Nietzsche and the Problem of Perspectivism

Reply to philosophy NIetzsche's perpsectivalism is related to American pragmatism in its recognizing value as more important than truth. It is not that we cannot choose between valuative paths, but that the basis of our choice is pragmatic usefulness, and the criterion of usefulness is subject to change along with the changes in perspective. So we can form stable societies and stable moral systems and a stable basis for science, which is precisely what we do. Its just that we have to throw out the 'view from nowhere' , the God's truth', the idea of linear progress, and replace these notions with a more mobile idea of consensus.

Reply to philosophy
That dilemma appears often in Nietzsche's writings. It is a contradiction he did not appear interested in helping the reader to figure out. But he was pretty clear that "perspectivism" was not a thesis as such. The nature of argument is based upon establishing conditions as either one thing or an other and that is the first challenge thrown down in Beyond Good and Evil. He criticizes the metaphysicians thusly:

Things of the highest value must have another, separate origin of their own, – they cannot be derived from this ephemeral, seductive, deceptive, lowly world, from this mad chaos of confusion and desire. Look instead to the lap of being, the everlasting, the hidden God, the ‘thing-in-itself’ – this is where their ground must be, and nowhere else!”
BGE, 2, translated by Judith Norman

This is not a take down of the "law of non-contradiction." The observation is that the either/or used to establish the necessity for a point of view can exclude experience in many ways. The practice of argument can also put a finger on the scale, as it were. Nietzsche delights in presenting philosophers in that light.

Another element to consider is how much of the "objective" truth is supposed to be a result. Consider the distinction made here:

But anyone who looks at people’s basic drives, to see how far they may have played their little game right here as inspiring geniuses (or daemons or sprites –), will find that they all practiced philosophy at some point, – and that every single one of them would be only too pleased to present itself as the ultimate purpose of existence and as rightful master of all the other drives. Because every drive craves mastery, and this leads it to try philosophizing. – Of course: with scholars, the truly scientific people, things might be different – “better” if you will –, with them, there might really be something like a drive for knowledge, some independent little clockwork mechanism that, once well wound, ticks bravely away without essentially involving the rest of the scholar’s drives. For this reason, the scholar’s real “interests” usually lie somewhere else entirely, with the family, or earning money, or in politics; in fact, it is almost a matter of indifference whether his little engine is put to work in this or that field of research, and every philosophy constitute the true living seed from which the whole plant has always grown. Actually, to explain how the strangest metaphysical claims of a philosopher really come about, it is always good (and wise) to begin by asking: what morality is it (is he –) getting at? Consequently, I do not believe that a “drive for knowledge” is the father of philosophy, but rather that another drive, here as elsewhere, used knowledge (and mis-knowledge!) merely as a tool. But anyone who looks at people’s basic drives, to see how far they may have played their little game right here as inspiring geniuses (or daemons or sprites –), will find that they all practiced philosophy at some point, – and that every single one of them would be only too pleased to present itself as the ultimate purpose of existence and as rightful master of all the other drives. Because every drive craves mastery, and this leads it to try philosophizing. – Of course: with scholars, the truly scientific people, things might be different – “better” if you will –, with them, there might really be something like a drive for knowledge, some independent little clockwork mechanism that, once well wound, ticks bravely away without essentially involving the rest of the scholar’s drives. For this reason, the scholar’s real “interests” usually lie somewhere else entirely, with the family, or earning money, or in politics; in fact, it is almost a matter of indifference whether his little engine is put to work in this or that field of research, and whether the “promising” young worker turns himself into a good philologist or fungus expert or chemist: – it doesn’t signify anything about him that he becomes one thing or the other. In contrast, there is absolutely nothing impersonal about the philosopher; and in particular his morals bear decided and decisive witness to who he is – which means, in what order of rank the innermost drives of his nature stand with respect to each other.
BGE, 6, translated by Judith Norman

So, you have a critic of "objectivity" making distinct claims about what exists. The easiest thing to do at this point is got off the highway and go somewhere else.

" But he was pretty clear that "perspectivism" was not a thesis as such."

Heidegger argues that "The will to power is the ground of the necessity of
value-positing and of the origin of the possibility of value judgment.. Moving out beyond itself,
the opening up and supplementing of possibilities belongs to the essence of the Will to Power."
"The revaluation of values via the thinking of Will to Power "does not merely
replace the old values with new. Revaluing becomes the overturning of the nature and manner of valuing."

