Will to Power

The "Will to Power"

Nietzsche believed the will to power to be the fundamental causal power in the world, the driving force of all natural phenomena and the dynamic to which all other causal powers could be reduced. I believe Nietzsche in part hoped the will to power could be a theory of everything, providing the ultimate foundations for explanations of everything from whole societies, to individual organisms, down to simple lumps of matter. The will to power cannot be known. It must be understood by its collection of manifestations. Being must consequently be rethought as becoming-a perception that acknowledges the altering nature of life and is able to stress the importance of constantly rethinking and revaluing a relationship between thought and life. The will to power is something like the desire to exert one's will in self-overcoming. The will to power is taken as an animal's most fundamental instinct or drive, even more fundamental than the act of self-preservation.

The connotations of power are broader and richer, suggesting that a human being is more than a figurative economic man whose desires could be satisfied with the utopian comforts of a Brave New World. Nietzsche's meaning could also be brought out by speaking of a will to self-realization, (one of his favorite mottoes was "Become what you are!") or by thinking of "power" as a psychic energy or potentiality whose possession "empowers" us to aspire, strive, and create.

Nietzsche associates man's being with positivity. Nietzsche's preferred metaphor for the human essence is the will - an active image that allows striving and creativity to be reconciled with plenitude. It enables him to see activity and desire as a positive aspect of our nature, rather than a somewhat desperate attempt to fill the hole at the heart of our being. For Nietzsche, all that proceeds from weakness, sickness, inferiority, or lack is considered reactive and resentful, while that which proceeds from health, strength, or plenitude is characterized in positive terms. For instance, at the beginning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra he likens Zarathustra to a full cup wanting to overflow and to the sun which gives its light out of plenitude and superabundance.(Prologue;1) Later, he contrasts the generosity of the gift-giving virtue with the all-too-poor and hungry selfishness of the sick, which greedily "sizes up those who have much to eat" and always "sneaks around the table of those who give".(Part 1;22)

Now this life itself (this original will or becoming) leads to the second meaning of the will in Nietzsche's writings, the will of the child in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The birth of the child, as the final metamorphosis of the spirit, can be seen as the central event of the book. It is equivalent to the birth of the Overman and thus it is Zarathustra's fundamental teaching. This central event, however, must be seen in combination with the basic thought of the book. This is the darkest thought of the eternal recurrence of the same and it is Zarathustra's gift to mankind. The problem becomes one of seeing how the central event (for example, the Ubermensch) and the basic thought (for example, eternal recurrence) are to be brought together. That is to say, how is Zarathustra's teaching related to Zarathustra's gift-giving? I think the answer to these combinations is to be found in the activity of the child. The child, Zarathustra says, "is a self-propelling wheel a sacred yes. In the child, the spirit now wills its own will"(Zarathustra Speeches; 27). In interpreting this passage one can see the will of the child as bound to the sacred yes of the child. At bottom, the individual will, for Nietzsche, is not so much a kind of doing as it is a kind of saying.

Now the object of this yes saying of the child is life itself. The child is able to affirm life; the Overman is able to overcome all resentment to life. He is able to redeem himself even to