Robert Solomon

Nietzsche’s “will to power” is not about political maneuverings but a psychological hypothesis about what drives human (and animal) behavior. He rejects what he sees as the rampantly hedonistic theory of his English (and some German) counterparts, their idea that people (and animals) are universally motivated by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Throughout his works Nietzsche insightfully catalogues cases of human behavior that cannot be explained by the hedonist paradigm. Heroes and martyrs accept the most excruciating pain and an agonizing death, not to gain pleasure or avoid worse pain but to prove something, to make a point, to win a great victory.

Indeed, what Nietzsche most often celebrates under this rubric is self-discipline and creative energy, and it is not so much having power or even feeling power that Nietzsche cites as the motivation of our behavior as the need to increase one’s strength and vitality to do great things—for example, to write great books in philosophy.