In other words, for Heidegger (and Derrida, Deleuze and a host of other interpreters),
the Will to Power is a principle that determines that particular valuations(theories, schemes, perspectives) are always contingent and temporary, and eventually lead to their own overcoming and transformation into different valuative perspectives ad infinitum. There is never an overarching scheme that can enclose them, other than the Will to Power itself as the principle of self-overcoming. (This doesn't affect the legitimacy of the logic contained within any particular perspective).

Reply to Joshs
There is much disagreement between different interpretations regarding the role of the will to power in Nietzsche's writings. The central place you give it has been done by others. Perhaps you could point to some kind of consensus through citation.

My saying "perspectivism is not a thesis" is a challenge to the idea that a system of the kind you describe was the intention of the writing. It is not a lot of text. Present a case from those texts to show it was his intention.

"Present a case from those texts to show it was his intention."

I'll start with Heidegger.
1)The Word of Nietzsche:" God Is Dead" in The Question Concerning Technology.
2)Heidegger:Nietzsche Vol 1 and 2,
3)Heidegger-Nietzsche vol 3 and 4

4)Deleuze:Desert Islands and Other Texts p.117 Conclusions on the Will to Power and the Eternal Return, p.135 On Nietzsche and the Image of Thought
5)Deleuze:Nietzsche and Philosophy 1962

My summary was from Heidegger's "The Word of Nietzsche:" God Is Dead", Deleuze's is similar. If you want it fleshed out I'd recommend the above reading.

Oh Hell :here's an exerpt from the piece:

The Word of Nietzsche:
" God Is Dead"

Therefore, let us now ask Nietzsche himself what he understands
by nihilism, and let us leave it open at first whether with this
understanding Nietzsche after all touches on or can touch nihilism's
essence.
In a note from the year 1887 Nietzsche poses the question,
"What does nihilism mean?" (Will to Power, Aph. 2). He answers
: "That the highest values are devaluing themselves."
This answer is underlined and is furnished with the explanatory
amplification : "The aim is lacking; 'Why?' finds no answer."
According to this note Nietzsche understands nihilism as an
ongoing historical event. He interprets that event as the devaluing
of the highest values up to now. God, the supra sensory world
as the world that truly is and determines all, ideals and Ideas,
the purposes and grounds that determine and support everything
that is and human life in particular-all this is here represented
as meaning the highest values. In conformity with the opinion
that is even now still current, we understand by this the true,
the good, and the beautiful; the true, i.e., that which really is ;
the good, i.e., that upon which everything everywhere depends ;
the beautiful, i.e., the order and unity of that which is in its
entirety. And yet the highest values are already devaluing themselves
through the emerging of the insight that the ideal world
is not and is never to be realized within the real world. The
obligatory character of the highest values begins to totter. The
question arises : Of what avail are these highest values if they
do not simultaneously render secure the warrant and the ways
and means for a realization of the goals posited in them?

If, however, we were to insist on understanding Nietzsche's
definition of the essence of nihilism in so many words as the becoming valueless o f the highest values, then we would have
that conception of the essence of nihilism that has meanwhile become
current and whose currency is undoubtedly strengthened
through its being labeled "nihilism" : to wit, that the devaluing
of the highest values obviously means decay and ruin. Yet for
Nietzsche nihilism is not in any way simply a phenomenon of
decay ; rather nihilism is, as the fundamental event of Western
history, simultaneously and above all the intrinsic law of that
history. For that reason, in his observations about nihilism
Nietzsche gives scant attention to depicting historiographically
the ongoing movement of the event of the devaluing of the highest
values and to discovering definitively from this, through
calculation, the downfall of the West; rather Nietzsche thinks
nihilism as the "inner logic" of Western history.

