Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities (The Collected Works of Edith Stein, vol. 7) (Stein, Ediththe Collected Works of Edith Stein) by Edith Stein & Marianne Sawicki

Author:Edith Stein & Marianne Sawicki [Edith Stein]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ICS Publications
Published: 2016-02-10T16:00:00+00:00

d) Efficacy of Will. Under efficacy of will, we understand that the subject gets an action going, in that [either] the subject lets the stance of will, induced by the motives, roll over into a doing, or the subject supplies from its own free resolve the impulse powers for the doing that the stance of will may lack. To envision the second possibility: Suppose that a problem is standing before me in all its weightiness, and demands of me an intense intellectual functioning in order for its solution to be reached. However, the problem doesn’t find me alert enough to induce in me the appropriate stance of will that’s able to transpose itself with no further ado into the requisite doing. Yet I commit myself to the work on the basis of the recognized (even though not vividly felt) urgency of the problem, and I follow it through, if necessary in a constant struggle against my tiredness, the expression of “nature fighting back.”

Now let’s ask whether the unity of one action of will can distribute itself among a plurality of subjects, perhaps in this form: that I fully experience one motive of will and the stance of will pertaining to it, but I accomplish the action “through somebody else.” For example, I feel the wish to see my friends again, I make up my mind to ask them over for the evening, I send them the invitation by messenger, and they come. Gathering with friends is the objective; all those involved work together toward its realization. If the friends help me with it, in that they respond to my invitation, this is nothing other than a case of the sharing of motivations, which we were discussing earlier in general. What I set forth for them as worth aspiring to, becomes an objective for them as well, and they contribute toward its attainment.

Various possibilities come under consideration for that causal factor which, aside from the sense-content, has a say in the realization of the course of motivation.93 It could be that the impulse power which converts into willing and acting is flowing forth to the others out of the motive – just as it is to me myself. But it could also be that the impulse power of the motive plus my friends’ own inner aliveness isn’t enough “to set them in motion,” yet the liveliness of my wishing and wanting, which expresses itself in my words, gives them the push that precipitates their doing. No common stance of will develops here (as it did in the case where the motive itself was impelling to the action), but rather the others are guided through my willing and I act through them.

This comes to expression even more clearly in my relationship to the messenger. He completely lacks the impulse power of my objective. (He might not even know about it.) Another motive can stand in for it: the wish or the obligation to be helpful to me. This provides the impulse power,

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