Trajectory (plain list)
Will to power
Published appearances only — hypothesis and valuation in Beyond Good and Evil, not the forged notebook book. The will to power names a way of reading life and value-creation.
1886 · Anticipates
Beyond Good and Evil · §22
Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
Physics as interpretation: “laws of nature” read as democratic prejudice against a world of commanding power.
Let me be pardoned, as an old philologist who cannot desist from the mischief of putting his finger on bad modes of interpretation, but "Nature's conformity to law," of which you physicists talk so proudly, as though--why, it exists only owing to your interpretation and bad "philology." It is no matter of fact, no "text," but rather just a naively humanitarian adjustment and perversion of meaning, with which you make abundant concessions to the democratic instincts of the mod…
Man vergebe es mir als einem alten Philologen, der von der Bosheit nicht lassen kann, auf schlechte Interpretations-Künste den Finger zu legen - aber jene "Gesetzmässigkeit der Natur", von der ihr Physiker so stolz redet, wie als ob - - besteht nur Dank eurer Ausdeutung und schlechten "Philologie", - sie ist kein Thatb…
Sources: gutenberg:4363 · gutenberg:7204
1886 · Introduces
Beyond Good and Evil · §36
Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
The world viewed from inside: will to power offered as the most extreme hypothesis of a living world.
Supposing that nothing else is "given" as real but our world of desires and passions, that we cannot sink or rise to any other "reality" but just that of our impulses--for thinking is only a relation of these impulses to one another:--are we not permitted to make the attempt and to ask the question whether this which is "given" does not SUFFICE, by means of our counterparts, for the understanding even of the so-called mechanical (or "material") world? I do not mean as an illu…
Gesetzt, dass nichts Anderes als real "gegeben" ist als unsre Welt der Begierden und Leidenschaften, dass wir zu keiner anderen "Realität" hinab oder hinauf können als gerade zur Realität unsrer Triebe - denn Denken ist nur ein Verhalten dieser Triebe zu einander -: ist es nicht erlaubt, den Versuch zu machen und die F…
Sources: gutenberg:4363 · gutenberg:7204
1886 · Develops
Beyond Good and Evil · §259
Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
Exploitation and overcoming cast as functions of living will to power, against egalitarian moralisation.
To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, and put one's will on a par with that of others: this may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary conditions are given (namely, the actual similarity of the individuals in amount of force and degree of worth, and their co-relation within one organization). As soon, however, as one wished to take this principle more generally, and if possible even as the FUNDAMENTAL …
Sich gegenseitig der Verletzung, der Gewalt, der Ausbeutung enthalten, seinen Willen dem des Andern gleich setzen: dies kann in einem gewissen groben Sinne zwischen Individuen zur guten Sitte werden, wenn die Bedingungen dazu gegeben sind (nämlich deren thatsächliche Ähnlichkeit in Kraftmengen und Werthmaassen und ihre…
Sources: gutenberg:4363 · gutenberg:7204
1886 · Develops
Beyond Good and Evil · §211
Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
The philosopher as commander and legislator — will to power as the task of creating values.
I insist upon it that people finally cease confounding philosophical workers, and in general scientific men, with philosophers--that precisely here one should strictly give "each his own," and not give those far too much, these far too little. It may be necessary for the education of the real philosopher that he himself should have once stood upon all those steps upon which his servants, the scientific workers of philosophy, remain standing, and MUST remain standing he himsel…
Ich bestehe darauf, dass man endlich aufhöre, die philosophischen Arbeiter und überhaupt die wissenschaftlichen Menschen mit den Philosophen zu verwechseln, - dass man gerade hier mit Strenge "Jedem das Seine" und Jenen nicht zu Viel, Diesen nicht viel zu Wenig gebe. Es mag zur Erziehung des wirklichen Philosophen nöth…
Sources: gutenberg:4363 · gutenberg:7204
1886 · Develops
Beyond Good and Evil · §23
Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
Psychology announced as morphology and development-doctrine of the will to power.
All psychology hitherto has run aground on moral prejudices and timidities, it has not dared to launch out into the depths. In so far as it is allowable to recognize in that which has hitherto been written, evidence of that which has hitherto been kept silent, it seems as if nobody had yet harboured the notion of psychology as the Morphology and DEVELOPMENT-DOCTRINE OF THE WILL TO POWER, as I conceive of it. The power of moral prejudices has penetrated deeply into the most in…
Die gesammte Psychologie ist bisher an moralischen Vorurtheilen und Befürchtungen hängen geblieben: sie hat sich nicht in die Tiefe gewagt. Dieselbe als Morphologie und Entwicklungslehre des Willens zur Macht zufassen, wie ich sie fasse - daran hat noch Niemand in seinen Gedanken selbst gestreift: sofern es nämlich erl…
Sources: gutenberg:4363 · gutenberg:7204
1887 · Develops
The Joyful Science · §349
The Joyful Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882/87)
Against Darwinist “struggle for life”: expansion as will to power.
