The Overcoming of Physiology
Andrea Rehberg
Nietzsche's doctrine of the will to power has provoked a large number of commentaries and still remains one of his most strange, provocative, and disturbing contributions to the ongoing attempt at the overcoming of metaphysical schemas of thought. The strangeness of will to power is in no way alleviated by its intimate proximity to Nietzsche's thoughts about physiology. In fact, one of the central assumptions this article will attempt to substantiate is that, in Nietzsche's oeuvre, will to power and physiology belong together as virtual synonyms for each other, and that any distinction between them is a matter of emphasis rather than due to a strong conceptual separation. Both the thought of will to power and its articulation in terms of physiology are here understood as strategies that permit the substitution of unitary phenomena, assumed to be pregiven in representational modes of thought, by complex economies of forces and values, or multiplicities.
One of the typical ways in which the thought of will to power is subsumed back into the order of representation—although that is what it most obviously seeks to undermine—is to render it as a unified subject or substance (will) that seeks to make good a lack or absence (power) by an exertion of its will. This putative subject is furthermore individualized, anthropomorphized, and taken as self-determining so that will to power ends up as something like the autonomous intentionality of a human being who seeks to extend his [sic] domination over others. But the chief import of will to power is precisely to steer thinking away from such macro-conceptions and to attune it to a more subtle world of flux and becoming, to a microcosm of impersonal forces that is incessantly at play in the interstices of the world of agents and their acts, of substance, subject and all the rest of an exhausted and finally unproductive metaphysical conceptuality.
Why then, we might ask, does Nietzsche permit himself the use of such heavily invested terms, will and power, when he precisely seeks to undermine their accepted, traditional philosophical usage, the common conceptual fields in which they appear? A more extended response to this question will be carried out in the course of the discussion that follows in the main part of this article. For the moment the following, preliminary remarks must suffice. [End Page 39]
The Nietzschean critique of metaphysics hinges on the latter's nihilistic, life-denying invention of the dualistic division between a true and an apparent world (however these worlds are conceived in detail). On that model, the plenitude of "this" world is "relocated" in an ideal realm of originary truth (the forms, God, Spirit, subjectivity, etc.). Hence Nietzsche's critique of metaphysics cannot claim recourse to any form of "higher truth," nor can it straightforwardly oppose its "truths" to those of the tradition without relapsing into Platonistic modes of thought. But one of the strategies left open to it is to infiltrate the lexicon and grammar of metaphysics and to use them against themselves. A prominent example of this is Nietzsche's critique of the Kantian distinction between appearance and thing in itself, 1 where he rethinks the former as semblance (Anschein 2) or appearing (Schein 3) without accepting a realm of the "in itself" "behind" appearances. 4 In this way, the hierarchy of any two-world theory is leveled into a string of dissimulations, into a series of veils or masks, yet the removal of one mask never reveals a final truth, the Truth, but only another mask and more masks. 5 Nietzschean thought frequently inhabits the dualistic structures of metaphysics in order to subvert them from within, but only strategically, given the logical cul-de-sac dualistic metaphysics presents to any kind of thought that seeks to free itself from its conceptual schemas by merely repeating its oppositional modes of thought. While this reading of Nietzsche's strategic inhabitation of metaphysics surely cannot be treated as a panacea for dealing with every instance of oppositional thought in his writings, it would broadly allow for an immanent "hermeneutics of suspicion" of them. In this vein, his remarks concerning oppositionally understood forces or types would have to be read as instances of dissimulation—not of course one exerted by the rational and voluntaristic, if devious, consciousness of Herr Nietzsche on his readers, but one inevitably at play, to a greater or lesser extent, in all textuality and indicative of the perpetual self-differing constitutive of it. Understood in this way, the thought of will to power leaves the oppositional schemas of metaphysics behind 6 —or else it engages them in ways to be explored a little later.
So, to come back to our first question, why the use of such metaphysically loaded terms as "will" and "power," Nietzschean will to power can neither be understood in traditional metaphysical terms (the autonomous intentionality of a human being who seeks to extend his domination over others) nor as their simple negation. Instead, as is ever the case in his oeuvre, Nietzsche's terminology contests a space between the two extremes, a space of differing that subverts both the simple inhabitation of metaphysical schemas and the denial of their conceptual force. It also inevitably problematizes the transitions from oppositional conceptuality to a thought of difference, and vice versa. The main part of this article will attempt to negotiate some of these transitions in some (textual) detail. That in doing so linear discursivity will [End Page 40] go hand in hand with recursive thematization should be seen as a function of the repetitional nature of Nietzsche's thought.
