two faces of the will to power

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 –

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