The
Reality of Freedom
CHAPTER TWELVE
Moral
Imagination (Darwinism and Morality)
A free spirit acts according to his impulses, that is, according
to intuitions selected from the totality of his world of ideas by
thinking. For an unfree spirit, the reason why he singles out a
particular intuition from his world of ideas in order to make
it the basis of an action, lies in the world of percepts given
to him, that is, in his past experiences. He recalls, before
coming to a decision, what someone else has done or recommended
as suitable in a comparable case, or what God has
commanded to be done in such a case, and so on, and he acts
accordingly. For a free spirit, these prior conditions are not
the only impulses to action. He makes a completely first-hand
decision. What others have done in such a case worries him as
little as what they have decreed. He has purely ideal reasons
which lead him to select from the sum of his concepts just
one in particular, and then to translate it into action. But his
action will belong to perceptible reality. What he achieves
will thus be identical with a quite definite content of perception.
The concept will have to realize itself in a single
concrete occurrence. As a concept it will not be able to contain
this particular event. It will refer to the event only in the
same way as a concept is in general related to a percept, for
example, the concept of the lion to a particular lion. The link
between concept and percept is the mental picture
(see Chapter 6).
For the unfree spirit, this link is given from the outset.
Motives are present in his consciousness from the outset in
the form of mental pictures. Whenever there is something he
wants to carry out, he does it as he has seen it done, or as he
has been told to do it in the particular case. Hence authority
works best through examples, that is, through providing
quite definite particular actions for the consciousness of the
unfree spirit. A Christian acts not so much according to the
teaching as according to the example of the Saviour. Rules
have less value for acting positively than for refraining from
certain actions. Laws take on the form of general concepts
only when they forbid actions, but not when they prescribe
them. Laws concerning what he ought to do must be given
to the unfree spirit in quite concrete form: Clean the street
in front of your door! Pay your taxes, amounting to the sum
here given, to the Tax Office at X! and so on. Conceptual
form belongs to laws for inhibiting actions: Thou shalt not
steal! Thou shalt not commit adultery! These laws, too,
influence the unfree spirit only by means of a concrete
mental picture, for example, that of the appropriate secular
punishment, or the pangs of conscience, or eternal damnation,
and so on.
Whenever the impulse for an action is present in a general
conceptual form (for example, Thou shalt do good to thy
fellow men! Thou shalt live so that thou best promotest thy
welfare!) then for each particular case the concrete mental
picture of the action (the relation of the concept to a content
of perception) must first be found. For the free spirit who is
impelled by no example, nor fear of punishment or the like,
this translation of the concept into a mental picture is always
necessary.
Man produces concrete mental pictures from the sum of
his ideas chiefly by means of the imagination. Therefore
what the free spirit needs in order to realize his ideas, in
order to be effective, is moral imagination. This is the source
of the free spirit's action. Therefore it is only men with
moral imagination who are, strictly speaking, morally productive.
Those who merely preach morality, that is, people
who merely spin out moral rules without being able to condense
them into concrete mental pictures, are morally
unproductive. They are like those critics who can explain
very intelligibly what a work of art ought to be like, but who
are themselves incapable of even the slightest productive
effort.
Moral imagination, in order to realize its mental picture,
must set to work in a definite sphere of percepts. Human
action does not create percepts, but transforms already
existing percepts and gives them a new form. In order to be
able to transform a definite object of perception, or a sum of
such objects, in accordance with a moral mental picture, one
must have grasped the principle at work within the percept
picture, that is, the way it has hitherto worked, to which one
wants to give a new form or a new direction. Further, it is
necessary to discover the procedure by which it is possible
to change the given principle into a new one. This part of
effective moral activity depends on knowledge of the particular
world of phenomena with which one is concerned.
We shall, therefore, look for it in some branch of learning in
general. Moral action, then, presupposes, in addition to
the faculty of having moral ideas (moral intuition) and
moral imagination, the ability to transform the world of percepts
without violating the natural laws by which these are
connected
(see fn 1).
This ability
is moral technique. It can be learnt
in the same sense in which any kind of knowledge can be
learnt. Generally speaking, men are better able to find
concepts for the existing world than to evolve productively,
out of their imagination, the not-yet-existing actions of the
future. Hence it is perfectly possible for men without moral
imagination to receive such mental pictures from others, and
to embody them skillfully into the actual world. Conversely,
it may happen that men with moral imagination lack technical
skill, and must make use of other men for the realization
of their mental pictures.
