The Will to Power An Attempted Transvaluation Of All Values By Friedrich Nietzsche Translated By Anthony M. Ludovici In the volume before us we have the first two books of what was to be Nietzsche's greatest theoretical and philosophical prose work. The reception given to Thus Spake Zarathustra had been so unsatisfactory, and misunderstandings relative to its teaching had become so general, that, within a year of the publication of the first part of that famous philosophical poem, Nietzsche was already beginning to see the necessity of bringing his doctrines before the public in a more definite and unmistakable form. During the years that followed--that is to say, between 1883 and 1886--this plan was matured, and although we have no warrant, save his sister's own word and the internal evidence at our disposal, for classing Beyond Good and Evil (published 1886) among the contributions to Nietzsche's grand and final philosophical scheme, "The Will to Power," it is now impossible to separate it entirely from his chief work as we would naturally separate The Birth of Tragedy, the Thoughts out of Season, the volumes entitled Human, all-too-Human, The Dawn of Day, and Joyful Wisdom.
Paying particular attention to the issue of how to read Nietzsche, this book presents a series of accessible essays on the work of this influential German philosopher. The contributions include many of the leading Nietzsche scholars in the United States today - Frithjof Bergmann, Arthur Danto, Bernd Magnus, Christopher Middleton, Lars Gustaffson, Alexander Nehamas, Richard Schacht, Gary Shapiro, and Ivan Soll - and the majority of the essays have never been published. Works discussed include On the Genealogy of Morals, Beyond Good and Evil, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Twilight of the Idols, and The Will to Power.
A penetrating study of the sister who betrayed and endangered her famous brother's legacy In 1901, a year after her brother Friedrich's death, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche published The Will to Power, a hasty compilation of writings he had never intended for print. In Nietzsche's Sister and the Will to Power, Carol Diethe contends that Förster-Nietzsche's own will to power and her desire to place herself--not her brother--at the center of cultural life in Germany are centrally responsible for Nietzsche's reputation as a belligerent and proto-Fascist thinker. Offering a new look at Nietzsche's sister from a feminist perspective, this spirited and erudite biography examines why Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche recklessly consorted with anti-Semites, from her own husband to Hitler himself, out of convenience and a desire for revenge against a brother whose love for her waned after she caused the collapse of his friendship with Lou Salomé. The book also examines their family dynamics, Nietzsche's dismissal of his sister's early writing career, and the effects of limited education on intelligent women. Diethe concludes by detailing Förster-Nietzsche's brief marriage and her subsequent colonial venture in Paraguay, maintaining that her sporadic anti-Semitism was, like most things in her life, an expedient tool for cultivating personal success and status. A volume in the series International Nietzsche Studies, edited by Richard Schacht
The will to power is a prominent concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. The will to power describes what Nietzsche may have believed to be the main driving force in humans - achievement, ambition, and the striving to reach the highest possible position in life. These are all manifestations of the will to power; however, the concept was never systematically defined in Nietzsche's work, leaving its interpretation open to debate.
The book proposes a critique of Nietzsche's works 'from within'. In doing so, it answers the continuing question asked by any reader of Nietzsche: Why did he decide not to write the major work he said he would write?
While most recent studies of Nietzsche's works have lost sight of the fundamental question of the meaning of a life characterized by inescapable suffering, Bernard Reginster's book The Affirmation of Life brings it sharply into focus. Reginster identifies overcoming nihilism as a central objective of Nietzsche's philosophical project, and shows how this concern systematically animates all of his main ideas.
Nietzsche's Mirror introduces the reader to one of the most central and pervasive themes in Friedrich Nietzsche's works—will to power. The book traces Nietzsche's use of the terms 'power,' 'will,' and 'will to power' as they are presented in both the works he authorized for publication and his literary remains, called the Nachlass. The author demonstrates that will to power as it is presented in the Nachlass differs from the way it is presented in the works Nietzsche authorized for publication before his collapse in 1889. Then it is argued that the problems that the Nachlass poses for scholars suggests that the Nachlass material should not be held in the same regard as the works Nietzsche authorized for publication. Because of the discrepancy between the published and unpublished writings, will to power should not be interpreted as a metaphysical principle operating behind the world, since the metaphysical-sounding passages are located in the Nachlass, but rather as a tool for interpreting relations, especially human relations, within the world. The final chapter examines Nietzsche's unique style of writing, which the author calls 'mirror writing.' Mirror writing is a technique Nietzsche deliberately employs in order to have such visionary themes as will to power, master morality, and eternal recurrence reflect the reader's values back to himself. Since this book is meant to be an introduction to will to power, at the end of each chapter is a list of additional books, so that the reader can delve further into the themes presented in the chapter, such as Nietzsche's biography, ethics, writings on truth, and eternal recurrence.