Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation: Reprinted from Green's Philosophical Works, vol. II., with Preface by Bernard Bosanquet — John Shaqi
Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation: Reprinted from Green's Philosophical Works, vol. II., with Preface by Bernard BosanquetGreen, Thomas Hill
Philosophy
Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation: Reprinted from Green's Philosophical Works, vol. II., with Preface by Bernard Bosanquet
Green, Thomas Hill
Liberty; Natural law; Political obligation
15. In the above we have not supposed any account to be taken of
the character of the objects willed in the application to the
will itself of the question 'free or not free,' which is properly
applied only to an action (motion of the bodily members) or to a
relation between one man and other men. Those who unwisely consent
to entertain the question whether a man is free to will or has
power over determinations of his will, and answer it affirmatively
or negatively, consider their answer, whether 'yes' or 'no,' to be
equally applicable whatever the nature of the objects willed. If
they decide that a man is 'free to will,' they mean that he is so in
all cases of willing, whether the object willed be a satisfaction of
animal appetite or an act of heroic self-sacrifice; and conversely,
if they decide that he is not free to will, they mean that he is not
so even in cases when the action is done upon cool calculation or
upon a principle of duty, as much as when it is done on impulse or
in passion. Throughout the controversy as to free will that has been
carried on among English psychologists this is the way in which the
question has been commonly dealt with. The freedom, claimed or denied
for the will, has been claimed or denied for it irrespectively of
those objects willed, on the nature of which the goodness or badness
of the will depends.
16. On the other hand, with the Stoics, St. Paul, Kant, and Hegel, as
we have seen, the attainment of freedom (at any rate of the reality
of freedom, as distinct from some mere possibility of it which
constitutes the distinctive human nature) depends on the character of
the objects willed. In all these ways of thinking, however variously
the proper object of will is conceived, it is only as directed to
this object, and thus (in Hegelian language) corresponding to its
idea, that the will is supposed to be free. The good will is free,
not the bad will. Such a view of course implies some element of
identity between good will and bad will, between will as not yet
corresponding to its idea and will as so corresponding. St. Paul
indeed, not being a systematic thinker and being absorbed in the
idea of divine grace, is apt to speak as if there were nothing in
common between the carnal or natural man (the will as in bondage to
the flesh) and the spiritual man (the will as set free); just as
Plato commonly ignores the unity of principle in all a man's actions,
and represents virtuous actions as coming from the God in man,
vicious actions from the beast. Kant and Hegel, however,-- though
they do not consider the will as it is in every man, good and bad,
to be free; though Kant in his later ethical writings, and Hegel
(I think) always, confine the term 'Wille' to the will as having
attained freedom or come to correspond to its idea, and apply the
term 'Willkür' to that self-determining principle of action which
belongs to every man and is in their view the mere possibility, not
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