“But, the dynamic of forces in fact leads us to a distressing conclusion. When reactive force separates active force from what…
“But, the dynamic of forces in fact leads us to a distressing conclusion. When reactive force separates active force from what it can do, the latter also becomes reactive. Active forces become reactive. And the word ‘becoming’ must be taken in the strongest sense: the becoming of forces appears as a becoming-reactive. Are there no other ways of becoming? The fact remains that we do not feel, experience or know any becoming but becoming-reactive. We are not merely noting the existence of reactive forces, we are noting the fact that everywhere they are triumphant. How do they triumph? Through the will to nothingness, thanks to the affinity between reaction and negation. What is negation? It is a quality of the will to power, the one which qualifies it as nihilism or will to nothingness, the one which constitutes the becoming-reactive of forces. It must not be said that active force becomes reactive because reactive forces triumph; on the contrary, they triumph because, by separating active force from what it can do, they betray it to the will of nothingness, to a becoming-reactive deeper than themselves. This is why the figures of triumph of reactive forces (ressentiment, bad conscience, and the ascetic ideal) are primarily forms of nihilism. The becoming-reactive, the becoming nihilistic, of force seem to be essential components of the relation of force with force. – Is there another becoming? Everything tempts us to think that perhaps there is. But, as Nietzsche often says, we would need another sensibility, another way of feeling. We can not yet reply to this question, we can hardly even contemplate its possibility. But we can ask why we only feel and know a becoming-reactive. Is it not because man is essentially reactive? Because becoming-reactive is constitutive of man? Ressentiment, bad conscience and nihilism are not psychological traits but the foundation of the humanity in man. They are the principle of human being as such. Man, “skin disease” of the Earth, reaction of the Earth … (ZII “Of Great Events”). It is in this sense that Zarathustra speaks of his “great contempt” for man and of his “great disgust”. Another sensibility, another becoming - would they still be man’s?”— Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy