The Will to Power

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Summary: Opus Magnum
Review: This is Nietzsche's opus magnum. It contains collected notes and unfinished chapters from 1884-1888. Published posthumously by his sister, this book contains his biography and all of his essential themes and philosophies. In it he talks about the Ubermensch. The Ubermensch is the man who has overcame himself and grows each day. He is the one who reveals his will to power on the environment that surrounds him. He lives in the moment of each and every second. He is the man who has organized his passions of chaos and is disciplined. He is the ultimate artist who has created himself and given himself a specific style. He lives without resentment and, if able to live his life over again, would; which is another new theme, eternal reoccurrence which states that history of the world repeats itself over and over again and we live our lives again and again. This idea is both revolutionary and skeptical, yet it was another idea from a revolutionary thinker. In The Will To Power, Nietzsche talks of all his ideas: The Antichrist, Christian Morality and Art. He talks of life being a beautiful piece of art and how one must be the artist of his own life. The Will to Power suggests that one will become more and more influential to his surrounding atmosphere. One must make more and more effects through his creations, but one mustn't become too complex or he will lose more and more power. There is some speculation that Nietzsche's sister and her husband arranged many of Nietzsche's notes after his death and may have changed many things in his original notes. His sister was anti-semitic and Nietzsche did not organize his thoughts on paper as well as he organized his passions. Still, this is Nietzsche's opus magnum, the one book that contains all of his thoughts and philosophies and conclusions.

Rating:
Summary: A book for the wise..No Poseurs!
Review: This work is only going to appeal to a few people. Some will simply pick it up as entertainment, some will only buy it to complete their collection or perhaps buy it for reference. However there are a select few who will read this, perhaps on accident, or on advice from some of the reviewers here and they will discover a new world. That is one of the things that initially attracted me to philosophy, to feel and understand different ways of seeing the world. As beautiful as Nietzsche's ideas may be, I often find he is the most misunderstood philospher. I am not going to go into the cliched rant about how he was misinterpreted by the Nazis, etc. Personally I think that hit the nail on the head on most his ideas. Yes, he was not antisemitic and the nazis were. However Nietzsche seemed to still advocate mass murder for the weak, by they white, black,jew, etc. What I find most laughable is those people who like to talk about how Nietzsche doesn't have a true interpretation or how he contradicts himself. Contradiction in the sense of logical contradiction will be impossible to find in Nietzsche's works. If he appears to contradict himself on the surface, then you should be guaranteed that you have failed to understand him in the right manner. Nietzsche is not that difficult to understand. If you read his works enough, and don't have certain preconceptions in mind then it shouldnt' be a problem. Nietzsche was an immoralist. He says it is this book and in his published works as well. I find is simply ludicrous that people will constantly try to make his ideas less severe and harsh. He believed morality was much like taste for foods. Morality is determined by the person's biology. Ubermensch would be those persons who had biology that was superior (in his view, obviously since I don't anyone would seriously try to support an objective notion of superiority) while the weak in his view were weak precisely because of their physiology. Since Nietzsche believed that the soul or the mind was really nothing over and above the body, then obviously people's behaviors, traits,etc. would be determined almost exclusively by their physiology. Much like a person may prefer certain breeds of dogs to others, so did Nietzsche prefer certain breeds of humans to others (although the perfect breed for him, the Ubermensch, did not exist yet). A certain breed of dog would only seem to be superior or inferior to another breed (according to a particular's persons view) based on their traits were are predominantly biological determined. Just apply this example to humans. Now many may bicker about how Nietzsche never uses these examples. True,but if you understand someone's ideas well enough you should be able to characterize it in words and examples other than their own. I have found that the greatest difficulty with Nietzsche is connecting his ideas in a logical and coherent framework. Because of the nature of his writings, often aphoristic, poetic, and unconventional for philosophers, he is easily misunderstood. Unfortunately he often uses a word to mean different things in different contexts and he is usually not specific about exactly what many of the terms he uses means. However if you read enough of his work and think long enough, as I did, you begin to connect the ideas and decipher the meanings in their specific contexts. Do not candycoat Nietzsche. In Ecce Homo, one of his last published works, he talks of how he has been misunderstood and interpreted in a very innocent way. He says that most people interpreted his superman (and I think this word should be used instead of overman...Bruce Detwyler gives a good reason why in his book, Nietzsche: the politics of aristocratic radicalism--i suggest you take a look at this work if you have difficulty understanding Nietzsche rather than Kaufman---remember just because someone is an accepted scholar on something doesn't make them right..especially since a great deal of recent Nietzsche scholarship from Detwyler, Schutte, and Gillespie have greatly disputed Kaufman's views)as a half saint, half genius, as the very opposite of what Zarathustra, the annihilator of morality, was supposed to be...

Rating:
Summary: The tone of strength is the teaching of contempt
Review: When reading these thoughts many years ago I tried to understand whether Neitzsche had succeeded and reduced all of human action and thought, all explanation and understanding to one central purpose ' the will to power'. I tried too to make sense of what ' power' meant for Neitzsche without coming in my own mind to a satisfactory understanding.
What impressed in the reading was of course the striking aphoristic strength of Nietzsche whose unexpected and very powerful sentences struck the mind like hard hammer blows. Here was a writer a thinker of startling brilliance, whose thoughts were of value for the purely aesthetic quality , if nothing else.
Yet the world of ideas , perhaps not of Neitzsche but of his worst interpreters also resonated from and back into the book. It is wonderful to be a scholar and truly understand what Neitzsche meant with the ' overman- superman' business but this theme was peddled by his own sister and picked up by the evil to justify the murder of millions of innocents. However one soft- peddles it the Neitzschean contempt for those who champion a kind of human equality, leads to a celebration of the ' worst' . "Will " " Power " Conquest" unfortunately are words employed by Neitzsche and used by others in ways which are Evil.
Can a thinker be blamed for all the misuses made of his ideas? Probably not. But something of the tone of contempt inherent in Neitzche's very strength as a writer leads to darkness blacker than any philosophical light however striking and beautiful can diminish.