ofthewedge

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Happy new year

Exploitation does not pertain to corrupt or imperfect or primitive society: it pertains to the essence of the living thing as a fundamental organic function, it is the consequence of the intrinsic will to power which is precisely the will of life.

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

One response to “Happy new year”

  1. jameswenz Avatar
    jameswenz

    In Beyond Good and Evil (§259), Nietzsche does provocatively claim that exploitation is not a “moral defect” of corrupt or primitive societies but an expression of life itself i.e. an instance of the will to power, which he describes as the fundamental drive of living beings to expand, appropriate, interpret, and transform their surroundings for its self-serving sake.

    If we reinterpret “exploitation” more broadly—as use, consumption, incorporation, mutual dependence (symbiosis), or transformation—the statement can be both deepened and softened.

    1. Exploitation as use and incorporation

    At the biological level, life persists through:

    • Consumption (predation, eating, metabolism)
    • Appropriation (territory, resources)
    • Assimilation (turning what is external into part of oneself)

    In this sense, exploitation is not primarily moral but ontological:
    To live is to take in, reshape, and reorganize the world.

    Even symbiosis—often seen as the opposite of exploitation—still involves mutual use:

    • The mitochondrion was once a separate organism.
    • Plants and fungi exchange nutrients.
    • Humans depend on gut bacteria.

    Life, therefore, appears structured around reciprocal or asymmetric use. Nietzsche’s point gains strength here: what moral discourse calls “exploitation” may be a special case of the deeper fact that organisms survive by transforming other organisms or environments to serve their own enhancement.

    Under this lens, exploitation is:

    • Not necessarily cruelty
    • Not necessarily injustice
    • But an expression of energetic differentiation and expansion

    This upgrades Nietzsche’s statement: exploitation becomes a neutral biological principle rather than a social pathology.

    2. From exploitation to symbiosis

    However, if exploitation is equated too strongly with domination, Nietzsche’s formulation seems one-sided.

    Modern ecology shows that:

    • Cooperation and mutualism are equally fundamental to life.
    • Complex systems often increase power through interdependence.
    • Stability frequently emerges from reciprocity rather than conquest.

    Thus, the “will to power” might not manifest only as domination or subjugation, but also as:

    • Alliance formation
    • Structural integration
    • Network building
    • Creative co-evolution

    In this sense, exploitation becomes just one modality of power among others.

    If life’s “will to power” includes:

    • Enhancing through cooperation
    • Expanding through integration
    • Strengthening through exchange

    Then Nietzsche’s harsh vocabulary (“exploitation”) might be rhetorically exaggerated to provoke moral revaluation, rather than descriptively exclusive.

    This downgrades the apparent absolutism of his claim.

    3. A deeper reading: power as interpretation

    For Nietzsche, power is not merely material dominance but the imposition of form, the interpretation of the world according to one’s own perspective.

    Thus:

    • Eating is interpretation (the world becomes nutrients)
    • Culture is interpretation (instinct becomes value)
    • Language is interpretation (chaos becomes meaning)

    Under this broader metaphysical lens, “exploitation” is the act of turning what is outside into a function of one’s own organisation.

    That includes:

    • Art transforming suffering into beauty
    • Philosophy transforming experience into concept
    • Civilization transforming nature into culture

    Exploitation here becomes creative appropriation, not mere oppression.

    4. Ethical Implications

    If exploitation is intrinsic to life:

    • Moral systems that condemn exploitation may deny the conditions of vitality.
    • But recognising exploitation as ‘natural’ does not ipso facto justify cruelty

    The key distinction becomes:

    • Reactive exploitation (fear-based domination, ressentiment)
    • Creative appropriation (life-enhancing transformation)

    Personally, I think Nietzsche intended the latter.

    So, what does that bring us to?

    Understanding exploitation as amoral the domineering scavenging of other life forms, but expanding it to include use, incorporation, exchange, symbiosis, and transformation we can nuance Nietzsche’s claim

    • It upgrades it by grounding it in biological and ecological realities.
    • It softens it by showing that power need not mean domination.
    • It deepens it by interpreting life itself as a continuous process of creative appropriation.

    Rather than a defense of oppression, the statement can be read as a challenge to moral sentimentalism:n yes life, at its core, is not neutral coexistence—it is dynamic, appropriative, interpretive activity, and to live is to use.

    The question is this not whether exploitation exists (it inherently and existentially is) but how it is shaped, directed, and sublimated which put us back to attributes of choice, not as morally neutral flatland.

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