With this, Nietzsche recognizes that despite the devaluing for
the world of the highest values hitherto, the world itself remains ;
and he recognizes that, above all, the world, become value-less,
presses inevitably on toward a new positing of values. After the
former values have become untenable, the new positing of values
changes, in respect to those former values, into a "revaluing of
all values." The no to the values hitherto comes out of a yes to
the new positing of values. Because in this yes, according to
Nietzsche's view, there is no accommodation to or compromise
with the former values, the absolute no belongs within this yes
to the new value-positing. In order to secure the unconditionality
of the new yes against falling back toward the previous values,
i.e., in order to provide a foundation for the new positing of
values as a countermovement, Nietzsche even designates the
new positing of values as "nihilism," namely, as that nihilism
through which the devaluing to a new positing of values that is
alone definitive completes and consummates itself. This definitive
phase of nihilism Nietzsche calls " completed," i.e., classical,
nihilism. Nietzsche understands by nihilism the devaluing of
the highest values up to now. But at the same time he takes an
affirmative stand toward nihilism in the sense of a "revaluing
of all previous values."

Hence the name "nihilism" remains
ambiguous, and seen in terms of its two extremes, always has
first of all a double meaning, inasmuch as, on the one hand, it
designates the mere devaluing of the highest values up to now, but on the other hand it also means at the same time the unconditional
countermovement to devaluing. Pessimism, which
Nietzsche sees as the prefiguration of nihilism, is already twofold
also, in the same sense. According to Schopenhauer, pessimism
is the belief that in this worst of worlds life is not worth
being lived and affirmed. According to this doctrine, life, and
that means at the same time all existence as such, is to be denied.
This pessimism is, according to Nietzsche, the "pessimism of
weakness." It sees everywhere only gloom, finds in everything
a ground for failure, and claims to know how everything will
turn out, in the sense of a thoroughgoing disaster. Over against
this, the pessimism of strength as strength is under no illusion,
perceives what is dangerous, wants no covering up and glossing
over. It sees to the heart of the ominousness of mere impatient
waiting for the return of what has been heretofore. It penetrates
analytically into phenomena and demands consciousness of the
conditions and forces that, despite everything, guarantee mastery
over the historical situation.

A more essential reflection could show how in what Nietzsche
calls the pessimism of strength there is accomplished the rising
up of modern humanity into the unconditional dominion of subjectivity
within the subjectness of what is.9 Through pessimism in its twofold form, extremes become manifest. Those extremes
as such maintain the ascendancy. There thus arises a situation
in which everything is brought to a head in the absoluteness of
an "either-or." An "in-between situation" comes to prevail in
which it becomes evident that, on the one hand, the realization
of the highest values hitherto is not being accomplished. The
world appears value-less. On the other hand, through this making
conscious, the inquiring gaze is directed toward the source
of the new positing of values, but without the world's regaining
its value at all in the process.

To be sure, something else can still be attempted in face of
the tottering of the dominion of prior values. That is, if God in
the sense of the Christian god has disappeared from his authoritative
position in the suprasensory world, then this authoritative
place itself is still always preserved, even though as that
which has become empty. The now-empty authoritative realm
of the suprasensory and the ideal world can still be adhered to.
What is more, the empty place demands to be occupied anew
and to have the god now vanished from it replaced by something
else. New ideals are set up. That happens, according to
Nietzsche's conception (Will to Power, Aph. 1021, 1887), through
doctrines regarding world happiness, through socialism, and
equally through Wagnerian music, i.e., everywhere where "dogmatic
Christendom" has "become bankrupt." Thus does "incomplete
nihilism" come to prevail. Nietzsche says about the latter :
"Incomplete nihilism : its forms : we live in the midst of it.
Attempts to escape nihilism without revaluing our values so far :
they produce the opposite, make the problem more acute" (Will
to Power, Aph. 28, 1 887) .

We can grasp Nietzsche's thoughts on incomplete nihilism
more explicitly and exactly by saying : Incomplete nihilism does
indeed replace the former values with others, but it still posits
the latter always in the old position of authority that is, as it
were, gratuitously maintained as the ideal realm of the suprasensory.
Completed nihilism, however, must in addition do away
even with the place of value itself, with the suprasensory as a
realm, and accordingly must posit and revalue values differently.
From this it becomes clear that the "revaluing of all previous
values" does indeed belong to complete, consummated, and therefore classical nihilism, but the revaluing does not merely
replace the old values with new. Revaluing becomes the overturning
of the nature and manner of valuing. The positing of
values requires a new principle, i.e., a new principle from which
it may proceed and within which it may maintain itself. The
positing of values requires another realm. The principle can no
longer be the world of the suprasensory become lifeless. Therefore
nihilism, aiming at a revaluing understood in this way, will
seek out what is most alive. Nihilism itself is thus transformed
into "the ideal of superabundant life" (Will to Power, Aph. 14,
1887) . In this new highest value there is concealed another appraisal
of life, i.e., of that wherein lies the determining essence
of everything living. Therefore it remains to ask what Nietzsche
understands by life.

