Just What Exactly is 'The Will to Power'?

Words -- and their meaning -- can be troublesome things. And the words, or concept of, 'the will to power' is no different. It can be a real 'head scratcher' if we want to explore the full realm of different possible 'semantic' interpretations of its meaning...

Here is how one of my most 'feedback engaging' readers framed a few of the difficult questions around this concept...

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Nick Pappas said...

Dave,

Interesting theme with suggestive comments. Will you say more about will to power and will to egalitarianism? Is egalitarianism itself a will to power? Is every opposite willing itself to power over its rival? If so, then what is will to power itself? What can oppose it?

Nick
pappasnick.typepad.com

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Try to get your head around any of these questions!!

Nick: Is egalitarianism itself a 'will to power'? 

Dave: Yes. 

Unfortunately, I don't have Nick here to play out my 'alter philosophical ego' so I will have to 'stand in for Nick' and play out this role myself in the direction that I think Nick was going with this semantically perplexing concept of 'the will to power'...

Dave for Nick: Okay, let us take this line of thinking to an even greater extreme... Is 'the will to submission' a form of 'will to power'? 

Dave for Dave: Yes. 

Dave for Nick: So if a 'will to submission' is a form of will to power, and a 'will to dominance' is also a form of will to power, then it sounds like a 'will to power' could, or can, mean anything...In the words of Nick, is there anything that can 'oppose' the 'will to power'?

Dave for Dave:  No, there is nothing that can oppose the 'will to power' IF by 'will to power' what we are actually coming down to is a 'will to individual and/or group choice'. 

For example, if I choose to 'submit', I am exercising my 'will to choice'; in effect, my 'will to choose' becomes my 'will to power' whether I use this 'will to power' in healthy and/or pathological ways...What if I choose 'not to choose'? Well, this too is a 'choice'. And by exercising our 'freedom of choice', we are also exercising our 'will to power'...even if this 'will to choose/choice/power', in effect, subverts our sense of 'self-power' in a more restrictive sense of the meaning of 'power' by my, for example, choosing to 'give up all my sense of power' to 'your authority' or 'dominance' over me...

'Approval-seekers' or 'pleasers' or 'disapproval-avoiders' are exercising their own particular rendition of their own 'will to power'. They choose to seek 'approval' over say choosing what they think is 'right'...

In contrast, a 'righteous power-seeker' will more likely overtly assert his or her individual sense of righteousness -- unless he or she has a greater perceived need for 'approval' or a greater perceived need for 'self-protection' than he or she does a need to overtly assert his or her righteousness...

It is not uncommon to get a 'mixed' character type that chooses to be 'covertly as opposed to overtly righteous'....this is a 'righteous Apollonian (anal) type' mixed with an 'approval-seeking ('I need your love and acceptance; therefore, I give you what you want in order to try to get this love and acceptance from you...') type...

In conclusion then, from a DGB perspective, the will to power is essentially the same as a 'will to choice'...and as long as we can choose between different lines of behavior, then we are also exercising our own more or less unique version of our own 'will to power'...different but often similar, from context to context, from relationship to relationship, from encounter to encounter, from moment to moment...until we are dead and cannot choose anymore...

This is my Adlerian-Gestalt-Humanistic-Existential influence, incidentally...

I partly oppose Freud on the issue of 'unconscious determinism'.  Again, being a post-Hegelian, dialectic thinker, I take the midpoint between 'determinism' and 'freedom' -- bringing into existence the dialectically integrative idea of 'existential freedom of choice' -- and accountability for this choice -- on a bed of strongly influencing underlying factors such as childhood upbringing, subconscious psycho-dynamics, hereditary genetics, and current environmental factors...

-- dgb, April 7th, 2010, 

-- David Gordon Bain, 

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations, 

-- Are Still in Process...

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