But prior to this discussion a few brief points concerning Nietzsche's senses of physiology need to be made. Just like the term will to power, so too "physiology" is used in a deliciously duplicitous way in Nietzsche's writings. It does not simply denote a biological body or the study thereof, nor does it absolutely rule this out. Instead physio-logy, the thinking of nature (physis) or matter (in both of its genitival senses) projects an active science of material becomings by asking how forces vie with each other and how some become formative of a body. Physiology, like will to power, stages a continual contest of forces rather than describe or discuss a stable, unitary phenomenon. For this reason, the thinking of will to power most readily takes the body as its "methodological" starting point. On the methodological value of physiological complexity for the understanding of unity, Nietzsche writes,
Everything that enters consciousness as "unity" is already tremendously complex: we always only have a semblance [Anschein] of unity.
The phenomenon of the body is the richer, more distinct, more graspable phenomenon: to be methodologically privileged without deciding anything about its ultimate significance. 7
This extends to the apparent unity of subjectivity, as in the following note:
With the guiding thread of the body an immense multiplicity shows itself; it is methodologically permitted to use the more easily studied, richer phenomenon as the guiding thread for the understanding of the poorer [the apparent unity of the "I"]. 8
He also avers, "The most valuable insights are gained last: but the most valuable insights are methods." 9
Thus the first, preliminary stage in this exploration of the senses of 'the overcoming of physiology' is that, "without deciding anything about its ultimate significance" (i.e., without "elevating" the body to the level of a new metaphysical ground, as varieties of base materialism or biologism might do), multiple physiological becoming replaces ontologies based on assumptions of unity or identity as the methodological starting point. Methodologically, physiology is taken to "overcome" unitary phenomena of consciousness.
Nietzsche also exploits the polysemy of the term "physiology" for philosophical diagnoses of different orders of phenomena. These include an exemplary yet singular human physiology (haecceio-physiology), like that of Caesar or Goethe 10 ; or particular physiological types (physio-typology), for example, the "tropical human being" 11 or artists, philosophers, scholars, priests, and saints. 12 But they extend to a phenomenon in the world read as a body [End Page 41] (chrema-physiology 13 ), such as reason, religion, art, science, and above all morality 14 ; and finally to the world as a whole understood as body (physio-cosmology). 15 These lend themselves to questions that predominate in medical physiology, namely, those concerning the relative health or sickness of a body, which Nietzsche also thematizes in terms of abundance and exhaustion. I will explore these questions, and the conditions for the possibility of posing them, in the next part of this article.
Against the background of these general introductory remarks we turn our attention to the key text for the interpretation that follows, a posthumous note from Nietzsche's last year of lucidity (Spring 1888), entitled "The most dangerous misunderstanding" ("Das gefährlichste Mißverständnis" 16 ). In this note, the key term to be examined is that of Verwechslung, habitually translated as "confusion." But it should be remembered that Verwechslung more precisely means a faulty or bungled substitution of one thing for another and is thus more specifically bipolar than the term "confusion."
There is a concept which apparently permits no confusion [Verwechslung], no ambiguity [Zweideutigkeit]: it is that of exhaustion. It can be acquired; it can be inherited—in any case it alters the aspect of things, the value of things. . . .
As opposed to [Im Gegensatz zu] him who, from the fullness which he presents and feels, involuntarily gives to things, and sees them fuller, more powerful, more promising—who at any rate is capable of bestowing, the exhausted diminishes and botches everything he sees,—he impoverishes the value: he is harmful. . . .
About this no mistake [Fehlgriff] seems possible: nonetheless history contains the gruesome fact that the exhausted have always been mistaken [verwechselt] for the fullest—and the fullest for the most harmful.
The poor in life the weak yet impoverishes life: the rich in life the strong enriches it. . . .
The first is its parasite; the second yet bestows on it. . . .
How is a confusion [Verwechslung] possible? . . . Nothing has been paid for more dearly than confusion [Verwechslung] in physiological matters [im Physiologischen]. 17
After the above typology of this strange phenomenon there follows, in the rest of the note, an analysis of it rooted in Nietzsche's doctrine of a historically inscribed will to power. But we will sidestep that interpretation for the time being and instead merely attempt to place the confusion (Verwechslung) of which the note speaks in the context of the economy of will to power. In doing so we hope to enhance our understanding of some of the more obscure [End Page 42] aspects of Nietzsche's physiological thinking and of the connections between will to power and physiology.
