Nietzsche was one of the most important philosophers of the 19th century, along with other important personalities, such as Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx. These thinkers were called “philosophers of suspicion” for their eagerness to unmask the lie hidden under the enlightened values of rationality. and the truth. Today we will speak specifically of the will to power in Nietzsche.
According to Nietzsche, Western culture is addicted to having sought to establish rationality in all aspects of life.
- Since the dawn of Western culture in Greece.
- Rationality has been a symptom of decline.
- Everything that opposes the values of man’s instinctive and biological existence is decadent.
To understand Nietzschean philosophy, we must not forget his harsh criticism of Plato for postulating the world of ideas. His philosophy rejects these metaphysical traps: the rational world, the moral world and the religious world.
The fundamental principle of Nietzschean theory is the concept of life. To understand what this thinker meant by “life”, one must not lose sight of the absolute denial of the platonic rational world.
For the German philosopher, life is based on two basic principles: the principle of conservation and the principle of augmentation.
He says that life exists only to the extent that it is preserved, it is clear that this capacity for conservation is due to constant movement, to the need to increase, if what is preserved does not increase, dies. Life is preserved because it increases through understanding what makes us have more life.
This whole living space, which we have echoed from principles, is understood as a will to be able.
The two vital principles of Nietzschean philosophy are conservation and augmentation. If we don’t try to increase what we have, we won’t be able to keep what we have.
The will to power is the same evolution of life, we can even say that life is the will to power because that is what conquers what we aspire to, tries to achieve what we want and dominates what we have.
The will to power is life expelled to a horizon where we find and get what we want, so you want things and you want to increase what you have.
However, it is essential to say that the will to power, before wanting something, must mean; only then will you want to increase what you have to maintain what you already have.
Imagine that we want to buy a car, but when we want we do not have enough cash to get it, the preservation of this desire will only be possible if we work to try to increase our savings to be able to pay for the desired car. .
If we did nothing to achieve this goal, that desire would disappear as desire and as motivation.
Since the will to power wants its own preservation, it also understands that everything it has achieved will not be able to maintain it if it only preserves it. To stay, you have to increase, you have to keep gaining ground.
The will to power is intentional and designed for the world of life, the only place where you can get what you want. The nature of this will is movement, which never stops, continues to expand.
According to Nietzsche, if we settle for what we have right now and do not try to increase it, we will die (in the metaphorical sense where the will to power is petrified).
“There are no facts. Are there only interpretations?”
Where’s the truth? For the German philosopher, it is clear that he is in the will of power. There is a very close relationship between truth and power.
Imagine that a particular media outlet publishes news in the morning, all other media will do the same, and everyone will tell the story from the point of view of their ideology.
Is it likely that each person will take it? Fact? Published by the media that best suits your ideas.
Now imagine that, given the different versions of the media, a controversy arises, and at night, people of different means come together to discuss which, for them, is the truth of what happened (truths stand out). they collide precisely because there are only interpretations of the facts. )
It is at this point that a critical mind will understand that truth is the daughter of power.
It is therefore obvious that hegemonic truth will always be underpinned by power, for it is a powerful expression of the will it wants to increase to be preserved (to understand this, let us think of totalitarian regimes whose truth was truth). .
For Nietzsche, any desire for power that does not seek to grow to preserve is merely a life imbued with nothing: what do we mean today by nihilism (the word nihilism comes from Latin nihil, an indefinite and indefinite pronoun that means nothing??).