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Key Terms (will be on quiz) action result of conscious motive action result of unconscious urge know the reasons for action knowing doer (act out of knowledge) free when controlled by reason free to determine life compelled by reason Robert Hamerling free to do what one wills determined by strongest motive motive forced on me how the decision arises Paul Rée rational thinking determined by invisible causes unconditioned absolute beginning The Philosophy of Freedom
Conscious Human Action 1.5 Action Result Of Conscious Motive I[7] This leads immediately to the standpoint from which the matter will be considered here. Can the question of the freedom of our will be posed narrowly by itself? And, if not, with what other questions must it necessarily be linked? [8] If there is a difference between a conscious motive and an unconscious drive, then the conscious motive will bring with it an action that must be judged differently from an action done out of blind impulse. Our first question will concern this difference. The position we must take on freedom itself will depend on the result of this inquiry. [9] What does it mean to have knowledge of the motives of one’s actions? This question has been given too little attention, because we always tear in two the inseparable whole that is the human being. We distinguish between the doer and the knower, but we have nothing to say about the one who matters most: the one who acts out of knowledge. 1.6 Free When Controled By Reason [10] People say that human beings are free when they obey reason alone and not animal desires. Or they say that freedom means being able to determine one’s life and actions according to purposes and decisions. [11] Nothing is gained by such claims. For the question is precisely whether reason, purposes, and decisions exercise control over human beings in the same way as animal desires. If a reasonable decision arises in me of itself, with the same necessity as hunger and thirst, then I can but obey its compulsion, and my freedom is an illusion. 1.7 Free To Do As One Wills [12] Another turn of phrase puts it thus: to be free does not mean being able to will whatever one wills, but being able to do what one wills. In his Atomistics of the Will, the poet-philosopher Robert Hamerling expresses this idea incisively: "Human beings can certainly do what they will— but they cannot will what they will, since their willing is determined by motives. They cannot will what they will? Let us look at these words more closely. Do they contain any reasonable meaning? Must freedom of the will then consist in being able to will something without having grounds, without a motive? But what does willing mean other than having grounds to do or attempt this rather than that? To will something, without grounds, without motive, would mean willing something without willing it. The concept of motivation is inseparably linked to the concept of the will. Without a determining motive, the will is an empty capacity: it only becomes active and real through the motive. Thus it is quite correct that the human will is not ‘free,’ inasmuch as its direction is always determined by the strongest motive. But it is absurd, in contrast to this ‘unfreedom,’ to speak of a conceivable ‘freedom’ of the will that involves being able to will what one does not will."5 [13] Even here, only motives in general are discussed, without considering the difference between conscious and unconscious motives. If a motive acts upon me, and I am forced to follow it because it proves to be the “strongest” of its kind, then the thought of freedom ceases to have any meaning. Why should it matter to me whether I can do something or not, if I am forced by the motive to do it? The first question is not whether I can or cannot do something once the motive has operated upon me, but whether there exist only motives of the kind that operate with compelling necessity. If I have to will something, then I may even be utterly indifferent as to whether I can actually do it. If, because of my character and the circumstances prevailing in my environment, a motive were forced upon me that my thinking showed me was unreasonable, then I would even have to be glad if I could not do what I will. [14] It is not a question of whether I can execute a decision once it is made, but of how the decision arises within me. 1.8 Action An Unconditioned Absolute Beginning [15] What distinguishes humans from all other organic beings rests on rational thinking. Activity we have in common with other organisms. Seeking analogies for human action in the animal kingdom does not help to clarify the concept of freedom. Modern natural science loves such analogies. And when science succeeds in finding among animals something similar to human action, it believes it has touched on the most important question of the science of humanity. Paul Rée’s book, The Illusion of Free Will offers one example of the misunderstandings to which this opinion leads. On page 5, Rée states, with regard to freedom, "It is easy to explain why it appears to us as if the movement of the stone is necessary while the donkey’s will is not. The causes that move the stone are, after all, external and visible. But the causes by which the donkey desires are internal and invisible: between us and the site of their activity there lies the donkey’s skull. . . . One does not see the causal determination and therefore imagines that it is not present. The will, we say, while it is the cause of the donkey’s turning around, is itself undetermined; it is an absolute beginning."6 Here, too, is an utter disregard for human actions in which the human being has an awareness of the reasons for the action, for Rée explains, “between us and the site of their activity there lies the donkey’s skull.” We can see from these words alone that Rée has no inkling that there exist actions (not a donkey’s, but a human’s) for which there lies, between us and the action, the motive that has become conscious. He proves this again a few pages later when he says: “We are not aware of the causes by which our will is determined, and so we imagine that it is not causally determined at all.” [16] But enough of examples proving that many fight against freedom without at all knowing what freedom is. 5. Robert Hamerling (1830-1889) Atomistik des Willens (Volume 2, p. 213 ff.) Hamerling was an Austrian poet, philosopher, dramatist, and schoolteacher in Vienna, Graz, and Trieste. He was an acquaintance of Rudolf Steiner. See “Robert Hamerling, Poet and Thinker” in The Presence of the Dead (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1990). See also Rudolf Steiner, An Autobiography and Karmic Relationships, vol. II (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1974). 6. Paul Rée (1849–1901), Die Illusion der Willensfreiheit. Rée was a friend of Friedrich Nietzsche and Lou Andréas Salome and an influential “alternative” thinker of the time. |
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