
Rejecting natural selection, Roux's model assumed a neo-Lamarckian or pangenetic model of inheritance. Through this mechanism, the body grows stronger and better adapted. The various cells and tissues struggle for finite resources, so that only the strongest survive. Roux was a disciple of and influenced by Ernst Haeckel, who believed the struggle to survive occurred at the cellular level. The book was a response to Darwinian theory, proposing an alternative mode of evolution. Wilhelm Roux published his The Struggle of Parts in the Organism ( Der Kampf der Teile im Organismus) in 1881, and Nietzsche first read it that year. Machtgelüst, in these works, is the pleasure of the feeling of power and the hunger to overpower. The idea of centers of force would become central to Nietzsche's later theories of "will to power".Īppearance of the concept in Nietzsche's work Īs the 1880s began, Nietzsche began to speak of the "Desire for Power" ( Machtgelüst) this appeared in The Wanderer and his Shadow (1880) and Daybreak (1881). Boscovich had rejected the idea of "materialistic atomism", which Nietzsche calls "one of the best refuted theories there is". Nietzsche makes his only reference in his published works to Boscovich in Beyond Good and Evil, where he declares war on "soul-atomism". As early as 1872, Nietzsche went on to study Boscovich's book Theoria Philosophia Naturalis for himself. For Schopenhauer, this will is the most fundamental aspect of reality – more fundamental even than being.Īnother important influence was Roger Joseph Boscovich, whom Nietzsche discovered and learned about through his reading, in 1866, of Friedrich Albert Lange's 1865 Geschichte des Materialismus ( History of Materialism). Writing a generation before Nietzsche, he explained that the universe and everything in it is driven by a primordial will to live, which results in a desire in all living creatures to avoid death and to procreate. Schopenhauer puts a central emphasis on will and in particular has a concept of the " will to live". Nietzsche's early thinking was influenced by that of Arthur Schopenhauer, whom he first discovered in 1865. Kraft is primordial strength that may be exercised by anything possessing it, while Macht is, within Nietzsche's philosophy, closely tied to sublimation and "self-overcoming", the conscious channeling of Kraft for creative purposes.
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Some of the misconceptions of the will to power, including Nazi appropriation of Nietzsche's philosophy, arise from overlooking Nietzsche's distinction between Kraft ("force" or "strength") and Macht ("power" or "might"). 3 Appearance of the concept in Nietzsche's work.
