Deleuze's Nietzsche: Will to Power and Eternal Return

Julie Van der Wielen

The Deleuzian Mind, eds. Jeffrey Bell and Henry Somers-Hall, Routledge, 2025. ISBN 9781032278513

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In this chapter, I address Deleuze’s interpretation of what he considers the two most important Nietzschean concepts: the will to power and the eternal return. I address the ethical and ontological signification that these concepts have according to Deleuze, and I point to the importance of these concepts to his non-Hegelian notion of difference and his elaboration of a concrete principle of production. The will to power plays the role both of a genetic principle of production and a critical genealogical principle of evaluation. As a differential principle of production, this concept informs Deleuze’s principle of different/ciation in the last chapters of Difference and Repetition. As a genealogical principle, Deleuze considers that this concept allows Nietzsche to truly realize the critical project: It allows him to evaluate the value of values, which Kant was unable to do because he never questioned the value of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, but only how they can be achieved. I further show in what way Deleuze’s genealogical interpretation of the will to power relates to the typology of forces that he elaborates with Nietzsche, and I indicate in what sense this implies a critique of the Hegelian, dialectical point of view. Then I address Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s eternal return, which plays an important role in the first two chapters of Difference and Repetition. For Deleuze, the eternal return is a selective principle, which has an ontological as well as an ethical sense. This principle is geared towards the affirmation of becoming over being, and towards a transmutation of values, which would allow to transcend the decadent and oppressive aspects of humanity. I conclude by noting the relevance of Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche for us today.