Nietzsche and the Problem of the Will in Modernity

No other concept in Nietzsche’s corpus is more controversial and has met with such a wide variety of interpretations than that of will to power. Heidegger demands that we interpret the notion in terms of Nietzsche’s consummation of the modern philosophical project which begins with the Cartesian positing of the human ego as the source of all meaning and value in the world. On this reading, the will to power signals the ‘triumph’ of man’s technological will to domination and mastery which characterizes the Machtpolitik of the modern age. A more common reading is one which understands will to power in terms of a psychological metaphysics where the ‘power’ (over persons and things) posited in the notion replaces ‘life’ or ‘happiness’ as the object of the ‘will’. In this manner Nietzsche’s central philosophical notion is understood as little more than an inversion of Schopenhauer’s positing of a will to life: where Schopenhauer demands that we negate the blind and destructive will, Nietzsche teaches that we should affirm its nihilistic striving. There is also a well-established tradition which argues that the notion of will to power is best understood as a contribution to an understanding of the nature of human autonomy and self-realization. A recent examination of the relationship between Nietzsche and political thought by Mark Warren argues that when construed in terms of a philosophy of praxis the doctrine of will to power can provide the basis for the articulation of a ‘postmodern’ conception of human agency in which the autonomous will is conceived not as an abstract metaphysical essence, but as the historical realization of certain social and cultural practices. ¹ Warren argues for a marriage of Kant and Nietzsche in which a philosophy of power (where power denotes the self-reflective desire of the human subject to become a self-determining centre of action) is combined with an ethic of equal respect derived from Kant’s notion of a kingdom of ends. It 166is with this Kantian supplementation of Nietzsche that Warren believes some of the worst excesses of the exploitative will to power can be overcome.