On the Normativity of Nietzsche's Will to Power

A prominent tradition in Nietzsche scholarship reads his views about will to power as a psychological thesis and his claims about the value of power as an attempt to derive normativity from psychological necessity. This article shows that these interpretations have failed to articulate a cogent reading faithful to Nietzsche's texts, and so casts doubt on such an approach. My argument bears not only on how we read Nietzsche, but also on the viability of one recent constitutivist theory. After presenting these critical arguments, I consider an original interpretation of will to power in terms of the motivation to grow. This revised interpretation, however, still fails to support the derivation of normativity. Thus, I conclude we should look elsewhere for Nietzsche's normative argument.