The allusion to the various levels and forms of nihilism shows
that nihilism according to Nietzsche's interpretation is, throughout,
a history in which it is a question of values-the establishing
of values, the devaluing of values, the revaluing of values ; it is a
question of the positing of values anew and, ultimately and
intrinsically, a question of the positing of the principle of all
value-positing-a positing that values differently. The highest
purposes, the grounds and principles of whatever is, ideals and
the suprasensory, God and the gods-all this is conceived in
advance as value. Hence we grasp Nietzsche's concept of nihilism
adequately only when we know what Nietzsche understands by
value. It is from here that we understand the pronouncement
"God is dead" for the first time in the way in which it is thought.
A sufficiently clear exposition of what Nietzsche thinks in the
word "value" is the key to an understanding of his metaphysics.
It was in the nineteenth century that talk of values became
current and thinking in terms of values became customary.

But only after the dissemination of the writings of Nietzsche did
talk of values become popular. We speak of the values of life,
of cultural values, of eternal values, of the hierarchy of values,
of spiritual values, which we believe we find in the ancients,
for example. Through scholarly preoccupation with philosophy
and through the reconstructions of Neo-Kantianism, we arrive
at value-philosophy. We build systems of values and pursue in
ethics classifications of values.

Reply to Valentinus

Nietzsche on Will to Power:

Value is, according to Nietzsche's words, the "point-of-view
constituting the preservation-enhancement conditions with respect
to complex forms of relative duration of life within becoming."
Here and in the conceptual language of Nietzsche's
metaphysics generally, the stark and indefinite word "becoming"
does not mean some flowing together of all things or a
mere change of circumstances; nor does it mean just any development
or unspecified unfolding. "Becoming" means the passing
over from something to something, that moving and being moved which Leibniz calls in
the Monadology (chap. 11) the changements
naturels, which rule completely the ens qua ens, i.e., the
ens percipiens et appetens [perceptive and appetitive being] .
Nietzsche considers that which thus rules to be the fundamental
characteristic of everything reat i.e., of everything that is, in
the widest sense.

He conceives as the "will to power" that which
thus determines in its essentia whatever is.
When Nietzsche concludes his characterization of the essence
of value with the word "becoming," then this closing word gives
the clue to the fundamental realm within which alone values
and value-positing properly belong. "Becoming" is, for Nietzsche,
the "will to power." The "will to power" is thus the fundamental
characteristic of "life," which word Nietzsche often uses also in
the broad sense according to which, within metaphysics (cE.
Hegel), it has been equated with "becoming." "Will to power,"
"becoming," "life," and "Being" in the broadest sense-these
mean, in Nietzsche's language, the Same (Will to Power, Aph.
582, 1885-86, and Aph. 689, 1888) . Within becoming, life-L e.,
aliveness-shapes itself into centers of the will to power particularized
in time. These centers are, accordingly, ruling configurations.

Such Nietzsche understands art, the state, religion,
science, society, to be. Therefore Nietzsche can also say : "Value
is essentially the point-of-view for the increasing or decreasing
of these dominating centers" (that is, with regard to their ruling
character) (Will to Power, Aph. 715, 1887-88).
Inasmuch as Nietzsche, in the above-mentioned defining of
the essence of value, understands value as the condition-having
the character of point-of-view-of the preservation and enhancement
of life, and also sees life grounded in becoming as the will
to power, the will to power is revealed as that which posits
that point-of-view. The will to power is that which, out of its
"internal principle" (Leibniz) as the nisus esse of the ens, judges
and esteems in terms of values. The will to power is the ground
of the necessity of value-positing and of the origin of the possibility
of value judgment. Thus Nietzsche says : "Values and
their changes are related to the increase in power of that which
posits them" (Will to Power, Aph. 14, 1 887) . Here it is clear : values are the conditions
of itself posited by
the will to power.

