The Human Synthesis: An Exploration of Anxiety, Love, and Selfhood under the Domain of the Will to Power

Abstract

This paper elucidates the conception of the self by reading prominent philosophers such as Sartre and Kierkegaard against the backdrop of Nietzsche’s “will to power”. By understanding this central tenet of Nietzschien thought as a self-overcoming force - ubiquitous in all life - that wills only its own growth, we are left with the question of how the will to power manifests. I will argue that in order to self-overcome, the will to power must have individuated life, i.e., a myriad of “selves” who, under the Sartrean definition of consciousness, are able to be what they are not yet. A singularity, I will claim, would be unable to become what it is not because there is no being it is not; therefore, life individuates into selves capable of Sartrean self-consciousness. Kierkegaardian anxiety can then be conceived as a pull into selfhood away from what he terms “the race”. With this groundwork laid, I will return to Nietzsche’s philosophy to provide an answer for the self’s purpose: one that is paradoxically supplemented by De Rougemont’s analysis of love.