pointing to
and substituting nothingness.

I shall not say that the synthesis between the philosophy of logic and
existentialism that I have just sketched has been realised. However, it hovers
in the air and shall be done. It will represent for our century what Critique
represented for the 18th century. Critique sacrificed the thing in itself in
order to allow the progress of the human spirit towards knowledge. Our
century will sacrifice meaning in order to allow for the continuation of the
same progress. In the end, the human spirit is a form of will that wants to
reach potentiality, even knowing that this potentiality is Nothingness.

Translated from Portuguese by Rodrigo Maltez-Novaes



i
This essay was first published in a Brazilian newspaper in 1962 and subsequently became part of
Flussers first published book Lingua e Realidade [Language and Reality], published in 1964.
ii
In Portuguese the word power has a double meaning. It can be translated as a verb, poder (to be
able) to signify potentiality or as a noun, also poder, which signifies material power. It is within the
gap between these two meanings that Flusser explores his interpretation of Nietzsches notion of Will
to Power. [TN]