It is necessary that our philosophy confess this quite loudly, so that it
might thereby finally be relieved of the unreasonable demand that it demonstrate to human beings from
outside something they have to create in themselves.
Now how is this absolute in willing thought?
At the level of abstraction that it must receive here, this concept [of the absoluteness of willing] may
well be the most difficult concept in all of philosophy, though in the future it will undoubtedly obtain the
greatest clarity, since the entire science that we are now engaged in establishing is really concerned only
with the further determination of this concept. In order to have something to think about with respect to
this concept right from the beginning, however, let us begin our exposition of it with the following
example.
Imagine a compressed steel spring. Within this spring there is undoubtedly a striving to push back
against what presses upon it; hence this striving within the spring is directed outward. This would be an
image of actual willing, as the stateof a rational being [IV, 27]; but this is not what we are talking about here. Now what is the proximate ground(not the condition) of this striving, understood as an actually
determined manifestation of the steel spring? The proximate ground in question is undoubtedly an inner
effect [ Wirkung] of the spring upon itself, a self-determination. Surely the ground for the opposing action of the spring does not lie in that body outside the steel spring, which exerts pressure upon it. This
self-determination would be [analogous to] what, in a rational being, is the sheer actof willing. From
both there would then arise – if only the spring of steel could intuit itself – a consciousness of a will to
push back what exerts pressure on it. But all this would be possible only on the condition that there
actually occurs a pressure on the spring from outside; just as, according to the argument given above, a
rational being cannot determine itself to engage in an actual act of willing unless it stands in reciprocal
interaction with something outside itself (for this is at least how it appearsto the rational being in
question). We now have to abstract from this last point, for we are here concerned just as little with it as
we were with the previously indicated one. Returning to our example: if I abstract entirely from the
external pressure, is there anything still left through which I can think the steel spring as such, and, if so,
what is this
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that remains? Obviously, it is that in consequence of which I judge that the steel spring, just as soon as
some pressure is exerted on it, will strive against the later; i.e., it is the inner tendency of the spring to
determine itself to a counterstriving, understood as the genuine essence of elasticity and as the ultimate
ground of all of its appearances, just as soon as the conditions of their manifestation are present, a
ground which cannot be explained any further. – The quite essential difference between this original
tendency of the steel spring and the original tendency of a rational being will become evident in the
following investigations.
In the same manner that we dissected the concept that served as our example, we now have to dissect the
I, as conceived through its willing [IV, 28].
First of all, with respect to its form, the problem is that of thinking the I at the requisite level of
abstraction as something subsisting[ Bestehendes] and fixed. From this it follows that that through which the I is here to be conceived and characterized has to be something enduring and essential. Its
manifestations and appearances may change, since the conditions under which it manifests itself will
change; but what manifests itself under all these conditions remains constantly the same. (Anyone
familiar with the spirit of transcendental philosophy will share our presupposition that this thinking of
something subsisting must itself be based on our laws of thinking and that, accordingly, what we are
seeking is only the essence of the I for the I, and by no means the latter’s essence in itself, as a thingin itself.)
Further, as to its matter, what is to be thought is supposed to be the ground of an absolute willing (for all
willing is absolute). What then is it? From the start, everyone must actually have thought along with us
what is demanded, must actually have carried out the prescribed abstraction, and must now intuit himself
internally to see what remains, what it is that he is still thinking. Only in this way will he obtain the
intended cognition.