Chapter 42

The Autonomy of Willing: Beyond Determinism and Indeterminism

The central question appears deceptively simple: when untutored observers claim they possess freedom of will, what exactly do they mean? Most prominent thinkers—from Aristotle and Epicurus to Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz, Hume, and Schopenhauer—interpret this as meaning the bearer of will can do what they want, the so-called freedom of action. But this interpretation, Klages argues, imposes a false dichotomy on natural reflection.

The phrase "I will" emphatically indicates it is the self of the willing person that makes or produces what they call their will. The only genuine question is whether it merely seems to behave this way while in reality another power has brought forth the will. Today's lecture proceeds through three movements: first, the nature of choosing and the command of self; second, the demolition of the concept of motives; and third, the dual nature of willing as the struggle between spirit and life.

The Asymmetry of Willing

Consider these contrasts. One can often enough not do what one wants, and not too seldom also do something one did not want at all—actions out of rage or negligence. Without self-contradiction one can say: "I want it, but I cannot do it" and "I did it, but I did not want it." Whereas the phrase "Not I wanted my will" would contain a self-contradiction.

This asymmetry reveals something fundamental. When we reflect on the experience of will, we encounter the command that issues from the center of personality to itself, and thus immediately upon the command-giver's own ability to test its independence at any time.

The Moment of Wavering

If I waver at the start of a walk, even for a moment, whether I would prefer the path to the right or to the left, I can thereby bring myself to consciousness that it is free for me to want either one or the other.

Such wavering, importantly, does not necessarily precede our decisions. In countless cases we want something—to read a book, for example—without reflection indicating that the decision was preceded by wavering. However, if we are forced to conclude in cases of wavering that it was our self that made the difference, then we must judge in all cases that it was up to us to want or not to want. Thus every act of will can be called choosing—selecting, arbitrariness.

The Imperative Form

If the uniquely distinguishing feature of the will's drive lies in the fact that it takes place on the occasion of a command, we may draw an important confirmation from the fact that linguistic transmission of one's will to others took the form of the imperative. In contrast to statements and questions, which can be reported without connection to the speaker, the sentence "Come here" gains its emphasis precisely from this context.

Both properties of the will's drive—its development from a command and the corresponding chosen status of the will's goal—make it possible to show the original I-ness of the will process in the clearest light through comparison with any mechanical process.

The Leaf and the Storm

Whoever can rise to this level of reflection will certainly not harbor the opinion, at the sight of a leaf swaying on the branch and then sinking to the ground, that the leaf while swaying also swayed inwardly and then decided to detach itself from the branch. Conversely, they will attribute the power to break trees to the storm but not endow it with the ability to give the command to fell trees.

They will find no difficulty in deriving the falling of the leaf and the blowing of the wind from causes that in turn require more distant causes, and again more distant ones, and so on. But they will have to admit that they consider the cause of willing—whether rightly or wrongly—the impulse felt compelled to assert itself, namely the command of self, would have been nullified if it had wanted to be effected by a more distant cause.

Only because the science of appearances has remained in mere rudimentary stages may it be somewhat understandable that one might so readily believe two fundamentally different sequences of events could be subjected to one and the same law of causality.

The Determinist's Error

If we examine the path that determinism follows, we encounter the following recurring thought process: In the moment of wanting, only the thing-like persistent personality manifests itself, whose nature is derived from an infinite chain of causes no less clearly than the nature of the leaf on the tree. Motives now act upon this personality, as a result of which the outcome—the volition—occurs with the same inevitable necessity as the falling of the leaf at the blowing of the wind.

This correctly describes the relationship of personality to the moment of wanting, probably incorrectly describes the personality itself, and completely misconstrues the meaning of the motive due to false reification.

Suppose it were as we established earlier: that purpose, instead of resembling a pre-existing fact, is rather produced by the willing self. Then every motive that asserted itself in the "conflict of motives" would also be produced by it, and the outlined view would have committed the irremediable error of classifying certain consequences of self-activity among their causes.

It would merely mean describing carefully laid out facts in other words if one were to say: therein lies precisely the distinction between the falling of the leaf and an action—that the blowing wind indeed causes the leaf's fall directly but precisely does not form a motive for it.

