Nietzsche's Core Concepts: Will to Power and Superman

Nietzsche Proposals

8. The Will to Power

The essence of human life and the world is more: to live more, to be overcome, to show ever-increasing strength, and the will to create values. Previous values are inseparable, leading out the process of revaluation.

9. The Revaluation, Transformation, or Inversion of Values

The death of God has plunged humanity into nihilism, leaving it without values. Nihilism must be overcome. There is no inherent morality; we must create new values that affirm life, opposing the moral force that comes from a sick and decadent mind. There must be a return to the life-affirming values of the Presocratics. This task is the creation of values through the game of the will to power, which gives rise to a new kind of man: the Superhombre (Superman).

10. The Superman

The Superman represents the love of life, the meaning of the earth, and the exaltation of ascending instincts. He gives new meaning to reality, embodying the Dionysian return to earth, renouncing supramundane dreams. The Superman's morality will be autonomous, existing beyond good and evil. He decides what is good and what is evil at all times to defend life and instinctual man. He stands above the herd and states that equality before democracy prevents the emergence of higher men and favors the mediocre.

The arrival of the Superman depends on superior individuals having the audacity to exceed all Christian values and create something special based on their own lives and power. The arrival of the Superman is a goal for the will, not an inevitable process of natural selection. The arrival of the Superman passes through three phases:

• a) The Camel: Symbolizes carrying the weight of old values, obeying them blindly. It bows to God and to the moral law.
• b) The Lion: Symbolizes nihilism (in its negative, destructive form). It rejects traditional values, establishing the necessary conditions for the new values and the Superman to arise.
• c) Children: They create a new value system parallel to serving life's instincts. They are capable of acting on instincts without considering consequences or prejudices. Only the child can be the Superman.

11. The Eternal Recurrence

This concept radically affirms existence, meaning one must want to repeat it eternally (as in pre-Socratic thought). It confronts the problem of time—life and the will to power over time. It requires overcoming the eternal turning of the unique world, the cyclic return of the same; the wheel of life revolves incessantly. This is a circular conception of reality that rejects the linear conception of time and the theological conception of the universe. The eternal recurrence is the "eternal flow of things, going and returning, death and rebirth of life." This eternal cycle of death and eternal life is repeated for everyone; we have already existed countless times, and all things with us.