Will to power

[Anonymous No.15514114]

Where the hell does he explain the will to power concept in full? I've read most of his work at this point and he always mentions it in passing as if the reader is already supposed to know what it means.

[Anonymous No.15514935]

wikipedia

[Anonymous No.15515095]

>>15514935
Unironically this.
I was confused like OP after reading a lot of Nietzsche and one of the first lines on the wiki page is "Nietzsche never systematically defined the will to power hence it's largely open to debate" or something like this.

[Anonymous No.15515115]

in geneaology essay two he says civilization turns our will to power inward because it ‘closes off’ the world. My interpretation of the will to power is as a will to dominate, a longing for space, to create our values

[Anonymous No.15515138]

>>15514114
>he always mentions it in passing as if the reader is already supposed to know what it means.
Because "Will to power" is about harnessing the inner quality of ambition that all men have and multiplying that drive by cultivating it by open action towards elevating oneself above the average.
It's a very strange concept, as it tries to internalize spiritual neccesity of man from relying on external supernatural as a driving force in one's life (like in Christianity) and instead harnessing one's own potential in its place, harking back to "master moralirty" of Antiquity. Example of rome is often given, ahere Gods and spirits were not benevolent creators, but more akin to cosmic powers to be appeased or bargained with, asked for assistance or blessing, but never ultimately interest in humans on the same level that a Christian god is, thus forcing antique man to strive for excellence and greatness in this life, as the only means of assuring one's legacy.
Christian drive towards afterlife detracts from that and dampens human spirit, according to Nietzche.

[Anonymous No.15515161]

You can tell someone hasn’t read Nietzsche when they talk about Will to Power, that book was a collection of cherry-picked fragments filled out by his cunt sister made to appeal to the current trends of the day so she could make money and gain nooriety lol

[Anonymous No.15515169]

>>15514114
this is why he went crazy. He could never define the "will" underlying his entire philosophy. He was left with emptiness.

[Anonymous No.15515315]

>>15514114
He never got around to it, unfortunately. He talks about it in The Antichrist, in Twilight of the Idols, and in his unpublished notes, but only in fragments. However, if you really study his work, and try to grasp it, the concept becomes clear.

>>15515161
This is wrong. Modern renditions of Will to Power have been cleaned up by several scholars since Elizabeth's time. Her tampering with the work was always somewhat overblown; the most controversial aspect of the work at this point is simply the order of which aphorisms are organized in it. Just keep in mind that, while there are original unpublished notebooks that it can compared with for validity, it's still a book of unpublished aphorisms, not all of which Nietzsche may have still liked by the time he got around to publishing his next work.

[Anonymous No.15517192]

>>15514114
He invented it. For Nietzsche the role of the philosopher is the creation of new values, not discovering truth.

[Anonymous No.15517282]

>>15514114
It's a modification of the will to live, because he saw at play not only the need of survival but also the need of domination. He talks about it in a fragment (don't remember which one) of The Gay Science

[Anonymous No.15517377]

>>15514114
He explains it in the Dawn

[Anonymous No.15517477]

He explains it in Beyond Good and Evil. The part where he speaks of the Free Spirit.

[Anonymous No.15517482]

>>15517477
Supposing that nothing else is "given" as real but our world of desires and passions, that we cannot sink or rise to any other "reality" but just that of our impulses--for thinking is only a relation of these impulses to one another:--are we not permitted to make the attempt and to ask the question whether this which is "given" does not SUFFICE, by means of our counterparts, for the understanding even of the so-called mechanical (or "material") world? I do not mean as an illusion, a "semblance," a "representation" (in the Berkeleyan and Schopenhauerian sense), but as possessing the same degree of reality as our emotions themselves--as a more primitive form of the world of emotions, in which everything still lies locked in a mighty unity, which afterwards branches off and develops itself in organic processes (naturally also, refines and debilitates)--as a kind of instinctive life in which all organic functions, including self- regulation, assimilation, nutrition, secretion, and change of matter, are still synthetically united with one another--as a PRIMARY FORM of life?--In the end, it is not only permitted to make this attempt, it is commanded by the conscience of LOGICAL METHOD. Not to assume several kinds of causality, so long as the attempt to get along with a single one has not been pushed to its furthest extent (to absurdity, if I may be allowed to say so): that is a morality of method which one may not repudiate nowadays--it follows "from its definition," as mathematicians say. The question is ultimately whether we really recognize the will as OPERATING, whether we believe in the causality of the will; if we do so--and fundamentally our belief IN THIS is just our belief in causality itself--we MUST make the attempt to posit hypothetically the causality of the will as the only causality. "Will" can naturally only operate on "will"--and not on "matter" (not on "nerves," for instance): in short, the hypothesis must be hazarded, whether will does not operate on will wherever "effects" are recognized--and whether all mechanical action, inasmuch as a power operates therein, is not just the power of will, the effect of will. Granted, finally, that we succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive life as the development and ramification of one fundamental form of will--namely, the Will to Power, as my thesis puts it; granted that all organic functions could be traced back to this Will to Power, and that the solution of the problem of generation and nutrition--it is one problem-- could also be found therein: one would thus have acquired the right to define ALL active force unequivocally as WILL TO POWER. The world seen from within, the world defined and designated according to its "intelligible character"--it would simply be "Will to Power," and nothing else.