Only where the will to power, as the fundamental
characteristic of everything real, comes to appearance,
i.e., becomes true, and accordingly is grasped as the reality of
everything real, does it become evident from whence values
originate and through what all assessing of value is supported
and directed. The principle of value-positing has now been recognized.
Henceforth value-positing becomes achievable "in principle,"
i.e., from out of Being as the ground of whatever is.
Hence the will to power is, as this recognized, i.e., willed,
principle, simultaneously the principle of a value-positing that
is new. It is new because for the first time it takes place consciously
out of the knowledge of its principle. This value-positing
is new because it itself makes secure to itself its principle and
simultaneously adheres to this securing as a value posited out
of its own principle. As the principle of the new value-positing,
however, the will to power is, in relation to previous values, at
the same time the principle of the revaluing of all such values.

Yet, because the highest values hitherto ruled over the sensory
from the height of the suprasensory, and because the structuring
of this dominance was metaphysics, with the positing of the
new principle of the revaluing of all values there takes place the
overturning of all metaphysics. Nietzsche holds this overturning
of metaphysics to be the overcoming of metaphysics. But every
overturning of this kind remains only a self-deluding entanglement
in the Same that has become unknowable.
Inasmuch as Nietzsche understands nihilism as the intrinsic
law of the history of the devaluing of the highest values hitherto,
but explains that devaluing as a revaluing of all values, nihilism
lies, according to Nietzsche's interpretation, in the dominance
and in the decay of values, and hence in the possibility of valuepositing
generally. Value-positing itself is grounded in the will
to power. Therefore Nietzsche's concept of nihilism and the
pronouncement "God is dead" can be thought adequately only
from out of the essence of the will to power. Thus we will complete
the last step in the clarifying of that pronouncement when
we explain what Nietzsche thinks in the name coined by him,
"the will to power."

The name "will to power" is considered to be so obvious in meaning that
it is beyond comprehension why anyone would
be at pains specifically to comment on this combination of words.
For anyone can experience for himself at any time what "will"
means. To will is to strive after something. Everyone today
knows, from everyday experience, what power means as the
exercise of rule and authority. Will "to" power is, then, clearly
the striving to come into power.
According to this opinion the appellation "will to power" presupposes
two disparate factors and puts them together into a
subsequent relation, with "willing" on one side and "power" on
the other. If we ask, finally, concerning the ground of the will
to power, not .in order merely to express it in other words but
also simultaneously to explain it, then what we are shown is that
it obviously originates out of a feeling of lack, as a striving
after that which is not yet a possession. Striving, the exercise
of authority, feeling of lack, are ways of conceiving and are
states (psychic capacities) that we comprehend through psychological
knowledge. Therefore the elucidation of the essence of
the will to power belongs within psychology.

The view that has just been presented concerning the will
to power and its comprehensibility is indeed enlightening, but
it is a thinking that in every respect misses both what Nietzsche
thinks in the word "will to power" and the manner in which he
thinks it. The name "will to power" is a fundamental term in
the fully developed philosophy of Nietzsche. Hence this philosophy
can be called the metaphysics of the will to power. We will
never understand what "will to power" in Nietzsche's sense
means with the aid of just any popular conception regarding
willing and power; rather we will understand only on the way
that is a reflection beyond metaphysical thinking, and that means
at the same time beyond the whole of the history of Western
metaphysics.

The following elucidation of the essence of the will to power
thinks out of these contexts. But it must at the same time, even
while adhering to Nietzsche's own statements, also grasp these
more clearly than Nietzsche himself could immediately utter
them. However, it is always only what already has become more
meaningful for us that becomes clearer to us. What is meaningful
is that which draws closer to us in its essence. Everywhere here, in what has preceded and in what follows, everything is
thought from out of the essence of metaphysics and not merely
from out of one of its phases.
In the second part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which appeared
the year after the work The Gay Science (1883), Nietzsche for
the first time names the "will to power" in the context out of
which it must be understood : "Where I found the living, there
I found will to power; and even in the will of those who serve I
found the will to be master."

To will is to will-to-be-master. Will so understood is also even
in the will of him who serves. Not, to be sure, in the sense that
the servant could aspire to leave his role of subordinate to become
himself a master. Rather the subordinate as subordinate,
the servant as servant, always wills to have something else under
him, which he commands in the midst of his own serving and of
which he makes use. Thus is he as subordinate yet a master.
Even to be a slave is to will-to-be-master.
The will is not a desiring, and not a mere striving after something,
but rather, willing is in itself a commanding (cE. Thus
Spoke Zarathustra, parts I and II ; see also Will to Power, Aph.
668, 1 888) . Commanding has its essence in the fact that the
master who commands has conscious disposal over the possibilities
for effective action. What is commanded in the command
is the accomplishing of that disposal. In the command, the one
who commands (not only the one who executes) is obedient to
that disposing and to that being able to dispose, and in that
way obeys himself. Accordingly, the one who commands proves
superior to himself in that he ventures even his own self. Commanding,
which is to be sharply distinguished from the mere
ordering about of others, is self-conquest and is more difficult
than obeying.

