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The Human Synthesis: An Exploration of Anxiety, Love, and Selfhood under the Domain of the Will to Power

δι
άν

οι
α

THE HUMAN SYNTHESIS: AN EXPLORATION 
OF ANXIETY, LOVE, AND SELFHOOD UNDER 

THE DOMAIN OF THE WILL TO POWER
DANIEL ANDREWS

“This, my Dionysian world of the eternally self- creating, the eter-
nally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous 
delight, my “beyond good and evil,” without goal, unless the joy of 
the circle is itself a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will 
toward itself— do you want a name for this world? A solution for all 
of its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most 
intrepid, most midnightly men?— This world is the will to power—
and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power—
and nothing besides!”1

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

§1: INTRODUCTION 
 The will to power leaves us with a fascinating question re-
garding the nature and purpose of the individual. If life is this will 
of “eternally self-creating, eternally self-destroying” force, and “[we 
ourselves] are also this will to power”, are we not destined to annihi-
late ourselves for the sake of creating beyond ourselves? Correlatively, 
and perhaps more importantly, why is there an individual at all? In 

1  Friedrich Nietzsche, Will to Power, 432.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

er r s  i  i e is e ne  s is i pe us  se es ru i n n  
re-creation, what is the purpose of sentient life that is individuated, 
i.e., a myriad of different egos and individuals coexisting as opposed 
to a single, undifferentiated, God-like intelligence?2 There must be a 
reason as to why such a singularity3 cannot exhibit the will to pow-
er itself. In reading Nietzsche, and other philosophers whom I will 
discuss in the paper, it is never able to be expressly understood as to 
why this ever-striving will to power manifests itself in the ego, in the 
human being. In this paper, I will attempt to examine the ego through 
the Nietzschean lens. First, I will expound the concept of the will to 
power more painstakingly. Next, I will outline why a being exhibiting 
the will to power must be self-conscious and, under a Sartrean analysis 
of consciousness, examine why a singularity alone cannot do this. After 
that, I will examine the human condition in our affections of anxiety 
and love to investigate the nature of selfhood and offer a solution to the 
fundamental question of “why” under the domain of the will to power. 

§2: BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF THE WILL TO POWER AND 
OUR ROLE WITHIN IT  
 Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra is centric around 
the idea of the “Ubermensch”. Translated into English as “overman” 
and symbolized by the main character Zarathustra, it represents what 
humans will one day evolve into: “Man is something that shall be over-
come… What is the ape to man? A laughing stock or a painful embar-
rassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughing stock 
or a painful embarrassment.”4 Crucially, becoming an overman is not 
achievable by anyone in this epoch; it is frequently misinterpreted as 
an exalted individual who stands out from a crowd in their excellence. 
Rather, Zarathustra is a symbol for the distant future of intelligent life’s 
evolution. 

 Before I analyze man’s role as a “rope tied between beast and 
overman,”5 it is worth elucidating in further detail the concept of life 

2  Importantly, this is not a paper questioning the existence of a God; further, 
my investigation of why there are a multiplicity of egos isn’t denying the 
existence of a God. Rather, I am exploring why the will to power isn’t just a 
singularity and manifests in the individual as well. 

3  Throughout the rest of the paper, what I will refer to as “singularity”, 
in ni e  eing  r n  er re e  er  is  n e g in  n  re r  n  

“God”. It is simply to offer a point of comparison to an individual.  
4  Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 124.
5 Id., 126.



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The Human Synthesis: An Exploration of Anxiety, Love, and Selfhood under the Domain of the Will to Power

as the will to power. This is best explained in Zarathustra’s recollecting 
  i gue e  i  i e  n  i e i se  n e  is se re   

me: ‘Behold’, it said, ‘I am that which must always overcome itself… 
where there is perishing and a falling of leaves, behold, there life sacri-

es i se   r p er   I us  e s rugg e n   e ing n  n 
end and an opposition to ends.”6 We see once again, as in the quotation 
from Will to Power,  i e is p si e  s  se s ri ing  se nni-
hilating machine. Fittingly, Nietzsche construes man in a similar vein. 
One of the central tenets of our role in begetting the overman is the 
r er r  n i n  se s ri e  e i s   is gre  in n is 
that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that is 
n er ure n   g ing un er  I e se   n  rs  see  e-
in  e s rs r  re s n  g  un er n  e  s ri e  u   s -

ri e e se es r e e r   e e r   s e  e e e 
overman’s.”7 This idea is expressed virtually everywhere in the book. 
Speaking of our inner “spirit”, he says, “Spirit is the life that itself cuts 
into life: with its own agony it increases its own knowledge. Did you 
know that? And the happiness of the spirit is this: to be anointed and 
through tears be consecrated as a sacrificial animal.”8 And, speaking 
to his disciples, Zarathustra says, “I have found you out, my disciples: 
you strive, as I do, for the gift-giving virtue. What do you have in com-
mon with cars and wolves? This is your thirst: to become sacrifices and 
gifts yourselves.”9 Only through our suffering and “going under” do we 
gi e   e er n  ur s ri e is  pr p g i n n  gi  r ur 
future. Humans, in Nietzsche’s eyes, are tools for the beautiful machine 
of life. Manifestations of life’s will to power, we act in congruence 
with it by destroying ourselves for the purpose of self-overcoming. As 
dark as this may appear, there is a purpose for our self-annihilation: 
creation. 

