Friedrich Nietzsche (1886)

A comparative analysis with the CoD

Nietzsche, dynamite on paper, sits humbly at his typewriter whilst his cat waits to be fed. Courtesy of Perchance.org

I. Abstract

Friedrich Nietzsche’s core ontological claim is that reality is fundamentally a chaotic flux of competing power-centers, a 'will to power', where being is not a stable state but a dynamic process of overcoming, interpretation, and self-assertion. As mentioned in Methodology, this comparative assessment employs the Ontological Model Assessment Framework (OMAF) to systematically contrast this view with the Conference of Difference (CoD) model. The OMAF reveals a fundamental divergence on the criterion of the manner-of-existence, highlighting the CoD's distinctive capacity to ground relational becoming without reducing it to a conflictual struggle. While both models champion a process-oriented ontology, Nietzsche’s will to power prioritizes agonistic self-overcoming, whereas the CoD posits a more foundational, co-petitive relationality. This chapter’s contribution is to demonstrate how the CoD subsumes the dynamism of the will to power within a broader ontological context of constitutive conferencing, offering a framework for transformation that is not inherently oppositional.

II. Overview of Nietzsche’s Model

Emerging in the late 19th century as a radical critique of Western philosophy, religion, and morality, Friedrich Nietzsche’s thought posits a world devoid of transcendent truths or static being. His core principle is the will to power, which he identifies as the essential, driving force of all reality—from biological instincts to human culture and thought. This is not a will for domination in a crude sense, but a fundamental tendency for all things to grow, expand, overcome resistance, and interpret the world from their own perspective, thereby creating their own conditions of existence.

Key mechanisms in this ontology include perspectivism—the idea that all knowledge is interpretation from a particular point of view, conditioned by the will to power of the knower—and the concept of becoming, which asserts that reality is a perpetual flux with no underlying, permanent substrate. For Nietzsche, entities are not stable 'beings' but temporary, dynamic configurations of forces in a constant state of tension and reconfiguration.

In the Friedrich Nietzsche: a CRUP-OMAF case study, his ontology is assessed as follows:

• primacy-of-existence: is given to this dynamic process of willing i.e. the 'will to power', not to any resultant entity or state.
• manner-of-existence: is one of ceaseless, agonistic becoming.
• relationship-between-multiplicity-and-unity: is resolved through the interplay of these myriad power-wills, where any apparent unity is a temporary and contested constellation of forces, a 'dominion' achieved by a particular configuration of the will to power.

III. Overview of the CoD

The Conference of Difference (CoD) model claims that, as a 'condition of being', existence is, by extension, a 'process of declaring together of action to be'. This condition: 'process of declaring together' can itself be described as a conference of difference: a 'condition of bearing together' transforming the 'condition of bearing apart'. Logically, every conference is of difference as every difference is born of conference. Critically, this is not a causal circle but a constitutive one: neither term precedes the other; each is intelligible only through the other.^[1] Therefore, the conference of difference is irreducible in and of itself and thus the process primitive of existence.

In the Conference of Difference: a CRUP-OMAF case study, its ontology is assessed as follows:

• On primacy-of-existence: The CoD reveals primacy, not in substance of entities but, in the relational process itself: the conference of difference—relation precedes relata. Entities' are discerned as stabilized patterns within this ongoing process. As declared in Koan 10.1, 'all existence is a conference of difference'. Relation is not something that happens between discerned entities but rather the process primitive that transforms existence itself.
• On manner-of-existence: The manner-of-existence is fundamentally conferential and transformative. Thus, being: 'action to be' is a continuous, dynamic process of 'bearing together' and 'bearing apart' – a constant negotiation that defines the 'condition of being' that is existence. 'All existence transforms via binding, not freedom' (Koan 30.7).
• On the relationship-between-multiplicity-and-unity: Unity is an immanent and continuous achievement of the conference of difference itself. Koan 80.1 frames this as a universal reciprocity that moves toward equilibrium—a self-organizing principle inherent to existence itself.

