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Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)

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There are few subjects in philosophy which breed so much confusion as this entire issue of "free will" verses determinism. Schopenhauer, who understood human will perhaps better than any philosopher (since will was central to his entire system of thought) contributes what may be the single best work on the subject. Starting where Locke, Hume, and Kant left off, Schopenhauer demonstrates that all versions of the free will doctrine are incoherent and fundamentally opposed to the basic presuppositions of human knowing. His argument is based on the simple idea that human willing contains certain uniformities that allow us to judge other people's character, and that in the absence of these uniformities, it would make no sense to hold people responsible for what they have done. If human beings really had free will in the traditional sense of the concept, their behavior would be inextricably unfathomable. Schopenhauer, as one of the few philosophers to really understand what is at issue in the whole debate, shows that, under the assumption of freedom of the will, a man's "character must be from the very beginning a tabula rasa...and cannot have any inborn inclination to one side or the other." This point of view, however, would utterly destroy the conception of human nature illustrated by the classics of World Literature and the researches of social scientists. Under the free will premise, individuals would have no set character at all, and men in general would have no common nature. It would be useless to study the humanities or the social sciences in order to learn about human beings, because there would be no common human nature. Human beings would either be the products of pure chance, or they would be spontaneous "self-creators," devising their personalities ex nihilio, out of nothing.

Schopenhauer's understanding of the confusion embedded at the very heart of the free will doctrine allows him to lay the groundwork for what is probably the most important insight into the whole problem of determinism verses free will. And while Schopenhauer never explicitly grasped this insight, it is implicit in his analysis nonetheless. This insight is simply the idea that what is important in life is not knowledge of whether human beings, in some obscure and probably meaningless sense, have "free will," but knowledge of how they are actually likely to behave. The whole free will controversy is a product of the anti-scientific teleological philosophy propagated by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. But science doesn't give a fig whether individuals, in some ultimate sense of the word, can help being what they are. What the scientist wants to know is not whether people are "free," but how they are likely to act in any given situation. So often those advocating free will are motivated by nothing more than the desire to rationalize their unwillingness to accept a scientific conception of human nature. They want to believe that human beings are capable of a degree of moral development which seems improbable in light of all the relevant evidence. So they take refuge in the notion that, because human beings have "free will," they can adopt any kind of nature they please, thus liberating themselves from the constraints of human tradition and social morality and bringing forth the utopian paradise of their fantasies.

Those who are eager to understand the reality of human willing and its primacy in understanding what human life is all about are advised to read Schopenhaeur's elegant writings on the subject, included this masterpiece on the freedom of the will.

For those who are convinced that determinism has been refuted (ie. Popper, Sartre, Kierkegarrd) it is quite obvious that they haven't read this essay because if they had they might put their own presuppositions about the validity of free will into question.
Schopenhauer does a fantastic job at dissecting the concept of the 'freedom of the will' by first showing that it cannot be proven from self-consciounsess. He follows this by meticulously distinguishing between the changes that occur in inorganic objects (cause), plants (stimulus), and animals(intuitive and particularly for humans, abstract motives). He points out that in regards to the automatic organic function of animals bodies, changes occur in the form of a "stimulus" but in willed action motivation is the cause (but not in the mechanical sense that the narrow definition of casaulity implies). Schopenhauer writes, in regards to motivation, "causality that passes through cognition... enters in the gradual scale of natural beings at that point where a being which is more complex, and thus has more manifold needs, was no longer able to satisfy them merely on the occasion of a stimulus that must be awaited, but had to be in a position to choose, seize, and even seek out the means of satisfaction."

Schopenhauer thinks that humans have "relative freedom" but that relative freedom is to act in accordance with the motives that are necessitated by the Will-- which in turn is the determining factor of human behavior. In humans the linkage of cause and effect is of a far greater distance than that of intuitive animals-- causing us to mistakingly exclude our behavior from the law of casaulity-- but in the end 'the Will' still determines actions by what he calls "sufficient necessitiy".

"For he (human beings) allows the motives repeatedly to try their strength on his will, one against the other. His will is thus put in the same position as that of a body that is acted on by different forces in opposite directions - until at last the decidedly strongest motive drives the others from the field and determines the will. This outcome is called decision and, as a result of the struggle, appears with complete necessity."

