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FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE was born near Leipzig in 1844, the son of a Lutheran clergyman who died when Nietzsche was four. He attended the famous Pforta School, then went to university at Bonn and at Leipzig, where he studied philology and first became acquainted with Richard Wagner. When he was only twenty-four he was appointed to the chair of classical philology at Basel University; he stayed there until his health forced him into retirement in 1879. While in Basel, he participated as an ambulance orderly in the Franco-Prussian War and published The Birth of Tragedy (1872), Untimely Meditations (1873–6) and the first part of Human, All Too Human (1878). From 1880 until 1889, except for brief interludes, he divorced himself from everyday life and, supported by his university pension, lived mainly in France, Italy and Switzerland. Works published in the 1880s included Dawn, The Joyous Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals and The Case of Wagner. In January 1889, Nietzsche collapsed on a street in Turin and was subsequently institutionalized in Basel and Jena. He spent the remaining years of his life in a condition of mental and physical debility, cared for by his mother and later his sister Elisabeth. The last works published during his lifetime were Twilight of the Idols (1889), The Anti-Christ (1895) and Nietzsche contra Wagner (1895). After Nietzsche’s death in 1900, Elisabeth assembled The Will to Power based on her brother’s notebooks and published it the following year; a greatly expanded edition appeared in 1906. Ecce Homo, Nietzsche’s autobiography, was published in 1908.

R. KEVIN HILL is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Portland State University. From 1994 until 2001 he taught in the Philosophy Department at Northwestern University. He is the author of Nietzsche’s Critiques: The Kantian Foundations of His Thought, published by Oxford University Press (2003).

MICHAEL A. SCARPITTI is an independent scholar of philosophy whose principal interests include English and German thought of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as exegesis and translation theory. His translation of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals in published in Penguin Classics.

Concordance

between Der Wille zur Macht and Kritische Gesamtausgabe

The section number from the second edition of Der Wille zur Macht, which we follow in this translation, is given to the left of the equals sign, and the division, volume and page number of the Kritische Gesamtausgabe, where a transcription of the source text can be found to the right. In some cases we have substituted other drafts, which we indicate in parentheses.

§ 358 = div. 9, VI, 121 (div. 8, II, 265); div. 7, I, 344; div. 9, VI, 121; div. 9, VI, 121 (div. 8, II, 251)

Chronology

1844 Birth of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche on 15 October in Röcken, Prussian Saxony, to the pastor Karl Ludwig Nietzsche and his wife Franziska, née Oehler.

1850 Death of Nietzsche’s brother, Joseph Ludwig. Family moves to cathedral city of Naumburg.

1858 Accepted at prestigious Pforta school, where he receives a traditional classical education.

1865 Transfers to the University of Leipzig, where he becomes Friedrich Ritschl’s favourite student. First acquaintance with the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.

1866 Friendship with Erwin Rohde. Reads Friedrich Albert Lange’s History of Materialism.

1867 First publication in classical philology. Enters military service in October.

1868 Riding accident in March leads to discharge from military service on 15 October. First meeting with Richard Wagner in November.

1869 Appointed to special professorship in Basel in classical philology (January). Awarded doctorate by Leipzig (23 March). Gives up Prussian citizenship. Holds inaugural lecture on ‘Homer and Classical Philology’ (28 May). Meets colleagues: historian Jacob Burckhardt and the theologian Franz Overbeck.

1870 Professorship regularized. Public lectures on ‘The Greek Music Drama’ (18 January) and ‘Socrates and Tragedy’ (1 February). Serves in France as an orderly in Franco-Prussian War with Prussian army; contracts dysentery and diphtheria. Discharged in October.

1872 Publication of Birth of Tragedy (January), which was largely ignored by the academic world. Series of five public lectures on education (‘On the Future of Our Educational Institutions’). Present at laying of foundation stone for Bayreuth opera house (22 May).

1873 Publication of first Untimely Meditation: David Strauss, the Confessor and Writer. Befriends Jewish student and moral philosopher Paul Rée.

1874 Publication of second and third Untimely Meditation: On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life and ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’.

1875 Meets Heinrich Köselitz (to whom Nietzsche gives the pseudonym Peter Gast in 1881). Elisabeth moves to Basel and sets up home for herself and her brother.

1876 Publication of fourth Untimely Meditation: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. Attends first Bayreuth festival (July). Granted one-year leave of absence from the university. Lives in Sorrento with Rée and Malwida von Meysenbug. Sees Wagner for last time.

1879 Publication of second volume of Human, All Too Human (Mixed Opinions and Maxims). Resignation from professorship due to ill-health; granted pension. Travels in Switzerland, then to Naumburg.

1880 Publication of The Wanderer and His Shadow. Travels to Riva del Garda, Venice, Marienbad, Naumburg, Stresa and Genoa, where he spends the winter.

1881 Publication of Dawn. Travels to Recoaro Terme and Riva with Köselitz; alone to St Moritz and Sils-Maria. Winter in Genoa.

1882 Publication of The Joyous Science. Meets Lou Salomé in Rome at the home of Malwida von Meysenbug (May). Returns to Naumburg; visits Berlin and Tautenburg, where Lou joins him. With Lou and Rée in Leipzig (October). Break with Lou and Rée; leaves for Rapallo (November).

