288 Nietzsche
genius" (7,355) was a prelude to the idea of the will to power. Genius is
the highest embodiment of power on the foundation of the cultural
power struggle.
On this foundation—be it human, all-too-human, or superhuman—
Nietzsche had a certain degree of success in portraying the drama of the
will to power. Here the power struggles became overt, not only in cul-
ture in the narrow sense, but in the organism of society as a whole.
Power was right at home in society.
In his Human, AU Too Human, Nietzsche had developed a morpho-
logical theory of social forces. He contended that while cold societies
represent an equilibrium of forces, hot societies are set in motion as a
result of a shift in the equilibrium and struggle to establish a new bal-
ance. He further asserted that an "equilibrium" of forces "is the basis of
justice" (2,556; ΗΗΊ1 WS § 22). The sense of justice originates not in a
morality high above the embatded parties but in a state of equilibrium.
If the forces that make up this equilibrium shift, morality shifts in
response. A ruler who has been considered just suddenly appears to be
a criminal and vice versa. In revolutions, which reflect a dramatic shift
of equilibriums, the truth of morality becomes blatant. It is a morality
of classes and parties. On this point, Nietzsche was furnishing the same
information as his somewhat older contemporary Kad Marx.
Nietzsche realized at an eady stage that power is not just agonistic but
also imaginative, not substantive but relational. It exists only in relation
to how it is regarded, which means that we need to move away from a
mechanistic model with a material basis. Power exists if it is considered
powerful. The power of one person becomes concrete in the imagina-
tion of another. A powerful individual is powerful only to the extent that
"the one person appears valuable, essential, indispensable, unconquer-
able, and things of that sort to the other" (2,90f.; HHl § 93). If power
relations are inextricably linked to the powers of imagination of all par-
ties involved, the imagination is part of the process of the "magical out-
pouring of innermost power from one living thing to another" (1,349;
SE § 2).