"Per me l'uomo era tutto". Nietzsche e Schopenhauer sul sé

What I wish to address in this article is a play on what Nietzsche suggested to Cosima Wagner was the key point of departure of his intepretation of Schopenhauer: not Schopenhauer the human being, but Schopenhauer’s view of the human being. What is at stake specifically is a seeming disjunction between Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the ‘inner’ world of the human being as a ‘Will to Life’ and Nietzsche’s claim that everything in the world, including human beings, would be considered ‘Will to Power’ and nothing else. “Only where life is, there is also Will: not Will to Life, but – as I teach – Will to Power!” (Z II, “On Self-Overcoming”). Contrary to what Nietzsche seems to say here, I argue that the terms are hardly simple contraries of each other: a similar vision of will aimed at two different ends, one replacing the other. Instead, I argue, they are two wholly disparate characterizations, not only in terms of their content but in terms of their form: Schopenhauer’s is an ontological claim about the world and the self, whereas Nietzsche’s is a symbolic description that generalizes what can possibly be experienced.