A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life itself is will to power

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	• Beyond Good and Evil (Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future) Friedrich Nietzsche Vintage Books, 1966 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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The Posthumous Man

Nietzsche is the most inspiring of all modern philosophers excepting Ayn Rand, who used a very different approach for exposing her philosophy (The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged). Beyond Good and Evil is often touted as Nietzsche's greatest work, but I like Geneology of Morals ( On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo) at least as much, since I think it asks some questions that are at least as interesting as these, especially "Meaning of the Aesthetic Ideal". Some people imagine that philosophers are boring, and of course this book, like all important books, does take some work, but I often find myself laughing out loud when reading Nietzsche, since he has a really funny and often unexpected turn of phrase.

The important concepts in this book include the difference between slave morality and master morality. Nietzsche tries to help the reader understand that there are no absolutes and that everything can be understood differently from a different point of view. He sees the greatest danger as the mindless, instinctive herd, and warns strongly against it, including especially the flawed and oxymoronic concept of the "common good". Since the rise of the Jacobins, more people have been murdered, starved to death or enslaved for the "common good" than for any other excuse.

After Nietzsche went insane from syphillus, his sister tried to "reengineer" his works and portray him as anti-Semitic, which he definitely was not. The Nazis also propagandized that he was, or would have been, one of them. None of this was true, but it led many to avoid his work. What IS true is that he was an anti-Christian (read The Anti-Christ and Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for None and All) and THAT has led to his shunning by a different group.

Read Nietzsche for yourself and don't depend on some guide to tell you what he says. Ignore the boring Cliff Notes and get any translation by Walter Kaufmann, who is a terrific translator and famous Nietzsche scholar.

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A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life itself is will to power

This was required reading for a graduate course in the Humanities.
Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of a "will to power" is central to his philosophical beliefs, and a recurring theme in his book "Beyond Good and Evil." When Nietzsche was a budding philosopher, he admired and was influenced by the writings of another philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer. However, Schopenhauer, like most scientists and philosophers of his day, attributed the "will to live" as the highest motivational life force in nature. Nietzsche observed that the "will to live" was not life affirming enough and that humankind needed a higher power. Therefore, Nietzsche theorized that living beings were not just motivated by a survival instinct to live. He understood that beings had a higher need, which he called the "will to power." One can easily interpret Nietzsche's "will to power" as a method by which people strive to grow and nurture their creative energies, and interact with the world. Nietzsche thinks that "will to power" was coupled with humankind's innate nature and passion to create. Nietzsche thinks that this "will to power" was the true driving force of humankind. "A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life itself is will to power, self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results" (Nietzsche Aphorism 13). The "will to power" causes humans to dominate and impose their will on others. Thus for Nietzsche, humankind's "will to power" meant that life and will is the exploitation of others, and it has been since the beginning of time, immemorial (Nietzsche Aphorism 258). In fact, Nietzsche believed that one could take his concept of the "will to power" one-step further, and use it to explain the motivations of whole societies, and nation states, as well as the individual (Nietzsche aphorism 257, 259).

Nietzsche tends to be very passionate and absolutist in his aphorisms. He wrote so much that one could find plenty of instances in his works where he has contradicted himself. Nietzsche's concept of "will to power" is a philosophic thought, which led to many interpretations. To assume that Nietzsche thought that the primary instincts of the human being came down to violence and little else, amounts to a gross underestimation of Nietzsche's views of humankind. However, most of his writings on the concept of a "will to power," if interpreted as being violent, have to be understood more in vain with what he saw as the constant struggle of overcoming one's individual weaknesses (Nietzsche aphorism 22, 260). Nietzsche envisioned his "will to power" more along the lines of applying one's will in self-overcoming. Nietzsche's writings about violence are usually meant as violence against giving in to the herd or slave morality. The herd, as Nietzsche names it, is the vast majority of humans who throughout history have obeyed and followed the status quo. The herd has stymied human development with their slave morality (Nietzsche aphorism 198, 199). The slave morality invented the dichotomy of good and evil. "Moral judgments and condemnations constitute the favorite revenge of the spiritually limited against those less limited" (Nietzsche aphorism 219). The herd morality causes people to sublimate their creative drive. Thus, Nietzsche is imploring the few noble humans--the few geniuses to struggle against following the herd morality. Nietzsche wants the noble people to invent their own morality and values to live their lives by, and to fulfill their own "will to power" and not indulge in an effort to attract others to their values (Nietzsche aphorism 199, 201, 260).

Recommended reading for anyone interested in philosophy, history, and psychology.

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