Will for power

The term Will for power ( Wille zur Macht ) indicates:

a concept invented by Friedrich Nietzsche.
a project of book of this same philosopher (see Will for power ), project given up with the end of the year 1888.
several compilations of its fragments published and presented like its principal work, and regarded today as falsifications (see also Will for power ).

This article treats Will for power as a concept.

Will for power

No text published of Nietzsche gives in a complete way and specifies the significance of the expression will for power . In spite of this absence of clear definition, the precise study of the texts, and especially of the posthumous fragments, showed the great coherent thinking of Nietzsche until in the use of the quotation marks.

In order to allow each one to read the passages where it is question of this concept, we give here (after a general determination of the concept) the greatest number of possible references, as well as broad extracts of texts among most important.

In the texts published

Dawn
the Merry Knowledge , §13: das Verlangen nach Macht , the aspiration with the power:

“Even if we bring there our life like makes the martyr in favor of his church, it would be a sacrifice brought to our requirement of being able ( Verlangen nach Macht ), or in order to preserve the feeling of our power ( Macht ). ”

Ainsi spoke Zarathoustra , delivers II, “Of the surpassing of oneself”:

“Wille zur Wahrheit heisst ihr' S, ihr Weisesten, was euch treibt und brünstig macht?

Wille zur Denkbarkeit Seienden ales: also heisse ich euren Willen !

Ales Seiende wollt ihr erst denkbar machen: denn ihr zweifelt put gutem Misstrauen, ob are schon denkbar STI.

Aber be ground sich euch fügen und biegen! So will' S euer Wille. Glatt ground be werden und dem Geiste unterthan, als center Spiegel und Widerbild.

Das STI euer ganzer Wille, ihr Weisesten, als ein Wille zur Macht ; und auch wenn ihr vom Guten und Bösen redet und von den Werthschätzungen. Schaffen wollt ihr noch die Welt, VOR DER ihr knien könnt: so STI be the Eure letzte Hoffnung und Trunkenheit. ”

“will to find truth: such is the name that you give, O wise badges, with the force which drives you and puts to you in rut.

will to return conceivable all that is: it is the name which I give to your will.

You want initially to return conceivable all that is; because you doubt rightly that it is conceivable a priori.

But it is necessary that all is subjected and ploie with your liking. It is what requires your to want; that very softens themselves and subjects themselves to the spirit, that all is reduced to be the mirror and the reflection about it.

It is there all that you want, wise badges, and it is a desire of power, even when you have with the mouth the words of good and evil and value judgments. You want initially to create a world such that you can adore it with knees; it is your last hope, your supreme intoxication. ”

Beyond good and badly , §36

“If nothing “are given to us” like reality except our world appetites and passions, if we can go down nor to go up towards no other reality that of our instincts - because the thought is not that the mutual report/ratio of these instincts, - isn't it allowed to ask to us whether this given is not enough not also to include/understand, from what resembles to him, the world says mechanical (or “material”)? To include/understand, want I to say, not like an illusion, a “appearance”, a “representation” within the meaning of Berkeley and of Schopenhauer, but like a reality of the same order as our very passions, the more primitive shape of the world of passions, where all that diversifies and structure then in the organic world (and also, of course, refines themselves and weakens) to still lie itself of a vast unit; like a kind of instinctive life where all the organic functions of self-regulation, of assimilation, nutritution, elimination, exchanges are still synthetically dependant; like a preform of the life? - Ultimately, it is not only allowed to venture this question; the spirit even of the method imposes it. Not to admit various species of causalities as a long time as one did not seek to be satisfied with only one by pushing it until his last consequences (until the absurdity would say I even), here is a morals of the method to which one does not have the right to withdraw oneself today; it is given “by definition” would say a mathematician. In the final analysis the question is to know if we regard the will as really acting , if we believe in the causality of the will. In the affirmative - and at the bottom our belief in this one is not anything else that our belief in causality itself - we must try to pose by assumption the causality of the will like the only one which is.

Genealogy of morals , Second essay, §12.

