Which One?

When Nietzsche asks what is the value of truth, he is effectively asking who or which one sets a value on truth.  According to the translator's notes (pg. 207), the French term "qui" that Deleuze uses here can be translated either way.  This question isn't primarily answered by pointing to a specific person though.  Finding an example of one who values truth may be part of the answer, but what we really want to know is what type of life that this example exemplifies.  Though Deleuze talks frequently about the nuances of types, I think it's fair to say that a type always comes down to a system of forces expressing an affirmative or negative will to power.  In a sense then, the question is how one might live so that the truth has an affirmative and creative value versus a negative and limiting one.  There is no 'truth-in-itself' but there are types of truth, with each mode of living getting the notion of truth that it deserves according to the role this concept is expected to play for it.  

Deleuze begins his discussion of Nietzsche's question by pointing out how different this way of approaching things is from the classic question that Socrates asks.  In the early aporetic dialogues, Socrates always asks, "what is ... love, beauty, justice, truth, X?"  And people always respond with examples of 'ones who' are X.  At which point Socrates invariably points out that they have not answered the question of what X is in itself.  And of course, he's completely right.  The question "what is ..." can only be answered by pointing to some abstract Form.  A particular example that possesses "the quality of being X" merely participates in, and derives this quality from, the Form.  This one is not really X in itself, but is merely the appearance of X in the phenomenal world, and appearance which is invariably mixed up with being all kinds of other things besides X.  The point here is that the very form of the question "what is ..." immediately takes us in the direction of an appearance/reality dualism because it can only be answered by pointing to some mysterious transcendent object.  

[Interestingly though, this type of question only dominates Plato's early dialogues, and seems to disappear when he invents the theory of the Forms.  Perhaps this is because the problem that the Forms address is not ultimately one of defining "what is ..." so much as providing a method to select "which one" of a set of rivals has the best claim to being "the one who is ..."  This suggests a Nietzschean analysis of Plato.  Plato too was asking ultimately asking the question "qui"; it's just that he was actually trying to answer it as well, so he constructed a method to find "the one" in every situation.  For Nietzsche, as we'll see, the value of the question lies in the fact that it can't be answered.  Or at least, it can't be answered non-pardoxically -- the true answer to the question "which one?" is always the will to power, which isn't 'one' at all, but a particular ordering of everything.]

Nietzsche is able to take philosophy in a different direction because he asks a different question.  "What is the essence of X?" is not the only philosophical question.  Though "which one is X?" may at first sound merely empirical, we've already pointed out that Nietzsche's answer to this question is a type, and not a single individual.  The inadequacy of answering with an individual is obvious if we've understood Nietzsche's metaphysics of force.  In fact, there are no individuals, there are only forces and the becoming of forces.  As a result, Nietzsche's question asks us to point to a specific constellation of forces that make something X, that fabricate an X or make it become-X.  

According to Nietzsche the question "which one?" (qui) means this: what are the forces which take hold of a given thing, what is the will that possesses it? Which one is expressed, manifested and even hidden in it? (NP, 77)

These forces are what give things whatever qualities they have -- beauty, truth, X ... The quality produced is merely a symptom of a certain set of forces operating in a certain manner.  Seeing, say, the beautiful as dependent on the forces that appropriate something and make it beautiful seems to do away with the essence of beauty entirely. Certainly, it empties the universal Form of Beauty.  There is no longer a single objective being called Beauty-in-itself, of which our examples of beauty are merely poor copies (because they have been mixed with other Forms).  Instead, there are multiple becoming-beautifuls.  Each of these becomings refers to a certain set of forces that are capable of constituting something as beautiful.  They are the perspectives from which something can be made beautiful.  Things are not beautiful or ugly in-themselves, but only dependent on a way of looking, on their manner of fabrication.  Nor is there a single thing which would be Beautiful (and nothing but Beautiful) from every possible perspective.  

And yet, we are referring to these multiple becomings with the same word "beauty" or "truth" every time.  As a result, Deleuze chooses in this context to preserve the term "essence" to refer to a particular type of affinity between forces and objects.  Since, as we recall, objects are just agglomerations of forces, and the relation between forces is called will (pg. 7), this definition of essence boils down to a question of the affinity between force and will.  