Just as will to power appears to be either affirmative or negating, just as forces appear to be either active or reactive, so physiologies are apparently either rich, full, and bestowing or impoverished, depleted, and exhausted, whether through unwise living or unfortunate circumstances or inheritance. The root cause of this exhaustion is, as the note goes on to explain, adherence to the doctrines of a decadent religion, namely, European Christianity. The opposition between these two types is even made explicit in the above note: "[a]s opposed to him who . . ." The indicators of which type one is faced with should be clear in the context of Nietzsche's genealogy of values, namely, that the value of things is either enhanced or depleted. According to this, things should simply either present themselves as rich, exuberant, and beautiful or else as tired, stunted, and sickly. Each type of physiology appears to be in an immediate exchange with the things, elements, and events of its world, and the genealogy of value and of will to power appears to be able to read these types like open books, not least through the way in which their environments present themselves and they in them. It ought to be so simple, no confusion, no ambiguity ought to be possible.
There might be occasions or cases where this straightforwardly oppositional narrative is applicable in a limited way, and Nietzsche might even toy with it as a preliminary way into the phenomenon of exhausted physiologies that are dangerously misunderstood. But on the whole it seems to me that this note heads off into far more abyssal regions than would at first, based on the somewhat simplistic story just outlined, seem to be the case. It is the relation, discussed at the beginning of this article, between oppositional, metaphysical modes of thought and Nietzschean thoughts of difference that compels us to look for more complex ways of responding to the above note. This is so because will to power, as a name for the Nietzschean thought of difference, is a will to self-overcoming, to grow and to be more. Hence an interpretation which purports to follow the thought of will to power but which has come to rest, especially in the complacent distribution of oppositional values, is driven to go further, to go beyond itself, if it is to heed the central imperative of will to power as will to grow. 18 And it seems that it is the term Verwechslung which exerts this strange vortical pull: it, that is, confusion or faulty substitution, seems impossible when it comes to those apparently merely opposed physiological types, and yet it seems to have occurred again and again throughout European history. As Nietzsche asks, how is this possible?
For our subsequent response to this question we need to remind ourselves briefly of a few fundamental tenets of Nietzschean thought, namely, the three central issues of the monistic character of will to power, the productive primacy accorded to it, and the perspectivism it articulates. We recall that for [End Page 43] Nietzsche, "This world is will to power—and nothing else besides." 19 Here Nietzsche pits a quasi-monistic (yet by no means unitary) conception of productivity against dualistic divisions of the world into greater and lesser productive orders (two-world theory), even though the "monism" of will to power is offset by its profoundly agonistic character ("All events, all motion, all becoming as a fixing of relations of degree and force, as a struggle . . ." 20 ).
Second, as was mentioned, ontologically, productive primacy is attributed to the will to power, with the result that, for instance, any purely idealist conceptions of or within morality, religion, philosophy, etc., are themselves understood as expressions or articulations of will to power. 21 In the context of the present exposition, this is the crucial point because it provides the spur to the genealogy of values that we are applying to our central text (WP 48) and at the same time, as mentioned above, it provides the "method" for this genealogy: by treating will to power and physiology as virtual synonyms it allows a reading of (bestowing or exhausted) types as symptoms of one physiology—the "body" of Platonic-Christian thought. The productive primacy of will to power rests on this chief characteristic, namely, that it alone is ultimately formative of values, given that Nietzsche's philosophy hinges on the insight that there are no facts but only interpretations and the values through which they are formed. 22 By way of parenthesis it should be said that it is also possible for thought to interpret phenomena, but it can only do so in the manner of something like an unconscious repetition of the materially formative processes of will to power. By contrast, a thinking or an activity which, in the course of interpretation, mistakes itself entirely for the product of an identical and originary consciousness, at the same time weakens itself in this mistaken assumption of its own unitary and original character because this assumption indicates a separation from and implicit denial of the productive plenitude of will to power. This implies that the apparently originary acts of human beings—whether ideational, practical, artistic, or technological—are to be understood as merely secondary expressions within the ontology (faute de mieux) of the will to power. This is one of the reasons why Nietzsche writes: "The will to power interprets: the formation of an organ is a matter of interpretation; it delimits, determines degrees, differentials of power. Mere differentials of power could not sense themselves as such: there has to be something that wills to grow, that interprets every other something that wills to grow as to its value." 23
Third, Nietzsche's writings both discuss and enact the perspectivism intrinsic to will to power (e.g., "[the world] has no sense behind it, but countless senses. 'Perspectivism' . . . Every drive is a kind of domineering, each has its perspective" 24 ). This issue of perspectivism also importantly qualifies Nietzschean "monism" which does not posit one central principle to which phenomena are ideally subsumed, but instead thinks a plurality (of forces, drives, values, or interpretations) which, in their agon, make up all there is [End Page 44] (the world). Hence the will to power names the character of the world as "at the same time one and many." 25
Furthermore, with his innumerable, nonsystematic notes on the will to power and as articulations of it, Nietzsche seeks to re-create in his oeuvre a sense of the world as the agonistic contest of forces. This conception of the world entails or implies a huge proliferation of experimentally articulated perspectives, to the detriment of the exclusivity claimed by any self-naturalizing centristic attitude, such as, and above all, anthropocentrism. The world as articulated by Nietzsche is irreducible to any one dominant voice (for example, that of religious, rational, or scientific Man) but expresses the disharmonious polyvocity of the world. Needless to say, insofar as this polyphony is made up for the most part of impersonal voices, it cannot be reductively understood as mere relativism.
