Reactive - Active
Tyrrhic - Odinic
What Nietzsche calls weak or slavish is not the least strong but that which, whatever its strength, is separated from what it can do.
The least strong is as strong as the strong if he goes to the limit, because the cunning, the subtelty, the wit and even the charm by which he makes up for his lesser strength are part of this strength so that it is no longer the least.
Thus reactive force is: 1) utilitarian force of adaptation and partial limitation; 2) force which separates active force from what it can do, which denies active force (triumph of the weak or the slaves); 3) force separated from what it can do, which denies or turns against itself (reign of the weak or of slaves).
And, analogously, active force is: 1) plastic, dominant and subjugating force; 2) force which goes to the limit of what it can do; 3) force which affirms its difference, which makes its difference an object of enjoyment and affirmation.
[Gilles Deleuze]
Nietzsche and Philosophy, p.61
Inferior forces are defined as reactive; they lose nothing of their force, of their quantity of force, they exercise it by securing mechanical means and final ends, by fulfilling the conditions of life and the functions and tasks of conversation, adaptation and utility.
[Gilles Deleuze]
Nietzsche and Philosophy, p.40
The reactive is a primordial quality of force but one which can only be interpreted as such in relation to and on the basis of the active.
[Gilles Deleuze]
Nietzsche and Philosophy, p.42
Thought does not need a method but a paideia, a formation, a culture. Method in general is a means by which we avoid going to a particular place, or by which we maintain the option of escaping from it (the thread of the labyrinth).
[Gilles Deleuze]
Nietzsche and Philosophy, p.110
Everything that separates a force from what it can do he calls law. Law, in this sense, expresses the triumph of the weak over the strong. Nietzsche adds: the triumph of reaction over action.
[...] hierarchy also designates the triumph of reactive forces, the contagion of reactive forces and the complex organisation which results - where the weak have conquered, where the strong are contaminated, where the slave who has not stopped being a slave prevails over the master who has stopped being one: the reign of law and of virtue.
We make Church, morality and State the masters or keepers of all hierarchy. We have the hierarchy that we deserve, we who are essentially reactive, we who take the triumphs of reaction for a transformation of action and slaves for new masters - we who only recognise hierarchy back to front.
[Gilles Deleuze]
Nietzsche and Philosophy, p.58, 60-1
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