Will to power

For Nietzsche's posthumous manuscript of the same name, see The Will to Power (manuscript).
For other uses, see Will to power (disambiguation).

The will to power (German: der Wille zur Macht) is a 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. However, the concept was never systematically defined in Nietzsche's work, leaving its interpretation open to debate.[1] Usage of the term by Nietzsche can be summarized as self-determination, the concept of actualizing one's will onto one's self or one's surroundings, and coincides heavily with egoism.[2]

  1. ^ "Nietzsche's Moral and Political Philosophy". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2021.
  2. ^ Leiter, Brian (2021), "Nietzsche's Moral and Political Philosophy", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2021 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2022-03-26