247. Outline of remaining lectures, on (1) rights connected with
the functions of government, (2) social virtues. (The antithesis of
'social' and 'self-regarding' is false)
248. Virtues, being dispositions to exercise rights, are best
co-ordinated with rights. Thus to the right of life correspond those
virtues which maintain life against nature, force, and animal passion
249. Similarly there are active virtues, corresponding to the
negative obligations imposed by property and marriage
250. 'Moral sentiments' should be classified with the virtues, of
which they are weaker forms
251. Although for clearness _obligations_ must be treated apart
from _moral duties_, they are really the outer and inner side of
one spiritual development, in the joint result of which the idea of
perfection is fulfilled.
Supplement.
Some Quotations rendered into English.
ON THE DIFFERENT SENSES OF 'FREEDOM' AS APPLIED TO WILL AND TO THE
MORAL PROGRESS OF MAN.
Note of the Editor,
The lectures from which the following extract is taken were delivered
in the beginning of 1879, in continuation of the course in which the
discussion of Kant's moral theory occurred. The portions here printed
are those which were not embodied, at any rate in the same form, in
the _Prolegomena to Ethics_. See _Prolegomena to Ethics_, Book ii.
ch. i. sec. 100, Editor's note.
ON THE DIFFERENT SENSES OF 'FREEDOM' AS APPLIED TO WILL AND TO THE
MORAL PROGRESS OF MAN.
1. Since in all willing a man is his own object, the will is always
free. Or, more properly, a man in willing is necessarily free,
since willing constitutes freedom, [1] and 'free will' is the
pleonasm 'free freedom.' But while it is important to insist upon
this, it is also to be remembered that the nature of the freedom
really differs--the freedom means quite different things--according
to the nature of the object which the man makes his own, or with
which he identifies himself. It is one thing when the object in
which self-satisfaction is sought is such as to prevent that
self-satisfaction being found, because interfering with the
realisation of the seeker's possibilities or his progress towards
perfection: it is another thing when it contributes to this end. In
the former case the man is a free agent in the act, because through
his identification of himself with a certain desired object--through
his adoption of it as his good--he makes the motive which determines
the act, and is accordingly conscious of himself as its author. But
in another sense he is not free, because the objects to which his
actions are directed are objects in which, according to the law of
his being, satisfaction of himself is not to be found. His will to
arrive at self-satisfaction not being adjusted to the law which
determines where this self-satisfaction is to be found, he may be
considered in the condition of a bondsman who is carrying out the
will of another, not his own. From this bondage he emerges into real
freedom, not by overcoming the law of his being, not by getting
the better of its necessity,--every fancied effort to do so is but
a new exhibition of its necessity,--but by making its fulfilment
the object of his will; by seeking the satisfaction of himself in
objects in which he believes it _should be_ found, and seeking
it in them _because_ he believes it should be found in them. For
the objects so sought, however various otherwise, have the common
characteristic that, because they are sought in such a spirit, in
them self-satisfaction is to be found; not the satisfaction of this
or that desire, or of each particular desire, but that satisfaction,
otherwise called peace or blessedness, which consists in the whole
man having found his object; which indeed we never experience in
its fulness, which we only approach to fall away from it again, but
of which we know enough to be sure that we only fail to attain it
because we fail to seek it in the fulfilment of the law of our being,
because we have not brought ourselves to 'gladly do and suffer what
we must.'
To the above statement several objections may be made. They will
chiefly turn on two points; _(a)_ the use made of the term 'freedom';
_(b)_ the view that a man is subject to a law of his being, in virtue
of which he at once seeks self-satisfaction, and is prevented from
finding it in the objects which he actually desires, and in which he
ordinarily seeks it.
[1] In that sense in which 'freedom' expresses a state of the soul,
as distinct from a civil relation.
2. As to the sense given to 'freedom,' it must of course be admitted
that every usage of the term to express anything but a social and
political relation of one man to others involves a metaphor. Even in
the original application its sense is by no means fixed. It always
implies indeed some exemption from compulsion by others, but the
extent and conditions of this exemption, as enjoyed by the 'freeman'
in different states of society, are very various. As soon as the term
'freedom' comes to be applied to anything else than an established
relation between a man and other men, its sense fluctuates much more.
Reflecting on their consciousness, on their 'inner life' (i.e. their
life as viewed from within), men apply to it the terms with which
they are familiar as expressing their relations to each other. In
virtue of that power of self-distinction and self-objectification,
which he expresses whenever he says 'I,' a man can set over against
himself his whole nature or any of its elements, and apply to the
relation thus established in thought a term borrowed from relations
of outward life. Hence, as in Plato, the terms 'freedom' and
'bondage' may be used to express a relation between the man on the
one side, as distinguishing himself from all impulses that do not
tend to his true good, and those impulses on the other. He is a
'slave' when they are masters of him, 'free' when master of them.
The metaphor in this form was made further use of by the Stoics, and
carried on into the doctrines of the Christian Church. Since there is
no kind of impulse or interest which a man cannot so distinguish from
himself as to present it as an alien power, of which the influence on
him is bondage, the particular application of the metaphor is quite
arbitrary. It may come to be thought that the only freedom is to be
found in a life of absolute detachment from all interests; a life
in which the pure ego converses solely with itself or with a God,
who is the same abstraction under another name. This is a view into
which both saints and philosophers have been apt to fall. It means
practically, so far as it means anything, absorption in some one
interest with which the man identifies himself in exclusion of all
other interests, which he sets over against himself as an influence
to be kept aloof.
With St. Paul the application of the metaphor has a special character
of its own. With him 'freedom' is specially freedom from the law,
from ordinances, from the fear which these inspire,--a freedom which
is attained through the communication of what he calls the 'spirit
of adoption' or 'son-ship.' The law, merely as law or as an external
command, is a source of bondage in a double sense. Presenting to man
a command which yet it does not give him power to obey, it destroys
the freedom of the life in which he does what he likes without
recognising any reason why he should not (the state of which St.