Will is gathering oneself together for the given
task. Only he who cannot obey himself must still be expressly
commanded. What the will wills it does not merely strive after
as something it does not yet have. What the will wills it has
already. for the will wills its will. Its will is what it has willed.
The will wills itself. It mounts beyond itself. Accordingly, the
will as will wills out beyond itself and must at the same time
in that way bring itself behind itself and beneath itself. Therefore
Nietzsche can say : "To will at all is the same thing as to will to become stronger, to will to grow . . . " (Will to Power,
Aph. 675, 1887-88) .13 "Stronger" means here "more power,"
and that means : only power. For the essence of power lies in
being master over the level of power attained at any time. Power
is power only when and only so long as it remains power enhancement
and commands for itself "more power."

Even a
mere pause in power-enhancement, even a mere remaining at a
standstill at a level of power, is already the beginning of the
decline of power. To the essence of power belongs the overpowering
of itself. Such overpowering belongs to and springs
from power itself, in that power is command and as command
empowers itself for the overpowering of its particular level of
power at any given time. Thus power is indeed constantly on
the way to itself, but not as a will, ready at hand somewhere for
itself, which, in the sense of a striving, seeks to come to power.
Moreover; power does not merely empower itself for the overpowering
of its level of power at any given time, for the sake of
reaching the next level ; but rather it empowers itself for this
reason alone : to attain power over itself in the unconditionality
belonging to its essence. Willing is, according to this defining of
its essence, so little a striving that, rather, all striving is only
a vestigial or an embryonic form of willing.

In the name "will to power" the word "power" connotes
nothing less than the essence of the way in which the will wills
itself inasmuch as it is a commanding. As a commanding the
will unites itself to itself, i.e., it unites itself to what it wills. This
gathering itself together is itself power's assertion of power. Will
for itself does not exist any more than does power for itself.
Hence, also, will and power are, in the will to power, not merely
linked together; but rather the will, as the will to will,14 is itself
the will to power in the sense of the empowering to power. But
power has its essence in the fact that it stands to the will as the
will standing within that will. The will to power is the essence of power. It manifests the unconditional essence of the wilt
which as pure will wills itself.

Hence the will to power also cannot be cast aside in exchange
for the will to something else, e.g., for the "will to Nothing" ;
for this latter will also i s still the will t o will, s o that Nietzsche
can say, "It (the will) will rather will Nothing, than n o t will"
(Genealogy of Morals, 3, Section I, 1887}.15
"Willing Nothing" does not in the least mean willing the mere
absence of everything real; rather it means precisely willing the
real, yet willing the latter always and everywhere as a nullity
and, through this, willing only annihilation. In such willing,
power always further secures to itself the possibility of command
and the ability-to-be-master.

The essence of the will to power is, as the essence of will, the
fundamental trait of everything real. Nietzsche says : The will
to power is "the innermost essence of Being" (Will to Power,
Aph. 693, 1888) . "Being" means here, in keeping with the language
of metaphysics, that which is as a whole. The essence of
the will to power and the will to power itself, as the fundamental
character of whatever is, therefore cannot be identified through
psychological observations ; but on the contrary psychology itself
first receives its essence, i.e., the positability and know ability
of its object, through the will to power. Hence Nietzsche does
not understand the will to power psychologically, but rather,
conversely, he defines psychology anew as the "morphology and
the doctrine of the development of the will to power" (Beyond
Good and Evil, Aph. 23}.16 Morphology is the ontology of on
whose morphe, transformed through the change of eidos to
perceptio, appears, in the appetitus of perceptio, as the will to
power. The fact that metaphysics-which from ancient times
thinks that which is, in respect to its Being, as the hypokeimenon,
sub-iectum-is transformed into the psychology thus defined
only testifies, as a consequent phenomenon, to the essential event,
which consists in a change in the beingness of what is.