Essence, being, is a perspectival reality and presupposes a plurality. Fundamentally it is always the question "What is it for me?" (for us, for everyone that sees etc.) (VP 1204). When we ask what beauty is we ask from what standpoint things appear beautiful: and something which does not appear beautiful to us, from what standpoint would it become so? And for a particular thing, what are the forces which make or would make it beautiful by appropriating it, what are the other factors which yield to these or, on the contrary, resist them. The pluralist art does not deny essence: it makes it depend, in each case, on an affinity of phenomena and forces, on a coordination of force and will. (NP, 77) 

Perspectivism, however, changes the concept of essence pretty substantially, and this is what differentiates a Nietzschean type from a Platonic Form.  The idea of pluralist essence as type is a bottom-up concept.  It can't dispense with specific examples (as Socrates always wants to do) but neither can it stop at those examples.  Specific examples are understood as symptoms of a type of looking, a sort of perspective that makes them serve similar roles for different modes of living.  A type is precisely not a thing-in-itself but is only defined by a relationship between forces.  It's a question of what kind of relation between forces leads to the production of an object that functions the way we think the truth (or beauty or X) should function.  What do we think the truth should do for us, what do we even mean by this term, what do we really want from it?  We'll only know what the truth is by looking at the type of effect it has on us and on others who use the same term to describe their experience.  Or, to stay closer to Deleuze's terminology, we can say that we discover a type when we uncover "which one" wills the truth and affirms something as true.

Thus, when we ask: "what does the one who thinks this want?" we do not abandon the fundamental question "which
one?" we merely give it a rule and a methodical development. We are demanding that the question be answered not by examples but by the determination of a type. And, a type is in fact constituted by the quality of the will to power, the nuance of this quality and the corresponding relation of forces: everything else is symptom. What a will wants is not an object but a type, the type of the one that speaks, of the one that thinks, that acts, that does not act, that reacts etc. A type can only be defined by determining what the will wants in the examplars of this type. What does the one that seeks truth want? This is the only way of knowing which one seeks truth. (NP, 78)

Stating things this way makes it more obvious how the idea of a type is almost an inversion of a Platonic Form.  And it simultaneously shows us that the Nietzschean will (to power) is almost an inversion of how we normally think of the will.  The will doesn't want or crave an object (especially not the object 'power') as some sort of goal that would satisfy it.  Instead, the will to power wants to be the type of will -- "the one" that can fabricate such an object for itself.  The object is merely a symptom, a sort of MacGuffin if you will, that reveals the existence of a certain type of will capable of producing a certain quality of object.  Instead of taking subjective experience for granted and asking what objective Form could produce a given quality, Nietzsche asks what type of subject could exist who would be capable of experiencing and valuing this quality.  Thus there's a complete reversal in answering the question, "what makes something X?" with a Form or a type.  

What a will wants is not an object, an objective or an end. Ends and objects, even motives, are still symptoms. What a will wants, depending on its quality, is to affirm its difference or to deny what differs. (NP, 78)

 

The idea of a type may still seem a little vague.  For example, in my mind it is still plagued by a question often asked of Plato's Forms -- is there a type for any quality we can come up with?  Probably so, and I expect this is why Deleuze keeps invoking the "nuance" of the quality of the will to power.  But I think he's already outlined for us the principal types he has in mind -- these are the four active/reactive and affirmative/negative pairs we saw in our discussion of becoming-active and becoming-reactive.  Ultimately, a type is defined by a quality of force (active/reactive) and a quality of will associated with the becoming of that force.  Though often it seems that even this matrix of types is reduced to the two most basic qualities: + and -, 1 and 0, affirmation and negation.  

Here we are on the verge of rediscovering other formulations we've seen of the will to power as the 'will to will', the will to be able to will, to be capable of acting, of the most basic actions -- affirmation and negation. This is why, in the end, "the will to power" is always the answer to the question: "which one?".  It's the will to power, the will to capability, that always ends up producing one that is able to affirm or deny any quality.  

We should not ask "which one wills?", "which one interprets?", "which one evaluates?" for everywhere and always the will to power is the one that (VP I 204). Dionysus is the god of transformations, the unity of multiplicity, the unity that affirms
multiplicity and is affirmed of it. "Which one is it?" - it is always him. (NP, 77)

Nietzsche calls it the "will to power" not because the will wants an object called power, but because the will 'wants' (the will is) is the power of acting.  The will wants to be able to do everything that it can do.  It wants to be unlimited.  And this description applies even to a negative will to power.  It too is doing as much as it can under the circumstances.  And, as we saw, if those circumstances are sufficiently limiting, the alliance between reactive forces and a negative will to power can end up manifesting a will to nihilism.  This nihilistic will is still a will though.  Even if all it ends up being able to will is stopping, if it takes this operation to the limit it can go as far as willing its own self-destruction, and thereby transform itself into an affirmative will.  The will to power as a principle asserts that every force goes as far as it can, as far as its power or capacity takes it, until it reaches the limits imposed by another force or until (in the case of a self-annihilating negative will) it reaches its own limits and transforms into some other force.  I think the secret of Deleuze's reading of ER lies in seeing that the principle of the will to power is not symmetrical with respect to affirmation and negation.  The negative will to power is self-limiting and ultimately self-negating.  An affirmative will to power, by contrast, just keeps going.