The will to power and truth: Ontological creation in Nietzsche's philosophy

Our entire life process is bound up with the question of who we are. Every choice a person makes on the path of seeking the self turns into a journey through which one constructs oneself. Nietzsche is the thinker who dismantles all systems that dictate how a person should choose and how one ought to act along this journey. His central critique of humanity targets those who live with a herd mentality, who have never realized their potential, and who have become victims of another's intellectual world. Nietzsche refuses to submit to any authority, religion, social norm, or philosophical tradition. His uncompromising demand for the freedom of thought makes him a thinker who demolishes existing value systems. Yet Nietzsche does not pursue destruction for its own sake, but rather a creative destruction. Nietzsche's most radical blow is directed at God. The death of God signifies the collapse of all existing values, meanings, and systems. Consequently, with the disappearance of God, the notion of absolute truth also ceases to exist, giving way to the necessity for the individual to create their own truth. This creation belongs only to those who possess the power to generate truth. The capacity to create truth emerges through the will to power. Every choice that determines who we are rests upon this will. The transformation of truth from an objective reality into a value constructed within a particular order of power marks a turning point in the history of philosophy. According to Nietzsche, every definition of truth is in fact an interpretation. Therefore, truth becomes a value that carries the meaning attributed to it. Creating the values that sustain truth is possible only through the will to power. To be master of oneself is to create one's own truth and determine one's own course of life. Consequently, the meanings attributed to truth become visible within a person's lived experience, for at the heart of one's existence lie the interpretations of what is real or true. The entirety of life unfolds from these interpretations. The aim of this thesis is to examine the extent to which the concept of truth plays a decisive role in making life meaningful and to relate the existence of life—through the meanings constructed about truth—to the will to power. Accordingly, it will be detailed how the will to power permeates the human mind, how it spreads into life, and how it is reflected back into the universe. In the first chapter, Nietzsche's radical critique of truth and his approach that dismantles claims to absoluteness are discussed. From this perspective, the interpretative nature of truth and its effect on human life are examined. It is demonstrated that life is shaped by the truths constructed within the human mind. Based on the premise that every truth is an interpretation, the plurality, relativity, and system-constituting nature of truth are analyzed. The first chapter concludes that truth is a creative domain in which the will to power manifests itself. It is shown that the reinterpretation of truth constitutes the fundamental element determining human identity and human life. In the second chapter, the will to power is examined as the driving force behind the creation of truth. The will to power is interpreted not merely as a psychological inclination but also as an ontological and cosmological law. In this context, it is concluded that the will to power is not a uniquely human impulse, but rather a fundamental principle/law that sustains life and the universe in a continual state of becoming. The claim that the will to power is identical with the logic through which life and the cosmos generate themselves is elaborated. The individual or subject is positioned as the constitutive agent of this existence. Thus, Nietzsche's interpretative account of truth is expanded, and the will to power is re-situated as an ontological principle of being underlying the universe and life. Consequently, the will to power emerges as the foundational principle that determines the creative logic of being, truth, and the universe. Finally, the analyses concerning the emergence of life and the universe from the will to power lead to the conclusion that life arises through an ontological creation beginning within the human mind. When the human mind is conceived as the micro-reflection of the universe, the will to power appears as the constitutive principle of the cosmos.