This world is the will to power and nothing else. And you yourself are also this will to power and nothing else. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay - Friedrich Nietzsche Humans have struggled for centuries to explain their existence: some thought it meaningless, others a gift from God. But since the Enlightenment and the dawn of the Age of Reason , these questions have taken on a new quality. Philosophers, scientists, and other great thinkers of the Enlightenment period promoted the power of reason as a force for progress. Through its application, the hierarchical rigidity of ideas such as aristocracy and divine order were replaced by individual freedom and rights. But in the time that has passed since this period, the Age of Reason has transformed into an era of insecurity, and we have arrived – confused, anxious and uncertain – in modernity. Some have asked, “Why hasn't the generalization of “sweet reason” produced a world subject to our prediction and control?” This is the lesson we have learned: that the power of reason, and the resulting accumulation of knowledge and understanding, has its limits and shortcomings. The modern problem, as Anthony Giddens identifies in his book The Consequences of Reason, is that the power of knowledge and reason has run up against a wall of uncertainty. It became evident that “no amount of accumulated knowledge about social life could encompass all the circumstances of its implementation, even if that knowledge were entirely distinct from the environment to which it is applied.” It might once have been thought possible that reason could explain all circumstances, but we have since learned that this is not the case. This is the nature of risk. Despite the accuracy of our knowledge and the agility of our reason, circumstances will not be under our control. We can never, and will never, defeat risk. In modernity, in the era following the great Age of Reason, reason does not have the power to overcome uncertainty. “…The knowledge-certainty equation turned out to be wrong.” Uncertainty is not a problem in itself, but the particular threat of this modern uncertainty is that it arises from circumstances of our own making. Our risk environment comes not so much from nature and war as from reflexive threats: threats – like the airplanes we invented flying into the skyscrapers we built – that we helped create. Therein lies the risk – that the plane will fly into that building – at the heart of our modern feelings of insecurity, a result of reason. Modern ontological insecurity arises from this promise of reason as a source of legitimacy and power, and its inability to provide absolute certainty. The tension between the promise of reason and its inability to overcome the circumstances we create is a source of metaphysical anguish. Giddens identifies two mechanisms we use to combat that distress and ensure normal functioning. Being “constantly and consciously anxious… would paralyze ordinary daily life.” So, knowing that these risks are beyond our control, we evoke a “vague, generalized sense of confidence in distant events,” a feeling of destiny that helps us keep these events from occupying the forefront of our minds. Destiny emerges from modern anxiety as a way to avoid a sense of existential fear about the risks we face and as a method of carrying on with the daily activities of life. According to Giddens, this final contradiction - of a supposedly rational society that employs the sense of destiny tocombating the insecurity he feels as a result of circumstances that are beyond his control but of his own creation – is what informs the quality of modernity. It ensures that we remain knights, not drivers, of the behemoth. It is also apparently inevitable due to our efforts to accumulate more knowledge, and employing the force of reason against this uncertainty only backfires on us: “New knowledge (concepts, theories, discoveries) [does] not simply make the social world more transparent, but [alter] its nature, pushing it in new directions.” The more firmly we hold onto knowledge of the world, the faster the world changes. For example, let's say a woman getting married in New York today knows she has about a 50 percent chance of getting divorced. This statistic, while having no real bearing on an individual woman's chances of staying happily married, changes how she thinks about her future compared to a woman who knows nothing about her chances of divorce. While we may try, “we cannot seize “history” and readily bend it to our collective purposes.” In this way, knowledge actually contributes to further uncertainty, intensifying those circumstances that we are unable to influence. According to the model outlined by Giddens, of the conflict between rationality and destiny and our inability to demand action on the unstoppable giant of energy. modernity: modern agents are relatively powerless. But there is another prospect: a way of reorienting ourselves to modern circumstances that could strengthen our tenuous grip on the behemoth. If we are looking for a kind of transcendence of the modern paradigm – a way in which we might come to terms with its colossal nature, and discern some action for ourselves – it might seem unusual to turn to Friedrich Nietzsche, known for his rejection of morality and of truth (a rejection it shares with the doctrine of nihilism). But Nietzsche's brand of nihilism evolves from his interpretation of truth as an unfixed and evolving