But to return to our main point, which is the attempt to respond to a question that enquires into the conditions of possibility of a confusion between apparently oppositional types of physiology, we can now begin to unravel some of the implications of our note (WP 48). Nietzsche tells us that "[n]othing has been paid for more dearly than confusion [Verwechslung] in physiological matters." 26 This has had the effect that "the fanatic, the possessed, the religious epileptic, all eccentrics have been experienced as the highest types of power: as divine." 27 One of the gruesome effects of this confusion has been that in cultures dominated by Platonic-Christian conceptualities and beliefs, physiological decadence has been venerated, a depleted will to power has been enshrined as the highest type and a widespread, "typical degeneration of spirit, body and nerves" 28 resulted. In the cultures (sometimes referred to by Nietzsche as "every kind of Europe") 29 where these ideals and idols gained ascendancy, physiological fullness and its attendant capacity to enrich life have almost been bred out. Humanity as a whole has been paying the price for such a comprehensive, near-fatal error. On the basis of the thought of will to power which, as we saw, undermines notions such as agency and responsibility, subjectivity and instrumentality, we cannot, do not want to, ask whose error this is. Clearly we cannot hope or wish to identify any one fons et origo mali, whether as (collective) subject or historical force, given also that chance no doubt plays a greater part in this global degeneration than any historical determinism would allow. At any rate, it is not the existence of such extreme types on which our note focuses, but the confusion (Verwechslung) between them and thus, to be specific, an error of interpretation that has taken root. The mere existence of physiological extremes remains devoid of any implications outside of the system of values which valorizes one as more real, true, good and denigrates the other as deficient in these categories. It is, after all, the process of evaluation, especially when elevated to the rank of philosophical "system," which determines degrees of being. [End Page 45]
In an abrupt moment of recoil entirely internal to the logic of our note, it therefore becomes clear that this error of interpretation is itself a function of the very hierarchical, oppositional distribution of values that characterizes Platonic-Christian thought. Hence it requires interpretations based on completely different modes of thought to begin to remedy the effects of this confusion. The circular, abyssal logic implicit here is that the move toward an immanentization of apparently oppositional physiological types to the physiological register of will to power must both be the starting point of the reflection and the result of the interpretations that ensue. That both common sense and traditional logic balk at this cannot pose a serious obstacle to this Nietzschean endeavor.
After this series of engagements with our central text from Nietzsche's Nachlass, and having taken into account some more general features of his thinking, it has now become possible to draw out the second sense of 'the overcoming of physiology'. Here it is the practice of a thought based on the physiological register of will to power which enables interpretations of purportedly idealist, apparently oppositional phenomena, thus merely clearing the way for the self-overcoming of the valuations that produced them as such phenomena. But even this strategic (i.e., experimental, never final) switch of perspective and the ensuing comprehension of Verwechslung as an error of interpretation that can be rectified in another, genealogical interpretation are themselves only preparatory for the next stage in this exposition, which, though based on more of Nietzsche's notes, is more speculative in character, will delve deeper into the economy of will to power and thereby show that the confusion between and understanding of types as wholly immanent to will to power is rooted even more deeply than thus far revealed.