The
ousia (beingness) of the subiectum changes into the subjectness of
self-assertive self-consciousness, which now manifests its essence
as the will to will.17 The will is, as the will to power, the
command to more power. In order that the will in its overpowering
of itself may surpass its particular level at any given time,
that level, once reached, must be made secure and held fast.
The making secure of a particular level of power is the necessary
condition for the heightening of power. But this necessary condition
is not suHicient for the fact that the will is able to will
itself, for the fact, that is, that a willing-to-be-stronger, an enhancement
of power, is. The will must cast its gaze into a field
of vision and first open it up so that, from out of this, possibilities
may first of all become apparent that will point the way
to an enhancement of power. The will must in this way posit a
condition for a willing-out-beyond-itself. The will to power
must, above all, posit conditions for power-preservation and
power-enhancement. To the will belongs the positing of these
conditions that belong intrinsically together.

" T0 will at all is the same thing as to will to become stronger,
to will to grow-and, in addition, to will the m eans thereto"
(Will to Power, Aph. 675, 1887-88) .18
The essential means are the conditions of itself posited by the
will to power itself. These conditions Nietzsche calls values. He
says, "In all will there is valuing . . . " (XIII, Aph. 395, 1884) .19
To value means to constitute and establish worth. The will to
power values inasmuch as it constitutes the conditions of enhancement
and fixes the conditions of preservation. The will to power is, in its essence, the value-positing will. Values are the preservation-enhancement conditions within the Being of whatever
is. The will to power is, as soon as it comes expressly to
appearance in its pure essence, itself the foundation and the
realm of value-positing. The will to power does not have its
ground in a feeling of lack ; rather it itself is the ground of
superabundant life. Here life means the will to will.

"Living :that already means 'to ascribe worth' " (lac. cit. ) .
Inasmuch a s the will wills the overpowering o f itself, i t i s not
satisfied with any abundance of life. It asserts power in overreaching-
i.e., in the overreaching of its own will. In this way
it continually comes as the selfsame back upon itself as the
same.20 The way in which that which is, in its entirety-whose
essentia is the will to power-exists, i.e., its existentia, is "the
eternal returning of the same."21 The two fundamental terms of Nietzsche's metaphysics, "will to power" and "eternal returning
of the same," define whatever is, in its Being-ens qua ens in
the sense of essentia and existentia-in accordance with the views
that have continually guided metaphysics from ancient times.
The essential relationship that is to be thought in this way,
between the "will to power" and the "eternal returning of the
same," cannot as yet be directly presented here, because metaphysics
has neither thought upon nor even merely inquired after
the origin of the distinction between essen tia and exis tentia.
When metaphysics thinks whatever is, in its Being, as the
will to power, then it necessarily thinks it as value-positing.

It thinks everything within the sphere of values, of the authoritative
force of value, of devaluing and revaluing. The metaphysics
of the modern age begins with and has its essence in
the fact that it seeks the unconditionally indubitable, the certain
and assured [das Gewisse] , certainty.2:! It is a matter, according
to the words of Descartes, of firmum et mansurum quid s tabi/ire,
of bringing to a stand something that is firmly fixed and that
remains. This standing established as object is adequate to the essence, ruling from of old, of what is as the constantly presencing, which everywhere already lies before (hypokeimenon, subiectum)
. Descartes also asks, as does Aristotle, concerning the
hypokeimenon. Inasmuch as Descartes seeks this subiectum
along the path previously marked out by metaphysics, he, thinking
truth as certainty, finds the ego cogito to be that which presences
as fixed and constant. In this way, the ego sum is
transformed into the su biectum, i.e., the subject becomes selfconsciousness.
The subjectness of the subject is determined out
of the sureness, the certainty, of that consciousness.

The will to power, in that it posits the preservation, i.e., the
securing, of its own constancy and stability as a necessary value,
at the same time justifies the necessity of such securing in everyfhing
that is which, as something that by virtue of its very
essence represents-sets in place before-is something that
also always holds-to-be-true. The making secure that constitutes
this holding-to-be-true is called certainty. Thus, according to
Nietzsche's judgment, certainty as the principle of modern metaphysics
is grounded, as regards its truth, solely in the will to
power, provided of course that truth is a necessary value and
certainty is the modern form of truth. This makes clear in what
respect the modern metaphysics of subjectness is consummated
in Nietzsche's doctrine of the will to power as the "essence" of
everything real.

