Will (Boúlesis / Voluntas / Wille) — The faculty of deliberation and choice. Augustine places the will at the center of moral and spiritual life: sin is the will’s deviation from God toward created goods. Kant distinguishes Wille (the legislative will, pure practical reason) from Willkür (the power of choice, the capacity to choose maxims). Schopenhauer: the Will (Wille zum Leben) is the blind, irrational essence of reality, from which the subject can only liberate itself through asceticism or aesthetic contemplation. Nietzsche reinterprets: Will to Power (Wille zur Macht) as creative self-affirming impulse.
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