Necessity, responsibility and character: Schopenhauer on freedom of the will
Necessity, responsibility and character: Schopenhauer on freedom of the will
This paper gives an account of the argument of Schopenhauer's essay On the Freedom of the Human Will, drawing also on his other works. Schopenhauer argues that all human actions are causally necessitated, as are all other events in empirical nature, hence there is no freedom in the sense of liberum arbitrium indifferentiae. However, our sense of responsibility or agency (being the ‘doers of our deeds’) is nonetheless unshakeable. To account for this Schopenhauer invokes the Kantian distinction between empirical and intelligible characters. The paper highlights divergences between Schopenhauer and Kant over the intelligible character, which for Schopenhauer can be neither rational nor causal. It raises the questions whether the intelligible character may be redundant to Schopenhauer's position, and whether it can coherently belong to an individual agent, suggesting that for Schopenhauer a more consistent position would have been to deny freedom of will to the individual.
schopenhauer, kant, freedom, will, empirical character, intelligible character, cause, necessity, individuality, agency, responsibility
431-457
Janaway, Christopher
61c48538-365f-416f-b6f7-dfa4d4663475
November 2012
Janaway, Christopher
61c48538-365f-416f-b6f7-dfa4d4663475
Janaway, Christopher
(2012)
Necessity, responsibility and character: Schopenhauer on freedom of the will.
Kantian Review, 17 (3), .
(doi:10.1017/S1369415412000167).
Abstract
This paper gives an account of the argument of Schopenhauer's essay On the Freedom of the Human Will, drawing also on his other works. Schopenhauer argues that all human actions are causally necessitated, as are all other events in empirical nature, hence there is no freedom in the sense of liberum arbitrium indifferentiae. However, our sense of responsibility or agency (being the ‘doers of our deeds’) is nonetheless unshakeable. To account for this Schopenhauer invokes the Kantian distinction between empirical and intelligible characters. The paper highlights divergences between Schopenhauer and Kant over the intelligible character, which for Schopenhauer can be neither rational nor causal. It raises the questions whether the intelligible character may be redundant to Schopenhauer's position, and whether it can coherently belong to an individual agent, suggesting that for Schopenhauer a more consistent position would have been to deny freedom of will to the individual.
Text
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Published date: November 2012
Keywords:
schopenhauer, kant, freedom, will, empirical character, intelligible character, cause, necessity, individuality, agency, responsibility
Organisations:
Philosophy
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 336378
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/336378
ISSN: 1369-4154
PURE UUID: 3f99cfbf-9b53-4a0d-b2d8-7e307b005d7a
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Date deposited: 22 Mar 2012 17:10
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:11
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