Nietzsche’s Vitalism: Will to Power and the Superman
Nietzsche’s Vitalism: Will to Power
Vitalism: Nietzsche focuses on the relationship between Will and the power of life. The Will to Power leads us to act in order to affirm ourselves. It is the strength and enthusiasm that enables us to overcome ourselves. The characteristics that Nietzsche reflects on regarding the Will to Power are the following:
- Unconscious: The Will to Power is tied to the body, a boost and is part of the body, making it more of a force of defense.
- Free: The Will to Power is the freedom to do what the body asks for. Freedom is manifested in the love of oneself; the more freedom ends where the force begins.
- Peculiar: The Will to Power is always changing according to feeding, age, etc.
- Demand-resistance: The Will to Power seeks to oppose forces because it needs to affirm itself.
- Creative: The desire to create unique ways of life that make us different, and we need to reassert the pain. The Will to Power needs the unpleasant feeling to grow and cannot maintain a balance; therefore, it faces life in a mode that includes the tragedy of tragedies.
- No external purposes: The Will cannot search for anything; pleasure and happiness are consequences, secondary phenomena.
- Diverse: The Will to Power is variable depending on the time and also expands as it includes many different activities.
On the other hand, we find life denying the Will to Power. We can say that life is force and energy and that will pretend to affirm life. Besides, life can face two different shapes: with a strong Will to Power (ascending) and a weak Will to Power (descending). Differentiate them by focusing on the desire to improve, with his relationship with pain and dealing with the instincts.
The Concept of the Superman (Übermensch)
On the other hand, we must highlight the concept of the Superman (Übermensch). We begin by stating that the human being possesses multiple impulses and instincts, each with its own perspective. The constant struggle between these is an infinite, eternal process, without end, but we have to love life so that we willingly re-live it forever. This approach allows us to overcome the human and provides a bridge to the Superman (representing the new values). In the book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, Nietzsche explains the metamorphoses that occur in the transition from human to Superman: Spirit -> Camel -> Lion -> Child. The child is the last step, since it represents the being free, not fighting, just enjoying existence in a playful way of life, and delivered to the destination and not more repent the past and hopes for the future anything.
Characteristics of the Superman:
- Ignores prejudice.
- Does not believe in equality but in differences and hierarchies.
- Incorporates suffering and pain into life as an element that enriches.
Type / Variety / Intention: The typology can be related to the variety of linguistic and communicative intention, since the order of the text conveys information and convinces us, and this argument uses the text along with a standard record and therefore an average degree of formality.
Voices of Discourse: On the one hand, we must distinguish the type of author and reader. On the other hand, we analyze the participants in communication.
- Sender / receiver (pronouns, verbs, determiners of 1st or 2nd person)
- Modalization rating of the issuer-subjectivity.
- Impersonal, seeks objectivity.
- Intertextuality, is a reference to another text or author.
Type: Enunciative, exclamatory, desiderative, tentative, interrogative total (yes/no) or partial imperative.
Functions: Representative, touching, appellate, poetic, metalinguistic.