Nietzsches concept of force is therefore that of a force which is related to another force: in this form force is called will. The will (will to power) is the differential element of force. A new conception of the philosophy of the will follows from this. For the will is not exercised mysteriously on muscles and nerves, still less on “matter in general”, but is necessarily exercised on another will. p 7

What the wills in Hegel want is to have there power recognised, to represent their power. According to Nietzsche we have a wholly erroneous conception of the will to power and its nature. This is the slave’s conception, it is the image that the man of ressentiment has of power. The slave only conceives of power as the object of a recognition, the content of a representation, the stake in a competition, and therefore makes it depend, at the end of a fight, on a simple attribution of established values. p 10

The cyclical hypothesis is incapable of accounting for two thing – the diversity of co-existing cycles and, above all, the existence of diversity within the cycle. This is why we can only understand the eternal return as the expression of a principle which serves as an explanation of diversity and its reproduction, of difference and repetition. Nietzsche presents this principle as one of his most important philosophical discoveries. Het calls it will to power. By will to power “I express the characteristic that cannot be thought out of the mechanistic order without thinking away this order itself” p 49

The will to power alone is the one that wills, it does not let itself be delegated or alienated to another subject, ever to force. p 49

It must not be said that active force becomes reactive because reactive forces triumph; on the contrary, they triumph because, by separating active force what it can do, the betray it to the will of nothingness, to a becoming-reactive deeper than themselves. This is why the figures of triumph of reactive forces (ressentiment, bad conscience, and the acetic ideal) are primarily forms of nihilism. p 64

Becoming-active is affirming and affirmative, just as becoming-reactive is negating and nihilistic. p 68

In other words, life goes beyond the limits that knowledge fixes for it, but thought goes beyond the limits that life fixes for it. Thought ceases to be a ratio, life ceases to be a reaction. The Thinker thus expresses the noble affinity of thought and life: life making thought active, thought making life affirmative. In Nietzsche this general affinity is not only the pre-Socratic secret par excellence, but also the essence of art. p 101

Ressentiment is the triumph of the weak as weak, the revolt of the slaves and their victory as slaves. It is their victory that the slaves form a type. The type of the master (the active type) is defined of the faculty of forgetting and the power of acting reactions. The type of slave (the reactive type) is defined by a prodigious memory, by the power of ressentiment; p 117

Who feels pity? … Those who hate everything which is active in life, those who use life to deny and depreciate life, to oppose it to itself. p 150

Zarathustra asks as the sole and first one to do so: ‘How shall man be overcome?’

Gilles Deleuze: Nietzsche and Philosophy

zegt Nietzsche bestaat niet in een begeren, zelfs niet in een grijpen, maar in een scheppen, in een schenken. De Macht als wilt tot macht is niet wat de wil wil maar datgene wat wil in het willen.

De wil tot macht zorgt er immers voor dat de actieve krachten bevestigen, dat ze hun eigen verschil bevestigen: in hen is de bevestiging primair, de ontkenning is nooit meer dan een congruentie, een soort overmaat van genot.

Deleuze: Nietzsche, p. 31

The will to power only makes what is affirmed return: it is the will to power which both transforms the negative and reproduces affirmation.

Deleuze: Nietzsche and philosophy, p. 198

Het Negatieve keert niet terug. Het Identieke keert niet terug. Het Zelfde en het Gelijkende, het Analoge en het Tegengestelde keren niet terug. Slechts de affirmatie keert terug, dat wil zeggen het Verschillende en het Ongelijksoortige. /p. 436/
De eeuwige terugkeer elimineert dat wat hem onmogelijk maakt door op zijn beurt het vervoer van het verschil onmogelijk te maken. Hij elimineert de vooronderstellingen van de representatie, namelijk het Zelfde en het Gelijkende, het Analoge en het Negatieve. Want de representatie en haar vooronderstellingen keren maar één keer terug en niet voor altijd, waarna ze voor altijd worden geëlimineerd. /p. 438/
Deleuze: Verschil en herhaling

It is by the will to power that a force commands, but is also by the will to power that a force obeys. To these two types or qualities of forces there correspond two faces, two qualia, of the will to power, which are ultimate and fluent, deeper than the forces that derive from theme, for the will to power makes it that active forces affirm, and affirm their difference: in them affirmation is first, and negation is never but a consequence, a sort of surplus of pleasure. What characterizes reactive forces, on the other hand, is their opposition to what they are not, their tendency to limit the other:  in theme, negation comes first; through negation, they arrive at a semblance of affirmation. Affirmation and negation are thus  the qualia of the will to power, just as action and reaction are the qualities of forces. And just as interpretation finds the principles of meaning in forces, evaluation finds the principles of values in the will to power. Given the preceding terminological precisions, we can avoid reducing Nietzsche’s thought to a simple dualism, for, as we shall seen affirmation is itself essentially multiple and pluralist, whereas negation is always one, or heavily monist.
Yet history presents us with a most peculiar phenomenon: the reactive forces triumph; negation wins the will to power! This is the case not only in the history of man, but in the history of life and the earth. at least on the face it inhabited by man. Everywhere we see the victory of No over Yes, of reaction over action. Life becomes adaptive and regulative, reduced to its secondary forms; we no longer understand what it means to act. Even the forces of the earth become exhausted on this desolate face. Nietzsche calls this joint victory of reactive forces an the will to negate “nihilism” – or the triumph of the slaves.

– Gilles Deleuze, Pure immanence, chapter 3 Nietzsche, p 74/75 –

‘Ik lees geen romans/literatuur meer, ik lees non-fictie, wetenschappelijke boeken’ Ik hoor dit regelmatig. Als ik ‘Verschil en herhaling’ van Deleuze les besef ik hoe belangrijke literatuur is. Dat goede literatuur de (enige) manier is om het leven te onderzoeken, te beschrijven. Dat het een levende, menselijke vorm van kennis- en inzichtvorming is.
Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Deleuze, het is een denken, en filosofie die zich met literatuur verbonden weet. Ze leunt er tegen aan en ondersteunt het.
-05-02-2019-