In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

chapter 3 Responsibility and Freedom of the Will Remorse differs according to whether whoever feels it bears in mind the necessary character of human actions or not. First of all, some people think the human will is free, but Hobbes, Works, ed. Molesworth, vol. IV, p. 239 et seq.; cf. also his De Homine, chap. IX; Spinoza , Ethics, First Part, prop. 32; Second Part, last scholium; Leibniz,* in particular his Theodicy, I, 166, 167;Wolff,Psychologica empirica, para.889 ff.,esp.925; Hume, Essay on Liberty and Necessity; Priestley, The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity; Montaigne,Essays, II; Bayle, Réponse aux questions d’un provinciale, t. II, p. 116 et seq.; Collins, A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty; d’Holbach,Système de la nature, esp.I,p.275; Lamarck,Philosophie zoologique; Voltaire,Le Philosophe ignorant, chap.13; Kant,ed.Kirchmann,Critique of Pure Reason, p.436,438,442; Critique of Practical Reason, p.115, 116: intelligible freedom is not the subject here; Schopenhauer, Essay on the Freedom of the Will; J. S. Mill, Logic, II. book 6; Tylor, introduction to The Origins of Culture; Bain, Mental and Moral Science: On Liberty and Necessity; and others are of the opinion that the human will is not free. If thinkers such as these say the same thing about a topic for which no new material of observation remains to be discovered, as with an object of the natural sciences, but which is decided rather by sharp observation of material at hand, then this topic can be regarded as settled. For it is impossible to admit that so many observers of the first rank could have made false observations . So it seems superfluous, indeed impossible, to say anything about the nonfreedom of the will that would not have been said already; and if I nevertheless go briefly into this subject, it is more for reasons of completeness than because the topic itself stands in need of any further discussion. * His assertion “Motives incline, but do not compel” has often been misunderstood. What Leibniz means is: however powerfully some motive, for example, a passion, may act upon us, we have the strength to resist it. Such a resistance, however, has particular causes and to that extent occurs with necessity. Those who maintain the freedom of the will attribute it exclusively to human beings and not to animals as well. Apart from the fact that this is quite inadmissible from the standpoint of the theory of evolution—for at what point in time could the freedom of the will have entered into the descendants of animals?—the same phenomena from which the freedom of the human will is supposed to be deduced are also found in animals. A dog, for example, hesitates over whether or not to eat forbidden food.He will finally decide to eat it if his appetite is greater than his fear of punishment; otherwise, he will decide in favor of self-control. In the first case, his action is the necessary consequence of the dominance of appetite. The fact that his appetite dominates is the necessary consequence of the physical and mental state he finds himself in; this state has,however,been brought about by a previous state, and so it goes back to the inherited qualities with which he is born and on which certain influences have acted up to the moment of action. In the second case,his action is the necessary consequence of the dominance of fear. The fact that this fear dominates is just the necessary consequence of the blows he has received. Similarly, a man who hesitates over whether he should follow his passion or the ideas of his reason will finally follow his passion if that acts more powerfully on him than the ideas of his reason; otherwise, he will follow his reason. In the first case, his action is the necessary consequence of the fact that certain influences have acted on the mental and physical qualities with which he was born, in such a way that at the moment of his action, passion was stronger than rational thought. In the second case, his action is the necessary consequence of the fact that, as a result of (1) the innate constitution of his mind and body and (2) the in- fluences that have acted on these from birth up to the moment of action, a disposition of his mind has been created such that, at the moment of action, despite...

Share