Free Fall

"An individual, who channels the Will to Power, if given the opportunity to change any of his previous actions, would reject the chance outright. If, as Nietzsche argues through the doctrine of Will to Power, we are merely a collection of actions, causes and effects, the wish to change anything in the past is “tantamount to complete self-annihilation…To wish that one had not acted the way one did is to wish to have never existed at all.” Nietzsche believes this because if we are merely a collection of our effects on other things, wishing that our properties were different will affect our interactions with other objects differently. The objects that our actions changed differently would then go on to change the things that they came into contact. Through Will to Power, it comes to follow that wishing for oneself is not simply tantamount to complete self-annihilation, but it also wishing for a totally different world from the current one. Any individual who would change any of their actions wish for an entirely different world and are life-deniers”. It is through the concept of eternal return that one can begin to understand how the Will to Power has the potential to begin to free humanity from nihilism. Without the eternal return, understood as a psychological test, one cannot express the Will to Power fully, creating an impediment to the pursuit of the overman."

- excerpt from paper for Kierkegaard and Nietzsche seminar (via cowmaster)