Friedrich Nietzsche

Barth, as we have seen, was influenced by the "transcendence" of Kierkegaard; Heidegger and Jaspers were affected by the naturalistic immanentism of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).

Nietzsche replaced the God of Christianity, the Creator of man, with the "will to power" which, according to him, is the soul of the world and is scattered among individual men. Each man is a center of the "will to power," and his existence can be represented as the will to dominate the whole universe. The human will knows no obstacle, no limits.

The will reasons thus:

* I seem to be a prisoner of time: behind me is the past, which is closed; before me the future, which is uncertain.
* I accept the fatal situation (This is what Nietzsche calls "amor fati -- love of destiny"); but I overcome it by reviving the past and anticipating the future in every instant of my existence.
* In so doing, I transcend my situation and transform time into eternity.
* The whole is in me, and I am in the whole: what I do now is what I do forever.

It is easy to understand that no moral, religious or scientific principle can oppose such a will to power. For Nietzsche such principles were set up by the weak in order to defend themselves and to prevent the impetus of the will to power.

But even the will to power, if it wishes to be the creator of its world, must have sort of ethics. Its ethics consists in loving what is dangerous and heroic, and in being prepared to suffer all things. To live in this way means to transcend self, and by transcending self the individual becomes a superman who lives in contempt of those who remain behind and below him.