“- I underline this capital point of view of the historical method more especially as he is opposed fundamentally to the instinct and the taste dominant of this time which would still prefer to be put up with the absolute chance, even of the mechanical nonsense of all becoming it, rather than of the theory of a will for power appearing in all becoming. ”

“But one ignores the gasoline of the life then, the will for power ; then one neglects the preeminence of principle which have the spontaneous forces, aggressive, invading which reinterpret, reorientate and form, the “adaptation” does nothing but follow the effects, then one denies in the organization even the dominating role of the supreme authorities, in which the vital will appears active and formative. ”

the Antichrist , §6:

“Das Leben selbst gilt to mir als Instinkt für Wachstum, für Dauer, für Häufung von Kräften, für Macht: wo der Wille zur Macht fehlt, gibt be Niedergang. ”

(“the life is, in my eyes, instinct of growth, duration, accumulation of force, power: where the will for power is lacking, there is decline. ”)

In the posthumous texts

the expression “ Will zur Macht ” appears for the first time in the fragment 23 of 1876-1877:

“Das Hauptelement of Ehrgeizes STI, zum Gefühl seiner Macht zu kommen. Die Freude year der Macht STI nicht darauf zurückzuführen, dass to wir ones freuen, in der Meinung anderer bewundert dazustehen. Lob und Tadel, Liebe und Hass sind gleich für den Ehrsüchtigen, welcher Macht will.

Furcht (negativ) und Wille zur Macht (positiv) erklären unsere starke Rücksicht auf die Meinungen der Menschen.

Lust year der Macht. - Die Lust year der Macht erklärt sich aus DER hundertfältig erfahrenen Unlust der Abhängigkeit, der Ohnmacht. STI sharp Erfahrung nicht da, so fehlt auch die Lust. ”

See also: fragments 4, 7, 9 of 1880-1881.
FP, XI, 38:

“(...) here is my dionysiaque world which creates for itself and destroys eternally itself Ewig-sich-selber-Schaffens '', '' of Ewig-sich-selber-Zerstörens '', this mysterious world of double pleasures, here is my beyond good and badly, without goal, unless in the joy of having achieved the Glück circle of Kreises '' to lie a goal ein Ziel '', without wanting, unless a ring does not have the good will to rotate eternally - do want you ihr '' a name for this world sharp Welt ''? A solution for all these enigmas? A light even for you, darkest, most secret, strongest, most intrepid of all the spirits? - This world, it is the world of the will for power and anything else Welt STI der Wille zur Macht und nichts ausserdem ''! And yourself, you are also this will for power - and anything else nichts ausserdem ''! ”

FP, XIV, 14:

“If the most intimate gasoline to be it is will for power, if the pleasure is very growth of the power, displeasure any feeling to be able to resist and control: can't we then pose pleasure and displeasure like cardinal facts? ”

FP XIV, 14:

““Will for power”

the “will for power” is hedge at this point in the democratic times, that all their psychology seems to aim to reduce it and disparage it…

the type of large ambitious avid of honor: it would be liked that it is Napoleon! and César! and Alexandre! … How if they were not precisely largest contemptuous of the honor!

And Helvétius exposes us in detail that one aspires to the power in order to have the pleasures available to the powerful man…: he includes/understands this aspiration with the power like a will of pleasure, like an hedonism…”

FP, XIV, 14:

“the life is only a particular case of the will for power, - it is completely arbitrary to affirm that all aspires to be melted in this form of the will for power. ”

Determination of the concept

The concept of will for power indicates to become more; it is conceived by Nietzsche like a tool for description of the Réalité.

The will for power is not strictly speaking a To have to be: nothing is constrained by a law with becoming more. There is indeed, according to Nietzsche, no law in becoming it: all becomes what it can become, and that even expresses its will for power. It will be noted that thus, being opposed to metaphysical dualism gasoline and Existence, Nietzsche interprets the gasoline of a thing (its structure interns) like being carried out very whole in becoming it, the Existence and the gasoline merging then in the same concept of will for power.

These precise details first of all make it possible to draw aside certain inaccurate interpretations and to include/understand an important aspect of the analysis of Nietzsche: a warrior or an artist, to take examples which can appear as distant as possible, also expresses by their activities a will for power. But it follows this example that no artistic movement, no party Politique and no Idéologie can truly claim will for power as if it were a question of a program to realize, of a requirement to be followed, since any artist, very party, any ideology, whatever they are, are already the expression of a will for power. It is thus this particular will for power which it is necessary to analyze as a Will for power: in the example above, the barbarian is a brutal and stupid form of will for power (Nietzsche is far from developing violence in itself - the spirit is for him, under certain conditions, the highest expression of the human will for power); the artist is a form more refined, higher, because creative, which makes it possible to constitute a scale of value which holds account owing to the fact that the roughest reality of the Homme is cruelty, but that the Culture, under certain conditions, is the degree highest of the power, the degree which has the most value, at least in the human world.