To restate one of the salient points of Nietzsche's note, as a consequence of the confusion between physiological types, the poorest life forms, which are not just poorest in life but even impoverish life, are being elevated to the status of idols. But if their elevation is understood as purely internal to will to power, that is, as internal to life itself, it would not only mean that life turns against itself 30 by supporting those types which deplete it, but that over long stretches it even favors those types which degrade it. How else could the essential confusion which permits this valorization have been sustained? Do we therefore have to understand masochism as one of the most fundamental traits of life?
That Nietzsche thinks in terms of an erotics of life is amply borne out by his numerous reflections on the economy of pleasure and displeasure (Lust and Unlust 31 ), not as psychological states but as salient points in the dynamic of will to power, that is, in the play of resistance and overcoming which pits force against force. We will conclude this exposition with a look at some of these observations that help to clarify further the position of human physiology in the economy of will to power. Nietzsche says, for instance, that [End Page 46] "[t]he will to power can only express itself against resistances; hence it seeks that which resists it," 32 and that an impediment (Hemmnis) is a stimulus to will to power. 33 On the basis of this, the ideals of metaphysics, understood as any two-world theory and its attendant conceptuality of subject, substance, mind, matter, spirit, cause, effect, will, etc., would take their "validity" not from their adequacy to a transcendent truth but from the function they fulfill within the dynamic of will to power, that is, to form a resistance internal to will to power, thereby to strengthen it and to stimulate it toward more powerful self-overcoming. The connection between this dynamic and a more overtly libidinal account is made, for instance, when Nietzsche writes in general terms, "It is not the satisfaction of the will that is the cause of pleasure . . . but rather that the will wants to advance and again and again become master over that which stands in its way. The feeling of pleasure lies in the dissatisfaction of the will, . . . [which is] never sated without its limits and resistances." 34 Will to power is above all the will to expand, to more power, "the imperative to grow." 35 If it were merely a matter of an adiaphorous increase in power—in the nature of rising water levels, for example—there would be no spur, no lure or temptation to expansion. Life (and not just human life) would be calm and pacific, without struggle or adversity, much like the heaven for which Christians yearn. But life such as it is, material, agonistic, violent, and unconcerned with any one of its creations, thrives on the displeasure of complications and finds pleasure in what impedes it.
Of particular interest for our current project of translating the emergence of two-world theories and their dualistic conceptuality back into the impersonal economy of will to power is the following note, "Depending on the resistances which a force seeks out in order to become master over them, the measure of failure and fatality thereby provoked must also grow: and insofar as each force can only exert itself against resistances, there is necessarily an ingredient of displeasure in every action. But this displeasure acts as a lure of life and strengthens the will to power!" 36 In other words, life, the libidinal-economic play of will to power, seeks out and if necessary produces those resistances which it then has to overcome, thereby enhancing its power. It is clear from this last note that, insofar as the dynamic of will to power harbors the perilous possibility of "failure and fatality," it could also produce casualties on a grand scale. It could be the case that, though giving rise to the magnificent impediment that are Platonic-Christian values, which use human physiologies as their carriers, in the overcoming of this impediment life destroys not only these values but also their hosts. 37 In other words, this raises the question whether human life is sustainable without nihilistic ideals of preservation, the values of Platonic-Christian culture. Nietzsche comments, "The 'truths' which have been believed best are for me—assumptions until further notice, . . . very well rehearsed habits of belief, so incorporated that not to believe in them would destroy the species. But are they therefore truths? [End Page 47] What a conclusion! As if truth were proven by the continued existence of human being!" 38
In this context, the overcoming of physiology could take on an all too literal sense, in that the values with which humanity has been imbued for millennia could end up destroying it as a species, because adherence to them has bred dependence, and to overcome these values, as life might, could also leave the species without any other resources for its preservation.
