The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Author:Hannah Arendt [Arendt, Hannah]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780547541471
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

3. The main objections to the Will in post-medieval philosophy

The purpose of these preliminary remarks is to facilitate our approach to the complexities of the willing ego, and in our methodological concern we can hardly afford to overlook the simple fact that every philosophy of the Will is the product of the thinking rather than the willing ego. Though of course it is always the same mind that thinks and wills, we have seen that it cannot be taken for granted that the thinking ego’s evaluation of the other mental activities will remain unbiased; and to find thinkers with widely different general philosophies raising identical arguments against the Will is bound to arouse our mistrust. I shall briefly outline the main objections as we find them in post-medieval philosophy before I enter into a discussion of Hegel’s position.

There is, first, the ever-recurring disbelief in the very existence of the faculty. The Will is suspected of being a mere illusion, a phantasm of consciousness, a kind of delusion inherent in consciousness’ very structure. “A wooden top,” in Hobbes’s words, “...lashed by the boys...sometimes spinning, sometimes hitting men on the shin, if it were sensible of its own motion, would think it proceeded from its own will, unless it felt what lashed it.”39 And Spinoza thought along the same lines: a stone set in motion by some external force “would believe itself to be completely free and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish,” provided that it was “conscious of its own endeavor” and “capable of thinking.”40 In other words, “men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.” Thus men are subjectively free, objectively necessitated. Spinoza’s correspondents raise the obvious objection: “If this were granted, all wickedness would be excusable,” which disturbs Spinoza not in the least. He answers: “Wicked men are not less to be feared, and not less harmful, when they are wicked from necessity.”41

Hobbes and Spinoza admit the existence of the Will as a subjectively felt faculty and deny only its freedom: “I acknowledge this liberty, that I can do if I will; but to say I can will if I will, I take to be an absurd speech.” For “Liberty or Freedom, signifieth properly the absence of...external impediments of motion.... But when the impediment of motion is in the constitution of the thing itself, we use not to say: it wants the liberty, but the power to move; as when a stone lieth still or a man is fastened to his bed by sickness.” These reflections are entirely in accordance with the Greek position on the matter. What is no longer in line with classical philosophy is Hobbes’s conclusion that “Liberty and necessity are consistent: as in the water, that hath not only liberty, but a necessity of descending by the channel; so likewise in the actions which men voluntarily do: which because they proceed from their will, proceed from liberty; and yet, because every act of man’s will.

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