Beilage XIX <Kinaesthesis as Desirous Striving and as Way of Willing> (probably September 1931)

Interest arises from an affection. The ray of interest (attention) proceeds from the I outward, or the self-directedness of the I is a striving self-directing, a being near-by in attention, being interested, being engaged, doing. The I performs an act. But it is therefore not yet an authentic doing, an act, so that being directed to something in attention is not yet an experiencing, a perceiving, or entirely an immediate perceiving of something, and as perhaps being next to an object. Authentic doing, acting (and the word here always has an uncommonly broad meaning) is directed to something as a "goal," and indeed as an attainable goal, something constituted. Hence we must distinguish between the goal as something merely desired (pole of desire), as something which is directed to an absent good, ... and the practical goal of which one is conscious as the goal of an actualizing way, and one that can be actualized by me.

In the primal sphere of the living perceiving present: here there is what is in itself earlier, the absent, the becoming conscious of an insufficiency and desiring. Should I now say: instinctively corporeal desiring or desiring goes over to a first "willing;" it does not remain with the passivity of striving; it becomes "active striving" = willing (even though both are acts)? Shall I say that this original willing has the form of one exploding total kinaesthesis, exploding in kinaestheses, which is still not dominant, thus in its partial kinaetheses undividedly penetrating through one another, whereby the field data are changed, and occassionally the absent also comes "nearer" or comes nearer again. "Nearer" signifies a change in data in increasing similarity allows the absent to shine through precisely in the form of similarity... The desire is fulfilled, the active striving, the original kinaestheses comes to kinaesthetic rest.

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