The views of Kant and Sir William Hamilton in relation to the antagonism
between liberty and necessity.
“To clear up this seeming antagonism between the mechanism of nature and
freedom in one and the self-same given action, we must refer,” says Kant,
“to what was advanced in the critique of pure reason, or what, at least,
is a corollary from it, viz., that the necessity of nature which may not
consort with the freedom of the subject, attaches simply to a thing
standing under the relations of time, i. e., to the modifications of the
acting subject as phenomena, and that, therefore, so far (i. e., as
phenomena) the determinators of each act lie in the foregoing elapsed
time, and are quite beyond his power, (part of which are the actions man
has already performed, and the phenomenal character he has given himself
in his own eyes,) yet, _e contra_, the self-same subject, being
self-conscious of itself as a thing in itself, considers its existence as
somewhat detached from the conditions of time, and itself, so far forth,
as only determinable by laws given it by its own reason.”(52)
Kant has said, that this “intricate problem, at whose solution centuries
have laboured,” is not to be solved by “a jargon of words.” If so, may we
not doubt whether he has taken the best method to solve it? His solution
shows one thing at least, viz., that he was not satisfied with any of the
solutions of his predecessors, for his is wholly unlike them. Kant saw
that the question of liberty and necessity related to the will itself, and
not to the consequences of the will’s volitions. Hence he was compelled to
reject those weak evasions of the difficulty of reconciling them, and to
grapple directly with the difficulty itself. Let us see if this was not
too much for him. Let us see if he has been able to maintain the doctrine
of necessity, holding it as a “demonstrated truth,” and at the same time
give the idea of liberty a tenable position in his system.
If we would clear up the seeming antagonism between the mechanism of
nature and freedom in regard to the same volition, says he, we must
remember, that the volition itself, as standing under the conditions of
time, is to be considered as subject to the law of mechanism: yet the mind
which puts forth the volition, being conscious that it is a thing somewhat
detached from the conditions of time, is free from the law of mechanism,
and determinable by the laws of its own reason. That is to say, the
volitions of mind falling under the law of cause and effect, like all
other events which appear in time, are necessary; while the mind itself,
which exists not exactly in time, is free. We shall state only two
objections to this view. In the first place, it seems to distinguish the
mind from its act, not _modally_, i. e., as a thing from its mode, but
_numerically_, i. e., as one thing from another thing. But who can do
this? Who regards an act of the mind, a volition, as anything but the mind
itself as existing in a state of willing? In the second place, it requires
us to conceive, that the act of the mind is necessitated, while the mind
itself is free in the act thus necessitated. But who can do this? On the
contrary, who can fail to see in this precisely the same seeming
antagonism which Kant undertook to remove? To tell us, that volition is
necessitated because it exists in time, but the mind is free because it
does not exist in time, is, one would think, a very odd way to dispel the
darkness which hangs over the grand problem of life. It is to solve one
difficulty merely by adding other difficulties to it. Hence, the world
will never be much wiser, we are inclined to suspect, with respect to the
seeming antagonism between liberty and necessity, in consequence of the
speculations of the philosopher of Königsberg, especially since his great
admirer, Mr. Coleridge, forgot to fulfil his promise to write the history
of a man who existed in “neither time nor space, but a-one side.”
Though Kant made the attempt in his Metaphysics of Ethics to overcome the
speculative difficulty in question, it is evident that he is not satisfied
with his own solution of it, since he has repeatedly declared, that the
practical reason furnishes the only ground on which it can be surmounted.
“This view of Kant,” says Knapp, “implying that freedom, while it is a
postulate of our _practical_ reason, (i. e., necessary to be assumed in
order to moral action,) is yet _inconsistent with our theoretical reason_,
(i. e., incapable of demonstration, _and contrary to the conclusions to
which the reflecting mind arrives_,) is now very generally rejected.”(53)
In regard to this point, there seems to be a perfect coincidence between
the philosophy of Kant and that of Sir William Hamilton. “In thought,”
says the latter, “we never escape determination and necessity.”(54) If the
scheme of necessity never fails to force itself upon our thought, how are
we then to get rid of it, so as to lay a foundation for morality and
accountability? This question, the author declares, is too much for the
speculative reason of man; and being utterly baffled in that direction, we
can only appeal to the fact of consciousness, in order to establish the
doctrine of liberty. “The philosophy which I profess,” says he,
“annihilates the theoretical problem—How is the scheme of liberty, or the
scheme of necessity, to be rendered comprehensible?—by showing that both
schemes are equally inconceivable; but it establishes liberty practically
as a fact, by showing that it is either itself an immediate datum, or is
involved in an immediate datum of consciousness.”(55) We shall hereafter
see, why the scheme of necessity always riveted the chain of conviction on
the thought of Sir William Hamilton, and compelled him to have recourse to
an appeal to consciousness in order to escape its delusive power.