Therefore Nietzsche can say : "The question of value is more
fundamental than the ques tion of certainty : the latter becomes
serious only by presupposing that the value question has already
been answered" (Will to Power, Aph. 588, 1887-88) .
However, when once the will to power is recognized as the
principle of value-positing, the inquiry into value must immediately
ponder what the highest value is that necessarily follows
from this principle and that is in conformity with it. Inasmuch
as the essence of value proves itself to be the preservationenhancement
condition posited in the will to power, the perspective
for a characterization of the normative structuring of value
has been opened up.

The preservation of the level of power belonging to the will
reached at any given time consists in the will's surrounding
itself with an encircling sphere of that which it can reliably grasp at, each time, as something behind itself, in order on the
basis of it to contend for its own security. That encircling sphere
bounds off the constant reserve of what presences (ousia, in the
everyday meaning of this term for the Greeks) that is immediately
at the disposal of the will.23 This that is steadily constant,
however, is transformed into the fixedly constant, i.e., becomes
that which stands steadily at something's disposal, only in being
brought to a stand through a setting in place. That setting in
place has the character of a producing that sets before. U That
which is steadily constant in this way is that which remains.
True to the essence of Being (Being = enduring presence) holding
sway in the history of metaphysics, Nietzsche calls this that
is steadily constant "that which is in being."

Often he calls that
which is steadily constant-again remaining true to the manner
of speaking of metaphysical thinking-"Being." Since the beginning
of Western thinking, that which is has been considered to
be the true and truth, while yet, in connection with this, the
meaning of "being" and "true" has changed in manifold ways.
Despite all his overturnings and revaluings of metaphysics,
Nietzsche remains in the unbroken line of the metaphysical tradition
when he calls that which is established and made fast in the
will to power for its own preservation purely and simply Being,
or what is in being, or truth. Accordingly, truth is a condition
posited in the essence of the will to power, namely, the condition
of the preservation of power. Truth is, as this condition, a value. But because the will can will only from out of its disposal over
something steadily constant, truth is a necessary value precisely
from out of the essence of the will to power, for that will. The
word "truth" means now neither the unconcealment of what is
in being, nor the agreement of a judgment with its object, nor
certainty as the intuitive isolating and guaranteeing of what is
represented. Truth is now, and indeed through an essentially
historical origin out of the modes of its essence just mentioned,
that which-making stably constant-makes secure the constant
reserve, belonging to the sphere from out of which the will to
power wills itself.

With respect to the making secure of the level of power that
has been reached at any given time, truth is the necessary value.
But it does not suffice for the reaching of a level of powerj for
that which is stably constant, taken alone, is never able to provide
what the will requires before everything else in order to
move out beyond itself, and that means to enter for the first
time into the possibilities of command. These possibilities are
given only through a penetrating forward look that belongs to
the essence of the will to powerj for, as the will to more power,
it is, in itself, perspectively directed toward possibilities. The
opening up and supplementing of such possibilities is that condition
for the essence of the will to power which-as that which
in the literal sense goes before-overtops and extends beyond
the condition just mentioned.

Therefore Nietzsche says : "But
truth does not count as the supreme standard of value, even less
as the supreme power" (Will to Power, Aph. 853, 1887-88).
The creating of possibilities for the will on the basis of which
the will to power first frees itself to itself is for Nietzsche the
essence of art. In keeping with this metaphysical concept,
Nietzsche does not think under the heading "art" solely or even
primarily of the aesthetic realm of the artist. Art is the essence
of all willing that opens up perspectives and takes possession of
them : "The work of art, where it appears without an artist,
e.g., as body, as organization (Prussian officer corps, Jesuit
Order) . To what extent the artist is only a preliminary stage.
The world as a work of art that gives birth to itself" (Will to
Power, Aph. 796, 1885-86) .:

Quoting Joshs

Its just that we have to throw out the 'view from nowhere' , the God's truth', the idea of linear progress, and replace these notions with a more mobile idea of consensus.

But we don't have to, if we don't agree with Nietzsche's perspective, particularly on science.

Reply to Joshs
By presenting a case from his text, I meant those written by Nietzsche himself.

But I also asked for citations from his interpreters. I will respond to the two samples given. I need to mull over it a bit first.