Definition of Will to Power

These are forces that intersect, generating either a growth of the living or a stagnation. Thus, the will to power operates successively by shaping and disintegrating the figures of what exists. In the case of the human being, the will to power manifests itself as a attitude playful and creative transvaluation of the moral values —that is, of the continuous production of new meanings— which, for Nietzsche, embodied the decadence of thought western.

The will to power as interpretation

From the Nietzschean point of view, the will to power appears linked to the

movement, but not as a result of an external cause, but immanent. In this sense, for the philosopher, there are no things moved by external forces, but fields of tension within which power relations are configured that give, as a result, different events. All will implies a desire for power, so that there is no power, but dynamic forces in constant change. In this sense, reality is constantly evolving and, in the face of this, the will to power operates creating interpretations about the world, which are in dispute with other possible interpretations. We need, for practical life, interpretations that allow us to give a provisional order to the constant evolution of reality. Such interpretations are related to others in terms of forces in dispute. As a result, for Nietzsche, there is an inseparable relationship between the will to power, interpretation (or perspectivism) and truth, insofar as the latter is understood as a provisional order by which reality is understood from a certain point of view in dispute with other possible interpretations, from other prospects. The will to power is thus what allows us to give a value to the world through our interpretations.

Life and will to power

The will to power is what is at the base of what exists, as an immanent dynamic principle —that is, not as a strength underlying fundamental, in the manner of an ultimate truth, but as a driving force immersed in matter which, in turn, gives it meaning; so it would consist neither of a physical force nor of a psychic force. In this sense, it is what determines the relationships between stability and growth, understood as the conservation of the will to power and the increase of power, respectively.

The will to power, referring to life, is associated with its growth and expansion. Life, from the Nietzschean perspective, does not constitute an essence metaphysics universal —as the vitalist currents affirmed—, that is, it is not defined as an ultimate foundation, but rather is a specific case of the will to power. Thus, life is a continuous production of ways of life —namely, of forms of what exists, without an ultimate foundation— traversed by a social, political and economic framework. When the will to power, instead of expanding life, preserves it, it becomes a sick will to power, which tends towards decadence.

This thesis, together with the notion of the ultraman understood as a "superman", it has cost the philosopher the appropriation of his ideas as part of the ideology of National Socialism. However, it should be noted that the notion of will to power linked to the expansion of the vital in no case refers to territorial expansion as proposed by the Third Reich, whose counterpart was the death of millions of beings humans. The Nietzschean conceptual framework, on the contrary, refers to a vital praxis that reaffirms life and, in this sense, it permanently creates new forms, as opposed to the reaffirmation of death (such as was carried out by the Nazism).