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Nietzsche - The Key Ideas: The will to power

by Dr Roy Jackson

The concept of the will to power is one of Nietzsche’s most famous contributions to the philosophical tradition, and yet it is a notoriously difficult concept to interpret. The main reason for this difficulty is that Nietzsche, like so much of his thought, is never particularly explicit in his account of the doctrine. Many previous scholars have looked to his unpublished notes for enlightenment, and in these notes Nietzsche seems to present a doctrine of the will to power as a metaphysical explanation for the nature of everything. The world is conceived as a monster of energy, of conflicting forces and drives striving for power, of an underlying principle that explains all events and actions. Yet this interpretation is not only unoriginal, it goes against Nietzsche’s published criticisms of presenting any kind of metaphysical doctrine. Also we need to be very wary of trusting Nietzsche’s unpublished notes. Rather, perhaps the best understanding of the will to power is more a subjective interpretation of the world, given Nietzsche’s view that all beliefs are essentially subjective. It may, as it turns out, be the best interpretation our empirical observations can currently provide, but that does not make it any more ‘true’. Nevertheless, it can have value from a psychological perspective, which is what really matters.

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