5.2.2—
Beyond Mechanism:
Will to Power

Nietzsche aims to correct these defects and eliminate these residues of theology. Denying both free will and mechanistic determinism, he attempts to formulate a theory of motion, change, and becoming the principle of which is immanent, active, and explanatory. He begins, as we have seen, by rejecting the dualisms of doer and deed, matter and force, and proposes instead an ontology according to which "the deed is everything" (GM I 13) and there exist "only dynamic quanta, in a relation of tension to all other dynamic quanta" (WP 635). In opposition to the passive and reactive character of mechanism, this ontology is fundamentally active; and the principle of its activity, motion, and becoming is not transcendent (as with the divine watchmaker or free will) but immanent:

In our science, where the concept of cause and effect is reduced to the relationship of equivalence, with the object of proving that the same quantum of force is present on both sides, the driving force is lacking: we observe only results, and we consider them equivalent in content and force. (WP 688)

The victorious concept of "force," by means of which our physicists have created God and the world, still needs to be completed: an inner world must be ascribed to it, which I designate as "will to power." (WP 619)^[14]

[13] It is for this reason that Nietzsche rejects the conclusions of thermodynamics: "If, e.g., the mechanistic theory cannot avoid the consequence, drawn for it by William Thompson, of leading to a final state, then the mechanistic theory stands refuted" (WP 1066; cf. WP 639).

[14] Note that the Kaufmann/Hollingdale translation mistakenly renders Nietzsche's "an inner world [eine innere Welt ]" as "an inner will."

This "will to power" must not be thought of as a capacity that inheres in individual entities. For Nietzsche repeatedly criticizes both this conception of "things" and this conception of "the will":

Is "will to power" a kind of "will" or identical with the concept "will"? Is it the same thing as desiring? or commanding? Is it that "will" of which Schopenhauer said it was the "in itself of things"? My proposition is: that the will of psychology hitherto is an unjustified generalization, that this will does not exist at all [ . . . ] one has eliminated the character of the will by subtracting from it its content, its "whither?" (WP 692)

There is no will: there are only treaty drafts of will [Willens-Punktationen ] that are constantly increasing or losing their power. (WP 715; see also GS 127; BGE 16, 19; TI "World" 5, "Errors" 3; A 14; WP 46, 488, 668, 671, 765)

That is, in place of an ontology of atomic unities each of which contains "will" as an effective capacity, Nietzsche substitutes a holistic ontology of relatively stable power-complexes essentially bound to one another by lines of force (resistance, domination, submission, alliance, etc.). Hence, each of these complexes exists in an intricate web of tension with neighboring power-complexes; and "will"—"will to power"—is just a name for this state of tension, this straining "towards which" and "away from which " (BGE 19; cf. WP 636). Moreover, this struggle is just as much internal as external. Each power-complex strives to maintain its integrity, its dominance or control over its component powers, which constantly threaten to revolt or secede (see WP 492 and §3.3.3, above).

Change, then, is no longer a matter of "cause" and "effect," conceived on the classic billiard-ball model as a rigid, one-directional system of colliding atoms; rather, it is a matter of myriad macro- and microscopic struggles and the new configurations of power which result:

Two successive states, the one "cause," the other "effect": this is false. [ . . . ] It is a question of a struggle between two elements of unequal power: a new arrangement of forces is achieved according to the measure of power of each of them. The second condition is something fundamentally different from the first (not its effect): the essential thing is that the factions in struggle emerge with different quanta of power. (WP 633; cf. BGE 19; WP 631, 688–89)

Indeed, this change or becoming does not leave the original parties intact. Rejecting the conception of substance maintained by the mechanistic-atomistic worldview, Nietzsche asserts that change is not merely

the qualitative alteration of essentially enduring entities but the constant production of new entities:

There are no durable ultimate units, no atoms, no monads: here, too, "beings" are only introduced [hineingelegt] by us. [ . . . ] "Forms of domination"; the sphere of that which is dominated continually growing or periodically increasing and decreasing according to the favorability or unfavorability of circumstances. [ . . . ] "Value" is essentially the standpoint for the increase or decrease of these dominating centers ("multiplicities" in any case; but "units" are nowhere present in the nature of becoming)—a quantum of power, a becoming, in so far as none of it has the character of "being." (WP 715; cf. WP 488)

"Becoming," then, is the result of this pressure and tension of forces and powers. Just as the work of a system is a function of the differences in temperature, level, pressure, and potential of its component parts, the dynamic force of will to power is a function of the difference of powers and the tension between them.^[15] A generalized equivalence or equilibrium of forces, then, would signal an end to this power-struggle and, hence, an end to becoming. But Nietzsche denies this possibility ("the adiaphoristic state is missing," he writes, "though it is thinkable" [WP 634]) and views the very supposition as ontotheological, merely another attempt to subordinate becoming to being.^[16] His rejection of God and being requires the elimination of both an absolute origin and an absolute end to becoming (see §4.6.1, above). Dismissing the hypothesis of "a creative God" (WP 1062) and "a created world" (WP 1066), Nietzsche maintains "the temporal infinity of the world in the past." Given this premise,

[i]f the world could in any way become rigid, dry, dead, nothing, or if it could reach a state of equilibrium, or if it had any kind of goal that involved

[15] Cf. Prigogine and Stengers (Order out of Chaos, 111): "Nietzsche was one of those who detected the echo of creations and destructions that go far beyond mere conservation or conversion. Indeed, only difference, such as difference of temperature or potential energy, can produce results that are also differences. Energy conversion is merely the destruction of a difference, together with the creation of another difference. The power of nature is thus concealed by the use of equivalences."

[16] For the same reason, he sees equalizing measures on the social level (socialism, democracy, peace) to be disastrous and antinatural: "from the highest biological standpoint, legal conditions can never be other than exceptional conditions, since they constitute a partial restriction of the will of life, which is bent upon power, and are subordinate to its total goal as a single means: namely, as a means of creating greater units of power. A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power-complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general [ . . . ] would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness" (GM II:11).

duration, immutability, the once-and-for-all (in short, speaking metaphysically: if becoming could resolve itself into being or into nothingness), then this state must have been reached. But it has not been reached: from which it follows. (WP 1066; cf. HL 9; WP 639, 688, 1064)

With this, Nietzsche challenges both the mechanistic hypothesis of God the watchmaker and the thermodynamic hypothesis of thermal equilibrium or "heat death." If the nineteenth century saw the introduction of time, history, and becoming into a previously static scientific and philosophical worldview, Nietzsche, at the end of that century, seeks to eliminate teleology, the last bulwark of God, eternity, and being.^[17]