Schopenhauer: Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will

by Arthur Schopenhauer

Book Overview

The winning entry in a competition held by the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences, Schopenhauer's 1839 essay brought its author international recognition. Its brilliant and elegant treatments of free... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521577667
• ISBN13: 9780521577663
• Release Date: May 1999
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Schopenhauer at his best

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.

A powerful examination of free will and determinism

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 a

Best Book Ever Written in All Philosophy

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.

Shedding light on the "free will" confusion

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

Remark on editoral revies

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.