290 Nietzsche
an agonistic, dynamic plurality at the basis of Being. As Nietzsche
pointed out, there are only "will points, which perpetually gain and lose
their power" (13,36f.; WP% 715).
Even if the metaphysical quest for tranquillity and longing for unity
failed to satisfy Nietzsche, he was still unable to dodge the humanizing
implication of metaphysical "imagery." The monster he had described
took on a face, and still worse a "causa prima" (prime cause), which is pre-
cisely what he had sought to avoid. His vision of a "truly great libera-
tion" would be realized when "the mode of Being cannot be traced back
to a causa prima [and] the world does not constitute a unity, either as a
sensorium or as 'spirit'" (6,97; 77"Four Great Errors" § 8).
When Nietzsche began to fight tooth and nail for his systematic mag-
num opus in the mid-1880s, he ran the risk of forfeiting his "great lib-
eration." He wanted his theory to be a unified whole that would explain
and clarify everything. He sought to grab the brass ring that would yield
the secret of the universe and tackle monstrous forces with a monstrous
theory. The will to power, which had started out as a principle of free
self-configuration and self-enhancement, a magical transformational
power of art, and an inner dynamics of social life, was now becoming a
biologistic and naturalistic principle as well. Despite his best efforts,
Nietzsche was succumbing to the power of a "causa prima."
Nietzsche had resisted moral, metaphysical, and historical "reason"
for the sake of life, but he was unable to guard himself against that other
"reason," which was arguably far more dangerous for life, namely the
reason associated with biologism and naturalism. In a fateful way, he
remained a child of his era's belief in science. As early as Human, All Too
Human, he had come under the sway of a scientific illumination of life.
In that book he wrote: "All that we need and what can be given to us only
now that the various sciences have achieved their current high level is a
chemistry of moral, religious, aesthetic ideas and feelings, as well as all of
those stimuli that we experience in ourselves in the course of major and
minor interactions of culture and society and even in solitude: what if
this chemistry were to conclude that even in this field the most fabulous