Spring 2000 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies
Nietzsche and Objectivism

Unit Three: March 20 - April 16

Michelle Cohen's Remarks on Nietzsche as Process Thinker
in Stephen Hicks' Introductory Essay
on History and Culture
In Friedrich Nietzsche's
The Will to Power and Beyond Good and Evil

To: TOC Cyberseminar <cybersem@objectivistcenter.org>

Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2000 9:30 AM

Subject: Cyberseminar: Nietzsche as Process Thinker

From: COHEN MICHELLE

Have all the Cyberseminarians gone on strike? :)

[If so, your moderator would like to see a list of demands: he is prepared
to negotiate!]

I would like to comment on the point of Nietzsche as process thinker.
Stephen Hicks's second question addresses Nietzsche's metaphysics as
follows:

2. For example, Nietzsche is often interpreted as being a process
thinker. (E.g., WtP 1067) Is this accurate? What kind of process is
it, if we are to think of process as more fundamental than something
engaged in a process? What is the contrast concept to process
metaphysics?

According to WtP 1067, Nietzsche's metaphysics indeed consists of
eternal, infinite, constant *process*. The entity which is engaged in
the process is referred to as *energy* - an interesting foreshadow of
modern physics. This energy encompasses everything, including
contradictions, so it cannot possibly have an identity except as that
which keeps changing. However, Nietzsche specifies that this energy (or
"force") does not grow bigger or smaller, has no increase or income. It
does have a size which stays constant and is limited by the boundary of
"nothingness."

This image reminds me of the first day in Genesis, when God created the
universe out of Chaos, by distinguishing the universe from nothingness.
However, Nietzche's universe is definitely eternal, not created at one
point in time. Still, the universe is not merely mechanistic. In
describing the constant transformation of the universe, Nietzsche uses
adjectives such as "affirming," self-creating," "self-destroying," as if
the universe had a soul. Perhaps this "soul of the universe" was his
replacement for the God he had lost.

The contrast concept to process metaphysics is probably identity. Even
when an identity includes the possibility of change, identity supersedes
change. Change is only one attribute of identity. And even within
change, the changing entity has an identity through all the stages of
change. Nietzsche reverses this order: He allows only for occasional,
sporadic, momentary "joy of concord," which is the closest his universe
can get to identity. The thrive of his universe is out and away from
identity: "out of the stillest, most rigid, coldest forms toward the
hottest, most turbulent, most self-contradictory."

Michelle Fram-Cohen


*****************************************************
Spring 2000 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies
Moderator: William Thomas
Email: cybersem@objectivistcenter.org

All Cyberseminar posts are working papers with copyright
reserved to the author. They may not be published or adapted
without permission, but may be circulated for purposes of
scholarly discussion.

*****************************************************