 Nietzsche believed that creating is the best way to give rise to 
the overman and succeed in “cutting into life”. He thought that in order 

 re e   ues us  rs  e es r e  in gi ing rise  ne  nes  
“Change of values - that is a change of creators. Whoever must be a 
creator always annihilates.”10 Novel creation requires annihilation of 
the old. Just as a demolition unit is required to construct a new build-
ing, man must demolish himself in order to recreate himself; he must 

6 Id., 227.
7 Id., 127.
8 Id., 216.
9 Id., 186.
10 Id., 171.



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is   nsu e i se  in is  n e   u  u is   
e e ne  un ess u  rs  e e s es I e i   n s 

to create over and beyond himself and thus perishes.”11

 All this to say, and this is a crucial point, that the ego appears 
to be set up for annihilation. This is done for the purpose of and as a 
manifestation of life’s will to power, which man is a piece of. Through-
out the paper, I will investigate how and why this process unfolds 
through an analysis of anxiety and love. In doing so, this conclusion 
will not seem as vague and dark as it does at this juncture. 

 Crucially, this is Nietzsche’s view of the overman, human 
beings, and their place in life’s will to power. I am not proclaiming the 
will to power to be true, nor explicitly endorsing this conception of 
the role of humans; what I will aim to do in this paper is elucidate the 
fundamental affections of anxiety and love in the context of the will to 
power.

§3: JEAN-PAUL SARTRE AND HUMAN CONSCIOUS-
NESS
 The reason for this begins with an understanding of intention-
al consciousness and nothingness, outlined by Jean-Paul Sartre in his 
book Being and Nothingness. Following Edmund Husserl, Sartre de-

nes ns i usness s eing in en i n  r about something12. Further, 
the object of consciousness must transcend consciousness itself. For 
example, if I am conscious of the computer that I am typing this paper 
on, the object of my consciousness transcends my consciousness in that 
it is posited as something other than it. This is best explained by Sartre 
himself: “Consciousness is consciousness of something. This means 
that transcendence is the constitutive structure of consciousness; that 
is, that consciousness is born supported by a being which is not itself. 
This is what we call the ontological proof.”13 This, as Sartre master-
fully examined, raises interesting questions about the notion of being. 
If a requisite to consciousness is predicated on transcendence, then 
“nothingness” becomes an integral part of being: “In our introduction 

e e ne  ns i usness s  eing su   in i s eing  i s eing 
is in question in so far as this being implies a being other than itself.’ 
But now that we have examined the meaning of ‘the question,’ we can 

11 Id., 176-77.
12 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, li, lxi-ii.
13 Id., lxi.



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The Human Synthesis: An Exploration of Anxiety, Love, and Selfhood under the Domain of the Will to Power

at present also write the formula thus: ‘Consciousness is a being, the 
nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.’”14

Sartre has discovered something crucial, and here is where we 
begin to examine the problem of individuality under the domain of the 
will to power. If the will to power coined by Nietzsche manifested in a 
sing e  en p ssing  in ni e in e igen e  i  would not be able to 
be conscious of the nothingness of its being and therefore would not be 
able to execute the will to power. How could the idea of a singularity 
 i  is  i se   e ns i us i  ns i usness is e ne  s  

being that is conscious of the nothingness of its being? Correlatively, 
how could this singularity execute the will to power? If will to power 
is e ne  s  se er ing i e r e  is singu ri  u  n  
be able to self-overcome; it would not be able to envisage “a being 

er n i se  e use i  is   e ni i n  en p ssing  There 
is no being that it is not. It is every being to have existed, is existing, 
and will exist. Sartre claims that we are able to transcend because time 
separates us from our future selves: “The being which is what it is must 
e e  e e eing i  is n   i  is n  u  in e rs  p e 

this negation, like all others, comes to the surface of being through hu-
man reality, as we have shown, and not through a dialectic appropriate 
just to being.”15 He is saying my point exactly: to become what it is 
not, to exhibit the will to power, a being needs to take form in humans 
and nothing else. 

To further establish this point, we must distinguish between 
what Sartre terms a “being-in-itself” and a “being-for-itself”. A be-
ing-in-itself “is what it is” in that there is no distance between its con-
sciousness of itself and itself. An example of a being-in-itself is a chair; 
i  is   ir  ere is n  re e i n r ns i usness ns i u e  
by an object-subject distance, as in intentionality. More perplexing and 
relevant to the focus of the paper, another example of a being-in-itself 

u  e n in ni e singu ri  sin e In e in i se  ere is n   
particle of being which is not wholly within itself without distance.”16 
Further, a singularity would be characterized as a being-in-itself be-

use e ensi   eing  e in i se  is in ni e  I  is  u ness 17 
If all intelligent life to ever exist across all time were concentrated to 
a single being, there would not be an iota of that being which is not 

14 Id., 47.
15 Id., 77
16 Id., 74.
17 Ibid.



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being; it wholly and unequivocally constitutes itself. Since, as I stated, 
it is every being that exists, has existed, and will exist, it is wholly and 
u  eing  I  is  ere re   eing in i se  e   S r re e ne  

consciousness as “a being such that in its being, its being is in question 
in so far as this being implies a being other than itself.”18 Further, a 
conscious being “does not coincide with itself in a full equivalence [...] 
The distinguishing characteristic of consciousness, on the other hand, 
is that it is a decompression of being.”19 Nothingness is a requisite for 
consciousness, which is a requisite for the will to power. This, a singu-
larity does not have. 

