Secondary sourceBookcompiled 1901-1906, from notes written before 1889
The Will to Power
Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and Peter Gast (compilers), from Nietzsche's notes · compiled 1901-1906, from notes written before 1889
A posthumous book assembled from Nietzsche's notebooks by his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and Peter Gast, later used to misrepresent his philosophy.
Assembled from Nietzsche's own notebooks after his collapse, this book shaped and distorted his public image for decades.
About this source
What it is
The Will to Power is a book of selections drawn from Nietzsche's unpublished notebooks after his collapse in 1889. It was compiled and arranged not by Nietzsche but by his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche with help from Heinrich Köselitz (Peter Gast), and first published in 1901, later expanded in 1906.
Why it matters
For decades readers believed this was Nietzsche's planned masterwork. Later scholars, Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, examined the original notebooks and showed that Nietzsche had abandoned the project before his collapse, calling the compiled book a
This book is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Friedrich Nietzsche on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.
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