Nietzsche: Genealogy and Will to Power (Aspect I: The Irrational)
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Nietzsche appears twice in our account: here as a critic of the primacy of reason, and later (chapter 9.3) as a radicalizer of historicity. This doubling is systematically justified because both aspects are inseparably linked in Nietzsche, though they have had different effects in the history of reception.
The Will to Power as Basic Principle:
Nietzsche’s philosophy of the will to power attacks the notion that reason is the highest authority of human life. On the contrary: reason is a tool of life, not its master. What really drives us is the will to power - not in the vulgar sense of political domination, but as a basic striving for enhancement, growth, self-overcoming.
Reason only rationalizes after the fact what has long since been decided. It constructs reasons for what the will has already willed. Genealogy exposes this after-the-fact rationalization. Behind the lofty concepts of “truth,” “justice,” “reason” lie constellations of power and vital interests.
The Legitimate Intuition:
Nietzsche’s critique hits a real point: conceptual thinking tends to freeze the living, to fix the dynamic, to level the individual. Reason can become an instrument of the negation of life - when it turns against life itself, when it denies suffering instead of shaping it.
The Systematic Challenge:
Can dialectical thinking integrate the instinctual, pre-conceptual dimension? Or does it necessarily remain a rationalization that misses what is actually at stake? The integration must show: living concept-formation can reckon with the irrational without eliminating it. (On integration, see chapter 5.7)
On the dimension of historicity, see chapter 9.3.
Sources:
- Nietzsche, Friedrich: Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
- Nietzsche, Friedrich: On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
- Nietzsche, Friedrich: The Will to Power (Nachlass fragments, posthumous)