Paul says 'I was alive without the law once'); it thus puts him in
bondage to fear, and at the same time, exciting a wish for obedience
to itself which other desires (φρόνημα σαρκός) [1] prevent from being
accomplished, it makes the man feel the bondage of the flesh. 'What
I will, that I do not'; there is a power, the flesh, of which I am
the slave, and which prevents me from performing my will to obey the
law. Freedom (also called 'peace,' and 'reconciliation') comes when
the spirit expressed in the law (for the law is itself 'spiritual'
according to St. Paul; the 'flesh' through which it is weak is mine,
not the law's) becomes the principle of action in the man. To the
man thus delivered, as St. Paul conceives him, we might almost apply
phraseology like Kant's. 'He is free because conscious of himself as
the author of the law which he obeys.' He is no longer a servant, but
a son. He is conscious of union with God, whose will as an external
law he before sought in vain to obey, but whose 'righteousness is
fulfilled' in him now that he 'walks after the spirit.' What was
before 'a law of sin and death' is now a 'law of the spirit of life.'
(See _Epistle to the Romans_, viii.)
[1] [Greek φρόνημα σαρκός (phronima sarkos) = carnal mind (KJV) Tr]
3. But though there is a point of connection between St. Paul's
conception of freedom and bondage and that of Kant, which renders
the above phrase applicable in a certain sense to the 'spiritual
man' of St. Paul, yet the two conceptions are very different. Moral
bondage with Kant, as with Plato and the Stoics, is bondage to the
flesh. The heteronomy of the will is its submission to the impulse
of pleasure-seeking, as that of which man is not in respect of his
reason the author, but which belongs to him as a merely natural
being. A state of bondage to law, as such, he does not contemplate.
It might even be urged that Kant's 'freedom' or 'autonomy' of the
will, in the only sense in which he supposed it attainable by man, is
very much like the state described by St. Paul as that from which the
communication of the spirit brings deliverance,--the state in which
'I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but find another
law in my members warring with the law of my reason and bringing
me into captivity to the law of sin in my members.' For Kant seems
to hold that the will is actually 'autonomous,' i.e. determined by
pure consciousness of what should be, only in rare acts of the best
man. He argues rather for our being conscious of the possibility of
such determination, as evidence of an ideal of what the good will
is, than for the fact that anyone is actually so determined. And
every determination of the will that does not proceed from pure
consciousness of what should be he ascribes to the pleasure-seeking
which belongs to man merely as a 'Natur-wesen,' or as St. Paul might
say 'to the law of sin in his members.' What, it may be asked, is
such 'freedom,' or rather such consciousness of the possibility of
freedom, worth? May we not apply to it St. Paul's words, 'By the law
is the knowledge of sin'? The practical result to the individual of
that consciousness of the possibility of freedom which is all that
the autonomy of will, as really attainable by man, according to
Kant's view, amounts to, is to make him aware of the heteronomy of
his will, of its bondage to motives of which reason is not the author.
4. This is an objection which many of Kant's statements of his
doctrine, at any rate, fairly challenge. It was chiefly because he
seemed to make freedom [1] an unrealised and unrealisable state,
that his moral doctrine was found unsatisfactory by Hegel. Hegel
holds that freedom, as the condition in which the will is determined
by an object adequate to itself, or by an object which itself as
reason constitutes, is realised in the state. He thinks of the state
in a way not familiar to Englishmen, a way not unlike that in which
Greek philosophers thought of the πόλις, [2] as a society governed
by laws and institutions and established customs which secure the
common good of the members of the society--enable them to make the
best of themselves--and are recognised as doing so. Such a state
is 'objective freedom'; freedom is realised in it because in it
the reason, the self-determining principle operating in man as his
will, has found a perfect expression for itself (as an artist may
be considered to express himself in a perfect work of art); and the
man who is determined by the objects which the well-ordered state
presents to him is determined by that which is the perfect expression
of his reason, and is thus free.
[1] In the sense of 'autonomy of rational will,' or determination by
an object which reason constitutes, as distinct from determination by
an object which the man makes his own; this latter determination Kant
would have recognised as characteristic of every human act, properly
so called.
[2] [Greek πόλις (polis) = city-state Tr.]
5. There is, no doubt, truth in this view. I have already tried to
show [1] how the self-distinguishing and self-seeking consciousness
of man, acting in and upon those human wants and ties and affections
which in their proper human character have as little reality apart
from it as it apart from them, gives rise to a system of social
relations, with laws, customs, and institutions corresponding; and
how in this system the individual's consciousness of the absolutely
desirable, of something that should be, of an ideal to be realised
in his life, finds a content or object which has been constituted
or brought into being by that consciousness itself as working
through generations of men; how interests are thus supplied to the
man of a more concrete kind than the interest in fulfilment of a
universally binding law because universally binding, but which yet
are the product of reason, and in satisfying which he is conscious
of attaining a true good, a good contributory to the perfection
of himself and his kind. There is thus something in all forms of
society that tends to the freedom [2] at least of some favoured
individuals, because it tends to actualise in them the possibility of
that determination by objects conceived as desirable in distinction
from objects momentarily desired, which is determination by reason.
[3] To put it otherwise, the effect of his social relations on a man
thus favoured is that, whereas in all willing the individual seeks to
satisfy himself, this man seeks to satisfy himself, not as one who
feels this or that desire, but as one who conceives, whose nature
demands, a permanent good. So far as it is thus in respect of his
rational nature that he makes himself an object to himself, his will
is autonomous. This was the good which the ideal πόλις, as conceived
by the Greek philosophers, secured for the true πολίτης, the man who,
entering into the idea of the πόλις, was equally qualified ἄρχειν
καὶ ἄρχεσθαι. [4] No doubt in the actual Greek πόλις there was some
tendency in this direction, some tendency to rationalise and moralise
the citizen. Without the real tendency the ideal possibility would
not have suggested itself. And in more primitive forms of society, so
far as they were based on family or tribal relations, we can see that
the same tendency must have been at work, just as in modern life the
consciousness of his position as member or head of a family, wherever
it exists, necessarily does something to moralise a man. In modern
Christendom, with the extension of citizenship, the security of
family life to all men (so far as law and police can secure it), the
establishment in various forms of Christian fellowship of which the
moralising functions grow as those of the magistrate diminish, the
number of individuals whom society awakens to interests in objects
contributory to human perfection tends to increase. So far the modern
state, in that full sense in which Hegel uses the term (as including
all the agencies for common good of a law-abiding people), does
contribute to the realisation of freedom, if by freedom we understand
the autonomy of the will or its determination by rational objects,
objects which help to satisfy the demand of reason, the effort after
self-perfection.
