Nietzsche's Will To Power

Nietzsche’s philosophy, if one should call it that, centers around the belief that living beings want to exert their “will to power,” and are at their best when they’re allowed to do so. He believes that dogmatic philosophy and certain moralities curb an individual’s ability to exercise this “will to power,” by proclaiming there is an objective truth that everyone must submit to, and hence compromise free thought and freedom. In a way, Nietzsche is rejecting the entire institution of philosophy, by ironically putting forward his own philosophy, which one can compare and contrast with the work of other philosophers.
Nietzsche first introduces his will to power as “the cardinal instinct of an organic being,” (Nietzsche 77), as opposed the Lockean

He dislikes the idea of supplying a “rational foundation for morality,” because it assumes morality itself to be one fixed entity. Instead, he recommends the preparation of a typology of morals for different contexts, because the same actions can be more or less virtuous depending on one’s situation. Nietzsche, then, would call justice a relative phenomenon that arose from the most prominent morality. Hence, any rational justification of any one morality is just an expression of the faith in the morality one follows, and isn’t backed by science. Nietzsche is also critical of the predominant moral system of his time which he calls “slave morality.” Slave morality originates from Rome, where those who didn’t have access to great comforts, or didn’t have the ability to take revenge by using force, made virtues, like poverty and forgiveness, out of these disadvantages. However, as discussed earlier, the will to power can’t be exercised by a slave who’s subservient to and controlled by his master, and this morality hence discourages the exercise of one’s will to power. The will to power in this case isn’t an intellectual concept, but a more raw and physical concept, that one can far more clearly see as being instinctual to a human being: people enjoy having the comforts money provides them, and want revenge when they’re

Both viewed the shift from aristocracy to democracy as inevitable, but while Tocqueville ultimately saw this as a positive change despite all his criticisms of democracy, Nietzsche saw this as a disastrous change that would eventually lead to a population of mediocre last men. Regardless of their final conclusions, they both criticize similar aspects of democracy. Ideas like the tyranny of the majority restricting freedom of thought, and the people in democracies being more apathetic towards government and other non-individualistic pursuits, are seen by both as negative features of democracy that “soften the soul” in Tocqueville’s terminology, and restrict the will to power in Nietzsche’s. However, their opinions differ on the role that religion should play in one’s life. Tocqueville considers religion to be a positive release from the trials and tribulations of this world. He claims that it’s the shift away from religion that’s making people in democracies restless and unhappy, and that people in democracies should their attention towards spiritual pursuits to stay happy. Nietzsche, while not disagreeing with Tocqueville’s claim that religion could bring happiness to one’s life, rejects the idea that religion should play a role in people’s lives. According to him, people would be far more incentivised to achieve great things in this world if they believed there wasn’t anything