It is worth summarizing at this juncture what we have posited 
s  r  irs  e e ne  e i   p er s n e ern  se re ing  
eternally self-destroying, eternally self-overcoming force of life. Then, 
we questioned why life, in exhibiting this will to power, manifests in 
 p ur i   in i i u s s pp se    singu r  in ni e in e igen e 

 er es i se  en  using e S r re n e ni i n  ns i us-
ness, we posited the reason why a singularity would not be able to ex-
hibit the will to power. We found that since consciousness requires an 
aspect of nothingness, a singularity cannot envisage a being other than 
itself because there is no being that it is not. There is no being which 
is n   e ni i n  n in ni e singu ri  n  e use in r er  
en is ge  eing er n i se  i  re uires eing  ni e eing  is 
affected by time. Now, I will posit that life must be in anxiety to exhibit 
the will to power, which it is unable to do if it is not individuated into 
r g en s  ese r g en e  in i i u s re u n eings  I i  rs  

elucidate how human beings are unique in that they are able to exhibit 
the will to power. Then, I will offer some commentary on life’s fall into 
individuality and a multitude of self-aware egos. 

§4: ANXIETY EXCLUSIVE TO HUMANS AS A CATALYST 
FOR THE WILL TO POWER

As Sartre claimed, and as I outlined at the end of [§3], a being 
who is able to become the being that is not what it is not is unique ex-
clusively to “human reality [...] and not through a dialectic appropriate 
to just being.”20 We now know that a being who wishes to be what it is 
not, i.e., to exhibit the will to power, must be a human. A singularity, as 

18 Id., 47.
19 Id., 74. 
20 Id., 77. 



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The Human Synthesis: An Exploration of Anxiety, Love, and Selfhood under the Domain of the Will to Power

Sartre would say, is unable to be conscious of a being it is not. But how 
do humans go about becoming a being which they are not? 

The answer to this is that humans are in a state of anxiety. Also 
called angst, it is an affection felt exclusively by humans and analo-
gously has the power to elucidate our condition.

Sartre claims that in humans, “there is already a relation 
between my future being and my present being. But a nothingness has 
slipped into the heart of this relation; I am not the self which I will be. 
First I am not that self because time separates me from it. Secondly, I 
am not that self because what I am is not the foundation of what I will 
be. Finally I am not that self because no actual existent can determine 
strictly what I am going to be.”21 is rs  re s n is s r ig r r  I 
am, for example, not the self that I was in 2017 because that was seven 
years ago. Correlatively, I am not the self because my past conduct 
doesn’t determine my present self, and I can’t control or determine my 
future self with my current actions.22 Nothingness is constitutive of 
being human and analogously allows us to have an ambiguous rela-
tionship with ourselves. Our past selves are not us; they are objects for 
us. Sartre uses the example of a recovering gambler who once again 
faces the gambling table. His past resolution is not him since “it has 
become an object for [his] consciousness.”23 However, despite us not 
being our past or future selves for the aforementioned reasons, we at 
the same time are our past and future selves: “Yet as I am already what 
I will be (otherwise I would not be interested in anyone being more 
than another), I am the self which I will be, in the mode of not being 
it. It is through my horror that I am carried toward the future, and the 
horror nihilates itself in that it constitutes the future as possible.”24 
There is a distance within us and between our past, present, and future 
selves rendering the human experience fragmented and ambiguous. As 
mentioned, our past is not us but an object for us. My future self is not 
me because I am not it yet; however, “Decisive conduct will emanate 
from a self which I am not yet.”25 Therefore, “I am the self which I will 
be, in the mode of not being it.”26 This is precisely Sartre’s conception 

21 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 31-32.
22 Otherwise, we would not be free. If my future self was constituted solely 

by my current actions, my actions and character in the future would be 
determined by my present self and congruently unfree. 

23 Id., 33. 
24 Id., 32.
25 Id., 56.
26 Ibid.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

of anguish. A singularity does not have this ambiguity for the reasons 
outlined in §3. 

Because humans have this distance between ourselves - a 
concomitant of which is our anxiety - are we able to exploit the gap 
between our past self or future self and become anew, thereby exhib-
iting the will to power? Only in anguish is the ambiguity and nothing-
ness of our existence posited. Further, anguish is tightly intertwined 
with freedom: “What we should note at present is that freedom, which 
manifests itself through anguish, is characterized by a constantly re-
newed obligation to remake the Self which designates the free being.”27 
I italicized the words “remake the self” in order to stress its importance 
in relation to the will to power. Once again, the will to power is de-

ne  s  se er ing  se re ing  n  se es r ing  i e 
force. Only when there is a distance existing in the individual between 
himself and his consciousness of himself can he become something he 
is not. Nietzsche describes the will to power as self-overcoming. For 
the “self” to be a self in “self-overcoming”, it must become fragment-
ed: “The self therefore represents an ideal distance within the imma-
nence of the subject in relation to himself, a way of not being his own 
coincidence, of escaping identity while positing it as unity-in short, of 
being in a perpetually unstable equilibrium between identity as abso-
lute cohesion without a trace of diversity and unity as a synthesis of a 
multiplicity.”28 

Individuated human selves are their future selves in the mode 
of not being them. A singularity is its future self in the mode of being 
it. Therefore, it can’t create beyond itself because it is already that 
which it wants to create; it’s like a paradox. To solve it, life must be in-
dividuated in the forms of humans29. Existential philosophy has strug-
gled for decades with the notion of anxiety and a feeling of ambiguity, 
of homelessness, within ourselves. I posit the reason for this being 
that life needs these fragmented multiplicities characterized by anxiety 
as opposed to a complete singularity in order to self-overcome. How, 

27 Id., 34-35.
28 Id., 77.
29 Interesting similarities here can be drawn to a singularity splitting itself 

up in an act of Sartrean “bad faith”. A singularity cannot self overcome, 
r e re s ns p si e  s  r  i  i  n s i  is in ni e  ere re  i  us  

e ei e i se  in  ni u e r ug   s r   en r pi  n  r g en i n 
in  u ns   re igu us  in ni e n  ni e  is  e er  is 
presupposing there is a “life” that is doing the “splitting up”; hence, this is 
mere speculation.  



