Setting the Stage for The Will to Power 289As we now know, Nietzsche's will to power was aimed at every aspect
of life. He regarded not only human beings as spheres of power but
nature as well. We should keep in mind that in the summer of 1881,
during the period of his inspiration at the Surlej boulder, Nietzsche had
grown wary of the seductive power of "imagery" (9,487). He had set
himself a task of clear, cold thinking: "the dehumanization of nature
and then the naturalization of humanity" (9,525). Nature is certainly
humanized if the power principle derived from the agonistic world of
humans is inserted into it. Nietzsche, though, felt justified in taking this
approach, in part because cognition itself is a will to power and a form
of overpowering, and in part because he did not read an ideal wish list
into nature and "humanize" it accordingly. On the contrary, he allowed
nature to reveal to him the cruel and inhuman innermost secrets of its
power struggles. The "dehumanization of nature" Nietzsche called for
was not meant as a quest for objectivity or the establishment of a
morally neutral field of knowledge. In fact, he summoned up its jarring
aspects, inviting the world to rear its monstrous head and reject the
human yearning for meaning, security, and refuge.
Nietzsche saw a Gorgon's head lurking at the outermost edge of the
horizon. Because he did not want to conceal the monstrous and
uncanny aspects of being, he vehemendy assailed the metaphysical
principle that a unified substance forms the basis of the world. He sus-
pected that the metaphysical quest for a unified substance was intended
as a path to serenity, the way Augustine had found serenity in God.
Now, however, Nietzsche was presenting his will to power in the very
way that metaphysicians approached their basic principle. Although he
was unable to escape this ultimately metaphysical reliance on principles,
he insisted that the principle not become a point of repose, but rather a
locus of trepidation, perhaps even a heart of darkness. If we envision
the will to power as a driving force, we will be stirred and driven all the
more forcefully by it. Moreover, the will to power occurs not in the sin-
gular but only in the plural, which also works against the metaphysical
obsession with unity. The philosophy of the will to power is a vision of