Towards the Rehabilitation of the Will in Contemporary Philosophy

References

• Friedrich Nietzsche, Kritische Studienausgabe, Band 4 (München/Berlin: de Gruyter, 1882/1887–1988), p. 146, hereafter cited as: KSA).
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• Emmanual Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. by Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburg: Duquesne UP 1987), pp. 216–253.
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• Herman Philipse, Heidegger's Philosophy of Being. A Critical Interpretation (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1998), p. 309.
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• Cf.Richard Wolin, The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger (New York: Columbia UP, 1990), p. 150.
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• Brett Davis, Heidegger and the Will. On the Way to Gelassenheit (Evanston/Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2007), p. 244; cf. pp. 216–248; cf. M.B. Tanzer, Heidegger: Decisionism and Quietism (New York: Prometheus Books, 2002).
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• With this question, we follow a different line of thought than Brett Davis proposes in his book. Also he argues that Heidegger's critics touch on certain genuine problematical issues, involved in the radicality of his thought path. ‘These misapprehensions of Heidegger's turn toward a twisting free of the domain of the will indirectly suggest an insufficiency in articulation, or at least a tenuous subtlety, in his intimations of thinking non-willing(ly)’. He asks whether there is ‘not a third possibility intimated in Heidegger's texts, namely that of a non-willing relation between man and being which exceeds the very domain of power and impotence?’ (Brett Davis, Heidegger and the will, 244). In this article however, and contrary to Davis, we ask whether there is a willing relation between man and being which exceeds the very domain of power and impotence.
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• Martin Heidegger, Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges, Gesamtausgabe Band 16 (Vittorio Klostermann: Frankfurt a.M., 2000), p. 108; 117, hereafter cited as: GA 16. For Heidegger's destruction of the will in his Rectoral Address, see Vincent Blok, ‚Heideggers “National Sozialismus” oder die Frage nach dem philosophischen Empirismus’, Studia Phaenomenologica, 10 (2010), pp. 273–292.
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• Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit. Heidegger and the Question, trans. Geoffrey Bennington end Rachel Bowlby (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1989), p. 46. In his study of the twists and turns in Heidegger's thought with regard to the problem of the will, Davis for instance does not take into account the possibility that Heidegger's profound confrontation (Auseinandersetzung) with the concept of the will is phenomenologically motivated. For this discussion see Vincent Blok, “‘Massive Voluntarism’ or Heidegger's Confrontation with the Will”, Studia Phaenomenologica, Vol. 13 (2013), 449–465.
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• Parts of this section were published earlier in Studia Phaenomenologica, Vol. 13 (2013), 449–465.
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• Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1949), p. 128, hereafter cited as: CPR.
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• Martin Heidegger, Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit, Gesamtausgabe Band 31 (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1994), pp. 276–279, hereafter cited as: GA 31.
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• Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche: Der Wille zur Macht als Kunst, Gesamtausgabe Band 43 (Frankfurt a.M: Vittorio Klostermann, 1985), p. 44, hereafter cited as: GA 43.
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• This characteristic of the will is founded on Aristotle. He defines will (boulèsis) as a striving (orexis) which is connected to a rational representation and is located in the rational part of the soul (Aristotle, de Anima III, 9 (432b5–7)). For a comprehensive study on the will in Western philosophical tradition, see: Thomas Pink, M.W.F. Stone (ed.), The Will and Human Action: From Antiquity to the Present (London/New York: Routledge, 2004).
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• Cf.Martin Heidegger, Schelling: Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit, Gesamtausgabe Band 42 (Frankfurt a.M: Vittorio Klostermann, 1988), p. 217.
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• With the concept of Entschlossenheit, Heidegger brings one of his own basic concepts of Being and Time in connection with Nietzsche's concept of the will. Normally, this word means resoluteness and indicates the resoluteness of the will of the subject. Literally nevertheless, Entschlossenheit means Ent-schlossenheit, ‘unclosedness’, i.e., not exactly will as the resoluteness of the subject, but exposure to the openness and concealment of beings, in which the one who wills and what is willed are interconnected. ‘Das Wesen des Wollens wird hier in die Ent-schlossenheit zurückgenommen. Aber das Wesen der Ent-schlossenheit liegt in der Ent-borgenheit des menschlichen Daseins für die Lichtung des Seins und keineswegs in einer Kraftspeicherung des Agierens. cf. Sein und Zeit §44 und §60. Der Bezug zum Sein aber ist das Lassen’ (Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik, Gesamtausgabe Band 40 (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983), p. 23, hereafter cited as: GA 40).
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• In 1930 already, Heidegger saw this character of the will: ‘Everyone who actually wills knows: to actually will is to will nothing else but the ought of one's existence’ (GA 31: 289).
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• Martin Heidegger, Holzwege, Gesamtausgabe Band 5 (Frankfurt a.M: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977), p. 234, hereafter cited as: GA 5.
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• Cf.Brett Davis, Heidegger and the Will, p. 9.
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• Cf.Martin Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie (vom Ereignis), Gesamtausgabe Band 65 (Frankfurt a.M: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989), pp. 179–186.
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• Jacob Rogozinski, „Hier ist kein warum. Heidegger and Kant's Practical Philosophy”, in Heidegger and Practical Philosophy, ed.by F. Raffoul, F., D. Pettigrew (New York: State University of New York Press, 2002), p. 50.
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• Quoted in J. Ritter et al., Historische Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Band 12 (Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 1971–2005), p. 784.
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• In this article, we focus on our main question and leave the question about the explanation of the self-interest of willing in Heidegger's philosophy aside. For this, see the excellent article of Rogozinski, who admits the difference between the modern philosophical interest in the human subject and Heidegger's interest in Dasein, but nevertheless points to the “existential solipsism” in his understanding of Dasein.
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• I would like to thank the reviewers of The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.
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