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The Human Synthesis: An Exploration of Anxiety, Love, and Selfhood under the Domain of the Will to Power

though, is anxiety born?

§5: ANXIETY BEFORE THE FALL 
For Soren Kierkegaard, this begins with a perspicuous anal-

ysis of anxiety itself in The Concept of Anxiety. Anxiety is a clue 
that is utterly crucial in elucidating the fundamental human question 
of “why” and “what”. Before diving into the text, a few preliminary 
re r s us  e es is e  s e  s s e e ni i ns  e rs  is 

 ier eg r  uses e   e ris i n i e  spe i  e 
fall of Adam, to elucidate the concept of anxiety. A concomitant of this 
is that much of the language he uses falls under the domain of Chris-
tian mythology; however, he claims that “the myth gives an outward 
expression of something that is inward.”30 In other words, the myth of 
the bible is practical and correlatively used for the purpose of illustrat-
ing a fundamental truth about humans that may otherwise be opaque. 
The myth, therefore, should not be viewed exclusively about Adam 
but interpreted as a metaphor for every human being; spe i  eir 
“fall” into a state of “spirit” from a state of “innocence”.

This leads me to my next preliminary remark: much of the lan-
guage used by Kierkegaard may feel esoteric to those unfamiliar with 
is p i s p  ere re  s e rie  e ni i ns us  rs  e u ine  

“Synthesis”: The concept of human beings as syntheses is 
arguably the most crucial tenet of Kierkegaard’s anthropology. He 
e nes  s n esis s s  e u n eing s  en   s n esis 

of soul and body, but also is a synthesis of the temporal and eternal.”31 
Humans are, in Kierkegaard’s description, intermediate beings in that 
we are not purely “physical” nor purely “psychical”. We are not purely 
body, like animals, nor purely mind. Analogously, we are a synthesis 
of the temporal and the eternal. Our predisposition to and conception 

 e in ni e s us  re i e ur ni u e  i e ise  r ug  ur 
reness  eing ni e re e e  n ei e  s e ing  is 

n  ni e  e in ni e  

“Spirit”: Kierkegaard refers to spirit as a sort of glue that 
makes this synthesis possible. Spirit can also be conceived of as our 
self-awareness and consciousness. He says that “the human being is a 
synthesis of the psychical and the physical, but a synthesis is unthink-

30 Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, 57. 
31 Id.,104.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

able if the two are not united in a third. This third is spirit.”32 Further, 
in his The Sickness unto Death, he claims that “A human being is spirit. 
But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is 
a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation’s relating itself 
to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation’s 
relating itself to itself.”33

“Innocence” and “the qualitative leap”: Innocence can be 
characterized as a state of immediacy, before the “qualitative leap” into 
spirit. Though he compares the state of innocence to that of Adam be-
fore his fall into sin, it can be compared to every human’s state of being 
before they are self-aware, before they are characterized by “spirit”. 
The qualitative leap is the fall into self-awareness itself. 

With this framework, we can now undergo a brief synopsis of 
Kierkegaardian anxiety. There are two main characterizations of anxi-
ety: the anxiety felt before our qualitative leap into self-awareness and 
that after; for now, the former will receive most of the analysis. Kierke-
gaard begins by describing the human experience of anxiety before we 
become self-aware:

 “Innocence is ignorance. In innocence the human being is 
not characterized as spirit but is psychically characterized in imme-
diate unity with its natural condition. Spirit is dreaming in the human 
being… In this state there is peace and repose, but at the same time 
there is something else, something that is not dissension and strife, for 
there is nothing against which to strive. What, then, is it? Nothing. But 
what effect does nothing have? It begets anxiety. This is the profound 
secret of innocence, that at the same time it is anxiety. Dreaming, spirit 
projects its own actuality, yet this actuality is nothing, but innocence 
always sees this nothing outside itself. Anxiety is an attribute of the 
dreaming spirit[...] The concept of anxiety is hardly ever seen treated in 
psychology, so I must point out that it differs altogether from fear and 
si i r n ep s  re er  s e ing e ni e  ere s n ie  is 
freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility.”34

e rs  p r   is u i n  isse  is e   in  
state of innocence, humans are not yet characterized by spirit.35 Here, 
the human is not yet a self; no ego is posited. Innocence is further 

32 Id., 53.
33 Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, 13.
34 Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, 50-51.
35 Recall that this is congruent with being characterized as self-aware and 

ing un er e e ni i n  S r re n ns i usness



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The Human Synthesis: An Exploration of Anxiety, Love, and Selfhood under the Domain of the Will to Power

explicated later in this analysis: “In innocence, the human being is not 
merely animal, for if at any moment in his life he were merely ani-
mal, he would never become a human being. So spirit is present but 
as intermediate, as dreaming.”36 Kierkegaard asserts that in a state of 
innocence our spirit is “dreaming”. Spirit “projects its own actuality” 
to the being who feels this projection outside of itself as a nothing. 
Put ambiguously, anxiety is “freedom’s actuality as the possibility of 
possibility”. It discloses itself before itself in time. Before humans 
become free, they feel anxiety in the sense that they have an inkling 
within them that communicates that they may become free, become a 
“self” whose actions are free. The reason the being in innocence feels 
this call as a nothing is because what is pulling us (spirit) is nothing to 
us; we are not it yet. Self-awareness and spirit exists in the future but 
is a nothing now. Why, then, can humans feel what is not yet posited as 
anxiety? The answer lies in our conception of ourselves as a synthesis. 