Even if we disregarded that the motive is a thought and thus not at all comparable to the fact called "wind's labor," the reference to the fact that would correspond to such a thought would not indicate precisely what gives it the character and peculiar power of motivation.

Everyone has the ability to assess all motives that could determine another to act in one way or another without having any other intention than the solution of a probability calculation. From this it becomes clear that merely thinking through purposes and motives never coincides with the motivating power of these purposes.

Nietzsche's Breakthrough

Here Nietzsche has paved the way like no one else. In "Twilight of the Idols," he states: "There was no doubt that all antecedentia of an action, its causes, are to be sought in consciousness and found therein, if one were to search for them—as 'motives': otherwise one would not have been free to it, not responsible for it."

But the so-called motive is an error—"merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness, an aside of the deed, which rather conceals the antecedentia of a deed than represents them."

In "Beyond Good and Evil," section 32, he explains that in a premoral period of humanity, one derived the value of an action from its consequences, whereas in the moral period, thanks to a first attempt at self-awareness, from its origin. "A disastrous new superstition came to reign: one interpreted the origin of an action in the most definite sense as originating from an intention... The intention as the entire prehistory of an action: under this prejudice, almost up to the present time, has been praised, criticized, and philosophized."

In Zarathustra: "A thought is one thing, a deed another, and the image of the deed another; the wheel of the cause does not roll between them."

The True Meaning of Motive

Nietzsche attacks the belief in consciousness's effective power at its most sensitive point by removing the thought of purpose from the causes of decision, leaving it only symptom value. He uses "motive" and "intention" in the same or nearly the same meaning.

That "motive" can truly be used for "purpose" and vice versa is shown whenever we prefer the phrase "the reason why I do this is such and such" over "I pursue this and that purpose."

If we call motives tentatively conceived purposes, we consider again: if it is the willing I that sets purposes, then it can only be the willing I that sets motives. However, as much as Nietzsche is right to assign only sign significance to the real causes of decision, it remains true that the discussion of willpower can only be in relation to consciousness of intention.

We call it purpose concerning the goal that hovers before us in our will, and conversely motive, insofar as we wish to express why, in our opinion, this particular goal was chosen by us.

The Process of Deliberation

As has been repeatedly suggested, the process of deliberation is a diligent process and thus a will-driven process—in short, an inner action. Since the consideration of so-called motives that precedes some but not all decisions naturally makes no exception, such preliminaries of external action are again acts of will and by no means precautions of pure reason.

Schopenhauer describes it as allowing given motives to "repeatedly test their strength against each other" on a still unawakened will—making the will prey to two fiercely willing entities fighting over it! Explaining willing from so-called motives would thus be like explaining burning with the remark that burning comes from fire.

Three Characteristics of Motive

If we consider purpose in the meaning of motive, we notice three distinct characteristics:

First, the motive is always a thought. If one argues that someone who ran away thoughtlessly in the face of an explosion had an object of perception as motive, we counter: either the mere impression actually caused the escape—then there is no decision of will and no action, but a sequence of impulsive movements—or the running away was intentional, then the perception of fire, containing the thought of its danger, must have preceded it.

Second, far from being merely a thought, the motive appears to its bearer in the light of the foundation of a purpose.

Third, if mere consideration of motives does not coincide with the intention of corresponding action, then its actual motivating force must have flowed to the purpose-thought from elsewhere.

The Resolution

Whatever hidden mediations may be at play, it is fundamentally established: there must be a vital drive through which the thought gains the urgency of the goal that presses the willing one, and there must be a command of spirit through which the drive was tied to a thought.

In sum: motives or "motives" in the previously believed sense do not exist at all.

We can now distinguish from within what in the process of willing falls to necessity and what to arbitrariness.

Given to the self, because suffered by it and thus necessary, are drives. Not given in the same sense, but having become inherent to it and therefore incapable of being classified under any concept of necessity, is the command of spirit, which makes purposes out of drives and thus first turns the driven self into a willing self.

One searches in vain for the autonomy of the will-bearer as long as one hopes to find it in the generation of drives. Conversely, one falsifies necessity when one believes one can derive from mere commands of spirit the manner by which a drive manifests itself in the process of willing.

The Battleground of Two Powers

If we imagine the personal self as the battleground of two powers—life and spirit—then personal willing arises from the struggle between the manifestation of life called drive, which the self suffers due to its vitality, and the manifestation of spirit called command, which the self seems to issue due to its spirituality.

