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Will to power
For other uses, see Will to Power (disambiguation).
The will to power (German: der Wille zur Macht) is a prominent concept in the
philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. The will to power describes what Nietzsche may have
believed to be the main driving force in humans achievement, ambition, and the
striving to reach the highest possible position in life. These are all manifestations of the
will to power; however, the concept was never systematically defined in Nietzsche's
work, leaving its interpretation open to debate.
Alfred Adler incorporated the will to power into his individual psychology. This can be
contrasted to the other Viennese schools of psychotherapy: Sigmund Freud's pleasure
principle (will to pleasure) and Viktor Frankl's logotherapy (will to meaning). Each of
these schools advocates and teaches a very dierent essential driving force in human
beings.
Early influences
Nietzsche's early thinking was influenced by that of Arthur Schopenhauer, whom he first
discovered in 1865. Schopenhauer puts a central emphasis on will and in particular has
a concept of the "will to live". Writing a generation before Nietzsche, he explained that
the universe and everything in it is driven by a primordial will to live, which results in a
desire in all living creatures to avoid death and to procreate. For Schopenhauer, this will
is the most fundamental aspect of reality more fundamental even than being.
Another important influence was Roger Joseph Boscovich, whom Nietzsche discovered
and learned about through his reading, in 1866, of Friedrich Albert Lange's 1865
Geschichte des Materialismus (History of Materialism). As early as 1872, Nietzsche went
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on to study Boscovichs book Theoria Philosophia Naturalis for himself. Nietzsche makes
his only reference in his published works to Boscovich in Beyond Good and Evil, where
he declares war on "soul-atomism". Boscovich had rejected the idea of "materialistic
atomism", which Nietzsche calls "one of the best refuted theories there is". The idea of
centers of force would become central to Nietzsche's later theories of "will to power".
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a sensing.
In 1883 Nietzsche coined the phrase "Wille zur Macht" in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The
concept, at this point, was no longer limited to only those intellectual beings that can
actually experience the feeling of power; it now applied to all life. The phrase Wille zur
Macht first appears in part 1, "1001 Goals" (1883), then in part 2, in two sections, "SelfOvercoming" and "Redemption" (later in 1883). "Self-Overcoming" describes it in most
detail, saying it is an "unexhausted procreative will of life". There is will to power where
there is life and even the strongest living things will risk their lives for more power. This
suggests that the will to power is stronger than the will to survive.
Schopenhauer's "Will to life" thus became a subsidiary to the will to power, which is the
stronger will. Nietzsche thinks his notion of the will to power is far more useful than
Schopenhauer's will to live for explaining various events, especially human behavior
for example, Nietzsche uses the will to power to explain both ascetic, life-denying
impulses and strong, life-arming impulses in the European tradition,[clarification needed]
as well as both master and slave morality. He also finds the will to power to oer much
richer explanations than utilitarianism's notion that all people really want to be happy, or
the Platonist's notion that people want to be unified with the Good.[citation needed]
Nietzsche read William Rolphs Biologische Probleme around mid-1884, and it clearly
interested him, for his copy is heavily annotated. He made many notes concerning
Rolph. Rolph was another evolutionary anti-Darwinist like Roux, who wished to argue
for evolution by a dierent mechanism than the struggle for existence. Rolph argued
that all life seeks primarily to expand itself. Organisms fulfill this need through
assimilation, trying to make as much of what is found around them into part of
themselves, for example by seeking to increase intake and nutriment. Life forms are
naturally insatiable in this way.
Nietzsche's next published work was Beyond Good and Evil (1886), where the influence
of Rolph seems apparent. Nietzsche writes, "Even the body within which individuals
treat each other as equals ... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to
grow, spread, seize, become predominant not from any morality or immorality but
because it is living and because life simply is will to power." Beyond Good and Evil has
the most references to "will to power" in his published works, appearing in 11
aphorisms; The influence of Rolph and its connection to "will to power", also continues
in book 5 of Gay Science (1887) where Nietzsche describes "will to power" as the
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theory of the "eternal recurrence of the same" and much speculation on the physical
possibility of this idea and the mechanics of its actualization recur in his later
notebooks. Here, the will to power as a potential physics is integrated with the
postulated eternal recurrence. Taken literally as a theory for how things are, Nietzsche
appears to imagine a physical universe of perpetual struggle and force that repeatedly
completes its cycle and returns to the beginning.
However such a concept of eternal return was used metaphorically, and evidenced for
not being taken as a literal theorem of Nietzsche for how in fact things are or aren't, by
how he claimed it as a most "abysmal" of convictions amongst human values. Wherein
he posed as a question to whether the eternal recurrence could be accepted by one
that such would justify that one's life beyond their valuation (a trans-valuation) and be a
necessary thought-experiment precursor to the overman in their perfect acceptance of
all that is, for the love of life itself and amor fati.[citation needed]
Interpretations
In contemporary Nietzschean scholarship, some interpreters have emphasized the will
to power as a psychological principle because Nietzsche applies it most frequently to
human behavior. However, in Nietzsche's unpublished notes (later published by his
sister as "The Will to Power"), Nietzsche sometimes seemed to view the will to power as
a more (metaphysical) general force underlying all reality, not just human behaviorthus
making it more directly analogous to Schopenhauer's will to live. For example,
Nietzsche claims the "world is the will to powerand nothing besides!". Nevertheless, in
relation to the entire body of Nietzsche's published works, many scholars have insisted
that Nietzsche's principle of the will to power is less metaphysical and more pragmatic
than Schopenhauer's will to live: while Schopenhauer thought the will to live was what
was most real in the universe, Nietzsche can be understood as claiming only that the
will to power is a particularly useful principle for his purposes.