[1] [In a previous course of lectures. See _Prolegomena to Ethics_,
III. iii. RLN]
[2] In the sense of 'autonomy of will.'
[3] [This last clause is queried in the MS. RLN]
[4] [Greek πόλις (polis) = city-state, πολίτης (polites) = citizen,
ἄρχειν καὶ ἄρχεσθαι (archein kai archesthai) = to rule and to be
ruled Tr]
6. On the other hand, it would seem that we cannot significantly
speak of freedom except with reference to individual persons; that
only in them can freedom be realised; that therefore the realisation
of freedom in the state can only mean the attainment of freedom by
individuals through influences which the state (in the wide sense
spoken of) supplies,--'freedom' here, as before, meaning not the mere
self-determination which renders us responsible, but determination by
reason, 'autonomy of the will'; and that under the best conditions
of any society that has ever been such realisation of freedom is
most imperfect. To an Athenian slave, who might be used to gratify a
master's lust, it would have been a mockery to speak of the state as
a realisation of freedom; and perhaps it would not be much less so to
speak of it as such to an untaught and under-fed denizen of a London
yard with gin-shops on the right hand and on the left. What Hegel
says of the state in this respect seems as hard to square with facts
as what St. Paul says of the Christian whom the manifestation of
Christ has transferred from bondage into 'the glorious liberty of the
sons of God.' In both cases the difference between the ideal and the
actual seems to be ignored, and tendencies seem to be spoken of as
if they were accomplished facts. It is noticeable that by uncritical
readers of St. Paul the account of himself as under the law (in
_Romans_ vii.), with the 'law of sin in his members warring against
the law of his reason,' is taken as applicable to the regenerate
Christian, though evidently St. Paul meant it as a description of the
state from which the Gospel, the 'manifestation of the Son of God
in the likeness of sinful flesh,' set him free. They are driven to
this interpretation because, though they can understand St. Paul's
account of his deliverance as an account of a deliverance achieved
for them but not in them, or as an assurance of what is to be, they
cannot adjust it to the actual experience of the Christian life. In
the same way Hegel's account of freedom as realised in the state does
not seem to correspond to the facts of society as it is, or even
as, under the unalterable conditions of human nature, it ever could
be; though undoubtedly there is a work of moral liberation, which
society, through its various agencies, is constantly carrying on for
the individual.
7. Meanwhile it must be borne in mind that in all these different
views as to the manner and degree in which freedom is to be attained,
'freedom' does not mean that the man or will is undetermined, nor
yet does it mean mere self-determination, which (unless denied
altogether, as by those who take the strictly naturalistic view
of human action) must be ascribed equally to the man whose will
is heteronomous or vicious, and to him whose will is autonomous;
equally to the man who recognises the authority of law in what St.
Paul would count the condition of a bondman, and to him who fulfils
the righteousness of the law in the spirit of adoption. It means
a particular kind of self-determination; the state of the man who
lives indeed for himself, but for the fulfilment of himself as a
'giver of law universal' (Kant); who lives for himself, but only
according to the true idea of himself, according to the law of his
being, 'according to nature' (the Stoics); who is so taken up into
God, to whom God so gives the spirit, that there is no constraint
in his obedience to the divine will (St. Paul); whose interests,
as a loyal citizen, are those of a well-ordered state in which
practical reason expresses itself (Hegel). Now none of these modes
of self-determination is at all implied in 'freedom' according
to the primary meaning of the term, as expressing that relation
between one man and others in which he is secured from compulsion.
All that is so implied is that a man should have power to do what
he wills or prefers. No reference is made to the nature of the will
or preference, of the object willed or preferred; whereas according
to the usage of 'freedom' in the doctrines we have just been
considering, it is not constituted by the mere fact of acting upon
preference, but depends wholly on the nature of the preference, upon
the kind of object willed or preferred.
8. If it were ever reasonable to wish that the usage of words had
been other than it has been (any more than that the processes of
nature were other than they are), one might be inclined to wish
that the term 'freedom' had been confined to the juristic sense of
the power to 'do what one wills': for the extension of its meaning
seems to have caused much controversy and confusion. But, after all,
this extension does but represent various stages of reflection upon
the self-distinguishing, self-seeking, self-asserting principle, of
which the establishment of freedom, as a relation between man and
man, is the expression. The reflecting man is not content with the
first announcement which analysis makes as to the inward condition
of the free man, viz. that he can do what he likes, that he has the
power of acting according to his will or preference. In virtue of the
same principle which has led him to assert himself against others,
and thus to cause there to be such a thing as (outward) freedom,
he distinguishes himself from his preference, and asks how he is
related to it, whether he determines it or how it is determined. Is
he free to will, as he is free to act; or, as the act is determined
by the preference, is the preference determined by something else?
Thus Locke (_Essay_, II. 21) begins with deciding that freedom means
power to do or forbear from doing any particular act upon preference,
and that, since the will is merely the power of preference, the
question whether the will is free is an unmeaning one (equivalent
to the question whether one power has another power); that thus the
only proper question is whether a man (not his will) is free, which
must be answered affirmatively so far as he has the power to do or
forbear, as above. But he recognises the propriety of the question
whether a man is free to will as well as to act. He cannot refuse to
carry back the analysis of what is involved in a man's action beyond
the preference of one possible action to another, and to inquire
what is implied in the preference. It is when this latter question
is raised, that language which is appropriate enough in a definition
of outward or juristic freedom becomes misleading. It having been
decided that the man civilly free has power over his actions, to do
or forbear according to preference, it is asked whether he has also
power to prefer.
9. But while it is proper to ask whether in any particular case a
man has power over his actions, because his nerves and limbs and
muscles may be acted upon by another person or a force which is not
he or his, there is no appropriateness in asking the question in
regard to a preference or will, because this cannot be so acted on.
