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.29Again none of this is to claim that I have a reconstruction of a validargument that we can ascribe to Nietzsche an argument that would showhow the fact that life does have this fundamental tendency towards powerdoes indeed entail either that we should value power or, at least, that it doesnot make sense for us to ask whether or not we should go along with our29I am willing to grant that it is not exactly clear what Nietzsche s complaint is, either here or in someother passages we will consider below.But this reflects the problems of the general strategy.I think itis quite unclear in all the cases we considered Bentham, Mill, Marx, Darwinism, contemporarynaturalists and constitutivists why a certain kind of normative question is supposed to be closed off.Nietzsche has company whether one takes it as good or bad company is another matter.See also WP, 675: To have purposes, aims, intentions, willing in general, is the same thing aswilling to be stronger, willing to grow and, in addition, willing the means to do this.The mostuniversal and basic instinct in all doing and willing has for precisely this reason remained the leastknown and most hidden, because in praxi we always follow its commandments, because we are thiscommandment .All valuations are only consequences and narrow perspectives in the service of thisone will: valuation itself is only this will to power.A critique of being from the point of view of anyone of these values is something absurd and erroneous.Even supposing that a process of declinebegins in this way, this process still stands in the service of this will.To appraise being itself! But thisappraisal itself is still this being! and if we say no, we still do what we are.One must comprehend theabsurdity of this posture of judging existence, and then try to understand what is really involved in it.It is symptomatic. See also WP, 706; CW, Epilogue. The role of life in the Genealogy 163tendency to pursue power.But given the historical context of the nine-teenth century indeed, given contemporary tendencies in those who rejectnon-naturalism philosophical charity does not force us to avoid theascription of the above Benthamite argument.The text, as I hope to haveshown, warrants just such an ascription.I have ignored so far one passage that Leiter appeals to in rejecting somestrong form of the will to power doctrine.The question is whether thepassage also provides evidence against the interpretation of Nietzsche interms of the notion of life that I have been defending.I will argue that itdoes not but that seeing why will eventually show us why and how On theGenealogy of Morality is absolutely essential to Nietzsche s overall project.Leiter quotes the following passage from The Antichrist:Life itself is to my mind the instinct for growth, for durability, for an accumulationof forces, for power: where the will to power is lacking there is decline.It is mycontention that all the supreme values of mankind lack this will.(A, 6)Leiter focuses on the claim that the will to power is lacking as textualevidence that undermines the strong form of the will to power doctrine.Ashe puts it, But if all actions manifested this will, then this will could neverbe found lacking (Leiter 2002: 141).Now, so far, there is an obviousresponse to be made.It is, recall, the values that lack this will and itseems perfectly fine to read this as just the claim that the values are valuesthat reject power, that condemn power.For my purposes what is crucial isthat it does not follow, yet, that life itself isn t a tendency to power andgrowth.Indeed, since Nietzsche explicitly claims, right here, that [l]ifeitself is.the instinct for growth, for durability, for an accumulation offorces, for power, he would apparently be contradicting himself in the spaceof the same sentence if he granted that there could be life that doesn tinvolve a tendency for growth and power.On pain of ascribing this contra-diction, we need to see Nietzsche as claiming that values can be lacking thewill to power I suggest in the sense of condemning power but that lifealways involves striving for power.This does, however, raise a puzzle: Why would living creatures that, qualiving, embody a fundamental tendency to dominate and grow come none-theless to have values that do not assign positive value to domination,growth, power, and so on? The answer that Nietzsche almost has to give,and that has been suggested in many of the passages we have alreadyconsidered, is that it is the fundamental tendency to dominate and growthat itself generates value judgments that are hostile to life.This is preciselythe kind of claim Nietzsche needs to make in order to use what I have called 164 nadeem j.z.hussainthe Benthamite model of inescapability or subjection.Thus its repeatedpresence in the texts we have considered is further evidence that he iscommitted to the Benthamite model.306.the genealogy of morali tyHowever, if this interpretation is right, then we should see Nietzschedefending this claim.After all, it is one thing to assert this and another toprovide evidence.Here is where we come to see the centrality of On theGenealogy of Morality in Nietzsche s overall project.One of the crucialtasks that the Genealogy carries out is precisely such a defense
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