ABSTRACT
This chapter examines one of Nietzsche’s most important and enigmatic formulations: will to power. Of all of Nietzsche’s terms, ‘will to power’ is the one most closely associated with his name in the popular imagination, where it is generally taken to describe a vision and a justification of life conceived as the violent domination of the weak by the strong. Like most clichés, this reading conceals a residue of truth, but it only highlights the most dramatic element of what Nietzsche claims to be an entirely new theory of life. In anticipation of the difficulties that beset discussions of this field, it must be said that it is uncertain whether ‘will to power’ may even be adequately represented as a ‘theory’, ‘idea’ or ‘principle’ given Nietzsche’s insistence that it names a productive force that both creates and transforms any version of ‘being’ or ‘reality’ that we encounter. The world envisaged as will to power, we might say, offers a dynamic vision of life experienced simultaneously as noun and verb in which every aspect of existence receives a new interpretation. In order to understand this new vision of life, however, we must first determine what Nietzsche meant by ‘will’ and ‘power’ and establish exactly what is at stake in rethinking life in these terms.