If so acted on, it would not be a will or preference. There is no
such thing as a will which a man is not conscious of as belonging to
himself, no such thing as an act of will which he is not conscious
of as issuing from himself. To ask whether he has power over it,
or whether some other power than he determines it, is like asking
whether he is other than himself. Thus the question whether a man,
having power to act according to his will, or being free to act,
has also power over his will, or is free to will, has just the same
impropriety that Locke points out in the question whether the will is
free. The latter question, on the supposition that there is power to
enact the will,--a supposition which is necessarily made by those who
raise the ulterior question whether there is power over the will,--is
equivalent, as Locke sees, to a question whether freedom is free.
For a will which there is power of enacting constitutes freedom, and
therefore to ask whether it is free is like asking (to use Locke's
instance) whether riches are rich ('rich' being a denomination from
the possession of riches, just as 'free' is a denomination from the
possession of freedom, in the sense of a will which there is power
to enact). But if there is this impropriety in the question whether
the will is free, there is an equal one in the question which Locke
entertains, viz. whether man is free to will, or has power over his
will. It amounts to asking whether a certain power is also a power
over itself: or, more precisely, whether a man possessing a certain
power--that which we call freedom--has also the same power over that
power.
10. It may be said perhaps that we are here pressing words too
closely; that it is of course understood, when it is asked whether
a man has power over his will, that 'power' is used in a different
sense from that which it bears when it is asked whether he has power
to enact his will: that 'freedom,' in like manner, is understood to
express a different kind of power or relation when we ask whether a
man is free to will, and when we ask whether he is free to act. But
granting that all this has been understood, the misleading effects
of the question in the form under consideration ('Is a man free
to will as well as to act?' 'Has he power over his will?') remain
written in the history of the 'free-will controversy.' It has mainly
to answer for two wrong ways of thinking on the subject; _(a)_ for
the way of thinking of the determining motive of an act of will,
the object willed, as something apart from the will or the man
willing, so that in being determined by it the man is supposed not
to be self-determined, but to be determined as one natural event by
another, or at best as a natural organism by the forces acting on it:
_(b)_, for the view that the only way of escaping this conclusion is
to regard the will as independent of motives, as a power of deciding
between motives without any motive to determine the decision, which
must mean without reference to any object willed. A man, having (in
virtue of his power of self-distinction and self-objectification)
presented his will to himself as something to be thought about, and
being asked whether he has power over it, whether he is free in
regard to it as he is free against other persons and free to use his
limbs and, through them, material things, this way or that, must
very soon decide that he is not. His will is himself. His character
necessarily shows itself in his will. We have already, in a previous
lecture, [1] noticed the practical fallacy involved in a man's saying
that he cannot help being what he is, as if he were controlled by
external power; but he being what he is, and the circumstances being
what they are at any particular conjuncture, the determination of the
will is already given, just as an effect is given in the sum of its
conditions. The determination of the will might be different, but
only through the man's being different, But to ask whether a man has
power over determinations of his will, or is free to will as he is to
act, as the question is commonly understood and as Locke understood
it, is to ask whether, the man being what at any time he is, it
is still uncertain (1) whether he will choose or forbear choosing
between certain possible courses of action, and (2) supposing him to
choose one or other of them, which he will choose.
[1] [_Prolegomena to Ethics_, Sections 107, ff.--RLN]
11. Now we must admit that there is really no such uncertainty.
The appearance of it is due to our ignorance of the man and the
circumstances. If, however, because this is so, we answer the
question whether a man has power over his will, or is free to
will, in the negative, [1] we at once suggest the conclusion that
something else has power over it, viz. the strongest motive. We
ignore the truth that in being determined by a strongest motive,
in the only sense in which he is really so determined, the man (as
previously explained) [2] is determined by himself, by an object of
his own making, and we come to think of the will as determined like
any natural phenomenon by causes external to it. All this is the
consequence of asking questions about the relation between a man and
his will in terms only appropriate to the relation between the man
and other men, or to that between the man and his bodily members or
the materials on which he acts through them.
[1] Instead of saying (as we should) that it is one of those
inappropriate questions to which there is no answer; since a man's
will is himself, and 'freedom' and 'power' express relations between
a man and something other than himself.
[2] [See _Prolegomena to Ethics_, Section 105.--RLN]
12. On the other side the consciousness of self-determination resists
this conclusion; but so long as we start from the question whether a
man has power over his will, or is free to will as well as to act,
it seems as if the objectionable conclusion could only be avoided by
answering this question in the affirmative. But to say that a man has
power over determinations of his will is naturally taken to mean that
he can change his will while he himself remains the same; that given
his character, motives, and circumstances as these at any time are,
there is still something else required for the determination of his
will; that behind and beyond the will as determined by some motive
there is a will, itself undetermined by any motive, that determines
what the determining motive shall be,--that 'has power over' his
preference or choice, as this has over the motion of his bodily
members. But an unmotived will is a will without an object, which is
nothing. The power or possibility, beyond any actual determination of
the will, of determining what that determination shall be is a mere
negation of the actual determination. It is that determination as it
becomes after an abstraction of the motive or object willed, which
in fact leaves nothing at all. If those moral interests, which are
undoubtedly involved in the recognition of the distinction between
man and any natural phenomenon, are to be made dependent on belief in
such a power or abstract possibility, the case is hopeless.
13. The right way out of the difficulty lies in the discernment
that the question whether a man is free to will, or has power over
the determinations of his will, is a question to which there is no
answer, because it is asked in inappropriate terms; in terms that
imply some agency beyond the will which determines what the will
shall be (as the will itself is an agency beyond the motions of the
muscles which determines what those motions shall be), and that as
to this agency it may be asked whether it does or does not lie in
the man himself. In truth there is no such agency beyond the will
and determining how the will shall be determined; not in the man,
for the will _is_ the self-conscious man; not elsewhere than in the
man, not outside him, for the self-conscious man has no outside. He
is not a body in space with other bodies elsewhere in space acting
upon it and determining its motions. The self-conscious man is
determined by objects, which in order to be objects must already be
in consciousness, and in order to be _his_ objects, the objects which
determine him, must already have been made his own. To say that they
have power over him or his will, and that he or his will has power
over them, is equally misleading. Such language is only applicable
to the relation between an agent and patient, when the agent and
the patient (or at any rate the agent) can exist separately. But
self-consciousness and its object, will and its object, form a single
individual unity. Without the constitutive action of man or his will
the objects do not exist; apart from determination by some object
neither he nor his will would be more than an unreal abstraction.
