I've been investigating the will. What makes us want to? How does the will arise in us? These are some of the questions that move me lately. I have read articles and books, watched movies where the will is an issue. But the riddle remains. I still haven't figured out what distinguishes will from purpose. What underlies it, what is the cornerstone of our desire and its driving force.
Rudolf Steiner, in his “Philosophy of Liberty”, says that “in order to understand the acts of the will, we have to take into account two factors: the motive and the motive force. The motive is a conceptual or figurative factor, the motive force is the will factor located in the human organization. The conceptual factor or motive is the momentary determining cause of action; the driving force, the permanent determining cause in the individual” (STEINER, GA 4, p. 106).
When investigating the cornerstone of the will, one must consider the motive, the purpose, since, according to Steiner, “individual goals drive the will”. He says, on page 114: “I want to do what is in me”. I ask myself: What? What do I want? What is my cornerstone? What truly drives my will, my driving force?
A contemporary Spanish philosopher states in a transcribed lecture that: “As we lose the ability to happen, we no longer know what is the source or the engine of our desire, we do not know the source or the engine of the movement of the body, speeds, slowness, changes that cross the body, an intensive body, an affective body, a body that lives at the edge of space, so to speak, that touches with its physical skin the very being of feeling… ” (FUGANTI, 2007).
Investigate your own motives, understand the foundation, seek the cornerstone, the purpose is a condition of health, maintenance of living life. For if the body loses its source, its motive, its purpose, it loses its own way of sustaining itself, of regulating itself, of modifying itself.
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Locating and making our cornerstone move, through the intensity of the will and the direction of the driving force, is a daily exercise for maintaining our potency in these times when we are at the mercy of a state of affairs that makes us weaken.
