Wang asked:

How is Nietzsche's notion of will different from Schopenhauer's?

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Both have a metaphysical definition of will in common.

Schopenhauer's notion of will is there in the title of his major work The World as Will and
Representation.Everything that is, is a representation or manifestation of the will, which is universal
and eternal. The world in all its manifoldness is an objectification of the will. Schopenhauer writes,
"What the will wills is always life" (WWR.IV.para.54). Will is the (Kantian) thing-in-itself, the inner
content (of all that is) and the essence of the world" (ibid.). Human will is a tiny mirror of universal will
which is always "the will to life."

Nietzsche's notion of will as "will to power" is also metaphysical. Beware of the commentaries that
treat "will to power" merely as a species of self-interest; certainly that enters into it, but it is hardly the
crux. As in Schopenhauer, for Nietzsche, the words of Schelling are true: "In the final and highest
instance, there is no being other than willing. Willing is primal being." (Philosophical Investigation
Concerning the Nature of Human Freedom and Its Object,1809).

Nietzsche's will to power concerns the problem of time. Nietzsche does not see time as the moving
image of eternity. Starting with the notion of primal being as will, he sees time past as resisting the
will, for the will is helpless before what was. "This, yes, this alone is revenge itself: the will's revulsion
against time and its 'It was'" (Thus Spake ZarathustraPart II, On Deliverance).

What Nietzsche didn't like about Schopenhauer's world as will and representation was that it was
world-denying. Schopenhauer thought that the world as representation and objectification was a
world of illusion and instead of getting wrapped up in it, we should withdraw from it as fast as we can.
If we deny our own will and discover will-lessness we will find the quietude that "alone redeems the
world." (IV.65). Like Nietzsche's philosophy, Schopenhauer's demands a direct, intuitive knowledge.
Unlike Schopenhauer, Nietzsche's will to power leads away from all asceticism or otherworldliness.

Nietzsche's metaphysical problem then is, how can the will redeem time? Faced with "it was", the
slipping away of time, will is useless. The answer for Nietzsche is to will the eternal recurrence of the
same. Zarathustra is a figure who lives the eternal recurrence and that is the 'good news' he brings
mankind. Instead of repenting over the past like a Christian or turning one's back on the world as
merely a realm of manifestation like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche redeems the time by willing its return
and recurrence. This will to power he saw as this-world affirming. (See, The Gay Sciencesections,
"The Greatest Stress" and "Incipit tragedia" and Thus Spake Zarathustra"On the Vision and the
Riddle" and "The Stillest Hour".)

Matthew Del Nevo
www.sicetnon.com