IV. Comparison

Criterion 1: Primacy-of-Existence

• Statement: The models converge on a process-oriented primacy but diverge radically on the nature of that process.
• Nietzsche’s Position: Nietzsche gives primacy to the 'will to power' as the ultimate reality. Entities and their properties are secondary effects or symptoms of this more fundamental, driving force.
• CoD’s Position: The CoD gives primacy to the conference of difference. The will to power, or any other drive, is a secondary expression that emerges from and operates within this prior ontological condition of relationality. Power ('ability') is accumulated and expressed through the conference of difference (Koan 70.1, 70.5).
• Interpretive Analysis: Nietzsche’s will to power is primary; for the CoD the conference of difference is the process primitive as it is the universal means of transformation observed throughout existence. The CoD posits that what Nietzsche terms the 'will to power' is, in CoD terms, to purpose: 'put fully' one's power: 'ability'. This reframing allows the CoD to ground Nietzsche's profound insight within a more universal ontological structure by redefining power as multiplicative ability rather than zero-sum domination.

Criterion 2: Manner-of-Existence

• Statement: The OMAF assessment identifies a profound alignment with a critical divergence on the fundamental character of existence.
• Nietzsche’s Position: For Nietzsche, the manner-of-existence is agonistic becoming due to the 'will to power'. Reality is a battlefield of interpreting forces, where every entity's action to be is an act of overcoming its environment and itself. Existence is fundamentally a struggle for enhancement and expression against resistance.
• CoD’s Position: For the CoD, the manner-of-existence is the conference of difference itself of which there are two modes: co-petition: 'petitioning together' and competition: 'petitioning against'. Reality is a continuous process of differences bearing together, a dynamic relationality that is not inherently conflictual but is the very condition for both cooperation and competition. As Koan 70.6 states, 'difference cannot manifest power in division but only in conference'.
• Interpretive Analysis: This difference is not merely semantic but foundational. Where Nietzsche sees the pathos of struggle as primary, the CoD sees relationality itself as the ground. The CoD’s framework can account for the synergistic, co-petitive phenomena (like symbiosis or cultural collaboration) that Nietzsche’s model tends to view through the lens of a more fundamental, underlying conflict. The CoD subsumes struggle as one possible mode of conferencing, but not its essence.

Criterion 3: Relationship-Between-Multiplicity-and-Unity

• Statement: Both models reject a prior, monolithic unity, but offer starkly different visions for how multiplicity coheres.
• Nietzsche’s Position: Unity is always a temporary, imposed, and often deceptive achievement. It is the result of one perspective or constellation of power-wills subjugating others to create a 'meaningful whole', like a state or a moral system, which inevitably contains internal tensions and seeds of its own overthrow.
• CoD’s Position: Unity and multiplicity are co-constitutive through the conference of difference itself. The 'bearing together' is not an imposition but the very mechanism of existence. As Koan 10.1 exposits, existence is the transformation of 'bearing apart' into 'bearing together'.
• Interpretive Analysis: Nietzsche’s vision is one of heroic, tragic tension, where any unity is hard-won and fragile. The CoD, by contrast, presents a vision where multiplicity in unity is the default condition of reality. The CoD’s 'bearing together' of differences is a more fundamental, process of existence, affected through co-petitive and sometimes competitive modes of being Nietzsche describes.

V. Implications

The single most important philosophical lesson from this comparison is that a dynamic, non-substantialist ontology grounded in perpetual conflict is incomplete because it fails to account for the co-petitive modes that dominate existence.^[2] The confrontation with Nietzsche demonstrates that the CoD can fully incorporate the reality of struggle and overcoming albeit as one mode of the conference of difference itself. This comparison strengthens the case for the CoD by showing it solves a specific problem in Nietzsche’s model: the risk of reducing all relationality to an expression of a single, monolithic competitive drive. The CoD offers a more nuanced and capacious framework, one that can account for the full spectrum of relational dynamics, from the most agonistic to the most symbiotic, without privileging one as more 'real'.

This opens a new line of inquiry into the ethics of relationality, suggesting that our task is not merely self-overcoming through opposition, but skillful participation in the myriad conferences of differences that constitute our world.

The Gospel of Being

by John Mackay

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