Will to Power Framework

The value criterion is...consistency with the will to power.

Here are some of the best justifications for a will to power framework.

NECESSARY LINK: see page Constitutivism True

The constitutive aim of action is overcoming since its object is a drive for power.

Paul Katsafanas. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LXXXIII No. 3, November 2011, Deriving Ethics from Action: A Nietzschean Version of Constitutivism. Boston University.

So, while a purely goal-directed act would seek to minimize resistances, a process directed activity involves an active desire to encounter and overcome resistances.24 For if you aim to engage in some process, you must actually seek the objects upon which the process can be directed. This is why Nietzsche sometimes describes the will to power as “a will to overcome, a will that has in itself no end… a processus in infinitum, an active determining” (WP 552). Or, as he elsewhere puts it, “the will to power can manifest itself only against resistances; therefore it seeks that which resists it” (WP 656/KSA 12.9[151]). Let me summarize the results of this argument. First, drives are defined as motivational states that aim at their own continuous expression. Second, aiming at continuous expression entails aiming to encounter resistances to overcome. The conclusion is simple: drive-motivated activities aim at encountering and overcoming resistance. This is part of what makes an activity qualify as drive-motivated. By the definition of (Constitutive Aim), this is just to say that drive-motivated activities have the constitutive aim of overcoming resistance.

Willing is constitutively aimed at power.

Paul Katsafanas. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LXXXIII No. 3, November 2011, Deriving Ethics from Action: A Nietzschean Version of Constitutivism. Boston University. 

What is interesting about Nietzsche’s remarks on will to power is that they seem designed to show that power is the constitutive aim of willing. Suppose that one wanted to offer a constitutivist argument about willing. The first step would be to show that there is some aim that is essentially involved in each instance of willing. Notice that this is exactly what Nietzsche’s arguments concerning the will to power are designed to establish. As we just saw, Nietzsche argues that each instance of willing aims at power. Moreover, the will to power doctrine is a claim about the essential nature of willing: it is a description of the form or structure that every episode of willing manifests. But, by the definition of Constitutive Aim, this is just to say that power is the constitutive aim of willing. Suppose Nietzsche’s arguments succeed in establishing that willing constitutively aims at power. If the constitutivist argument form were valid, then Nietzsche would be entitled to conclude that power has a privileged normative status. In drawing that conclusion, Nietzsche would not have to rely on the idea that power is an objective value. Rather, the argument would rely simply on the idea that insofar as an agent wills an end, the agent is committed to treating power as a standard of success for willing. Again, this seems to be exactly what Nietzsche does conclude about power. Nietzsche denies that there are objective values, but treats power as the one standard of evaluation that readily meets challenges to its authority. And we can now see why. Nietzsche is grounding power’s privileged evaluative status in an incapacity: it is the one value that we cannot give up, insofar as we are engaged in willing. Surprisingly, then, Nietzsche’s claims about will to power and revaluation seem to be linked by a constitutivist argument. The premises, the argument form, and the conclusion are all just what we would expect, if Nietzsche were a constitutivist