In terms of impulses, willing belongs to the fabric of necessity. In terms of command, it realizes itself with that fabric through an act of spirit that is understandable from nothing but spirit itself.

The necessity of the pathic arises from essence itself. Thus willing arises from the personal self—from an internally fragmented being whose necessary and obligatory side is continually disturbed by an active side, and whose active side is continually hindered by a passive side.

The Structure of Volition

As command—seemingly of the self, truly connecting spirit with living drive—is resolved by the will-driven impulse, just as indivisible as the one in the self that immediately comes into action within, its dual nature nonetheless testifies that it must first carry the goal into reality, even if it produces it immediately.

Willing is thus entirely preconditioned by the personality of the willing. In the personality of the willing, however, two fundamentally different types of conditions are coupled: the vital constitution, according to which the self receives impulses by necessity of nature, and the spiritual constitution, according to which it performs acts autonomously, though entirely based on received impulses.

The finally "given" connection of vital constitution with spiritual constitution can no longer be understood from the standpoint of necessity.

The Problem of Fact-Related Impulses

If my self is to be able to generate a purpose, then it must have suffered impulses—for without any drive to do so, it could aim for nothing. What's more, these must be fact-related impulses that I have suffered, because otherwise I would be unable to connect what drives me with the world of facts.

Only "elementary" and only "animalistic" impulses are fact-related impulses, and a purely animalistic as well as a purely elemental being can harbor no intentions, can generate no purposes.

If we call the basis of such impulses drives, the basis of fact-related impulses motives—"interests"—then the problem of will coincides with the problem of the emergence of motives from mere drives.

The Question of Character

How many have started a "new life" overnight, freely, by not only condemning wrong habits but simply discarding them and suppressing them with "iron energy"! Does it not become evident that the personality, instead of being led by its motives, is actually able to master its motives?

The answer: Without a doubt, the personality can choose between two impulses and has thus already chosen between two motives. But even this happens as a result of a suffered impulse, which again is subject to a motive.

The concept of purpose inherently includes the relation to a motive—both are a single fact viewed from two different sides. No intention can be conceived without an accompanying reason.

The Givenness of Character

The character is not a fixed but a variable size—a system of dispositions together with the initially unknown range of variations. Two twins, from the first days of their lives placed under conceivably similar environmental and educational influences, will have acquired different dispositions by age fourteen as surely as they brought different dispositions from the outset.

The "conversion" that succeeds in one person and fails in another under the same circumstances succeeds or fails according to character traits as they were "given" at the time of the influencing circumstances.

However, the "givenness" of the character is neither affected nor restricted by variability.

How does this entire view differ from determinism?

The arbitrary command of mind, as Klages has shown, really contends with necessity and thus brings about changes in the world of appearances that could not occur without it.

If the mental act is supposed to produce effects without being able to generate drives, then these effects must consist of certain modifications that already available drives undergo through it. The drive is split by the mental act—though this remains a problem dressed in statement form until we can specify which side separates from which other side of the life process and what the consequence is.

However the specific information turns out, the supposed effect would undoubtedly mean an intervention of mind into the necessity of events. No change can occur in events that would not also bring about changes in the world of phenomena, and there can be no change in the world of phenomena that would not somehow be perceptible and accessible to proof in the world of facts.

If willing is not without the command of mind, then all movements called arbitrary movements are not without the command of mind. With the concept of natural lawfulness, the almighty will of mind had to make a concession to necessity. The foundation of all legality is the linkage of mechanical causes with mechanical effects, according to which the recurrence of the former invariably leads to the recurrence of the latter.

From the undeniable impossibility of classifying the purely mental act among the causes follows the impossibility of attributing any effects to the purely mental act within the framework of the laws of nature. This is precisely the standpoint of consistent determinism that Klages leaves untouched.

For he intends to show that demonstrably immense effects, with which acts of mind incessantly break into reality, occur on this side of all possible causal connections—and that it is completely irrelevant for the discovery of causal connections whether we base it on the extrahuman world of facts or the results of our willing.

This would demonstrate with the most powerful example that in relation to the necessity of events, the pseudo-necessity of law mechanics resembles an extremely artificial net with which one thought to exhaust the ocean.