Thus, in short, and it is the aspect there properly amoral of this thought, in worst cruelty as in the most refined culture, it is the same tendency to the power which appears everywhere, but by taking forms different related to education from the instincts which one gives to the man. A culture which would express the increase in power is neither militarist culture (Nietzsche does not have very an good opinion of the degradation of patriotism, and estimates that the power of the State can only harm the Culture) nor a culture of standardization (what is expressed for example by a moral gregarism), but a culture which cultivates the man as an animal, without denying the instincts of them, but by spiritualizing them (what Nietzsche names a deification of the instincts, concept relatively close to sublimation at Freud). The highest expressions of such a culture are the unit of the artistic style (in Architecture for example), spiritual refinement (development at the individuals of capacities such as the suspension of the judgment, the clearness of the style, etc and of corresponding tastes, etc).

The will for power has necessarily several dimensions, it describes basically:

to become in general to it (metaphysical)
living it (physiology)
economy of the human instincts (psychology, morals, policy)
education of the instincts (culture)

“Will for power” in the writings of Nietzsche

According to Müller-Lauter, it is possible to distinguish three directions different from the expression “will for power” when it is employed in the singular:

“will for power” like all reality, the name of this reality. In this direction, the Will for power is well a Concept Métaphysique since it characterizes the to be being;
“will for power”, without the article “”, like quality. In this direction, as for the following direction, this concept indicates a certain direction to become singular; it indicates the increase in power;
“a will for power”, presupposing a plurality of wills for power; even direction that above, but the radical multiplicity of the world is underlined. That means that the whole, the universe, if it can be regarded as a quantity of fixed forces, is not itself Will for power, because it does not have a unit, and, since this character is lacking to him, it does not have either a finality, it does not move towards a final state (the universe is thus also necessarily circular: to see: eternal return).

Starting from the life

The will for power is interpreted starting from the organic life without being reduced to it:

Ainsi spoke Zarathoustra , II, “Of the domination of oneself”

“Everywhere where I found the alive one, I found will for power; and even in the will of that which obeys, I found the will to be a Master. And the life itself entrusted this secrecy to me: “, Has it says me, I See am what must always surmount oneself. And you also, you who seek knowledge, you are only the path and the track of my will: in truth, my will for power also goes on the traces of your will of truth! It undoubtedly did not meet the truth, that which spoke about the “will of life”, this will - does not exist. Because: what is not, cannot want; but how what is in the life could it still wish the life! It is only where there is life that there is will: however it is not the will of life, but the will for power. There is many things that living it higher than the life itself appreciates; but it is in the appreciations themselves that - the will for power speaks! ””

If the organization, and more precisely our body, are the starting point of Nietzsche, its directing wire, it is parce we do not have design to be it independent because of living. To be, it is to breathe, nourish themselves, etc the being, in itself, is a concept stripped of direction, “the last smoke of a reality which evaporates. ” ( Crépuscule of the idols , reason in philosophy, §1) This is why, according to Nietzsche, it is legitimate to seek initially what can characterize living it:

internal capacity to create forms

it not identity of the alive one, of which the unit can never be a principle

the internal struggle which treats on a hierarchical basis an organization

the Autorégulation of the alive one.

Nietzsche supposes then the existence of only one causality, as assumption (see §36 higher). This assumption is all the more legitimate as causal dualisms heart - body and life - matter lead to contradictions of the metaphysical idealism denounced by Nietzsche. Nevertheless, the thesis of the will for power leads to the rejection, not only vitalism, but also of the materialism of the mechanist type. Indeed, since what characterizes living it must according to him be generalized, then what one names “matter” (Nietzsche denies the existence of the latter) is also feeling and perceiving, but in a state more synthetic than in the case of an organization.

Will for power like relation

To act and relation
To feel
To think
Of wanting

Will for power like evaluation

Will for power and Eternal return

Will for power among other philosophers

Alain

The philosopher Alain St-Arnaud insisted in his Propos on happiness on the fact that the will for power did not have to mean with the restricted direction of power on others or on the things , but well of expansion of ego . Thus, it indicates, a Latinist will never be wearied to become still better Latinist (matter XLVII). In this reading, one finds Aristote and the traditional approach stoical aiming at first of all placing his happiness in the things which depend on oneself, which is also very close to the design of Nietzsche (the morals put aside):

“Aristote says this astonishing thing, that the true musician is that which likes himself the music, and the true policy that which is liked the policy. “The pleasures, says it, are the signs of the powers. ” This word resounds by the perfection of the terms which carry us out of the doctrines; and if one wants to include/understand this astonishing genius, as well of time and so vainly disavowed, it is here as it is necessary to look at. The sign of true progress in any action is the pleasure that one can there take. From where it is seen that work is the only delicious thing, and who is enough. I hear free labor, effect of power at the same time and source of power. Once again, not to undergo, but act. ”

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