Wanting to Want, in Nietzsche, La Volonté de puissance, Livre III, 462

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary and not translation. Please check my interpretation against the original text reproduced below.]

Wanting to Want

Friedrich Nietzsche

La Volonté de puissance

II

Livre III:

Le nihilisme vaincu par lui-même

3. L'innocence du Devenir

(The Innocence of Becoming)

462

We take pleasure when we set a goal for ourselves. And we must exert a sizable amount of intellectual force in order to determine the ends and means.

Wanting is an immanent agreeable sensation. There is still an outpouring of overabundant force even if we do not obtain what we wanted.

From the Bianquis translation:

Se fixer un but est à soi seul un plaisir ; une dose considérable de force intellectuelle se dépense à chercher les moyens et les fins.

Vouloir : sensation instante, très agréable ! C’est le phénomène connexe de toute effusion de force. Pareillement, le voeu en lui-même (indépendamment du succès).

A. 1883 (XIII, §368)

Nietzsche, Friedrich. La Volonté de puissance, II. Transl. G. Bianquis. Paris: Gallimard, 1938.

Critique of the Power of Judgment §10: End, Purposiveness, Pleasure, and Will

by Corry Shores
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Transcendentally speaking (i.e., without regard for empirical matters, such as pleasure), an end is the object of a concept insofar as the concept is considered as the cause (the ground of possibility) of its object. In other words, when the concept of something is presupposed for that object to be, or for it to be thought, then it is an end. Purposiveness is the concept of an object being the cause of that object. The representation of the end is presupposed for it to be an outcome. Pleasure is our consciousness of such a representation, which allows us to maintain this state of awareness; while displeasure is the consciousness of the representation that thwarts pleasure (§10 105b). Will is the faculty of desire’s being in relation to representations of ends. Something is purposive only if it relates to ends and thus also to will (§10 105c).

(page numbers from: Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Transls. & Eds. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.)

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