1883 Publication of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, parts one and two. Death of Wagner (13 February). Travels to Genoa, Rome, Sils-Maria, Naumburg, Genoa and Nice. In Naumburg learns of Elisabeth’s engagement to anti-Semite Bernhard Förster, a member of the extended Wagner circle.

1884 Publication of Zarathustra, part three. Stays in Venice, Sils-Maria, Zürich and Nice.

1885 Publication of Zarathustra, part four (published privately). Travels to Venice, Sils-Maria, Naumburg and Nice. Marriage of Elisabeth and Förster, who leave together for the colony Nueva Germania in Paraguay.

1886 Publication of Beyond Good and Evil. Stays in Naumburg, Leipzig, Genoa and Nice.

1887 Publication of On the Genealogy of Morals. Travels to Sils-Maria, Venice and back to Nice.

1888 Publication of The Case of Wagner. Stays in Turin and Sils-Maria; returns to Turin in September. Composition of last sane writings.

1889 Publication of Twilight of the Idols (completed in 1888). Collapses on street in Turin (3 January). Retrieved by Overbeck. Enters clinic in Basel (10 January). Transferred to clinic in Jena (17 January). Förster commits suicide in Paraguay after embezzling colony’s funds.

1890 Franziska Nietzsche takes her son to Naumburg, where he remains in her care. Elisabeth returns from Paraguay.

1892 Plan for first edition of Nietzsche’s published works (discontinued after volume five), edited by Köselitz but arranged by Elisabeth, who then returns to Paraguay to clear up business of the colony.

1895 Publication of The Anti-christ and Nietzsche contra Wagner (both completed in 1888). Elisabeth acquires all rights to Nietzsche’s writings.

1901 First version of The Will to Power (second, expanded edition 1906), edited by Elisabeth and Köselitz; based on Nietzsche’s notebooks and plans in his notebooks.

PENGUIN CLASSICS

Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

First published in Penguin Classics 2017

Translation © R. Kevin Hill and Michael A. Scarpitti, 2017
Editorial material © R. Kevin Hill, 2017

The moral right of the translators and editor has been asserted

Cover: Sturmgebet, plate 11, from the portfolio ‘Lebenszeichen’, pub. 1908 in Berlin by Fritz Heyder Verlag, Fidus (Hugo Hoppener) (Photo: Bridgeman Images) © DACS 2017

ISBN: 978-0-141-19536-0

THE BEGINNING

A book for thought, nothing more: it belongs to those who delight in thought, nothing more . . .

The fact that it is written in German makes it unfashionable, to say the least: I wish it had been written in French so that it does not seem to endorse any German national aspirations.

Books for thought – they are for those who delight in thought, nothing more . . . The Germans of today are no longer thinkers: they are pleased and impressed by something else. The will to power as a principle would be difficult for them to understand . . . For that very reason, I wish my Zarathustra had not been written in German.

I distrust all systems and systematists, and avoid them: perhaps one will discover just behind this book the system which I avoided . . .

The desire for a system, for a philosopher, morally speaking, is a refined form of depravity, a disease of character; immorally speaking, it is the willingness to appear more stupid than one is – more stupid, that is, stronger, simpler, more untutored, more formidable, commanding, tyrannical . . .

I no longer respect the reader: how could I write for readers? . . . But I make notes for my own use.

Autumn 1887

First book.

European nihilism.

Second book.

Critique of the highest values.

Third book.

Principle of a new determination of values.

Fourth book.

Discipline and cultivation.

Draft dated 17 March 1887, Nice

Further Reading

Carol Diethe, Nietzsche’s Sister and the Will to Power: A Biography of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003).

Hugo Drochon, Nietzsche’s Great Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).

Mazzino Montinari, Reading Nietzsche, trans. Greg Whitlock (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003).

Bernard Reginster, The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).

John Richardson, Nietzsche’s System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

William H. Schaberg, The Nietzsche Canon: A Publication History and Bibliography (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

Julian Young, Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Introduction

During the 1880s, not long after he had completed Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche intended to write a magnum opus that would articulate the full range of his mature thought. The book was announced in 1886 as being ‘in preparation’ on the back cover of Beyond Good and Evil. He mentions it again in On the Genealogy of Morals in 1887. ‘I intend to deal with these things more thoroughly and rigorously in another connection (under the title “A Contribution to the History of European Nihilism”, to be included in a work which I am now preparing: The Will to Power, an Attempt at a Re-valuation of All Values, to which I refer the reader).’¹ Throughout the period from 1885 to 1888, Nietzsche kept extensive notebooks in which he developed material for this project. During Nietzsche’s final productive summer of 1888, while he was staying as he had for many prior summers in a rented room in Sils-Maria, Switzerland, he made one last attempt to organize his notes into this work, without success.

