The 'Will to Life' (Wille zum Leben) enters the depth-psychology corpus principally through Schopenhauer's metaphysical identification of a blind, universal striving as the innermost nature of existence — a striving that individual ego-consciousness both expresses and is enslaved by. Across the corpus, the term functions as a diagnostic instrument: wherever suffering, compulsion, or the futility of rational self-governance appear, the Will to Life lurks as their ground. Schopenhauer's heirs in this library divide sharply. For the therapeutic tradition flowing through Yalom, Rank, and May, the Will to Life is transmuted into a clinical problem of volition — how the individual may achieve genuine willing against the blind impulse-life that drives behavior unconsciously. Nietzsche retools the concept entirely: the Will to Life is subordinated to, and finally overcome by, the Will to Power, which he reads as the true 'unexhausted, procreating life-will.' Aurobindo's Integral Yoga offers a third position, distinguishing the gross 'will to live' — a degraded vital impulse — from a purified 'will to delight' proper to the soul. What unites these positions is the recognition that the Will to Life, left unexamined, forecloses individuation, authentic choice, and spiritual liberation; the question each author presses is how consciousness might subordinate, redirect, or transcend it.
In the library
16 passages
both ordinary and scientific knowledge, he claims, are objectifications and instruments of the will to life that expresses itself in the ego's motives and actions… the ego sees the world through the lens of its motives as an embodiment of the will to life.
This passage gives Schopenhauer's fullest epistemological indictment of ordinary cognition as structurally subordinated to the Will to Life, making all knowing, including science, its instrument rather than its master.
Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis
both ordinary and scientific knowledge, he claims, are objectifications and instruments of the will to life that expresses itself in the ego's motives and actions… the ego sees the world through the lens of its motives as an embodiment of the will to life.
Identical in argument to the Ure passage, this formulation establishes the Will to Life as the totalizing force from which aesthetic and ascetic liberation must be sought.
Sharpe, Matthew and Ure, Michael, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis
suffering is intrinsic to our existence as phenomena of the will to live… Schopenhauer draws from Buddhism, Brahmanism and Christian pessimism about the value and purpose of existence.
The passage argues that Schopenhauer's pessimism — grounded in the Will to Life — is validated cross-culturally by Buddhism, Brahmanism, and Christianity, each of which diagnoses existence itself as the source of suffering.
Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis
suffering is intrinsic to our existence as phenomena of the will to live… Schopenhauer draws from Buddhism, Brahmanism and Christian pessimism about the value and purpose of existence.
This passage confirms that the Will to Life, as Schopenhauer conceives it, grounds a cross-traditional pessimism that links phenomenal existence to irreducible suffering demanding transcendence.
Sharpe, Matthew and Ure, Michael, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis
it is that will itself, the will to power, the unexhausted, procreating life-will. But that you may understand my teaching about good and evil, I shall relate to you my teaching about life and about the nature of all living creatures.
Nietzsche here explicitly reformulates the Schopenhauerian Will to Life as Will to Power — the 'procreating life-will' — thereby both inheriting and overturning Schopenhauer's framework in a single move.
desire is only a deformation of will in the dominant bodily life and physical mind… if we are unable to make this distinction practically in the experience of our being, we can only make a choice between a life-killing asceticism and the gross will to live.
Aurobindo distinguishes the 'gross will to live' as a deformation of soul-will by the body-mind, arguing that genuine liberation requires neither suppression nor indulgence but transformation of the will's quality.
so great is the vim, the clutch of that more agitated Life-Will, so immense the peril of its passions and errors, so subtly insistent or persistently invasive… that even the saint and the Yogin cannot be sure of their liberated purity.
Aurobindo characterizes the Life-Will as a tenacious force that resists even advanced spiritual practice, framing it as the primary obstacle to supramental transformation.
Aurobindo, Sri, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948supporting
Philosophy, as he conceives it, seeks to explain and overcome the suffering we experience as willing, passionate creatures… we cannot free ourselves from suffering through the exercise of reason.
This passage contextualizes the Will to Life within Schopenhauer's therapeutic philosophy, arguing that because reason is itself an instrument of willing, rational therapy is insufficient to overcome the Will to Life.
Sharpe, Matthew and Ure, Michael, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
Philosophy, as he conceives it, seeks to explain and overcome the suffering we experience as willing, passionate creatures… we cannot free ourselves from suffering through the exercise of reason.
Parallel to the Sharpe passage, this frames the Will to Life as the central problem that Schopenhauer's philosophy-as-therapy attempts to address, deeming rational approaches structurally inadequate.
Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
two primitive drives emerged as dominant: the desire for power and the emotion of fear… when Nietzsche came to understand fear as the feeling of the absence of power, he was left with a single motivating principle for all human actions: the will to power.
This editorial commentary traces Nietzsche's philosophical reduction of multiple drives — including the fear that underlies mere survival-willing — to a single motivating principle that supersedes the Will to Life.
it was he who introduced the concept of the will into modern psychotherapy… Rank joined Freud in 1905 as one of his first students.
Yalom's genealogy of will-theory in psychotherapy situates Otto Rank as the pivotal figure who translated metaphysical will-discourse into clinical practice, the therapeutic heir to the Will to Life tradition.
Yalom, Irvin D., Existential Psychotherapy, 1980supporting
motivation can influence but cannot replace will; despite various motives, the individual still has the option of behaving or not behaving in a certain fashion.
Yalom's distinction between motivation and will positions the clinical will as a faculty that can resist the blind drivenness of motive, implicitly countering the determinism implicit in the Will to Life concept.
Yalom, Irvin D., Existential Psychotherapy, 1980supporting
If you have only 'will' and no 'wish,' you have the dried-up, Victorian, neopuritan man. If you have only 'wish' and no 'will,' you have the driven, unfree, infantile person.
This passage, citing Rollo May via Farber, articulates the therapeutic ideal as a balance between wish and will, implicitly diagnosing the unreformed Will to Life as the condition of the 'driven, unfree, infantile person.'
Yalom, Irvin D., Existential Psychotherapy, 1980supporting
the will is an impulse, positively, actively placed in the service of the ego, and not a blocked impulse, as is the emotion.
Rank's technical reformulation of will as an 'ego impulse' distinct from blocked impulse-life represents an attempt to domesticate the metaphysical Will to Life into a workable clinical concept.
Yalom, Irvin D., Existential Psychotherapy, 1980aside
I can will knowledge, but not wisdom; going to bed, but not sleeping; eating, but not hunger; meekness, but not humility.
Farber's celebrated list of the limits of conscious will implicitly acknowledges the domain in which the unconscious Will to Life operates beyond voluntary control, demarcating the reach of therapeutic intervention.
Yalom, Irvin D., Existential Psychotherapy, 1980aside
a continued sense of life meaning was crucial for survival in the concentration camp… Frankl's own meaning in life has been since that time 'to help others find their meaning.'
Frankl's logotherapeutic response to the Will to Life tradition recasts the question: rather than overcoming the will to live, meaning-finding sustains and dignifies it in extremis.
Yalom, Irvin D., Existential Psychotherapy, 1980aside