Some interpreters also upheld a biological interpretation of the Wille zur Macht, making
it equivalent with some kind of social Darwinism. For example, the concept was
appropriated by some Nazis such as Alfred Bumler, who may have drawn influence
from it or used it to justify their expansive quest for power.
This reading was criticized by Martin Heidegger in his 1930s courses on Nietzsche
suggesting that raw physical or political power was not what Nietzsche had in mind.
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perhaps after the communistic clich of Dhring, that every will must consider every
other will its equalwould be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution
and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of
weariness, a secret path to nothingness.
Individual psychology
Main article: Individual psychology
Alfred Adler borrowed heavily from Nietzsche's work to develop his second Viennese
school of psychotherapy called individual psychology. Adler (1912) wrote in his
important book ber den nervsen Charakter (The Neurotic Constitution):
Nietzsche's "Will to power" and "Will to seem" embrace many of our views, which
again resemble in some respects the views of Fr and the older writers, according
to whom the sensation of pleasure originates in a feeling of power, that of pain in a
feeling of feebleness (Ohnmacht).
Adler's adaptation of the will to power was and still is in contrast to Sigmund Freud's
pleasure principle or the "will to pleasure", and to Viktor Frankl's logotherapy or the "will
to meaning". Adler's intent was to build a movement that would rival, even supplant,
others in psychology by arguing for the holistic integrity of psychological well-being with
that of social equality. His interpretation of Nietzsche's will to power was concerned
with the individual patient's overcoming of the superiority-inferiority dynamic.
In Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl compared his third Viennese school of
psychotherapy with Adler's psychoanalytic interpretation of the will to power:
... the striving to find a meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force in man.
That is why I speak of a will to meaning in contrast to the pleasure principle (or, as
we could also term it, the will to pleasure) on which Freudian psychoanalysis is
centered, as well as in contrast to the will to power stressed by Adlerian psychology.
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The 2016 4x strategy game Stellaris also includes a technology with this name.
Bob Rosenberg, founder of freestyle music group Will to Power (band) chose the name
Will to Power for the group as an homage to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's
theory of an individual's fundamental "will to power".
The first title in the Xenosaga trilogy is Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht.
See also
The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
The Will to Power (manuscript)
Schopenhauer's concept of will to live
Each of the following Viennese schools of psychotherapy advocate a very dierent
main driving force in man:
Sigmund Freud's will to pleasure pleasure principle
Alfred Adler's will to power individual psychology
Victor Frankl's will to meaning logotherapy
Heinz Ansbacher
Power (social and political)
Aggression
References
1. ^ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche-moral-political/
2. ^ Golomb, Jacob (2002). Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism? On the Uses and
Abuses of a Philosophy.
3. ^ Whitlock, Greg (1996). "Roger Boscovich, Benedict de Spinoza and Friedrich
Nietzsche: The Untold Story". Nietzsche Studien 25 (1): 200220.
doi:10.1515/9783110244441.200.
4. ^ Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (1886; New York:
Vintage Books, 1966), 12.
5. ^ Anderson, R. Lanier (1994). "Nietzsches Will to Power as a Doctrine of the Unity of
Science". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 25 (5): 738 "Boscovich's
theory of centers of force was prominent in Germany at the time. Boscovichs theory
'is echoed in Immanuel Kants Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, which
reduces matter to force altogether. Kants view, in turn, became very influential in
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German physics through the work of Hermann von Helmholtz and his followers. By
the time Nietzsche wrote, treating matter in terms of fields of force was the dominant
understanding of the fundamental notions of physics.'"
6. ^ Moore, Gregory (2002). Nietzsche, Biology, Metaphor. New York: Cambridge
University Press. ISBN 0521812305.
7. ^ Wolfgang Mller-Lauter, "The Organism as Inner Struggle: Wilhelm Rouxs
Influence on Nietzsche", in Nietzsche: His Philosophy of Contradictions and the
Contradictions of His Philosophy, trans. David J. Parent (Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 1999), 16182.
8. ^ Section 13
9. ^ Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufman (1887; New York: Vintage
Books, 1974), 127.
10.
11.
12.
13.
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Nachlass", Journal of the History of Ideas 57, no. 3 (1996): 44763, 450.
23. ^ Whitlock, "Boscovich, Spinoza and Nietzsche", 207.
24. ^ cf. Williams, "Will to Power in Nietzsche's Published Works and the Nachlass".
25. ^ For discussion, see Whitlock, "Roger Boscovich, Benedict de Spinoza and
Friedrich Nietzsche"; Moles, "Nietzsches Eternal Recurrence as Riemannian
Cosmology"; Christa Davis Acampora, "Between Mechanism and Teleology: Will to
Power and Nietzsches Gay 'Science'", in Nietzsche & Science, 171188
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004); Stack, "Nietzsche and Boscovichs Natural
Philosophy"; and Small "The Physics of Eternal Recurrence", in Nietzsche in
26.
27.
28.
29.
Context, 135152.
^ Nietzsche, The Will To Power, 1067
^ Friedrich Nietzsche. Nachlass, Fall 1880 6 [206]
^ Mazzino Montinari, Friedrich Nietzsche (1974), 121.
^ Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 636
External links
Der "Wille zur Macht" kein Buch von Friedrich Nietzsche, a selection of texts from
Nietzsche's estate related to his philosophical concept and book projects "Wille
zur Macht" ("Will to Power"), edited by Bernd Jung based on the Digital Critical
Edition of Nietzsches Works, 2012/13
"Nietzsche Will to Power", a video explication of the will to power concept.
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