Davis, H&W
RE The will as a faculty of the subject
"...if we are to pursue Heidegger's path of rethinking the will, we must more radically call into question the traditional assumption that the will is simply a "faculty of the subject." To begin with, what if it were the case that something akin to the opposite were true--that subjectivity is rather, as it were, a "faculty of the will"? What is the will underlies the subject, and not vice versa...that thinking in terms of a subject who possesses faculties, a subject who wills, already involves a particularly willful mode of being-in-the-world?...if the very ontology which sets up a subject who stands over against a world of objects, to which it then reaches out by means of faculties, powers of representational thought and volitional action, is itself determined by a willful manner of being and thinking?" 6
RE the will as "Fundamental (Dis)attunement
"A fundamental attunement would be "fundamental" in the sense that it first opens (one) up (to) a world, prior to the determination of "who" is opened up to "what"...A willful fundamental attunement first determines the ontology wherein a subject is open to a world of objects in such a manner that the "open to" of this relation is distorted (constricted) into the representation of objects present-at-hand, if not indeed into the securing of a totality of materials ready for willful manipulation" 8
"The will...involves precisely not being a-tuned to an other...The will, of necessity, draws its being from a relation with an otherness or exteriority which exceeds its domain, while at the same time denying or disguising this ordinary dispossession of itself. In this sense, the fundamental attunement of the will would be an inauthentic fundamental (dis) attunement...the will is a comportment of the subject that attempts to close off, to forget, his originary ecstatic openness to what lies beyond his grasp." 14
RE the Will's appropriation
H: "he who wills stations himself abroad among beings in order to keep them firmly within his field of action"
"In willing, we exceed ourselves to bring this excess back into the self...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" 9
"The will, in willing itself, reaches out to the world as something it posits and represents as a means for its movement of power-enhancement and hence power-preservation, or power-preservation and hence power-enhancement" 12
RE Representation
H: "Representation inspects everything encountering it from out of itself and in reference to itself" In representing the world, one brings it into one's sphere of knowing and acting, and thus the world is reduced to an environment pivoting on one's will. Ultimately, Heidegger attempts to show, representation reduces the things of the world to objects and finally to "standing-reserve" fro willful technological manipulation" 13
RE Metaphysics
"The dilemma endemic to metaphysics as such lies in the fact that its "will to ground and found", its will to submit beings to the shadowless light of the principle of calculative reason, or the will to posit the human subject himself as the ground, hinders an originary experience of the granting-in-withdrawal of being which lets beings be in their presencing and absencing" 13
RE Levinas and the Will
"THe will is a movement of reducing otherness to sameness, difference to identity, even when paradoxically when this has the effect of solidifying dichotomies...The will wants the impossible: to possess others as others; but the moment it succeeds in possessing them, they are stripped of their otherness. The will therefore fails even when it succeeds, and its movement of restless self-expansion must continue without end" 10
RE The will as a faculty of the subject
"...if we are to pursue Heidegger's path of rethinking the will, we must more radically call into question the traditional assumption that the will is simply a "faculty of the subject." To begin with, what if it were the case that something akin to the opposite were true--that subjectivity is rather, as it were, a "faculty of the will"? What is the will underlies the subject, and not vice versa...that thinking in terms of a subject who possesses faculties, a subject who wills, already involves a particularly willful mode of being-in-the-world?...if the very ontology which sets up a subject who stands over against a world of objects, to which it then reaches out by means of faculties, powers of representational thought and volitional action, is itself determined by a willful manner of being and thinking?" 6
RE the will as "Fundamental (Dis)attunement
"A fundamental attunement would be "fundamental" in the sense that it first opens (one) up (to) a world, prior to the determination of "who" is opened up to "what"...A willful fundamental attunement first determines the ontology wherein a subject is open to a world of objects in such a manner that the "open to" of this relation is distorted (constricted) into the representation of objects present-at-hand, if not indeed into the securing of a totality of materials ready for willful manipulation" 8
"The will...involves precisely not being a-tuned to an other...The will, of necessity, draws its being from a relation with an otherness or exteriority which exceeds its domain, while at the same time denying or disguising this ordinary dispossession of itself. In this sense, the fundamental attunement of the will would be an inauthentic fundamental (dis) attunement...the will is a comportment of the subject that attempts to close off, to forget, his originary ecstatic openness to what lies beyond his grasp." 14
RE the Will's appropriation
H: "he who wills stations himself abroad among beings in order to keep them firmly within his field of action"
"In willing, we exceed ourselves to bring this excess back into the self...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" 9
"The will, in willing itself, reaches out to the world as something it posits and represents as a means for its movement of power-enhancement and hence power-preservation, or power-preservation and hence power-enhancement" 12
RE Representation
H: "Representation inspects everything encountering it from out of itself and in reference to itself" In representing the world, one brings it into one's sphere of knowing and acting, and thus the world is reduced to an environment pivoting on one's will. Ultimately, Heidegger attempts to show, representation reduces the things of the world to objects and finally to "standing-reserve" fro willful technological manipulation" 13
RE Metaphysics
"The dilemma endemic to metaphysics as such lies in the fact that its "will to ground and found", its will to submit beings to the shadowless light of the principle of calculative reason, or the will to posit the human subject himself as the ground, hinders an originary experience of the granting-in-withdrawal of being which lets beings be in their presencing and absencing" 13
RE Levinas and the Will
"THe will is a movement of reducing otherness to sameness, difference to identity, even when paradoxically when this has the effect of solidifying dichotomies...The will wants the impossible: to possess others as others; but the moment it succeeds in possessing them, they are stripped of their otherness. The will therefore fails even when it succeeds, and its movement of restless self-expansion must continue without end" 10