14. If, however, the question is persisted in, 'Has a man power over
the determinations of his will?' we must answer both 'yes' and 'no.'
'No,' in the sense that he is not other than his will, with ability
to direct it as the will directs the muscles. 'Yes,' in the sense
that nothing external to him or his will or self-consciousness has
power over them. 'No,' again, in the sense that, given the man and
his object as he and it at any time are, there is no possibility of
the will being determined except in one way, for the will is already
determined, being nothing else than the man as directed to some
object. 'Yes,' in the sense that the determining object is determined
by the man or will just as much as the man or will by the object. The
fact that the state of the man, on which the nature of his object at
any time depends, is a result of previous states, does not affect
the validity of this last assertion, since (as we have seen [1])
all these states are states of a self-consciousness from which all
alien determination, all determination except through the medium of
self-consciousness, is excluded.
[1] [_Prolegomena to Ethics_, Section 102. RLN]
15. In the above we have not supposed any account to be taken of
the character of the objects willed in the application to the
will itself of the question 'free or not free,' which is properly
applied only to an action (motion of the bodily members) or to a
relation between one man and other men. Those who unwisely consent
to entertain the question whether a man is free to will or has
power over determinations of his will, and answer it affirmatively
or negatively, consider their answer, whether 'yes' or 'no,' to be
equally applicable whatever the nature of the objects willed. If
they decide that a man is 'free to will,' they mean that he is so in
all cases of willing, whether the object willed be a satisfaction of
animal appetite or an act of heroic self-sacrifice; and conversely,
if they decide that he is not free to will, they mean that he is not
so even in cases when the action is done upon cool calculation or
upon a principle of duty, as much as when it is done on impulse or
in passion. Throughout the controversy as to free will that has been
carried on among English psychologists this is the way in which the
question has been commonly dealt with. The freedom, claimed or denied
for the will, has been claimed or denied for it irrespectively of
those objects willed, on the nature of which the goodness or badness
of the will depends.
16. On the other hand, with the Stoics, St. Paul, Kant, and Hegel, as
we have seen, the attainment of freedom (at any rate of the reality
of freedom, as distinct from some mere possibility of it which
constitutes the distinctive human nature) depends on the character of
the objects willed. In all these ways of thinking, however variously
the proper object of will is conceived, it is only as directed to
this object, and thus (in Hegelian language) corresponding to its
idea, that the will is supposed to be free. The good will is free,
not the bad will. Such a view of course implies some element of
identity between good will and bad will, between will as not yet
corresponding to its idea and will as so corresponding. St. Paul
indeed, not being a systematic thinker and being absorbed in the
idea of divine grace, is apt to speak as if there were nothing in
common between the carnal or natural man (the will as in bondage to
the flesh) and the spiritual man (the will as set free); just as
Plato commonly ignores the unity of principle in all a man's actions,
and represents virtuous actions as coming from the God in man,
vicious actions from the beast. Kant and Hegel, however,-- though
they do not consider the will as it is in every man, good and bad,
to be free; though Kant in his later ethical writings, and Hegel
(I think) always, confine the term 'Wille' to the will as having
attained freedom or come to correspond to its idea, and apply the
term 'Willkür' to that self-determining principle of action which
belongs to every man and is in their view the mere possibility, not
actuality, of freedom,--yet quite recognise what has been above
insisted on as the common characteristic of all willing, the fact
that it is not a determination from without, like the determination
of any natural event or agent, but the realisation of an object which
the agent presents to himself or makes his own, the determination
by an object of a subject which itself consciously determines that
object; and they see that it is only for a subject free in this sense
('an sich' but not 'fur sich,' δυνάμει but not ενεργείᾳ) [1] that the
reality of freedom can exist.
[1] [Greek δυνάμει (dynamei) = potential, ενεργείᾳ (energiea) =
actuality Tr]
17. Now the propriety or impropriety of the use of 'freedom' to
express the state of the will, not as directed to any and every
object, but only to those to which, according to the law of nature
or the will of God or its 'idea,' it should be directed, is a matter
of secondary importance. This usage of the term is, at any rate,
no more a departure from the primary or juristic sense than is
its application to the will as distinct from action in any sense
whatever. And certainly the unsophisticated man, as soon as the usage
of 'freedom' to express exemption from control by other men and
ability to do as he likes is departed from, can much more readily
assimilate the notion of states of the inner man described as bondage
to evil passions, to terrors of the law, or on the other hand as
freedom from sin and law, freedom in the consciousness of union
with God, or of harmony with the true law of one's being, freedom
of true loyalty, freedom in devotion to self-imposed duties, than
he can assimilate the notion of freedom as freedom to will anything
and everything, or as exemption from determination by motives, or
the constitution by himself of the motives which determine his will.
And there is so far less to justify the extension of the usage of
the term in these latter ways than in the former. It would seem
indeed that there is a real community of meaning between 'freedom'
as expressing the condition of a citizen of a civilised state, and
'freedom' as expressing the condition of a man who is inwardly
'master of himself.' That is to say, the practical conception by
a man ('practical' in the sense of having a tendency to realise
itself) of a self-satisfaction to be attained in his becoming what
he should be, what he has it in him to be, in fulfilment of the
law of his being,--or, to vary the words but not the meaning, in
attainment of the righteousness of God, or in perfect obedience to
self-imposed law,--this practical conception is the outcome of the
same self-seeking principle which appears in a man's assertion of
himself against other men and against nature ('against other men,' as
claiming their recognition of him as being what they are; 'against
nature,' as able to use it). This assertion of himself is the demand
for freedom, freedom in the primary or juristic sense of power to
act according to choice or preference. So far as such freedom is
established for any man, this assertion of himself is made good;
and such freedom is precious to him because it is an achievement
of the self-seeking principle. It is a first satisfaction of its
claims, which is the condition of all other satisfaction of them.
The consciousness of it is the first form of self-enjoyment, of the
joy of the self-conscious spirit in itself as in the one object of
absolute value.