Life, characterized by the will to power, needs to self-over-
come. Life needs to be in anxiety to self-overcome. We now know this. 
Recall the discussion in §3 of the distinction between a being-in-it-
se  n   eing r i se   ir r n ni  in pure ni u e  is  
being-in-itself insofar as it is what it is; there is no consciousness of 
the distance that exists between itself because there is no distance. 

n in ni e singu ri  is  eing in i se  r e s e re s n  ere 
is no consciousness of itself and therefore no gap to exploit in con-
sciousness. There is no intentional distance between the object and 
the subject because the singularity is wholly itself and nothing else. 

u ns  e er  re uni ue  u ns re  s n esis  e in ni e 
n  e ni e  I  e ere s ri  in ni e  e u  e eings in e -

se es  e in r u i n  in ni  in  ns i usness  si e r  e 
  i  es e p en en n n  s ures i  is n  n e p i i e 

theory expressly designed to reduce the being of consciousness to that 
of the in-itself.”37 n g us  i  e ere s ri  ni e  s ri   
we would also be beings-in-themselves. We would be no different than 
a chair or a dog, which is what it is and is incapable of self-conscious-
ness that manifests as a result of any distance within itself. Humans, 
then, need to be a Kierkegaardian synthesis constituted by ambiguity 
- what Sartre similarly fashioned a “being-for-itself”: “The self refers, 
but it refers precisely to the subject. It indicates a relation between the 
subject and himself, and this relation is precisely a duality [...] The 

36 Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, 53.
37 Sarte, Being and Nothingness, 76.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

self therefore represents an ideal distance within the immanence of the 
subject in relation to himself, a way of not being his own coincidence, 
of escaping identity while positing it as unity-in short, of being in a 
perpetually unstable equilibrium between identity as absolute cohesion 
without a trace of diversity and unity as a synthesis of a multiplicity. 
This is what we shall call presence to itself. The law of being of the 
for-itself.”38 This “duality” within a human is precisely what Kierkeg-
aard calls the “synthesis”. By being an ambiguous temporal synthesis, 
we can be what we are not and not be what we are. We can be the self 
from which our past actions originated while simultaneously viewing 
our past as an object to be negated. We can be the self from which 
future conduct will emanate despite being separated from that self 
through time. Only in this ambiguity unique to being a human synthesis 
of the temporal and eternal can the will to power be achieved. 

Spirit is the glue that posits this ambiguous synthesis. Spirit, 
too, is itself ambiguous: “[spirit] is in a sense a hostile power, for it 
constantly upsets the relation between soul and body, a relation that 
does have subsistence but then doesn’t have it, because it receives it 

rs  r ug  spiri  i  is  n e er n   rien  p er  is es 
precisely to constitute the relation.”39 The relation between soul and 
body is described as hostile because through its synthesizing soul and 

 s u  n   re i e e  re n  uni e  Spiri  gi es e  e 
relation only to posit that they are separate. However, this act also is a 
friendly power since it wishes to reconcile the two. As a result of this 
ambiguity, the result of this synthesis, the human, is in a state not only 
of ambiguity but of anxiety: “What then is the human being’s relation 
to this ambiguous power; how does spirit relate to itself and to that 
which conditions it? It relates as anxiety.”40

Spirit allows life to be conscious of itself and become a being 
it is not. If spirit did not exist: one of two states would exist that would 
prevent the will to power from manifesting: one, that which seeks to 
execute the will to power would be infinite; or two, that which seeks 
to execute the will to power would be finite. Both are beings-in-them-
selves for the reasons outlined above, and both are unable to be con-
scious under the Sartrean conception of consciousness as a being able 
to be what it is not. Spirit creates an amorphous human that is neither 
one nor the other, positing that all-crucial distance within the self 

38 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 76-77.
39 Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, 53.
40 Ibid.



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that allows for self-overcoming. For the “self” in self-overcoming in 
ie s e s e ni i n  e i   p er  e se  us  represen  n 

ideal distance within the immanence of the subject in relation to him-
self, a way of not being his own coincidence, of escaping identity while 
positing it as unity-in short, of being in a perpetually unstable equilib-
rium between identity as absolute cohesion without a trace of diversity 
and unity as a synthesis of a multiplicity.”41 i  is e ni i n  
spirit and self, we can arrive at a crucial point:

If spirit is the conglutinating force positing the conscious syn-
thesis of temporal and eternal as a self, and humans, as this synthesis, 
relate to spirit in anxiety, this shows that anxiety can thereby be char-
acterized as a pull into ambiguous selfhood away from a being-in-itself 
in innocence. This explains the feeling of anxiety accompanying the 
all-too-human affection of homelessness, experiencing oneself as “oth-
er” and “fragmented”. As humans “fall” into selfhood, their synthesis 
renders them anxiously aware of their ambiguity and nothingness. 
We desperately want to be beings-in-themselves, whose existence is a 
given, who have no internal tension. This explains much of our other 
fundamental affection, love, which will be expounded in further detail 

er  e er  ue  ur eing s n eses  e ni e n  e in ni e  
which both constitute beings-in-themselves, our existence is a constant 
project, a constant ambiguity, and a constant striving. We are constantly 
in a state of inner homelessness, of not being at peace and whole with 
ourselves. Only in this turbulent and intermediate state as a synthesis 
of temporal and eternal, however, can we be consciously aware of and 
exploit the distance wedged between ourselves by time. This anxiety 
surrounding selfhood also explains why humans attempt to negate their 
selfhood through conformity or bad faith. 