[Anonymous No.15517512]

Everything that is profound loves the mask: the profoundest things have a hatred even of figure and likeness. Should not the CONTRARY only be the right disguise for the shame of a God to go about in? A question worth asking!--it would be strange if some mystic has not already ventured on the same kind of thing. There are proceedings of such a delicate nature that it is well to overwhelm them with coarseness and make them unrecognizable; there are actions of love and of an extravagant magnanimity after which nothing can be wiser than to take a stick and thrash the witness soundly: one thereby obscures his recollection. Many a one is able to obscure and abuse his own memory, in order at least to have vengeance on this sole party in the secret: shame is inventive. They are not the worst things of which one is most ashamed: there is not only deceit behind a mask--there is so much goodness in craft. I could imagine that a man with something costly and fragile to conceal, would roll through life clumsily and rotundly like an old, green, heavily-hooped wine-cask: the refinement of his shame requiring it to be so. A man who has depths in his shame meets his destiny and his delicate decisions upon paths which few ever reach, and with regard to the existence of which his nearest and most intimate friends may be ignorant; his mortal danger conceals itself from their eyes, and equally so his regained security. Such a hidden nature, which instinctively employs speech for silence and concealment, and is inexhaustible in evasion of communication, DESIRES and insists that a mask of himself shall occupy his place in the hearts and heads of his friends; and supposing he does not desire it, his eyes will some day be opened to the fact that there is nevertheless a mask of him there--and that it is well to be so. Every profound spirit needs a mask; nay, more, around every profound spirit there continually grows a mask, owing to the constantly false, that is to say, SUPERFICIAL interpretation of every word he utters, every step he takes, every sign of life he manifests.

From the same chapter. Take it as a hint too OP.

[Anonymous No.15517552]

>>15515138
Ignore this, he got it all wrong. There's many books on it. Deleuze's book on Nietzsche is really good and clear, even if it is a sui generis conceptualization of Nietzsche's philosophy.

[Anonymous No.15517571]

It's like Plato and his idea of the good being left vague. Either leaves it that way so the reader has to think for themselves and maybe he just doesn't know. Probably the latter

[Anonymous No.15517889]

>>15514114
will to power is self suggestive

[Anonymous No.15518966]

>>15514114
He mentions that the will to power is the fundamental instinct of all life (not just humans). Rather than self-preservation being the primary instinct, like Darwin would suggest, Nietzsche thinks it is the drive to discharge energy.

>>15515169
I could be wrong but the will to power was fundamentally based on his understanding of Boscovichs theory of atoms, and because he was still trying to completely figure out his theory (in his notebooks there are many mentions of will to power and terms related to Boscovichs theory from 1882-1888?) we never received a complete published explanation of how he believed the will to power actually operates (the will to power is fundamentally based on the idea that there are only forces and no matter, the belief in matter was only a residue of Christen belief). I got this information from a section in Nietzsche, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Science.

[Anonymous No.15518973]

>>15514114
Beyond Good and Evil. You should read TSZ and Geneology to get a feel for what it might be, maybe even some of the more bombastic aphorisms in WTP. BGE 13 is especially relevant for a more direct sketch.

[Anonymous No.15518998]

>>15515138
This is sort of in the right direction but I think there’s a necessary distinction to be made between intentional and unintentional will. On the hand, the will to power is everything: it is constantly expressing, retracting, finding new ways to discharge strength even if that means expressing what we identify as “weakness,” etc. Hence why dangerous psychological mechanisms like ressentiment can really make or break one’s will. You never know exactely what will is up to on every level of identification, only that finally it is expressing strength, even if the analysis of that strength is to your detriment. Again, BGE expresses the various twists and turns here.

[Anonymous No.15519013]

>>15515161
Will to power is a concept that finds is earliest direct reference in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, written in the middle of Nietzsche’s career, and most certainly thought through with the intention of publication by the time we get Beyond Good and Evil, which is to say nothing of the self-titled work you’re referring which has demonstrable value throughout the secondary literature. Stay “edgy” and “enlightened” though, fag.

[Anonymous No.15519028]

>>15515161
This is misinformation, Nietzsche mentions the will to power in most or all of his later works, and writes extensively about it throughout his notebooks as well. The real sign that someone hasn't read Nietzsche is when they try to explain the Will to Power as only being a short-sighted, uncontrollable impulse that drives a person to act like a retard with no thought for the consequences of their actions, which is an over-simplistic and general interpretation which doesn't apply to everyone.

[Anonymous No.15519030]

>>15515169
No, he went crazy because he was ill. He clearly states a definition of will, it’s applicable, positive upshot in Dionysian Pessimism, its aim toward the future in the concept of higher men as well as the philosophy of the future, and the only “maddening” depth he fathomed until his illness was the serious challenge of nihilism, which, again, conceptually he had a solution to, though he could not see it instantiated given his own timely reference (give the guy a break).

[Anonymous No.15519035]

>>15515315
You haven’t read Zarathustra through Twilight if the Idols, if you think this.

>>15517282
This is accurate. Again, see BGE 13 and the surrounding aphorisms.

[Anonymous No.15519044]

>>15518966
I love your contextualization of this. I reread this passage yesterday and have been thinking through this myself. Thank you based actual reader.

[Anonymous No.15519052]

>>15518966
Kaufmann has a relevant footnote to this in his translation btw