Unlike Sartre's treatise on freedom, which ultimately collapsed into obscurity and contradiction, Scophenhauer's rightly contends that a fixed essence is inborn (what we would today call DNA). In other words, it contradicts Sartre's saying that "existence precedes essence." For Schopenhauer, neither precedes the other. The two are inseparable. The expression of the essence can change through experience within the environment but the fundamental aspects of it remain instrinsic to the organism (Genes/Biology). Schopenhauer responds to the proponents of absolute free will, who haven't carefully analyzed what it means for the 'will' to be free, by writing: "Closely considered, the freedom of the will means an existentia without essentia; this is equivalent to saying that something is and yet at the same time is nothing, which again means that it is not and thus is a contradiction." So my guess is that if Sartre had happened to stumble upon this particular essay he might have realized that it was he who was in "bad faith" about man being condemned to be free.

It should also be noted that if Schopenhauer is wrong about mans intrinsic nature then all of the social sciences are a fraud and particularly psychology is wrong when it takes genes, biology, and the environment into consideration when interpreting and analyzing human behavior.

The reason people object to philosophical determinism is that it makes morality and personal responsibility a precarious thing. One valuable thing we can adopt from Sartre's ideas is that it is imperative that we take responsibility for our choices. But being that pragmatism is the philosophy of the U.S. and not existentalism, it is more than likely the masses will always assume that Free Will exists because the stability of civil society depends on it. In light of all of this it should be mentioned that Schopenhauer does not think that people can't be morally reformed. In other words he thinks that the expression of behavior can be cultivated. Many people credit Nietzsche for coming up with the idea of sublimation that would later be used by Freud, but it was actually Schopenhauer who was the first speak of the idea.

"Cultivation of reason by cognitions and insights of every kind is morally important, because it opens the way to motives which would be closed off to the human being without it."

Schopenhauer also condemns a moral system that tries to root out the defects of a person's character rather than utilizing sublimation.

For those who consider this type of philosophy immoral because it seems to exclude the possibility of moral responsibility we should remember that in Christianity there is the concept of predesination, and in Islam there is a religious fatalism. On top of that fact, many of the church fathers (Augustine and Luther) didn't accept the notion of free will either.

I highly recommend this book!

We are free when we are able do what we want, that is, when we are not somehow impeded from doing what we will to do. But we decide what to do as a matter of causal necessity; otherwise, our actions would be random and senseless. The notion that we have the power to originate the causal chain by an act of will makes no sense; as Schopenhauer says, causation is not like a cab that you can start and stop wherever it helps your argument. As he notes, that point also defeats cosmological arguments about "prime movers" and "first causes." This is a great read, a chance to experience a first-class mind grappling with a difficult and interesting problem. Schopenhauer generally even avoids his usual bitter broadsides and against Schelling and Hegel and the sort of philosophizing they represent, although those are fun to read and generally on target. (He lost another, later prize because his essay in that case, although the only candidate for the prize, was so full of personal invective that the judges refused to make the award.)

Another reviewer correctly notes that Schopenhauer undermines his own argument at the last minute, or tries to, in a strange concluding chapter. There he argues that our feelings of personal responsibility for our actions points to freedom of some kind, a species of argument that he had earlier dismantled. Anyway, this freedom would have to exist beyond the empirical level, as his arguments have decisively eliminated any possibility of freedom there. The position Schopenhauer presents in that chapter involves the idea that we, somehow, choose our own characters at some mysterious point of emergence from the Kantian noumena. No commentator I have read has been able to make sense of it. In any case, it's completely skippable, a brief, tacked-on chapter that makes no difference for the rest of the book, which is very well worth reading.

It was while reading about Einstein that my attention was drawn to Schopenhauer, for Einstein often quoted Schopenhauer's saying: "One can do what one wants but not want what one wants." Einstein never believed in free will, only freedom to do what we will. And Schopenhauer was the first person who inspired this thought in him.

Schopenhauer proves by rational reasoning why this is so. People in other cultures (especially East Asia) arrive at the same conclusion by instinct; they believe in Fate. So do many Muslims.

In fact, if you believe in Fate, then not even the freedom to do what we will is really free. You only do what you must, and whatever you have done, you cannot have prevented yourself from doing it. I think Schopenhauer makes this point clear also. Einstein himself said, "Everything is determined." Whether it's an insect or a human being, everything from the tiniest particles to the largest galaxies - "we all dance to the tune of a mysterious piper," said Einstein. Read this book, and see if Schopenhauer would have said the same thing. (He would.)