In so far as knowledge of the objects within our sphere of
action is necessary for acting morally, our action depends
upon such knowledge. What we are concerned with here are
laws of nature. We are dealing with natural science, not ethics.
Moral imagination and the faculty of having moral ideas
can become objects of knowledge only after they have been
produced by the individual. By then, however, they no
longer regulate life, for they have already regulated it. They
must now be regarded as effective causes, like all others
(they are purposes only for the subject). We therefore deal
with them as with a natural history of moral ideas.
Ethics as a science that sets standards, in addition to this,
cannot exist.
Some people have wanted to maintain the standard-setting
character of moral laws, at least in so far as they have
understood ethics in the sense of dietetics, which deduces general
rules from the organism's requirements in life as a basis for
influencing the body in a particular way (e.g.,
Paulsen,
in his System der Ethik). This comparison is false, because our
moral life is not comparable with the life of the organism.
The functioning of the organism occurs without any action
on our part; we come upon its laws in the world ready-made
and can therefore seek them and apply them when found.
Moral laws, on the other hand, are first created by us. We
cannot apply them until we have created them. The error
arises through the fact that, as regards their content, moral
laws are not newly created at every moment, but are inherited.
Those that we have taken over from our ancestors appear to
be given, like the natural laws of the organism. But a later
generation will certainly not be justified in applying them as
if they were dietetic rules. For they apply to individuals and
not, as natural laws do, to specimens of a general type.
Considered as an organism, I am such a generic specimen
and I shall live in accordance with nature if I apply the
natural laws of my general type to my particular case; as a
moral being, I am an individual and have laws of my very
own.
(see fn 2)
This view appears to contradict the fundamental doctrine
of modern natural science known as the theory of evolution.
But it only appears to do so. Evolution is understood to mean
the real development of the later out of the earlier in accordance
with natural law. In the organic world, evolution is
understood to mean that the later (more perfect) organic forms
are real descendants of the earlier (imperfect) forms, and
have developed from them in accordance with natural
laws. The adherents of the theory of organic evolution ought
really to picture to themselves that there was once a time on
our earth when a being could have followed with his own
eyes the gradual development of reptiles out of
proto-amniotes,
had he been able to be there at the time as an
observer, endowed with a sufficiently long span of life.
Similarly, evolutionists ought to picture to themselves that a
being could have watched the development of the solar
system out of the
Kant-Laplace primordial nebula,
had he been able to remain in a suitable spot out in the cosmic
world ether during that infinitely long time. That with such
mental pictures, the nature of both the proto-amniotes and
the Kant-Laplace cosmic nebula would have to be thought of
differently from the way the materialist thinkers do, is here
irrelevant. But no evolutionist should ever dream of maintaining
that he could get the concept of the reptile, with all
its characteristics, out of his concept of the proto-amniotic
animal, if he had never seen a reptile. Just as little would it
be possible to derive the solar system from the concept of the
Kant-Laplace nebula, if this concept of a primordial nebula
is thought of as being directly determined only by the
percept of the primordial nebula. In other words, if the
evolutionist is to think consistently, he is bound to maintain
that later phases of evolution do actually result from earlier
ones, and that once we have been given the concept of the
imperfect and that of the perfect, we can see the connection;
but on no account should he agree that the concept attained
from the earlier is, in itself, sufficient for evolving the
later out of it. From this it follows for ethics that, though we
can certainly see the connection between later moral concepts
and earlier, we cannot get even a single new moral idea
out of the earlier ones. As a moral being, the individual
produces his own content. For the student of ethics, the
content thus produced is just as much a given thing as
reptiles are a given thing for the scientist. Reptiles have
developed out of proto-amniotes, but the scientist cannot
get the concept of reptiles out of the concept of the
proto-amniotes. Later moral ideas evolve out of earlier, but the
student of ethics cannot get the moral concepts of a later
civilization out of those of an earlier one. The confusion
arises because, as scientists, we start with the facts before us,
and then get to know them, whereas in moral action we
ourselves first create the facts which we then get to know.
In the process of evolution of the moral world order we
accomplish something that, at a lower level, is accomplished
by nature: we alter something perceptible. The ethical
standard thus cannot start, like a law of nature, by being
known, but only by being created. Only when it is there, can
it become an object of knowledge.
But can we not then make the old a measure for the new?
