self-preservation

trivia

is an instinct ruled by the inner forces of hunger, lover, pain, or fear.

Hunger, love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces which rule the individual's instinct for self preservation.

The reader will recall that for Nietzsche, the basic drive of all life is will to power. More specifically, it is the will to increase power. Within this context, Nietzche recognizes only two fundamental types of change: a power-constellation can either increase its power and grow, or it can fail to increase its power and decline. There is no middle stage. To stand still, to maintain a status quo, is already to be in decline. Mere self-preservation is a symptom of weakness and decline. Just as an organism with vital and exuberant will to power seeks out obstacles and opposition (i.e. 'displeasure') in order to assert itself and grow, it also seeks out situations which might very well destroy it. Opposition, resistance, even danger, are to be regarded as stimulants to life because, as Nietzsche says, 'was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker'. This is also the meaning of Nietzsche's injunction to 'live dangerously.' Those who would posit self-preservation as the fundamental life-drive are once more guilt of confusing effects with causes. The fundamental drive of life is to grow and increase in power, and this may very well result in an organism's putting itself into peril. Self-preservation is only a consequence of this and is not the end in view (p14-115) (Nietzsche's Theory of Knowledge By Rüdiger Hermann Grimm p.14)

is a wrongheaded mechanistic theory unimportant in life on account of the fact that life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the universe.

Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe. A. N. WHITEHEAD, Adventures of Ideas, 1933

is a wrongheaded notion since the self grows by annihilating itself, thus destroying the very thing which is to be preserved.

The human being's mastery of itself, on which the self is founded, practically always involves the annihilation of the subject in whose service that mastery is maintained, becasue the substance which is mastered, suppressed, and disintegrated by self-preservation is nothing other than the living entity, of which the achievements of self-preservation can only be defined as functions in other words, self-preservation destroys the very thing which is to be preserved

is not a fundamental condition of life. The opposite is true. Every living thing does everything it can not to preserve itself but to become more.

On the contrary: a condition once achieved would seem to be obliged to preserve itself if there were not in it a capacity for desiring not to preserve itself Spinoza's law of 'self-preservation' ought really to put a stop to change: but this law is false, the opposite is true. It can be shown most clearly that every living thing does everything it can not to preserve itself but to become more (klossowski 'vicious' 102).

is at work in any man who risk his own life in order to preserve it. No one would claim that the man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide.

every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide'

is overvalued. Life is comparatively deficient in survival value. The art of persistence is to be dead.

In fact life itself is comparatively deficient in survival value. The art of persistence is to be dead. Only inorganic things persist for great lengths of time. (whitehead 'function of reason' pdf)

is the primary and only foundation of virtue.

self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue. Baruch Spinoza

self preservation, n.All

self preservation