_The Origin of the Learned once more._—To seek self-preservation merely, is the expression of a state of distress, or of limitation of the true, fundamental instinct of life, which aims at the _extension of power_, and with this in view often enough calls in question self-preservation and sacrifices it. It should be taken as symptomatic when individual philosophers, as for example, the consumptive Spinoza, have seen and have been obliged to see the principal feature of life p…
Sources: gutenberg:52881
1887 · Develops
On the Genealogy of Morality · II §12
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Meaning as overpowering: a Will to Power mastering a weaker force.
A word more on the origin and end of punishment--two problems which are or ought to be kept distinct, but which unfortunately are usually lumped into one. And what tactics have our moral genealogists employed up to the present in these cases? Their inveterate naïveté. They find out some "end" in the punishment, for instance, revenge and deterrence, and then in all their innocence set this end at the beginning, as the _causa fiendi_ of the punishment, and--they have done the t…
Sources: gutenberg:52319
1887 · Develops
On the Genealogy of Morality · II §18
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Bad conscience as will to power turned inward upon the animal self.
Beware of thinking lightly of this phenomenon, by reason of its initial painful ugliness. At bottom it is the same active force which is at work on a more grandiose scale in those potent artists and organisers, and builds states, which here, internally, on a smaller and pettier scale and with a retrogressive tendency, makes itself a bad science in the "labyrinth of the breast," to use Goethe's phrase, and which builds negative ideals; it is, I repeat, that identical _instinct…
Sources: gutenberg:52319
1887 · Comments on
On the Genealogy of Morality · III §27
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Title deferred to a future book — the concept outruns the published station (and the forged Nachlass compilation is not cited here).
Enough! enough! let us leave these curiosities and complexities of the modern spirit, which excite as much laughter as disgust. Our problem can certainly do without them, the problem of _meaning_ of the ascetic ideal--what has it got to do with yesterday or to-day? those things shall be handled by me more thoroughly and severely in another connection (under the title "A Contribution to the History of European Nihilism," I refer for this to a work which I am preparing: _The Wi…
Sources: gutenberg:52319
1888 · Comments on
Ecce Homo · Why I Write Such Good Books · Birth of Tragedy §3
Ecce Homo (1888)
Retrospective binding of tragic affirmation to the later vocabulary of power and recurrence.
The extent to which I had by means of these doctrines discovered the idea of "tragedy," the ultimate explanation of what the psychology of tragedy is, I discussed finally in _The Twilight of the Idols_ (Aph. 5, part 10).... "The saying of yea to life, and even to its weirdest and most difficult problems: the will to life rejoicing at its own infinite vitality in the sacrifice of its highest types--that is what I called Dionysian, that is what I meant as the bridge to the psyc…
Sources: gutenberg:52190
1888 · Develops
Twilight of the Idols · TI-things-i-owe-to-the-ancients-3
Twilight of the Idols (1888)
Romans diagnosed: strongest instinct, the Will to Power.
To rout up cases of “beautiful souls,” “golden means” and other perfections among the Greeks, to admire, say, their calm grandeur, their ideal attitude of mind, their exalted simplicity—from this “exalted simplicity,” which after all is a piece of _niaiserie allemande,_ I was preserved by the psychologist within me. I saw their strongest instinct, the Will to Power, I saw them quivering with the fierce violence of this instinct,—I saw all their institutions grow out of measur…
Sources: gutenberg:52263
1888 · Develops
Ecce Homo · EH-why-i-am-a-fatality-4
Ecce Homo (1888)
Passions and will to power more necessary than petty “goodness.”
In reality two negations are involved in my title Immoralist. I first of all deny the type of man that has hitherto been regarded as the highest--the _good,_ the _kind,_ and the _charitable_; and I also deny that kind of morality which has become recognised and paramount as morality-in-itself--I speak of the morality of decadence, or, to use a still cruder term, Christian morality. I would agree to the second of the two negations being regarded as the more decisive, for, reck…
Sources: gutenberg:52190