The Legacy of the Will to Power

It is uncertain if Nietzsche's assertion, at #290 of Beyond Good and Evil, that "every profound thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood", is true.  Regardless, if the subsequent century or so is any indication, he has little to fear with respect to his concept of the Will to Power.  For, the most prominent influence of the latter has been where it has been appropriated as a rhetorical rationale for violence, exploitation, and/or neglect.  In other words, even there, there has been no insight into its innovative implications as a Psychological or Biological theory, or as a Moral doctrine of Empowerment.  No doubt his emphasis on the more brutish interpretation of the concept, i. e. as apparently advocating uncompromising Overpowering, has contributed to the narrowness of its appeal.  Furthermore, despite his well-earned reputation as one of the great writers in the history of Philosophy, his manner of presenting the Will to Power undermines its potential efficacy, by failing to do justice to it.  That failure consists, more precisely, in an inadequacy of Form to Content, e. g. the better expression of a "development of  . . . more comprehensive states" (BGE 257) is a progressive construction, not scatter-shot aphorisms, no matter how cleverly juxtaposed.  So, if he, in contrast, had presented the Will to Power as has been proposed here, i. e. as the methodically constructed doctrine 'Potentism', he might have had more to fear about its being understood, though its legacy might have been a more generally beneficial one.