But complementing this bleak scenario, in which it is precisely the values which are supposed to aid the preservation of the species that render its survival improbable, Nietzsche also occasionally speculates on the future of the posthuman. In a note which contains the observation that "[i]t is the phase of the modesty of consciousness," 39 he projects a future that today, over a hundred years after this note was written, and in the context of epochal developments in science and technology (such as genetic engineering or the development of machinic intelligence), is proving prophetic. He writes,
perhaps the entire evolution of the spirit concerns the body: it is history becomeperceptible that a higher body is forming. The organic is rising to yet higher levels. Our greed for knowledge of nature is a means through which the body wants to perfect itself. Or rather: hundreds of thousands of experiments are made to change nutrition, mode of dwelling and the way in which the body lives: consciousness and the evaluations in the body, all kinds of pleasure and displeasure are signs of these changes and experiments. In the end it is not at all a question of human being: it is to be overcome. 40
A higher body is forming—the signs are all around us— and it
may involve the overcoming of human being as it is. While the overcoming
of which this note speaks might eventually result in the material
perishing of the human species, it could also develop rather differently,
and this concerns the third sense of 'the overcoming of physiology'. The
formation of a higher body might lead to the overcoming of "human being"
as that life form which conceives of itself in opposition to animality,
which projects itself as rational, ethical, and morally responsible,
and which believes that a pure intellect is the highest expression of its
eternal essence, that is, which is lost in the nihilistic abstractions of
metaphysics. But as the hitherto incomplete nihilism of which these values
are an expression begins to enter a phase that will see its eventual
completion, so the "clever animals" whose instrumental rationality has
transformed the planet beyond recognition may gradually enter into a
wholly different understanding of themselves. In the incipient phase
of the modesty of consciousness humans may come to think of themselves
as life forms entirely immanent to the will to power. At the same time,
they may come to regard the exhausted physiologies we have been hearing
about as the unfortunate but still entirely "natural" waste products of
a higher body
[End Page 48]
that is forming—so that they are not to be pitied but neither
to be revered. Conversely, it might mean an end to the predominance of
metaphysical schemas and by extension an end to this confusion between
physiological types that could augur a higher body in the process of
forming itself—even if this would only entail the formation of a
new resistance to be overcome for the ever-voracious, ever-growing will
to power.
University of Dundee
Notes
1. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1968), §§553-60, hereafter WP. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), §6, "How the 'true world' finally became a fable." Hereafter TI.
2. See WP §489, below.
3. Most notably throughout the Birth of Tragedy (trans. Walter Kaufmann [New York: Random House, 1967]).
4. WP §§553ff.
5. See, for example, Sarah Kofman, Nietzsche and Metaphor, trans. Duncan Large (London: Athlone Press, 1993), 74f., 126f., and Michel Haar, Nietzsche and Metaphysics, trans. Michael Gendre (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996), 48f., 57, and especially 61.
6. But, it could be asked, could some of these problems regarding Nietzsche's allegedly oppositional typology not simply be resolved by saying that they are merely to be taken as extremes on a gradated scale, thus enforcing the "bipolar" character of will to power (David Farrell Krell, Infectious Nietzsche [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996], xiv)? On the whole, yes, but in the case of our note (and indeed many others), I think there is something even more complex and interesting going on, as this article will attempt to show.
7. WP §489, translation modified.
8. WP §518, translation modified.
9. WP §469.
10. TI, "Expeditions of an Untimely One," §§31, 49.
11. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978), V, §197. Hereafter BGE.
12. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967), III, §1. Hereafter GoM.
13.
From Greek
, a thing, matter, affair, event. Liddell and
Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, 7th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1996).
14. See the innumerable notes throughout Nietzsche's later works in particular.
15. See also BGE II, §36, WP §§1066f., 1062, 708.
16. WP §48.
17. Translation modified, last sentence not in WP, my translation.
18. See WP §§644, 650, 703.
19. WP §1067, translation modified; cf. also BGE V, §186, GoM II, §12, WP 693.
20. WP §552, translation modified.
21. For example, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1974), Preface, §2.
22. WP §481.
23. WP §643, translation modified.
24. WP §481, translation modified, cf. also WP §567.
25. WP §1067. It seems to me that in this respect the will to power is crucially related to the thought of the rhizome, as elaborated by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (London: Athlone Press, 1988). In particular, when they speak of "the dualisms we had no wish to construct but through which we pass. Arrive at the magic formula we all seek—PLURALISM=MONISM—via all the dualisms that are the enemy, an entirely necessary enemy" (20f., emphasis added), it is clear that the present essay attempts to reenact such a passage through a dualism (of types)—which is necessary as a dissimulation of the will to power in the process of 'self'-overcoming—in order to hint that the above formula is already in play at the heart of Nietzsche's thought of will to power. For now this can only be mentioned by way of suggestion, but it will be discussed more extensively in a forthcoming monograph.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. GoM III, §14.
30. As it does, for instance, in Nietzsche's reading of "The Problem of Socrates," TI, especially §§1 and 2.
31. WP §§657f., 661, 688f., 693-97, 699, 702f.
32. WP §656, translation modified.
33. WP §702, translation modified.
34. WP §696, translation modified.
35. WP §644, translation modified
36. WP §694, translation modified.
37. WP §678.
38. WP §497, translation modified.
39. WP §676, translation modified.
40. All emphasis in the original, translation modified.
