a new valuation." Will to power is not simply the way in which and the means by which valuation takes place; will to power, as the essence of power, is the one basic value according to which anything that is supposed to have value, or that can make no claim to value, is appraised. "All events, all motion, all becoming, as a determination of degrees and relations of force, as a struggle" (WM, 552; spring—fall, 1887). What loses the struggle is—because it has lost—untrue and in the wrong. IN hat emerges victorious is—because it has won—true and in the right.
What is being contested, if we want to think of it as a specific substantive goal, is always of less significance. All the aims and slogans of battle are merely the means for waging war. What is being contested is decided in advance: power itself, which requires no aims. It is aim-less, just as the whole of beings is value-less. Such aim-lessness pertains to the metaphysical essence of power. If one can speak of aim here at all, then the "aim" is the aimlessness of man's absolute dominance over the earth. The man of such dominance is the Over-man. It is quite usual to remonstrate with Nietzsche that his image of the Overman is indeterminate, that the character of this man is incomprehensible. One arrives at such judgments only if one has failed to grasp that the essence of the Over-man consists in stepping out "over" the man of the past. The latter needs and seeks ideals and idealizations "above" himself. Overman, on the contrary, no longer needs the "above" and "beyond," because he alone wills man himself, and not just in some particular aspect, but as the master of absolute administration of power with the fully developed power resources of the earth. It is inherent in the essence of this man that any particular substantive aim, any determination of such kind, is always a nonessential and purely incidental means. The absolute determination of Nietzsche's thought about the Overman lies precisely in the fact that he recognizes the essential indeterminateness of absolute power, although he does not express it in this fashion. Absolute power is pure overpowering as such, absolute supersedence, superiority, and command—the singular, the most high.
The sole reason for the inadequate portrayals of the Nietzschean doctrine of the Overman lies in the fact that until now it has not been