It is worth once again summarizing the ground we have cov-
ere   is un ure  irs  e e ne  e i   p er s e eter-
nally self- creating, the eternally self-destroying” force of life. With 

is e ni i n  e re i e   in r er  se er e n  re e 
e n  i se  i e us  rs  e ns i us  i se  e er  in r er 

for a being to be conscious, it must be “a being such that in its being, 
its being is in question in so far as this being implies a being other than 
itself.”42 With this, we posited that a singularity would not be able to 
be conscious of itself because there is no being other than itself. An 
in ni e singu ri  is  eing in i se  e  e re i e   u ns 

41 Sarte, Being and Nothingness, 77.
42 Id., 47.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

are conscious in that we are, through our ambiguous character, able to 
become beings which we are not. This stems from the conception of a 
self, which is never a “whole” whose being is a given; rather, selfhood 
implies a distance and incompleteness existing within the self which 
is made possible through its being in Sartrean consciousness. This 
ambiguous character is lent to us in tandem with our being syntheses 
held together by spirit, which we relate to in anxiety. If we relate to 
spiri  in n ie  n ie  n ere  e e ne  s  pu  in  se  
If anxiety is a pull into selfhood, and selfhood allows for creation 
through its unique condition as a being-for-itself, and the will-to-power 
requires a being-for-itself in order to envisage and self which it is not, 
then anxiety is a catalyst for the will to power. Here, we seem to have 
arrived at the answer to the question of individuality. Only through a 
fragmented ego who can become what it is not by virtue of its ambig-
uous being is the will to power manifested. Life, in order to become 
what it is not, must have a relationship to a self which it is not in the 
future, something it cannot do if it is an unindividuated singularity. 
Such a being would be all beings to exist and ever exist and in no way 
could envisage a being that it can be because it is that being. To exhibit 
the will to power, a being must take form in an ambiguous, paradoxi-
cal, individuated human form: one that is in a state of anxiety due to its 
incompleteness. In a human, selfhood and being are never a state but a 
continuous striving, a continuous consciousness of itself and transcen-
dence of itself into a new self. 

§6: SELFHOOD IS SELF-ANNIHILATION  
 eing igu us se es r ns e  in i e r ug  ns n  

negation and becoming, we are in a state of continuous self-annihila-
tion and self-creating. This means that the ego is, in every sense of the 
word, set up to be destroyed. Here we arrive at the Nietzschean notions 

 se s ri e  se nni i i n  n  g ing un er  u ine  in 2   
virtue of us being syntheses are we never a whole; we are amorphous 
in that we are beings-for-themselves who can exploit the distance 
engendered by consciousness and therefore continuously become anew. 
Nietzsche believed that “Whoever must be a creator always annihi-
lates.”43 The ego, in this characterization of continuous self-annihila-
tion, can be conceived of as a piece of wood making the flame burn 
brighter by being destroyed. Like fuel to an engine of the monstrous 

43 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 171.



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will to power is the ego. To execute the will to power, we must do as 
Zarathustra did: “I overcame myself, the sufferer; I carried my own 
ashes to the mountains; I invented  rig er e r se 44 Only 
through our destruction can we become anew. Nietzsche told us that 
“And you yourselves are also this will to power—and nothing be-
sides”. Not only are we the will to power - and this is the crucial point 
of this paper and what Nietzsche never expressly stated - the will to 
power is nothing without us. To self-overcome and create, it needs the 
human.  

§7: SELF-ANNIHILATION AND FATAL LOVE 
 If humans are characterized as ambiguous syntheses, and con-
sequently in a state of self-annihilation, it is worth expounding in more 
e i  is i e   se s ri e  s e ing  is in eres ing  un  in 

our conception of love. 

 The Swiss writer Denis de Rougemont offers a fascinating 
commentary on the myth of Tristan and Iseult in his work Love in 
the Western World; one that, independently of the concept of the will 
to power, paints the individual in a similar fashion as Nietzsche. De 
Rougemont begins his analysis by emphasizing the prominence of love 
and death as intertwined themes through European literary history: 
“Love and death, a fatal love—in these phrases is summed up, if not 
the whole of poetry, at least whatever is popular, whatever is univer-
sally moving in European literature, alike as regards the oldest legends 
and the sweetest songs. Happy love has no history.”45 Already we can 
see overlaps with Nietzschean thought: “Love and perishing: that has 
rhymed for eternities.”46 Further, De Rougemont claims that “What 
s irs ri  p e s  eir nes  ig s is nei er e e ig   e 
senses nor the fruitful contentment of the settled couple; not the satis-
faction of love, but its passion. And passion means suffering. There we 
have the fundamental fact.”47 Here, we see the theme of annihilation 
already intertwined with - and seemingly paradoxically - love. What 
has moved human beings for centuries are not stories of happy endings 
and contentment in our love; rather, we crave the suffering and striving 
accompanied by the act. 