phenomenon. If we follow the evolution of his thought it becomes clear that he rejects metaphysics to root us more firmly in the here and now. From this rooting comes the source of the will to power, the force that Nietzsche holds responsible for the greatest of human projects. Only when we embrace his vision does it become clear that, rather than evoking the meaninglessness of life, Nietzsche's way of thinking illuminates a path through which we might begin to guide the colossus. Although some of Nietzsche's philosophical ideas overlap with nihilism, they do not originate from the same assumption. Nihilism assumes that life is meaningless, while Nietzsche is more interested in the nature of facts and knowledge that give rise to belief in metaphysical ideas. He insists: “To the extent that the word 'knowledge' has a meaning, the world is knowable; but it can be interpreted differently and has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings. This is Nietzsche's rejection of absolute truth, because only the tangible things of the real world that present themselves before us are evident and it is not justifiable to interpret beyond what is evident. Knowledge, therefore, is not fixed or immutable, but fluid and subject to change: just as life itself is constantly evolving. Using the metaphor of life as painting, Nietzsche further explains:…this painting – what we men call life and experience – has gradually become, and is still fully in process of becoming, and must therefore not be regarded as a fixed magnitude from which one could draw a conclusion regarding the originator (the sufficient reason)... There is a movement towards existence, both in its distinct past and in the futurepotential. Since “life and experience” have always been and continue to be in a process of change, it is unreasonable to “draw a conclusion” above or beyond what is certain. Here we can see that Nietzsche does not reject metaphysics for the purpose of declaring life meaningless: according to his way of thinking and his rigorous methods of thinking, there is simply no justification for believing in it. The instability of knowledge claims is exactly the same phenomenon that Giddens argues is central to the inherent insecurity of modernity. Nothing we know or believe is stable because it is always subject to change. In this context Nietzsche can help explain where modern insecurity comes from: look, our need for knowledge is not precisely this need for the familiar, the will to discover everything strange, unusual and questionable, something that does not disturb us more? Isn't it perhaps the instinct of fear that invites us to know? And isn't the jubilation of those who achieve knowledge the jubilation of having a sense of security restored? If knowledge produces security, then it is easy to understand why an age in which knowledge is not certain is an age of great uncertainty. “Reflexively applied knowledge” is metaphysically empty because, in modern times, “the knowledge-certainty equation has been proven wrong,” and therefore knowledge is not necessarily productive of absolute truth. When our search for certain or absolute knowledge is unsuccessful, our feelings of insecurity also overwhelm us. Nietzsche gets around this dilemma by denying the necessity of the very claims to absolute knowledge that we find at the heart of our modern insecurity. According to his conception, there is nothing beyond this life and this experience that can serve as a model – not morality, not truth, and not God – and therefore any search for metaphysical truth is in vain. In light of this conception, the only alternative to nihilism, and the only option for Nietzsche (who believes in nothing beyond the here and now) is to identify some force at the center of the world he characterizes. For Nietzsche the answer is clear; human history has been the expression of the will to power. In its greatest conquests, wars and empires, and in its highest achievements, art and culture, humanity has given vent to its power. Nietzsche explains his conception at the end of The Will to Power: And do you know what the "world" is for me? Do I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a greatness of firm, iron strength, which neither grows nor diminishes, which is not consumed but transformed… This world is the will to power – and nothing else! And you yourselves are also this will to power – and nothing else! This exemplifies the central position of power in Nietzsche's worldview, and demonstrates how this vision excludes claims to absolute knowledge that give rise to modern insecurity. The world is not simply the will to power, it is nothing else. Every action, every creation, every triumph and every failure is an expression of this fundamental force. And since our world “only transforms” – it has no beginning or end, neither grows nor shrinks, and yet contains an enormous amount of force and energy – the only things we can be sure of are those that exist now, here , right in front of us. It now seems possible to reconcile the insecurity arising from the colossal quality of modernity with Nietzsche's vision of a positive will to power. In his explanation of this will, which (as James Der Derian explains) is “an active and affective force of becoming, from which values ​​and meanings… life-affirming are produced,” Nietzsche distances us from our fear of insecurity. This fear, at the root of modern ontological anxiety, is what motivates the, 2001.