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Key Terms (will be on quiz) David Freidrich Strauss new faith freedom of indifferent choice illusion of indifferent choice always a reason for choice of action Herbert Spencer freedom of choice liberty to desire or not desire analysis of consciousness The Philosophy of Freedom
Conscious Human Action 1.1 Freedom of Indifferent Choice And it is among the sad signs of the superficiality of contemporary thinking that a book intending to coin a "new belief" from the results of recent scientific research—David Friedrich Strauss’s The Old and New Belief—contains nothing on this question but the words: "We need not here go into the question of the freedom of human will. The supposed freedom of indifferent choice has been recognized as an empty phantom by every philosophy worthy of the name, while the moral valuation of human conduct and character remains untouched by the question."1 I cite this passage, not because I think the book from which it derives has any special significance, but because it seems to me to express the opinion which the majority of our thinking contemporaries have been able to achieve on this question. Today, everyone who can claim to have outgrown scientific kindergarten appears to know that freedom cannot consist in choosing arbitrarily between two possible actions. There is always, so it is claimed, a quite specific reason why a person performs one specific action from among several possibilities. 1.2 Freedom of Choice [2] This seems obvious. Nevertheless, present-day opponents of freedom direct their principal attacks only against freedom of choice. After all, Herbert Spencer, whose views daily gain wider acceptance, says: "That anyone could desire or not desire arbitrarily, which is the real proposition concealed in the dogma of free will, is refuted as much through the analysis of consciousness as through the content of the preceding chapter [on psychology]."2 1. D.F. Strauss (1808–1874), Der alte und der neue Glaube (1872). A German theologian and philosopher, David Friedrich Strauss developed a Hegelian theory of Biblical interpretation. He caused a storm with his historical-critical Life of Jesus, in which he called the Gospels “a historical myth.” 2. Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), The Principles of Psychology (1855). German edition Dr. B. Vetter, Stuttgart, 1882. Spencer was an English philosopher, friend of Huxley, Tyndall, George Eliot, and John Stuart Mill. He attempted a comprehensive, systematic (materialist/ dualist) account of all cosmic phenomena, including mental and moral principles.”The spirit in our present civilization is the spirit which John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer have already worked into their philosophies.” Rudolf Steiner, A Modern Art of Education (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1981). |
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