I'm in complete agreement with Schopenhauer and Einstein. And although this book does not have the same impact on me that it did on Einstein, I count myself lucky to have found it. But then, all this was "written"....

There is one other English translation of this book. Both are good. I happen to have both - my German is only elementary - and they are now among the most treasured of my possessions.

Editorial Review: "Schopenhauer's Prize Essay is widely regarded as one of the most brilliant and elegant treatments of free will and determinism. He distinguishes the freedom of acting from the freedom of willing, affirming the former while denying the latter. This volume offers the text in a previously unpublished translation by Eric F.J. Payne, the leading twentieth-century translator of Schopenhauer into English, together with a historical and philosophical introduction by G^D"unter Z^D"oller."

Note on the editorial remark:

I have read the volume concerned and should like to comment on the editorial claim that A. Sch. confirms the freedom of action and denies the freedom of the will. This is plainly wrong since his tenet is that action is absolutely determined by the law of causality and with reference to human action by motive. Without motive no action. Will in this respect comes in by the fact that the individuals will will determine which motive within a range of motives that the individual is perhaps considering in his mind before having arrived at a decisive decision will actually cause him to act as determined by this particular motive.

In short and summarized: A. Sch. denies the free will with respect to action as well as with reference to the will itself. The empirical world is entirely determined: no free will, no free action.

Ironically, despite Schopenhauer's relative simplicity, not a single one of all the brilliant phenomenologists of the 20th century, who all believed in free will (Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Lévinas...), ever managed to properly refute determinism. In fact, they handily ignored this work. If only they had read it, their systems would not have suddenly lapsed from brilliance into incoherent obfuscation whenever they were confronted with the problem of freedom. Also, they could have integrated it with a theory of the unconscious like Jung's very easily, rather than being forced into deliberate ignorance of depth psychology (like Heidegger), or terrible refutations of the unconscious (like Sartre).

What is more, this is not a materialistic, but an IDEALIST á la Berkeley proof of total determinism! The fact that this is so little read proves what Nietzche said about free will - that a theory so easily refutable will always be believed simply because it is obvious it is not true and the very fact that it IS so easily refutable. Buy this now, if you've got any interest in philosophy, or even more importantly if you're planning to write any philosophy...

The title of my review is a little misleading, so I'll be quick to explain. In fact, Schopenhauer does make a good case for determinim in his essay. However, there is something noteworthy I haven't seen in any of the reviews so far: At the end of the well-crafted essay, Schopenhauer -- well -- spoils it all. Having established the truth of determinism, he suddenly tries to justify free will. Yes, that's true. He appeals to a Kantian style idealism to try and convince the reader that we are ultimately morally responsible. He asserts that we have metaphysical free will because we FEEL our responsibility. His proclamation that this free will that we are supposed to have is a mystery is strikingly reminiscient of theistic statements like "God works in mysterious ways". This is just an example to illustrate the failure of Schopenhauer's case for free will. In order to defend his free will, "real free will", Schopenhauer is forced to resort to mere assertions. He can't explain why we have this free will or how it works, hence he calls it a mystery. If you are a determinist it may well be that you will feel a little betrayed or even outright disappointed after finishing the book. I give the book 4 stars nonetheless, because for the most part it IS a skillfully written defense of determinism. Schopenhauer should have laid aside his pen a couple of pages earlier than he did, that's all.

Almost everyone agrees that - here, Schopenhauer made a convincing case for denying free-will. Nevertheless, I would argue that if we look back to the influence Kant's work exerted on Schopenhauer, and review Schopenhauer's own remarks about the validity of empirical knowledge, it must surely be that Schopenhauer landed himself in difficulties. On his own reading of Kant's philosophy, and those parts of it which he incorporated into his own work, the 'willing' subject, sensu strictu, cannot be said to exist in space and time, but only to be working through those categories in the understanding.

If time and space are transcendentally ideal - as Schopenhauer asserted, following Kant, he ought to have known better than to locate the 'will' in time and space, when according to his own reckoning, 'time and space are in us.'

