Nietzsche

Abstract

For Hegel, Absolute Spirit, the Being of beings, was also Absolute Will, whereby “Will” suggests the intrinsic necessity by reason of which the Absolute unfolds into the complete seizure of itself. In this respect, Hegel’s dialectical idealism was no less a philosophy of Will than Kant’s, Fichte’s or Schelling’s. Between Hegel and Nietzsche stood Schopenhauer. We have only to advert to the title, The World as Will and Presentation, to realize on the one hand how deeply immersed he is in the subject-ist tradition, as Leibniz had stamped it after Descartes, and on the other how close he stands to Nietzsche, whose debt to him, according to personal testimony, is long since a commonplace.¹ As we come, then, to Nietzsche’s philosophy of universal Willing, we are somewhat prepared for the thesis that Nietzsche is the “consummation” of metaphysics in the West. Somewhat! Before we can appreciate the full import of this, however, we must first see it in some detail.