18. This form of self-enjoyment, however, is one which consists
essentially in the feeling by the subject of a possibility rather
than a reality, of what it has it in itself to become, not of what it
actually is. To a captive on first winning his liberty, as to a child
in the early experience of power over his limbs and through them over
material things, this feeling of a boundless possibility of becoming
may give real joy; but gradually the sense of what it is not, of the
very little that it amounts to, must predominate over the sense of
actual good as attained in it. Thus to the grown man, bred to civil
liberty in a society which has learnt to make nature its instrument,
there is no self-enjoyment in the mere consciousness of freedom as
exemption from external control, no sense of an object in which he
can satisfy himself having been obtained.
Still, just as the demand for and attainment of freedom from external
control is the expression of that same self-seeking principle
from which the quest for such an object proceeds, so 'freedom'
is the natural term by which the man describes such an object to
himself,--describes to himself the state in which he shall have
realised his ideal of himself, shall be at one with the law which
he recognises as that which he ought to obey, shall have become all
that he has it in him to be, and so fulfil the law of his being
or 'live according to nature.' Just as the consciousness of an
unattainable ideal, of a law recognised as having authority but with
which one's will conflicts, of wants and impulses which interfere
with the fulfilment of one's possibilities, is a consciousness of
impeded energy, a consciousness of oneself as for ever thwarted and
held back, so the forecast of deliverance from these conditions is
as naturally said to be a forecast of 'freedom' as of peace' or
'blessedness.' Nor is it merely to a select few, and as an expression
for a deliverance really (as it would seem) unattainable under
the conditions of any life that we know, but regarded by saints
as secured for them in another world, and by philosophers as the
completion of a process which is eternally complete in God, that
'freedom' commends itself. To any popular audience interested in any
work of self-improvement (e.g. to a temperance-meeting seeking to
break the bondage to liquor), it is as an effort to attain freedom
that such work can be most effectively presented. It is easy to tell
such people that the term is being misapplied; that they are quite
'free' as it is, because every one can do as he likes so long as he
does not prevent another from doing so; that in any sense in which
there is such a thing as 'free will,' to get drunk is as much an
act of free will as anything else. Still the feeling of oppression,
which always goes along with the consciousness of unfulfilled
possibilities, will always give meaning to the representation of the
effort after any kind of self-improvement as a demand for 'freedom.'
19. The variation in the meaning of 'freedom' having been thus
recognised and accounted for, we come back to the more essential
question as to the truth of the view which underlies all theories
implying that freedom is in some sense the goal of moral endeavour;
the view, namely, that there is some will in a man with which many
or most of his voluntary actions do not accord, a higher self that
is not satisfied by the objects which yet he deliberately pursues.
Some such notion is common to those different theories about freedom
which in the rough we have ascribed severally to the Stoics, St.
Paul, Kant, and Hegel. It is the same notion which was previously [1]
put in the form, 'that a man is subject to a law of his being, in
virtue of which he at once seeks self-satisfaction, and is prevented
from finding it in the objects which he actually desires, and in
which he ordinarily seeks it.' 'What can this mean?' it maybe asked.
'Of course we know that there are weak people who never succeed
in getting what they want, either in the sense that they have not
ability answering to their will, or that they are always wishing
for something which yet they do not will. But it would not be very
appropriate to apply the above formula to such people, for the man's
will to attain certain objects cannot be ascribed to the same law
of his being as the lack of ability to attain them, nor his wish
for certain objects to the same law of his being as those stronger
desires which determine his will in a contrary direction. At any
rate, if the proposition is remotely applicable to the man who is
at once selfish and unsuccessful, how can it be true in any sense
either of the man who is at once selfish and succeeds, who gets what
he wants (as is unquestionably the case with many people who live for
what _a priori_ moralists count unworthy objects), or of the man who
'never thinks about himself at all'? So far as the proposition means
anything, it would seem to represent Kant's notion, long ago found
unthinkable and impossible, the notion of there being two wills or
selves in a man, the 'pure' will or ego and the 'empirical' will or
ego, the pure will being independent of a man's actual desires and
directed to the fulfilment of a universal law of which it is itself
the giver, the empirical will being determined by the strongest
desire and directed to this or that pleasure. In this proposition the
'objects which the man actually desires and in which he ordinarily
seeks satisfaction' are presumably objects of what Kant called the
'empirical will,' while the 'law of his being' corresponds to Kant's
'pure ego.' But just as Kant must be supposed to have believed in
some identity between the pure and empirical will, as implied in the
one term 'will,' though he does not explain in what this identity
consists, so the proposition before us apparently ascribes man's
quest for self-satisfaction as directed to certain objects, to the
same law of his being which prevents it from finding it there. Is not
this nonsense?'
[1] [Above, section 1 RLN]
20. To such questions we answer as follows. The proposition before
us, like all the theories of moral freedom which we have noticed,
undoubtedly implies that the will of every man is a form of one
consciously self-realising principle, which at the same time is
not truly or fully expressed in any man's will. As a form of this
self-realising principle it may be called, if we like, a 'pure ego'
or 'the pure ego' of the particular person; as directed to this
or that object in such a way that it does not truly express the
self-realising principle of which it is a form, it may be called the
'empirical ego' of that person. But if we use such language, it must
be borne in mind that the pure and empirical egos are still not two
egos but one ego; the pure ego being the self-realising principle
considered with reference either to its idea, its possibility, what
it has in itself to become, the law of its being, or to some ultimate
actualisation of this possibility; the empirical ego being the same
principle as it appears in this or that state of character, which
results from its action, but does not represent that which it has
in itself to become, does not correspond to its idea or the law of
its being. By a consciously self-realising principle is meant a
principle that is determined to action by the conception of its own
perfection, or by the idea of giving reality to possibilities which
are involved in it and of which it is conscious as so involved; or,
more precisely, a principle which at each stage of its existence is
conscious of a more perfect form of existence as possible for itself,
and is moved to action by that consciousness. We must now explain a
little more fully how we understand the relation of the principle
in question to what we call our wills and our reason,--the will
and reason of this man and that,--and how we suppose its action to
constitute the progress of morality.