Kant distinguished here, between 'will' and 'willkuhr' - that is, the practical difference between the will grounded in the noumenon, and the will seen in its phenomenal or empirical

employment. Insofar as Schopenhauer adopted Kant's distinction between appearance and reality, viz. the ideality of time and space, it surely follows that by denying free-will, Schopenhauer was denying a key element in his own philosophy. In short, his argument against 'free-will' amounts to a simplistic observation - namely, 'your willing takes place in the empirical world. The empirical world is conditioned. Ergo, your willing is conditioned' - as if he had suddenly forgotten everything else said in his philosophy, about the ideality of time and space.

By arguing that 'free will' - in the empirical manifold, is simply comparative or relative - viz., when confronted with choices - Schopenhauer was stating the obvious. In this respect, Schopenhauer's position was not unlike that of certain early Buddhists, who almost made Buddhism into a form of determinism. To do that, they had to advocate a kind of empirical realism, while denying any reality to the 'pudgala.' But in actual fact, Schopenhauer's position vis-a-vis the ideality of the phenomenal world, more nearly resembled the Vijnanavada/Yocacara. What mattered to Kant (and what surely matters to anyone else, defending the case for free-will), is that considered as noumenon (i.e. our unconditioned nature), that which can initiate a new chain of events - in the phenomenal world, is not - in itself, phenomenal.

It was while reading about Einstein that my attention was drawn to Schopenhauer, for Einstein often quoted Schopenhauer's saying: "One can do what one wants but not want what one wants." Einstein never believed in free will, only freedom to do what we will. And Schopenhauer was the first person who inspired this thought in him.

Schopenhauer proves by rational reasoning why this is so. People in other cultures (especially East Asia) arrive at the same conclusion by instinct; they believe in Fate. So do many Muslims.

I'm in complete agreement with Schopenhauer. And although this book does not have the same impact on me which it did on Einstein, I count myself lucky to have found it. But then, all this was "written"....

I really enjoyed this essay. I have always been interested in the freedom of the will problem and I thought that this essay provided a good description of the problem and some very interesting discussion. Schopenhauer writes very clearly and in a manner that kept me interested throughout the hundred pages of the essay. Schopenhauer starts out with a consideration of what is meant by "freedom of the will." He considers the statement that "I can do what I will" to be irrelevant to the question of freedom of the will since he says that "...the will is already presupposed...for it assumes that the will has already been decided." He goes on to say, "The assertion does not at all speak about the dependence or independence of the occurrence of the act of volition itself."

The real question that Schopenhauer seems to be interested in is whether an individual can will what he or she wills; he does not think that this is the case. Schopenhauer arrives at the opinion that "...man's will is his authentic self, the true core of his being...he himself is as he wills and wills as he is" such that, "You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing." He then goes on to talk about causality and what compels the will to act in one way or another (i.e., motives) always coming back to what he sees as a confusion when people use the fact that they can do what they will as an argument for free will. Schopenhauer argues that an individual's statement of "...`I can do this' is in reality a hypothetical and carries with it the additional clause, `if I did not prefer the other.' But this addition annuls the ability to will." Schopenhauer considers the notion of an uncaused cause to be unintelligible and at variance with observation. "If freedom of the will were presupposed, every human action would be an inexplicable miracle--an effect without a cause...here we are supposed to think something which determines without being determined, which depends on nothing, but on which the other depends."

One question that often comes up when talking about the absence of freedom of will is "What then happens to individual responsibility?" Schopenhauer answers this by saying that people are responsible for their own characters and that others judge individuals based on the outward signs (actions) that belie their inward character. "So the responsibility of which he is conscious falls upon the act only provisionally and ostensibly, but basically it falls upon his character--for this he feels responsible. And it is for his character that the others also make him responsible." So then Schopenhauer seems to be saying that people are judged based on their actions and underlying motives since these together show evidence of their true nature.

On a somewhat unrelated note, Schopenhauer's relationship with Hegel seems less than cordial as evidenced by his discussing Hegel's philosophical ponderings as "the emptiest word rubbish and silliest gallimathias [the word means nonsense or gibberish] that have ever been heard outside the insane asylum." For some reason, this passage made me laugh such that I wanted to include it in this review. It makes me thankful that my professional relationships have not yet reached such a level of colorful language. At any rate, I enjoyed this essay very much and would recommend it to others who are interested in a freedom of the will discussion.