The Voluntarist Path

Voluntarism holds that will, rather than reason or intellect, is the fundamental feature of reality and of the human being. Schopenhauer developed its most systematic metaphysics, arguing that the world is the expression of a single blind, striving Will of which all phenomena are manifestations. Nietzsche transformed this into the will to power as the drive underlying all life. Bergson's élan vital and the broader philosophy of life movement carry voluntarist themes into the twentieth century, connecting this tradition to Existentialism and Process Philosophy.