The Will To Power -PDF book by Friedrich Nietzsche

The Will To Power PDF book by Friedrich Nietzsche

The Will To Power

From introduction:

the will to power is a very famous and interesting book, but its stature and its reputation are two very different things. Indeed, the nature and contents of the book are as little known as its title is familiar. In a way this is odd because the book has been so widely cited and discussed; but in the history of ideas one finds perpetually that Hegel was right when he said in the preface to his first book: “What is well-known is not necessarily known merely because it is well-known.”

Two false views of The Will to Power have had their day, in turn. The first was propagated by Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche, the philosopher’s sister, when she first published the book after his death: for a long time, it was widely held to represent Nietzsche’s crowning systematic achievement, to which one had to turn for his final views. Alfred Baumler began his postscript to the handy one-volume edition of the work (Kroner’s Taschenausgabe, 1 vol. 78, 1930): “The Will to Power is Nietzsche’s philosophical magnum opus.

All the fundamental results of his thinking are brought together in this book. The aversion of its author against systematizers must not deter us from calling this work a system.” Philosophically, Baumler was a nobody, but the editions of Nietzsche’s works for which he wrote his postscripts were the most convenient and least expensive and read very widely. Being a Nazi, Baumler was called to Berlin as a professor of philosophy after Hitler came to power.

His ideas about Nietzsche were accepted not only by large numbers of Germans but also by many of Nietzsche’s detractors outside Germany. Ernest Newman, for example, admits in the fourth volume of his Life of Richard Wagner (1946) that his account of Nietzsche relies heavily on Baumler’s “masterly epitome of Nietzsche’s thinking, Nietzsche, Der Philosoph und Politiker ”

Assembled by Nietzsche’s sister after his death, The Will to Power is a collection of the philosopher’s reflections and theories taken from his unpublished notebooks. With explorations of nihilism, scathing critiques of Christianity and morality, and explications of the famous “will to power,” the book was controversially presented as Nietzsche’s all-but-completed magnum opus containing his philosophical system. Including some of his most interesting metaphysical and epistemological thoughts, as well as some of his most disturbing ethical and political comments, the book proved to have a significant influence on Nietzsche’s contentious reception in the twentieth century.

Contents of the book

BOOK ONE. EUROPEAN NIHILISM

I. Nihilism 9

II. History of European Nihilism 40

BOOK TWO. CRITIQUE OF THE HIGHEST VALUES HITHERTO
I. Critique of Religion

1. Genesis of Religions 85

2. History of Christianity 98

3. Christian Ideals 127

II. Critique of Morality

1. Origin of Moral Valuations 146

2. The Herd 156

3. General Remarks on Morality 162

4. How Virtue is Made to Dominate 170

5. The Moral Ideal 180

A. Critique of Ideals 180

B. Critique of the “Good Man,” the Saint, etc. 191

C. Disparagement of the So-Called Evil Qualities 197

D. Critique of the Words:

Improvement, Perfecting, Elevation 210

6. Further Considerations for a Critique of Morality 215

III. Critique of Philosophy

1. General Observations 220

2. Critique of Greek Philosophy 23 1

3. Truth and Error of Philosophers 247

4. Further Considerations for a Critique of Philosophy 253

BOOK THREE. PRINCIPLES OF A NEW EVALUATION

I. The Will to Power as Knowledge

1. Method of Inquiry 261

2. The Epistemological Starting Point 262

3. Belief in the “ Ego The Subject 267

4. Biology of the Drive to Knowledge. Perspectivism 272

5. Origin of Reason and Logic 276

6. Consciousness 283

7. Judgment. True — False 286

8. Against Causalism 293

9. Thing-in-Itself and Appearance 300

10. Metaphysical Need 307

11. Biological Value of Knowledge 322

12. Science 324

II. The Will to Power in Nature

1. The Mechanistic Interpretation of the World 332

2. The Will to Power as Life 341

A. The Organic Process 341

B. Man 347

3. Theory of the Will to Power and of Values 366

III. The Will to Power as Society and Individual

1. Society and State 382

2. The Individual 403

IV. The Will to Power as Art 419

BOOK FOUR. DISCIPLINE AND BREEDING

I. Order of Rank

1. The Doctrine of Order of Rank 457

2. The Strong and the Weak 459

3. The Noble Man 493

4. The Masters of the Earth 500

5. The Great Human Being 504

6. The Highest Man as Legislator of the Future 509

II. Dionysus 520

III. The Eternal Recurrence 544

appendix: Commentary on the facsimiles 551

Author: Friedrich Nietzsche
Translator: Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale
Publication Date: 1967

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