44 Id.,143. 
45 De Rougemont, Love in the Western World, 15.
46 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 235.
47 De Rougemont, Love in the Western World, 15.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

The point of departure De Rougemont takes in his analysis of 
the Tristan Myth is the mechanics of the plot; to avoid summarizing 
the entire story, he argues that the two lovers, Tristan and Iseult, do 
everything in their power not to be with each other. Every small ob-
s e  eir uni i n is e  i  u er e e i n   is p in  e 
Rougemont proclaims that “Objectively, not one of the barriers to the 
u en   eir e is insuper e  n  e  e  i e e  gi e up  

It is not too much to say that they never miss a chance of getting part-
ed. When there is no obstruction, they invent one, as in the case of the 
drawn sword and of Tristan’s marriage. They invent obstructions as if 
on purpose, notwithstanding that such barriers arc their bane. Can it be 
in order to please the author and reader?”48 The act of striving towards 
each other, the act of overcoming barriers to their love, is paramount 
to the object of their love. In short, Tristan and Iseult love the act of 
loving more than the object of their love; they love striving toward 
one another. The same can be said of the reader following along. What 

es e s r  in eres ing n  igni es e e i in us is i gining 
the lovers overcoming the obstacles to their love, not their union.

With this established, De Rougemont proceeds to make a 
larger claim about what this reveals about human nature; after all, “It is 
only ‘silly’ questions that can enlighten us; for behind whatever seems 
obvious lurs something that is not.”4950 A myth, he says, discloses a 
secret. This secret is that we “love love more than the object of love, to 
love passion for its own sake, has been to love to suffer[…] passionate 
love, the longing for what sears us and annihilates us in its triumph - 
there is the secret which Europe has never allowed to be given away.”51 

e ues i n en re ins    u ns  r s s ries  
passionate suffering? Why do we crave this suffering, this love whose 
“effulgence culminates in [our] self-destruction?”52 The answer, and if 
the similarities with Nietzsche are not already apparent, is that “Both 
passion and the longing for death which passion disguises are connect-
ed with, and fostered by, a particular notion of how to reach under-
standing [...] man reaches self-awareness and tests himself only by 
risking his life.”53

48 Id., 37.
49 Id., 38.
50 Interestingly, Nietzsche had a strikingly similar quote on page 144 in Thus 

Spoke Zarathustra: “Is not the strangest of all things proved most nearly?”.
51 De Rougemont, Love in the Western World, 50.
52 Id., 51.
53 Ibid.



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The Human Synthesis: An Exploration of Anxiety, Love, and Selfhood under the Domain of the Will to Power

Here, we see the will to power in the individual not only in 
anxiety but in love54 as well. The reason why we love loving more 
than the object of our love is that “Whatever I create and however 
much I love it - soon I must oppose it and my love; thus my will wills 
it.”55 In eing e ne  s rp us n  rre i e  se nni i ing 
creatures substantiating the will to power, we must be in a continual 
state of striving towards, becoming and overcoming. This tendency of 
creation in self-destruction is so fundamental that it takes root in - at 
least a part of - our conception of love. In passionate love, we cannot 
e s is e  i  i s uni  e need the constant opposition, the inces-

sant overcoming of barriers to love. This is precisely the reason the 
myth of Tristan and Iseult has gripped us for centuries: because we 
ourselves are characterized by the will to power’s continuous striving. 
We are drawn to stories such as Romeo and Juliet in which the lovers 
“can never be united till, bereft of all hope and of all possible love, 
they reach the heart of utter obstruction and experience the supreme 
e i n i  is es r e  in eing u e 56 De Rougemont is, of 
course, referring to death as the “heart of utter obstruction”. The lovers 
in such stories, whether Tristan and Iseult or Romeo and Juliet, much 
to our enthrallment, obsess in the ecstasy of what it means to be a 
human - to constantly overcome obstacles - to the point that they reach 
unity in the ultimate obstacle of death. This craving for death is indic-
ative of the point proved in §8, that the self is set up, by its ambiguous 
e ni i n   e ns n  nni i e  ris n n  Iseu  r e e  

just as Nietzsche proclaims we do: “Spirit is the life that itself cuts into 
life: with its own agony it increases its own knowledge. Did you know 
that? And the happiness of the spirit is this: to be anointed and through 
tears be consecrated as a sacrificial animal.”57 Just as the will to power 
is  ns n  su ering n  se s ri e  p ssi n e e is su ering  
something undergone [...] To love love more than the object of love, to 
love passion for its own sake, has been to love to suffer [...] passionate 
love, the longing for what sears us and annihilates us in its triumph - 
there is the secret which Europe has never allowed to be given away.”58 

4 I p r n  in p ssi n e  e  ere re n  pes n  ssi i ns 
of love, and at this juncture I am only analyzing this one (not to say that the 

i   p er is n  presen  in er ssi i ns  e  
55 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 227.
56 De Rougemont, Love in the Western World, 53.
57 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 216.
58 De Rougemont, Love in the Western World, 50-51.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