Is not every man compelled to measure the products of his
moral imagination by the standard of traditional moral
doctrines? For something that should reveal itself as morally
productive, this would be just as absurd as to want to
measure a new form in nature by an old one and say that,
because reptiles do not conform to the proto-amniotes, they
are an unjustifiable (pathological) form.
Ethical individualism, then, is not in opposition to a
rightly understood theory of evolution, but follows directly
from it.
Haeckel's
genealogical tree, from protozoa up to
man as an organic being, ought to be capable of being
continued without an interruption of natural law and without
a break in the uniformity of evolution, up to the individual
as a being that is moral in a definite sense. But on no account
could the nature of a descendant species be deduced from
the nature of an ancestral one. However true it is that the
moral ideas of the individual have perceptibly developed out
of those of his ancestors, it is equally true that the individual
is morally barren unless he has moral ideas of his own.
The same ethical individualism that I have developed on
the basis of views already given could also be derived from
the theory of evolution. The final conviction would be the
same; only the path by which it was reached would be
different.
The appearance of completely new moral ideas through
moral imagination is, for the theory of evolution, no more
miraculous than the development of a new animal species
out of an old one ; only, as a monistic view of the world, this
theory must reject, in morality as in science, every
transcendental (metaphysical) influence, every influence that is
merely inferred and cannot be experienced ideally. In doing
so, the theory follows the same principle that guides it when
it seeks the causes of new organic forms without invoking
the interference of an extra-mundane Being who produces
every new species, in accordance with a new creative thought,
by supernatural influence. Just as monism has no use for
supernatural creative thoughts in explaining living organisms,
so it is equally impossible for it to derive the moral
world order from causes which do not lie within the
experienceable world. It cannot admit that the moral nature
of will is completely accounted for by being traced back to a
continuous supernatural influence upon moral life (divine
government of the world from the outside), or to an act of
revelation at a particular moment in history (giving of the
ten commandments), or to God's appearance on the earth
(as Christ). What happens to man, and in man, through all
this, becomes a moral element only when, in human experience,
it becomes an individual's own. For monism, moral
processes are products of the world like everything else that
exists, and their causes must be sought in the world, that is,
in man, since man is the bearer of morality.
Ethical individualism, then, is the crowning feature of the
edifice that
Darwin
and
Haeckel
have striven to build for
natural science. It is spiritualized theory of evolution carried
over into moral life.
Anyone who, in a narrow-minded way, restricts the
concept of the natural from the outset to an arbitrarily
limited sphere may easily conclude that there is no room in it
for free individual action. The consistent evolutionist cannot
fall a prey to such narrow-mindedness. He cannot let the
natural course of evolution terminate with the ape, and allow
man to have a “supernatural” origin; in his very search for
the natural progenitors of man, he is bound to seek spirit in
nature; again, he cannot stop short at the organic functions
of man, and take only these as natural, but must go on to
regard the free moral life as the spiritual continuation of
organic life.
If he is to keep to his fundamental principles, the evolutionist
can state only that the present form of moral action
evolves from other forms of activity in the world; the
characterizing of an action, that is, whether it is a free one,
he must leave to the immediate observation of the action. In
fact, he maintains only that men have developed out of
ancestors that were not yet human. What men are actually
like must be determined by observation of men themselves.
The results of this observation cannot contradict the
properly understood history of evolution. Only the assertion
that the results are such as to exclude a natural ordering of
the world would contradict recent trends in the natural
sciences.
(see fn 3)
Ethical individualism has nothing to fear from a natural
science that understands itself: for observation shows that
the perfect form of human action has freedom as its characteristic
quality. This freedom must be allowed to the human
will, in so far as the will realizes purely ideal intuitions. For
these intuitions are not the results of a necessity acting upon
them from without, but are due only to themselves. If a man
finds that an action is the image of such an ideal intuition,
then he feels it to be free. In this characteristic of an action
lies its freedom.
What are we to say, from this standpoint, about the
distinction mentioned earlier
(see Chapter 1)
between the two
propositions, “To be free means to be able to do as one wills”
and, “To be at liberty to desire or not to desire is the real
proposition involved in the dogma of freewill”?
Hamerling
bases his view of free will precisely on this distinction, by
declaring the first statement to be correct but the second to
be an absurd tautology. He says, “I can do as I will. But to
say I can want as I will is an empty tautology.” Whether I
am able to do, that is, to translate into reality, what I will,
that is, what I have set before myself as my idea of action,
depends on external circumstances and on my technical
skill
(see above).
