SCHOLAR: The non-willing meant in these cases is thus rather a willing that something not happen. This non-willing is not a negation of willing.
SCIENTIST: It is becoming increasingly doubtful to me whether there ever is such a negation of willing.
SCHOLAR: Yet how about when someone says: “I will no longer”?
GUIDE: Even the non-willing named here seems to me to be still ambiguous.
SCHOLAR: “I will no longer” can mean: “I have no desire or no strength any longer to will.”
SCIENTIST: Or else: “I abhor willing.”
GUIDE: Or even: “I forgo willing.” [78]
SCHOLAR: Yet in abhorring, just as in forgoing and renouncing, does there not still live a will?
SCIENTIST: That is what I previously meant when I doubted the possibility of a nonwilling.
GUIDE: Thus, there is still will where we, as it were, suspend willing.
SCHOLAR: All non-willing of the said kind remains a variation of willing.
GUIDE: Even though the varying consists of a negating of willing, the variant is never a negation of the will, but rather each time an affirmation of it. And this is true of what is subject to the variation, that is, of what is varied, so long as we understand by this what lies at the base of the negation. But it is also true of what comes out of the varying in the sense of negation. The variations of willing in the form of its manifold negations are all carried out within the will.
SCIENTIST: You therefore distinguish between willing and will. I am, however, unable to conceive of what precisely is meant with this distinction. I am reluctant to expect of you the superficial view that the word “will” is merely meant to designate the faculty for willing.
GUIDE: With the word “will” I do not in fact mean a faculty of the soul, but rather that wherein the essence of the soul, mind, reason, love, and life is based, according to a unanimous yet hardly thought through doctrine of occidental thinkers. If we understand by “willing” the human carrying-out of this will, then there is concealed in the still completely obscure relation between will and willing a relationship; yet I lack the word to name it. [79]
SCIENTIST: I cannot at all conceive of what relationship you mean to suggest. Assuming, however, that the distinction between willing and will is a legitimate one, then the negation could also extend to the will.
GUIDE: Non-willing would thus imply non-will.
Ἀγχιβασίη: A Triadic Conversation on a Country Path between a Scientist, a Scholar, and a Guide