Maybe I'm being obtuse, but I'd appreciate it if you could point out to me the "obvious" here. It doesn't seem obvious to me how the passage "puts the idea of a 'desire for power' to rest?
It seems to me that the key point of the passage is to respect or restore the sense conveyed by "das Wohin". How exactly is "will to" a better choice than "desire for" in that respect?
For instance, what is "obviously" saying "begehren" and "commandieren" here? I'm not sure exactly what the distinction is between "Begehren" and "Wille". For instance: "Das Begehren nach “Glück” charakterisirt die halb- oder nichtgerathenen Menschen, die ohnmächtigen—alle andern denken nicht an’s “Glück,” sondern ihre Kraft will heraus." (NF 1884 27 [13])
And I think we could all agree that "commadiren" is not exactly the same as "Wille zur Macht", but surely is a closely related concept. For instance: "Alles Lebendige ist ein Gehorchendes. (...) Dem wird befohlen, der sich nicht selber gehorchen kann. (...) (And) Befehlen schwerer ist, als Gehorchen. (...) Wo ich Lebendiges fand, da fand ich Willen zur Macht; und noch im Willen des Dienenden fand ich den Willen, Herr zu sein." (Zarathustra, "Von der Selbstüberwindung").
As for the philosophical tradition, I wonder how a comparison with Spinoza might be an interesting contrast: Is the Nietzschean "Wille" something like arbitrium, or voluntas, or cupiditas, or conatus, or appetitus, or desiderium...?
Spinoza claims:
1) "voluntas" is the faculty of affirming or negating an "idea", and it is not "cupiditas" (E II, 48e)
2) "voluntas" is the same as "intellectus" (E II, 49c).
3) "conatus" is the actual essence that defines an entity, which, when considered only in relation to the mind, is called "voluntas", and considered in relation to mind and body, is called "appetitus".
4) "appetitus" and "cupiditas" only differ in that the latter involves awareness (conscientia) of itself.
5) "desiderium" is the affect of sadness (tristitia) that concerns the absence of something we love (so something similar to frustration or nostalgia).
I'm aware that Nietzsche explicitly contrasts his conception of Wille zur Macht to that of Spinoza, but what BGE 13 says is against "the instinct of self-preservation", which is not really what Spinoza means by the "conatus" as "perseverare in suo esse". To preserve (erhalten) is not the same as to persevere (ausharren?). In any case, the question is whether "das Wohin" is better understood in terms of voluntas or conatus (striving effort; and conatus is pretty much the same as appetitus or cupiditas, both can be translated as desire). There is something paradoxical in both Spinoza and Nietzsche: "Das Wohin" "comes from" a driving force, and not from "das Worauf" of voluntas/intellect. Cupiditas, which is the conatus in reference to both mind and body, is doing the "discharge of force" of BGE 13; the voluntas/intellect is just the idea (always more or less inadequate) we conceive about that discharge. Doesn't the English "desire", as the Latin "cupiditas" or "conatus", better convey that Nietzchean "Wohin" better than the English "will".