Abstract: My overall project is to show that Nietzsche's ideas do cohere into a philosophical system comparable to his predecessors’ – despite his own strong attacks on the system, and on these predecessors. This system centers around his view of the world as will to power. I work to make this notion conceptually precise, and to show how it extends into his wealth of other thoughts, including his analysis of the basic types of persons and societies, his insistence that the world is “not being but becoming,” his values of individuality and self-creating, his attacks on morality, and his critique and affirmation of truth. The claim that Nietzsche promotes such a systematic view seems inconsistent with his well-known “perspectivism”; I argue that the latter issues from his conception of these wills to power as perspectives, and that this source shows us both the forces and limits of that doctrine.

Keywords: German philosophy, history of philosophy, Nietzsche, not being but becoming, perspectivism, philosophical system, philosophy, John Richardson, will to power