Will to Power as Affect

Abstract

That Nietzsche identified affect/swith will to power seems clear especially from one much-discussed section of Beyond Good Evil. Here, Nietzsche proposes that we should attempt to understand the so-called mechanical or “material” world as a “more primal form of the world of affects, in which everything still lies concentrated in a powerful unity” (BGE §36).1 This “powerful unity”, moreover, is infamously revealed by the end of the section as none other than will to power, which Nietzsche defines in terms of this world of affects “seen from inside, the world determined and designated in terms of its intelligible character” (BGE §36).