Freedom of thought is also the most obvious example of that freedom of the
spirit in morally “willing,” which it is the business of ethical science
to teach and defend. As in the one case thought shows itself superior to
the physiologically or psychologically conditioned sequence of its
concepts, so the free spirit, in the uniqueness of its moral laws, reveals
itself as lord over all the motives, the lower feelings of pleasure and
pain that have their play within us. As in the one case it is free to
measure according to the criteria of true or false, and thus is able to
intervene in the sequence of its own conceptions, correcting and
confirming, so in the other it is able to estimate by the criteria of good
or bad. As in the one case it carries within it its own fundamental laws
as logic, so in the other the moral ideals and fundamental judgments which
arise out of its own being. And in both cases it is free from nature and
natural law, and capable of subordinating nature to its own rules, in so
far as it “wills,” and of becoming subordinate to nature—in erroneous
thinking and non-moral acting—in so far as it does not will.
Feeling, Individuality, Genius, and Mysticism.
The four things here mentioned are very closely associated with one
another, especially the second and third, as is easily perceived, but the
second is rooted in the first. And in the second and third there is
already to be discovered a factor which goes beyond the sphere of the
purely rational, and is no longer accessible to our comprehension, but
carries us over into the sphere of the fourth. This is really true even of
the phenomena of moral consciousness and moral “freedom.” In this quality,
and in the ethical ideal of “personality,” there is implied something that
is inaccessible to a purely rational consideration, and is directly
related to mystery and divination. (What is “personality”? We all feel it.
We respect it from the depths of our soul wherever we meet it. We bow down
before it unconditionally. But what it is no philosophy has ever yet been
able definitely to state. In seeking to comprehend it intuition and
feeling must always play the largest part.)
Feeling.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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