§8: SYMPOSIUM LOVE 
 Passionate love, however, is not the only type of love that 
elucidates the human condition; we are given another interpretation 
of love by Diotima in Plato’s Symposium. In Diotima’s dialogue with 
Socrates at the end of Symposium  e g ess e nes e s e r 

e in ni e  s e ing e ie e r ug  pr re i n  r re i n 
is everlasting and immortal as far as is possible for something mortal. 
Eros necessarily desires immortality with the good, from what has 
been agreed, since its object is to possess the good for itself forever. 
It necessarily follows from this account, then, that Eros is also love 
of immortality.”59 In ur nguis e  r g en e  ni e s e  e re 
painfully aware of our mortality; this is the negative concomitant of 
executing the will to power. In becoming syntheses through spirit do 
we become conscious of the nothingness of our being. The self, as 
outlined in §6, is set up for annihilation. As a result, the human self, in 
i s nguis e  re i i n  i s ni u e see s s  r s i  n  e is  
forever and be immortal. It can do so only in this way, by giving birth, 
ever leaving behind a different new thing in place of the old, since even 
in the time in which each single living creature is said to live and to be 
the same—for example, as a man is said to be the same from youth to 
old age— though he never has the same things in himself, he neverthe-
less is called the same, but he is ever becoming new while otherwise 
peris ing  in respe   ir n  es  n  ne n   n  e en ire 
body.”60 Although individual humans are mortal, the will to power of 
life is immortal. Through our procreation, driven by love, by striving 
towards one another, we immortalize life. In addition to infantilizing 
life through physical procreation, we can also achieve a sort of me-
ta-immortality of our knowledge through our unique ability to gain 
knowledge iteratively through generations: “Study, by introducing 
again a new memory in place of what departs, preserves the knowledge 
so that it seems to be the same.”61 

The individual will not be around forever, and nor will the 
human race. Some day, and hopefully, humans will evolve into what 
Nietzsche calls the “overman” just as humans evolved from apes. To 
the overman, humans will be apes.62 No being, in its ambiguity, can 

er e e e s ing re i   i s ni u e  I  n  e er  e er-

59 Plato, Symposium, 207a.
60 Id., 207d.
61 Id., 208a. 
62 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 124.



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The Human Synthesis: An Exploration of Anxiety, Love, and Selfhood under the Domain of the Will to Power

nalize the will to power through love. Through procreation and the it-
erative passing down of knowledge through generations, intelligent life 
immortalizes itself. The will to power is real; life continually dies only 
to create something new; in this process, it has discovered amazing 
things about itself. While the concept of a human as merely a kindling 

r e e ern  e  e i   p er  see  isp r ging  I p si  
that it is beautiful beyond words. Though everything is transitory and 

ni e  e  ns i u e n e inspiring  e ern  i   p er  i i  
says that “it is in this way that all that is mortal is preserved: not by 
being ever completely the same, like the divine, but by leaving behind, 
as it departs and becomes older, a different new thing of the same sort 
as it was.”63 r e i   p er  e in ni e  se er ing   
be preserved, it cannot be a singularity. It needs life to be a synthesis 
that can exploit the nothingness between itself through its ambiguous 
relationship with time. 

§9: CONCLUSION  
 Humans are intermediate beings. We are made so by spirit 
in anxiety, rendering us insatiably craving wholeness in love either 

r ug  se nni i i n r ppe  r s e in ni e  e u n  
however, can never be a being-in-itself. Yet another reason that our 
existence is ambiguous is that we did not ask for self-consciousness, 
yet the self is our responsibility. 

 Knowing that selfhood is what drives the will to power and 
can beget the overman, let us not hide from it. Let us not subjugate our 
“self” by hiding from it in conformity. We must embrace the ambiguity 
of our existence rather than seek some objective truth external to us. 
Only through self-exploration, suffering, and self-overcoming can we 
do what is most beautiful: create beyond ourselves. 

 Humans have, throughout time, gradually adopted more and 
more de-centering outlooks on the world. It began with geo-centric 
decentering: humans realize their planet is not the center of the uni-
verse. Then, in horror, we realized that man was not specially created 
and rather is a result of billions of years of evolution. Next, we realize 
that even our own egos, our own selves, are mysteries to us.64 Perhaps 
now it is time for another de-centering. Let us realize that humans have 
an ethical duty to safeguard our distant future, and that we must ensure 

63 Plato, Symposium, 208b.
64  Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

the being into which we will evolve is both something we are proud 
of and capable of thriving. Humans are not the end of the evolutionary 
ladder of life. It would be a shame to throw away the gift of the will to 
p er   e u ni  e en   e er r ug  ur se s ness  
Nietzsche believed that it is time for humanity to set itself a goal. It is 
time to look at humanity’s purpose and future more practically. After 
all, isn’t the most disenfranchised being that which isn’t born yet?65

65 This is an aspect of “longtermism”, which endorses ethical consideration 
for beings who are not yet born, i.e., a being such as the overman. 



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The Human Synthesis: An Exploration of Anxiety, Love, and Selfhood under the Domain of the Will to Power

REFERENCES
De Rougemont, Denis. Love in the Western World. Translat-

ed by Montogomery Belgion. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 
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Freud, Sigmund. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. 
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Kierkegaard, Soren. The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psy-
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of Hereditary Sin. Edited by Alastair Hannay, Translated by Alastair 
Hannay. NY: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2014. 

Kierkegaard, Soren. The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian 
s gi  p si i n r i i n n  ening  i e   

Alastair Hannay, Translated by Alastair Hannay. NY:  Viking Pen-
guin Inc., 1989.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. Edited by Walter A. 
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Nietzsche, Friedrich. “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” in The Por-
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A. Kaufmann. NY: Viking Penguin Inc., 1968.

Plato. Symposium. Translated by R.E. Allen. New Haven: 
Yale University Press, 1991. 

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Translated by 
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