21. By 'practical reason' we mean a consciousness of a possibility of
perfection to be realised in and by the subject of the consciousness.
By 'will' we mean the effort of a self-conscious subject to satisfy
itself. In God, so far as we can ascribe reason and will to Him, we
must suppose them to be absolutely united. In Him there can be no
distinction between possibility and realisation, between the idea
of perfection and the activity determined by it. But in men the
self-realising principle, which is the manifestation of God in the
world of becoming, in the form which it takes as will at best only
_tends_ to reconciliation with itself in the form which it takes as
reason. Self-satisfaction, the pursuit of which is will, is sought
elsewhere than in the realisation of that consciousness of possible
perfection, which is reason. In this sense the object of will does
not coincide with the object of reason. On the other hand, just
because it is self-satisfaction that is sought in all willing, and
because by a self-conscious and self-realising subject it is only
in the attainment of its own perfection that such satisfaction can
be found, the object of will is intrinsically or potentially, and
tends to become actually, the same as that of reason. It is this
that we express by saying that man is subject to a law of his being
which prevents him from finding satisfaction in the objects in
which under the pressure of his desires it is his natural impulse
to seek it. This 'natural impulse' (not strictly 'natural') is
itself the result of the operation of the self-realising principle
upon what would otherwise be an animal system, and is modified, no
doubt, with endless complexity in the case of any individual by the
result of such operation through the ages of human history. But
though the natural impulses of the will are thus the work of the
self-realising principle in us, it is not in their gratification that
this principle can find the satisfaction which is only to be found
in the consciousness of becoming perfect, of realising what it has
it in itself to be. In order to any approach to this satisfaction
of itself the self-realising principle must carry its work farther.
It must overcome the 'natural impulses,' not in the sense of either
extinguishing them or denying them an object, but in the sense of
fusing them with those higher interests, which have human perfection
in some of its forms for their object. Some approach to this fusion
we may notice in all good men; not merely in those in whom all
natural passions, love, anger, pride, ambition, are enlisted in the
service of some great public cause, but in those with whom such
passions are all governed by some such commonplace idea as that of
educating a family.
22. So far as this state is reached, the man may be said to be
reconciled to 'the law of his being' which (as was said above)
prevents him from finding satisfaction in the objects in which he
ordinarily seeks it, or anywhere but in the realisation in himself of
an idea of perfection. Since the law is, in fact, the action of that
self-realising subject which is his self, and which exists in God as
eternally self-realised, he may be said in this reconciliation to be
at peace at once with himself and with God.
Again, he is 'free,' (1) in the sense that he is the author of the
law which he obeys (for this law is the expression of that which
is his self), and that he obeys it because conscious of himself
as its author; in other words, obeys it from that impulse after
self-perfection which is the source of the law or rather constitutes
it. He is 'free' (2) in the sense that he not merely 'delights in
the law after the inward man' (to use St. Paul's phrase), while his
natural impulses are at once thwarted by it and thwart him in his
effort to conform to it, but that these very impulses have been drawn
into its service, so that he is in bondage neither to it nor to the
flesh.
From the same point of view we may say that his will is 'autonomous,'
conforms to the law which the will itself constitutes, because the
law (which prevents him from finding satisfaction anywhere but in
the realisation in himself of an idea of perfection) represents the
action in him of that self-realising principle of which his will
is itself a form. There is an appearance of equivocation, however,
in this way of speaking, because the 'will' which is liable not to
be autonomous, and which we suppose gradually to approach autonomy
in the sense of conforming to the law above described, is not
this self-realising principle in the form in which this principle
involves or gives the law. On the contrary, it is the self-realising
principle as constituting that effort after self-satisfaction
in each of us which is liable to be and commonly is directed to
objects which are not contributory to the realisation of the idea of
perfection,--objects which the self-realising principle accordingly,
in the fulfilment of its work, has to set aside. The equivocation
is pointed out by saying, that the good will is 'autonomous' in the
sense of conforming to a law which the will itself, _as reason_,
constitutes; which is, in fact, a condensed way of saying, that the
good will is the will of which the object coincides with that of
practical reason; that will has its source in the same self-realising
principle which yields that consciousness of a possible
self-perfection which we call reason, and that it can only correspond
to its idea, or become what it has the possibility of becoming, in
being directed to the realisation of that consciousness.
23. According to the view here taken, then, reason and will, even
as they exist in men, are one in the sense that they are alike
expressions of one self-realising principle. In God, or rather in
the ideal human person as he really exists in God, they are actually
one; i.e. self-satisfaction is for ever sought and found in the
realisation of a completely articulated or thoroughly filled idea
of the perfection of the human person. In the historical man--in
the men that have been and are coming to be--they _tend_ to unite.
In the experience of mankind, and again in the experience of the
individual as determined by the experience of mankind, both the idea
of a possible perfection of man, the idea of which reason is the
faculty, and the impulse after self-satisfaction which belongs to
the will, undergo modifications which render their reconciliation
in the individual (and it is only in individuals that they can
be reconciled, because it is only in them that they exist) more
attainable. These modifications may be stated summarily as (1) an
increasing concreteness in the idea of human perfection; its gradual
development from the vague inarticulate feeling that there is such a
thing into a conception of a complex organisation of life, with laws
and institutions, with relationships, courtesies, and charities, with
arts and graces through which the perfection is to be attained; and
(2) a corresponding discipline, through inheritance and education, of
those impulses which may be called 'natural' in the sense of being
independent of any conscious direction to the fulfilment of an idea
of perfection. Such discipline does not amount to the reconciliation
of will and reason; it is not even, properly speaking, the beginning
of it; for the reconciliation only begins with the direction of the
impulse after self-satisfaction to the realisation of an idea of
what should be, as such (_because_ it should be); and no discipline
through inheritance or education, just because it is only impulses
that are natural (in the sense defined) which it can affect, can
bring about this direction, which, in theological language, must
be not of nature, but of grace. On the contrary, the most refined
impulses may be selfishly indulged; i.e. their gratification may
be made an object in place of that object which consists in the
realisation of the idea of perfection. But unless a discipline and
refinement of the natural impulses, through the operation of social
institutions and arts, went on _pari passu_ with the expression of
the idea of perfection in such institutions and arts, the direction
of the impulses of the individual by this idea, when in some form or
other it has been consciously awakened in him, would be practically
impossible. The moral progress of mankind has no reality except as
resulting in the formation of more perfect individual characters;
but on the other hand every progress towards perfection on the
part of the individual character presupposes some embodiment or
expression of itself by the self-realising principle in what may be
called (to speak most generally) the organisation of life. It is
in turn, however, only through the action of individuals that this
organisation of life is achieved.