To be free means to be able of one's own
accord to determine by moral imagination those mental
pictures (motives) which underlie the action. Freedom is
impossible if anything other then myself (mechanical process
or merely inferred extra-mundane God) determines my
moral ideas. In other words, I am free only when I myself
produce these mental pictures, not when I am merely able to
carry out the motives which another being has implanted
in me. A free being is one who can want what he himself
considers right. Whoever does anything other than what he
wants must be impelled to it by motives which do not lie
within him. Such a man is unfree in his action. To be at
liberty to want what one considers right or what one considers
wrong, would therefore mean to be at liberty to be
free or unfree. This is, of course, just as absurd as to see
freedom in the ability to do what one is compelled to will.
But this last is just what Hamerling maintains when he says,
“It is perfectly true that the will is always determined by
motives, but it is absurd to say that on this account it is
unfree; for a greater freedom can neither be desired nor
conceived than the freedom to realize oneself in proportion
to one's own strength and determination.” In deed it can! It is
certainly possible to desire a greater freedom, and this for
the first time the true one: namely, to decide for oneself the
motives for one's will.
Under certain conditions a man may be induced to abandon
the execution of his will. To allow others to prescribe to him
what he ought to do — in other words, to want what another,
and not he himself, considers right — to this a man will submit
only to the extent that he does not feel free.
External powers may prevent me from doing as I will.
Then they simply condemn me to do nothing or to be unfree.
Not until they would enslave my spirit, drive my motives
out of my head, and put their own motives in the place of
mine, do they really aim at making me unfree. For this
reason the Church sets itself not only against the mere doing,
but especially against the impure thoughts, that is, the motives
of my action. The Church makes me unfree if, for her, all
those motives she has not herself enunciated seem impure.
A Church or other community produces unfreedom when its
priests or teachers make themselves into keepers of consciences,
that is, when the faithful are obliged to go to them
(to the confessional) for the motives of their actions.
Author's addition, 1918
In these chapters on the human will I have shown what
man can experience in his actions so that, through this
experience, he comes to be aware: My will is free. It is
particularly significant that the right to call an act of will free arises
from the experience that an ideal intuition comes to realization
in the act of will. This experience can only be the result
of an observation, and is so, in the sense that we observe our
will on a path of development towards the goal where it
becomes possible for an act of will to be sustained by purely
ideal intuition. This goal can be reached, because in ideal
intuition nothing else is at work but its own self-sustaining
essence. When such an intuition is present in human consciousness,
then it has not been developed out of the
processes of the organism, but rather the organic activity has
withdrawn to make room for the ideal activity
(see Chapter 9).
When I observe an act of will that is an image of an intuition,
then from this act of will too all organically necessary activity
has withdrawn. The act of will is free. This freedom of the
will cannot be observed by anyone who is unable to see how
the free act of will consists in the fact that, firstly, through
the intuitive element, the activity that is necessary for the
human organism is checked and repressed, and then replaced
by the spiritual activity of the idea-filled will. Only those who
cannot make this observation of the twofold nature of a free
act of will, believe that every act of will is unfree. Those who
can make this observation win through to the recognition
that man is unfree in so far as he cannot complete the process
of suppressing the organic activity; but that this unfreedom
tends towards freedom, and that this freedom is by no means
an abstract ideal but is a directive force inherent in human
nature. Man is free to the extent that he is able to realize in
his acts of will the same mood of soul that lives in him when
he becomes aware of the forming of purely ideal (spiritual)
Intuitions.
Footnotes:
- Only a superficial critic will find in the use of the
word “faculty” in this and other passages a relapse into the
doctrine of faculties of the soul, found in the older psychology.
The meaning of the word is clear when taken in connection with
what is said in
(Chapter 5).
- When
Paulsen
(on page 15 of the book mentioned above) says, “Different natural
endowments and different
conditions of life demand both a different bodily and also a
different spiritual-moral diet,” he is very close to the correct
view, but yet he misses the decisive point. In so far as I am an
individual, I need no diet. Dietetic means the art of bringing a
particular specimen into harmony with its generic laws. But as
an individual I am not a specimen of a general type.
- That we speak of thoughts (ethical ideas) as
objects of observation is fully justified. For, although during
the activity of thinking the products of thinking do not appear
at the same time in the field of observation, they can nevertheless
become objects of observation afterwards. And it is in this way
that we have arrived at our characterization of action.
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