Some philosophers, like Schopenhauer, looked at the world, and life on it, as meaningless and purposeless. He failed to recognize that people could impact, even change the outcome of the world through deliberately making informed decisions based on their own values. One of the key concepts to Nietzsche’s philosophy is his ideal of the will to power. I believe that the will to power is the foundation of Nietzsche’s philosophical thought and refutes Schopenhauer’s dim and negative view of the world. Friedrich Nietzsche was a very influential philosopher of the 19th Century. He was born in Germany and is considered to be one of the most influential Western philosophers. Nietzsche was born to family of prominent Lutheran ministers. He was …show more content…
His philosophy has been connected to his concept of life. It was Nietzsche belief that a truly life affirming philosophy embraces change and recognizes in the will to power that change is the only constant in the world. Nietzsche looked at the will to power from a psychological insight. It was his belief our fundamental drive is for power as used in independence and dominance. This will is stronger than the will to survive. An example of this would be an individual willingly to die for a cause if they feel that by associating themselves with that cause gives them greater power. The Kamikaze pilots from World War II would be a prime example of this. Even though the war was going poorly for Japan, the leaders were able to convince (or brainwash) young pilots to crash explosive filled planes into ships. It wasn’t logical, it went against human nature’s basic instinct of survival, but the mere promise of a ticket straight to a glorious eternal life in the afterlife was enough to convince them to do it. We even have examples of this in today’s world, with the suicide bombers based in the Middle East. The intriguing thing is the power that a promise of automatic entrance into the afterlife has on people still