24. Thus the process of reconciliation between will and reason,--the
process through which each alike comes actually to be or to do what
it is and does in possibility, or according to its idea, or according
to the law of its being,--so far as it comes within our experience
may be described as follows. A certain action of the self-realising
principle, of which individuals susceptible in various forms to the
desire to better themselves have been the media, has resulted in
conventional morality; in a system of recognised rules (whether in
the shape of law or custom) as to what the good of society requires,
which no people seem to be wholly without. The moral progress of
the individual, born and bred under such a system of conventional
morality, consists (1) in the adjustment of the self-seeking
principle in him to the requirements of conventional morality, so
that the modes in which he seeks self-satisfaction are regulated
by the sense of what is expected of him. This adjustment (which it
is the business of education to effect) is so far a determination
of the will as in the individual by objects which the universal or
national human will, of which the will of the individual is a partial
expression, has brought into existence, and is thus a determination
of the will by itself. It consists (2) in a process of reflection,
by which this feeling in the individual of what is expected of
him becomes a conception (under whatever name) of something that
universally should be, of something absolutely desirable, of a single
end or object of life. The content of this conception may be no more
than what was already involved in the individual's feeling of what is
expected of him; that is to say, if called upon to state in detail
what it is that has to be done for the attainment of the absolute
moral end or in obedience to the law of what universally should
be, he might only be able to specify conduct which, apart from any
such explicit conception, he felt was expected of him. For all that
there is a great difference between feeling that a certain line of
conduct is expected of me and conceiving it as a form of a universal
duty. So long as the requirements of established morality are felt
in the former way, they present themselves to the man as imposed
from without. Hence, though they are an expression of practical
reason, as operating in previous generations of men, yet, unless the
individual conceives them as relative to an absolute end common to
him with all men, they become antagonistic to the practical reason
which operates in him, and which in him is the source at once of the
demand for self-satisfaction and of the effort to find himself in,
to carry his own unity into, all things presented to him. Unless the
actions required of him by 'the divine law, the civil law, and the
law of opinion or reputation' (to use Locke's classification) tend to
realise his own idea of what should be or is good on the whole, they
do not form an object which, as contemplated, he can harmonise with
the other objects which he seeks to understand, nor, as a practical
object, do they form one in the attainment of which he can satisfy
himself. Hence before the completion of the process through which
the individual comes to conceive the performance of the actions
expected of him under the general form of a duty which in the freedom
of his own reason he recognises as binding, there is apt to occur a
revolt against conventional morality. The issue of this may either
be an apparent suspension of the moral growth of the individual,
or a clearer apprehension of the spirit underlying the letter of
the obligations laid on him by society, which makes his rational
recognition of duty, when arrived at, a much more valuable influence
in promoting the moral growth of society.
25. Process (2), which may be called a reconciliation of reason with
itself, because it is the appropriation by reason as a personal
principle in the individual of the work which reason, acting through
the media of other persons, has already achieved in the establishment
of conventional morality, is the condition of the third stage in
which the moral progress of the individual consists; viz. the growth
of a personal interest in the realisation of an idea of what should
be, in doing what is believed to contribute to the absolutely
desirable, or to human perfection, because it is believed to do so.
Just so far as this interest is formed, the reconciliation of the two
modes in which the practical reason operates in the individual is
effected. The demand for self-satisfaction (practical reason as the
will of the individual) is directed to the realisation of an ideal
object, the conceived 'should be,' which practical reason as our
reason constitutes. The 'autonomy of the will' is thus attained in
a higher sense than it is in the 'adjustment' described under (1),
because the objects to which it is directed are not merely determined
by customs and institutions which are due to the operation of
practical reason in previous ages, but are embodiments or expressions
of the conception of what absolutely should be as formed by the man
who seeks to satisfy himself in their realisation. Indeed, unless in
the stage of conformity to conventional morality the principle of
obedience is some feeling (though not a clear conception) of what
should be, of the desirable as distinct from the desired,--if it is
merely fear of pain or hope of pleasure,--there is no approach to
autonomy of the will or moral freedom in the conformity. We must not
allow the doctrine that such freedom consists in a determination
of the will by reason, and the recognition of the truth that the
requirements of conventional morality are a product of reason as
operating in individuals of the past, to mislead us into supposing
that there is any moral freedom, or anything of intrinsic value,
in the life of conventional morality as governed by 'interested
motives,' by the desire, directly or indirectly, to obtain pleasure.
There can be no real determination of the will by reason unless both
reason and will are operating in one and the same person. A will
is not really anything except as the will of a person, and, as we
have seen, a will is not really determinable by anything foreign
to itself: it is only determinable by an object which the person
willing makes his own. As little is reason really anything apart from
a self-conscious subject, or as other than an idea of perfection
to be realised in and by such a subject. The determination of will
by reason, then, which constitutes moral freedom or autonomy, must
mean its determination by an object which a person willing, in
virtue of his reason, presents to himself, that object consisting in
the realisation of an idea of perfection in and by himself. Kant's
view that the action which is merely 'pflichtmässig,' not done 'aus
Pflicht,' [1] is of no moral value in itself, whatever may be its
possible value as a means to the production of the will which does
act 'aus Pflicht,' is once for all true, though he may have taken
too narrow a view of the conditions of actions done 'aus Pflicht,'
especially in supposing (as he seems to do) that it is necessary
to them to be done painfully. There is no determination of will by
reason, no moral freedom, in conformity of action to rules of which
the establishment is due to the operation of reason or the idea of
perfection in men, unless the principle of conformity in the persons
conforming is that idea itself in some form or other.
[1] [German aus Pflicht = from duty, pflichtmässig = consistent with
duty--Tr.]