Sometime between 26 August and 3 September, Nietzsche abandoned the project in frustration – at least as he had previously conceived it. Instead, he envisioned reworking some of the material collected thus far into texts that would become Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, regarding the latter as the first of a new, re-envisioned magnum opus in four parts to be called Revaluation of All Values. The other three parts were never drafted, and Nietzsche concluded that with The Anti-Christ, the Revaluation project could be regarded as completed. Thus a longer book was never written; instead we have a variety of works he published or prepared for publication, from Beyond Good and Evil forwards, and his notebooks.²

After Nietzsche’s breakdown in 1889, and the passing of control over his literary estate to his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche’s friend Heinrich Köselitz (‘Peter Gast’) conceived the notion of publishing selections from these notebooks as a means of communicating the scope and systematic character of Nietzsche’s thought, using one of his simpler outlines for the magnum opus as a guide to their arrangement. It would appear that his justification for this was that Nietzsche’s late conception of The Anti-Christ as the completed Revaluation ought not to be credited. As he explained to Elisabeth on 8 November 1893:

Eventually, Elisabeth warmed to this idea and the project was undertaken. Most of the editorial work was done by Köselitz and his associates, not by Elisabeth (as she herself explains in the preface to the 1901 edition, where she ‘stresses explicitly’ that she is ‘not even the editor of the book but at most and in the most modest sense of the word, a collaborator’),⁴ whose particular gifts lay more in the areas of administration and promotion. Köselitz appears to have made a good-faith effort to select the material that was of the greatest interest, and much of the editorial activity was merely ‘tidying’. Nor was it ever his intention, as some have claimed, to convey the misleading impression of a magnum opus. As David Marc Hoffmann explains, ‘The editors, H. Köselitz, E. & A. Horneffer, had originally chosen the title which mirrored the other volumes: “Unpublished material from the years [1882/83–1888] (the period of the Revaluation)” and in an introduction had discussed Nietzsche’s procedure and the emergence of the late literary remains. Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche suppressed this introduction and replaced it with her own, and gave the volume the title “The Will to Power. Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values. (Studies and Fragments)”.’⁵

The result of these two changes was to convey the impression that Elisabeth had successfully restored a lost magnum opus, though to be fair to her, she never asserted that the book was anything but an attempt to transcribe and publish a portion of Nietzsche’s literary remains from the 1880s; what is more, he did in fact produce these notes in the hope that some kind of magnum opus would emerge from them. Hers was a project not unlike the English archaeologist Arthur Evans’ contemporaneous attempt to restore the ancient Minoan frescoes at Knossos: bold to the point of folly surely, a mutilation of historical remains perhaps, but not fundamentally dishonest. And unlike Evans, Elisabeth did not have to ruin the texts themselves in the process, a fact which has made it possible for us to improve upon her editors’ work here.

A first edition was brought out in this somewhat misleading form in 1901 and contained 483 sections; the second, definitive edition expanded the number of sections to 1,067. Little effort was made to render the material consistent with any of Nietzsche’s projected plans for it, plans he had abandoned in any case. In many instances, longer discussions were cut up and their portions given separate numbers without any indication that this had been done, perhaps more out of pressure to produce more material than a desire to mislead about its content. Elisabeth’s editorial contribution seems to have been limited to her insistence that Nietzsche had produced a philosophical system that could compete with the systems of such figures as Kant and Hegel (for without that achievement, Nietzsche might be regarded as nothing more than a belletrist, an impression reinforced by the aphoristic style of many of his other works) and that the text presented that system. Köselitz’s editorial sin lay more in his silent acquiescence to her overall characterization of the material as Nietzsche’s crowning achievement, rather than in his manipulation of the materials themselves, which was primarily intended to make them more accessible. The book that resulted from these peculiar circumstances, Der Wille zur Macht, is the book you hold in your hands, in English translation.

Elisabeth’s publication of the book was to have further, fateful consequences. By 1930, Nietzsche was in vogue in Germany just as the Nazis were coming into power and the material in The Will to Power was being represented as the system of the thinker of first importance to the Nazis by figures as negligible as Alfred Baeumler, whose postscript accompanied the one-volume edition and whose own philosophical writings characterized Nietzsche as a Nazi prophet, or as significant as Martin Heidegger, who regarded The Will to Power as containing the essence of Nietzsche’s philosophy, a philosophy which in his view was the culmination of the entire Western tradition. This close association of the book with Nazism has been further reinforced by the existence of a now famous photograph of Elisabeth shaking hands with Adolf Hitler.

However, not long after the Second World War, the rehabilitation of Nietzsche’s reputation was under way both in France and the English-speaking world, and putting distance between Nietzsche and The Will to Power was central to that task. In one sense, this was easily accomplished: The Will to Power was in no way the magnum opus some took it for, and was, at most, the shadow of an imaginary book which had existed only in Nietzsche’s mind as an unfulfilled possibility, an anthology of Nietzsche’s notes to himself.

Unfortunately, these circumstances have conditioned the way in which we view these texts, as if the published works were ‘canonical’ and the notebooks ‘apocryphal’. Matters are not helped by the fact that Nietzsche seems here to speak glowingly of domination and war, of Zuchtung (which we translate as ‘cultivation’ but which others have translated as ‘breeding’, thus suggesting eugenics) and even occasionally of a ‘master race’. The impression conveyed by such remarks was far more