Will in Nietzsche was delusion precisely because it was divorced from the individual's process and injection into the world from a social dimension that preceded and determined the individual's existence. The will to power is a lie, the power of the social, developmental-intersubjective, to shape or diminish the quality of the individual, is not.
It's useless to speak and think of knowledge in terms of universal objectivity, this is not the point, this is an abstract game -- the point is to obtain knowledge for the purpose of increasing and expanding existential quality (this is something no nihilism can refute).
What a thinker doesn't want to tell himself, and what he doesn't want to believe, are the most important things about his philosophy. But even this has a limit, a sophist will use this logic to propagate the value of his sophistry, asserting that, because his idiosyncratic philosophy is antithetical to one's desire, "therefore it must contain a high value." This is false. A good thinker must be concerned with the rejection of the concrete-negative, not the rejection of a false-positive.
Perhaps the greatest danger that tempts thinkers is vanity, or intellectual hedonism. Life has no obligation to submit to every claim of authority, precisely because life is not infinite, our time is limited, therefore we have a right to discriminate. Nevertheless, hordes of young thinkers flock to vain professors and authors who write abstract books full of abstract concepts that have no concrete relevance to life; this is the living praxis of intellectual hedonism.
It's a strange thing to assert one's self in the context of the public sphere because, before such an act begins, one is prejudged by a series of silent, cultural presuppositions. Before a thinker can talk with authority or be taken seriously, culture demands that specific identities be attached to his or her name. This is not entirely negative or without value. Nevertheless, we are all drifting in the darkness, but only few are conscious of this. Is it credentials that give a speaker value or is it the fact that her words contain substance, even power? What does it mean to have power in words and what makes certain formations of words more powerful than others?
"High
Politics.—Whatever may be the influence in high
politics of utilitarianism and the vanity of individuals and
nations, the sharpest spur which urges them onwards is their need
for the feeling of power—a need which rises not only in the souls
of princes and rulers, but also gushes forth from time to time from
inexhaustible sources in the people. The time comes again and again
when the masses are ready to stake their lives and their fortunes,
their consciences and their virtue, in order that they may secure
that highest of all enjoyments and rule as a victorious,
tyrannical, and arbitrary nation over other nations (or at all
events think that they do).
"On occasions
such as these, feelings of prodigality, sacrifice, hope,
confidence, extraordinary audacity, and enthusiasm will burst forth
so abundantly that a sovereign who is ambitious or far-sighted will
be able to seize the opportunity for making war, counting upon the
good conscience of his people to hide his injustice. Great
conquerors have always given utterance to the pathetic language of virtue;
they have always been surrounded by crowds of people who felt
themselves, as it were, in a state of exaltation and would listen
to none but the most elevated oratory. The strange madness of moral
judgments! When man experiences the sensation of power he feels and
calls himself good; and at exactly the same time the others who
have to endure his power call him evil!" Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day, paragraph 189, translated by, John McFarland Kennedy, The MacMillian Company 1911, posted on Project Gutenberg
The pathological error to power, we can call it, because it subverts intelligence, intelligence that would be directed toward the cultivation of existential quality (that's why it's intelligent!). There is almost no statement more true than that humans desire feelings of power, but this desire is itself the backward result of social stupidity and subconscious social formations. This desire hinges on the kind of world into which one is born. Humankind is exceedingly primitive, man's social organization of the world, being almost entirely impulsive, turns humans into insecure automatons. It's the stupidity of man's social organization that is to blame for primitive desires: competition divides the power of the species against itself. Segregation of the earth pits man against man, and yet, this stupid little primate is hurling through a black void that, without advanced technological mediation, guarantees its extinction. No foresight, no consciousness, this is humankind!
It doesn't matter if we like it, or it kicks against primitive dogma, in order to make more intelligent humans it's necessary to make more qualitative, socially conscious, scientifically and psychologically informed, developmental environments. (This is not a reference to the old school of behaviorism, but to the new school of empathic care, kindness, the conscious cultivation of healthy attachment environments.) Only intelligence can save mankind from its impulsive self.
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