Nietzsche and Power What Does Nietzsche Mean

Nietzsche and Power

What does Nietzsche mean by a "will to power," or "life affirmation?"

"The world itself is the will to power -- and nothing else. And you, yourself are the will to power, and nothing else!" F. Nietzsche

Much of Nietzsche's thought seems to be about the concept of human beings, not individuals, but the species, overcoming mediocrity and becoming "better." Certainly, his ideas are sometimes translated out to mean "nothing matters," but his basic views do not seem to fit that idea. Nietzsche's advice is somewhat of an argument -- man is the immature being, and there is an ongoing process that must happen for humans to actualize. Nietzsche is not saying that he is this ubermensch, this person who has all the power; nor is he arguing knowing that people cannot rise to the occasion. Instead, he is asking humans to rise above the mundane, to become more than they are, and in a sense, to do what Marx and Engels complained that capitalism prevented one from doing -- self-actualize -- or take the "will to power" and "affirm life."

For Nietzsche, The great majority lacks and intelligent conscience. Nietzsche seems to be looking around at society and finding a real duality in the nature of humans. This duality appears again and again; as good/evil, selfish/magnanimous, spiritual/pagan, etc. He does see humans as being creatures that are unwilling to ask the hard questions, to move beyond a sense of routine and comfort into an area where it is difficult to reconcile certain things. Nietzsche is simply asking us to go beyond that stage -- and think. The "will to power" is to take responsibility for one's actions and do something with one's life that will contribute to the greater good of human society:

But there is nothing outside the whole! -- This only is the grand emancipation: that no one be made responsible any longer, that the mode of being be not traced back to a causa prima, that the world be not regarded as a unity, either as sensorium or as "spirit;" -- it is only thereby that the innocence of becoming is again restored… (Twilight, p. 36)

Part 2 -- Analysis -- People that give up their power, to Nietzsche at least, give it up because they either cannot find a way to dig deep enough into themselves to fight against the flow or because they lack the knowledge to do so. Those, then, that give up their power, give it up willingly, they have a choice, and that choice is to continually affirm one's nature as human by moving beyond the chattel of external authority and find that which is morally and ethically the right battle towards the future. Of major importance is the merit of the choice, for that is when freedom is truly found… "And verily, many a chance came imperiously unto me: but still more imperiously did my Will speak unto it. . . "(Zarathustra, Portable, 283). While human nature remains a constant battle between good and evil, this two-part nature (which causes free will to even occur), removes the invention of religious freedom and moves society towards personal freedom, which will then emerge as allowing the individual person to become a better human.