RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Will, Freedom of The
pendent upon him. Human reason is influenced by will; its judgments are muffled acts of will. Error of reason must be ascribed to the vol-
6. Modern untary affirmation of ideas which are
Philosophy. as yet problematical. The capacity to affirm or deny, however, is merely cate-
gorical; the will amenable to reasons is higher. The former, or merely unbiased vacillation between motives, is really lack of freedom since it rests upon deficient power of judgment. Clear insight into the practical enables weaker subjects to independence from passions. Nicolas Malebranche (q.v.) called will the natural inclination of the mind toward the good; it is always without compulsion, spontaneous, but not always capable of indifferently taking the alternative. Impression and motive, receptivity and spontaneity, are respectively identified. Spinoza (q.v.) represented absolute determinism; free will is a delusion due to a failure to comprehend the absolute cause. Leibnitz (q.v.) defines freedom as selfdetermination in accordance with understanding, the product of which is inclination, not necessity. Free will is to be compared to the magnetic needle obeying its own inherent laws. A freedom of neutrality would not be free will but wilfulness. To apply the law of causation to the will would be to insert in volitional subjectivity a retrogressive infinity. The English and French empiricism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries culminated in absolute materialism, most pronounced in the De la nature (1744) of J. B. R. Robinet. David Hume, theoretically concerned with a destructive criticism of the idea of causation, acknowledged an antipathy against the judgment that human willing is determined. On the other hand, conduct can not be the necessary resultant of the ego, since the unity of the ego is only concluded from a series of reciprocal functions. The solution is resolved in skepticism: if accidental, then conduct is irrational; if causally determined, then it is not one’s own but another’s, a thesis whichis untenable. Joseph Priestley (q.v.), following David Hartley, represented the physiological determinism, deriving all psychical phenomena from physiological neural antecedents; yet inconsistently he maintained the immortality of the soul. According to Kant, causal necessity issues a priort from pure reason, which legislates upon nature. In his practical philosophy, he proceeds to demonstrate that what was before considered freedom, the capability on the part of the empirical ego of alternative choice, was only an apparent freedom. Empirically, as sensual beings belonging to the world of phenomena, men are determined in their future actions the same as everything that is causally determined, because the empirical ego belongs not to the world of reality but of phenomena, which is subject to the a priori law of causation. This is predicated of the transcendental ego or soul noumenon, which also affords in practical ethical deductions, by synthetic judgment, the categorical imperative “thou shalt.” With this also freedom is absolutely given; “thou canst, for thoushalt.” Logically the conscience or moral law is primarily given; but ethically and metaphysically this freedom is the first implication, since by a “practical syllogism” it is deduced as the adequate ground of the moral impera-
tive. Since the time of Kant there is therefore no longer any contradiction between identification with the causal complexity of nature and the consciousness of ethical, religious freedom; and the value and instructiveness of later treatments depend upon their attitude positively or negatively toward Kant’s system.
In the philosophical development of the idea of freedom after Kant four different types may be distinguished: (1) According to F. W. J. Schelling (q.v.); Ueber das Wesen der menschlichen Frethett, 1809; 1834), freedom of the will proceeds from the separable coexistence of light and darkness, 1.e., from the possibility of good and evil, in distinction
from the inseparable divine identity.
7. The From it results the contradiction be-
Nineteenth tween necessity and freedom, as well as Century. their unity, which is the subordination of the finite to the infinite, and which
will resolve the despair of the practical reason by personal recourse in the divine, or the incarnation of God. (2) J. F. Herbart strictly distinguishes between the metaphysical ‘‘fiction” of freedom which he denies, and the idea of ‘‘inner freedom.” Schleiermacher’s position approximates that of Herbart, making the will a mode of thought, and freedom independence over against causality as collectivity, without the subordination of effect to cause. (3) The Hegelian school maintained that freedom is implied in the rational will. But more important than formal free will is moral freedom, which, according to the degree of its development and perfection, is determined by the truth of its content; and in its last stage, where it, as the absolute rational knowledge of the absolute rational purpose, is identical with the will of God; where will and its object, volition and duty are one, freedom and necessity are no longer distinct. (4) Arthur Schopenhauer taught that “necessity is the kingdom of nature, freedom the kingdom of grace.’”’ Grace comes immediately from outside and has not the least in common with the law of cause and effect. The empirical man can do what he would, but he can not will what he would; he can not change himself; he is determined. Only by the total, radical negation of the will to live, salvation may be attained. This negation, however, does not result from philosophical reflection, but, momentarily, upon an intuitive technical vision; permanently, only upon the miracle of the rupture of the intellect from its root in the will, by means of a transcendental process of supermundane passivity. Refined by Eduard von Hartmann (q.v.) and his adherents, and subjected to thorough criticism by others, Schopenhauer’s doctrine has remained the most remarkable type after the time of Hegel. Positivistic naturalism and materialistic historiography have found a psychological counterpart in the deterministic mechanization of the life of the will and the denial of will itself. More recently individual apologists, ushering in a new appreciation of the Fichtian egoism (Liebmann), have revived belief in the freedom of the will, with an unsurpassed intensity; while the school of the consciousness theory and the psychomonism, directly or indirectly, reassert the verity of the sense of freedom. Liebmann teaches that the man is free
Will, Freedom of The