Bret Davis (2007:9) – vontade não é esforço

A vontade tem de ser distinguida de um "mero esforço" (blosse Streben  ) que, por assim dizer, apenas nos empurra para trás. Enquanto "não nos é possível esforçarmo-nos para além de nós próprios, . . . a vontade . . . é sempre um querer para além de si próprio [über sich hinaus wollen  ]" (N1 51/41). A vontade não é, portanto, uma questão de um simples "encapsulamento do ego   em relação ao que o rodeia" (59/48), mas é um modo pelo qual o Dasein   existe extasiado no mundo. No entanto, "aquele que quer coloca-se no exterior entre os entes para os manter firmemente no seu campo de ação" (ibid., sublinhado nosso). Em outras palavras, se o sujeito que quer sempre quer para além de si mesmo, abrindo-se ao mundo, isso envolve ao mesmo tempo um movimento de trazer o mundo de volta ao domínio do seu poder, ao domínio da sua vontade.

Let us return to the task at hand  , that of giving a preliminary account of the notion of “will.” What characterizes the fundamental (dis)attunement of willing? Heidegger develops his mature conception of the will chiefly through his encounter with Nietzsche  . In Heidegger’s first lecture course on Nietzsche in 1936, he draws on Nietzsche’s thought to give a kind of phenomenological account of the will, laying out the following points. [1]

Willing must first be distinguished from a “mere striving” (blosse Streben) which, as it were, merely pushes one from behind. While “it is not   possible for us to strive beyond ourselves, . . . will . . . is always a willing out beyond oneself [über sich hinaus wollen]” (N1 51/41). The will is thus not a matter of a simple “encapsulation of the ego from its surroundings” (59/48), but is a mode in which Dasein ecstatically exists out into the world. Nevertheless, “he who wills stations himself abroad among beings in order to keep them firmly within his field of action” (ibid., emphasis added). In other words, if the subject who wills always wills out beyond himself, opening himself up to the world, this involves at the same time a movement of bringing the world back into the realm of his power, the domain of his will.

There is thus a double movement essential to willing. “Willing always brings the self to itself; it thereby finds itself out beyond itself” (63/52, emphasis added); or as Heidegger writes in his Schelling   interpretation  , it is a matter of “what always strives back to itself, and yet expands itself” (SA 155/128). In willing, we exceed ourselves only to bring this excess back into the self; “in willing we [seek to] know ourselves as out beyond ourselves; we have the sense of having somehow achieved a state of being-master [Herrsein] over [something]” (N1 64/52). The ekstasis of willing is thus always incorporated back into the domain of the subject; the will’s movement of self-overcoming is always in the name of an expansion of the subject, an increase in his territory, his power. Willing is, in short, “being-master-out-beyond-oneself [Uber-sich-hinaus-Herrsein]” (76/63). I shall call this double-sided or “duplicitous” character of will: ecstatic-incorporation.