Nietzsche said:
The error of free will. Today we no longer have any tolerance for the idea of "free will": we see it only too clearly for what it really is the foulest of all theological fictions, intended to make mankind "responsible" in a religious sense that is, dependent upon priests. Here I simply analyze the psychological assumptions behind any attempt at "making responsible."
Whenever responsibility is assigned, it is usually so that judgment and punishment may follow. Becoming has been deprived of its innocence when any acting-the-way-you-did is traced back to will, to motives, to responsible choices: the doctrine of the will has been invented essentially to justify punishment through the pretext of assigning guilt. All primitive psychology, the psychology of will, arises from the fact that its interpreters, the priests at the head of ancient communities, wanted to create for themselves the right to punish or wanted to create this right for their God. Men were considered "free" only so that they might be considered guilty could be judged and punished: consequently, every act had to be considered as willed, and the origin of every act had to be considered as lying within the consciousness (and thus the most fundamental psychological deception was made the principle of psychology itself).
Today, we immoralists have embarked on a counter movement and are trying with all our strength to take the concepts of guilt and punishment out of the world to cleanse psychology, history, nature, and social institutions and sanctions of these ideas. And there is in our eyes no more radical opposition than that of the theologians, who continue to infect the innocence of becoming by means of the concepts of a "moral world-order," "guilt," and "punishment." Christianity is religion for the executioner.
What alone can be our doctrine? That no one gives a man his qualities neither God, nor society, nor his parents and ancestors, nor he himself. (The nonsense of the last idea was taught as "intelligible freedom" by Kant and perhaps by Plato.) No one is responsible for a man's being here at all, for his being such-and-such, or for his being in these circumstances or in this environment. The fatality of his existence is not to be disentangled from the fatality of all that has been and will be. Human beings are not the effect of some special purpose, or will, or end; nor are they a medium through which society can realize an "ideal of humanity" or an "ideal of happiness" or an "ideal of morality." It is absurd to wish to devolve one's essence on some end or other. We have invented the concept of "end": in reality there is no end.
A man is necessary, a man is a piece of fatefulness, a man belongs to the whole, a man is in the whole; there is nothing that could judge, measure, compare, or sentence his being, for that would mean judging, measuring, comparing, or sentencing the whole. But there is nothing besides the whole. That nobody is held responsible any longer, that the mode of being may not be traced back to a primary cause, that the world does not form a unity either as a sensorium or as "spirit" that alone is the great liberation. With that idea alone we absolve our becoming of any guilt. The concept of "God" was until now the greatest objection to existence. We deny God, we deny the responsibility that originates from God: and thereby we redeem the world.
Nietzsche's point is a good one, and is an important thing to reflect on. (As a side note, I always find a lot of opposition when I try to discuss Nietzsche, but I think it has to do with some being afraid of actually
reflecting on his point of view. That and the Nazis. It always comes back to the Nazis.
)
Anyway, I look back and wonder when I first was aware I had free will. I can't. I can remember when I started to question it seriously, though. Is free will a concept created through social development, as Nietzsche seems to imply?
It is certainly possible. We are trained through behavioral methods of punishment and reward to exist under a social contract. We are given a sense of Self (is whether it is a social or natural consequence of consciousness relevant for this?) and are trained that we may govern the actions of this Self through willpower, and receive either punishment or reward. Would I have ever had an illusion of free will without this training?
But as I sit here, I do exist under the reality of the illusion. I've had it shot down through arguments based on hard determinism and behavioral psychology, but it's a stubborn little critter, and continues to assert itself as something real.
And for me, the reason for its tenacity is based on the construction of the Self.
Spinoza said:
Men believe themselves to be free because they are conscious of their own actions and are ignorant of the causes by which they are determined. The mind is determined to this or that choice by a cause which is also determined by another cause, and this again by another, and so on ad infinitum. This doctrine teaches us to hate no one, to despise no one, to mock no one, to be angry with no one, and to envy no one.
The deterministic argument is a good one, because our normal existence is ruled by a sense of causality. Something happens, and something else happens because of it. This argument makes sense, but ignores a basic construction of the Self.
If an individual's action is preceded by a causal event, it is then the effect of a cause that has become a part of the perpetrator's reality and is thus an integral part of the Self. Essentially, the cause and effect relationship is kept separate from the individual because of the fragmenting razor of the mind, and the effects that determine action
are the individual. If the individual has a will--then it is free and unrestricted because there is nothing to restrict except the very relationship the individual is engaged in.
Causality--essentially determinism--is also a "a philosophical phantom borne out of the fragmenting tendency of thought."
I think this reflects Nietzsche's view:
A man is necessary, a man is a piece of fatefulness, a man belongs to the whole, a man is in the whole; there is nothing that could judge, measure, compare, or sentence his being, for that would mean judging, measuring, comparing, or sentencing the whole. But there is nothing besides the whole.
I think to an extent we already accept a deterministic view
when it is convenient. Like, for instance, when an mentally-anguished elderly man yells racial slurs in public. "Sorry! He has a touch of dementia."
However, a man who commits a crime is something different. "He
knows better."
It is, ironic, I think that the Amish have demonstrated a better understanding of the interplay between will and the individual than a good portion of the outspoken public.
(Forgive the seemingly disjointed nature of this. I'm applying my introspective muscle with this one! I think of this a lot.)
