Book | New Philosopher 2023, Issue 22 - The Will to Freedom

"If moral courage is to right what is wrong, creative courage is to discover new forms and symbols, new patterns capable of building a new society." - Rollo May





The Will to Freedom
The Will to Freedom

"I know what it's like to live a life rubbing up against your innermost nature. If only I could.... I would want to save you from that pain." Arthur Schopenhauer's mother, Johanna, wrote such a letter to her son. The young Schopenhauer was unable to give up his desire to study philosophy, and was extremely pained by it. As Schopenhauer was undergoing a merchant's apprenticeship in order to take over his father's business, his career path and the path of a philosopher were bound to clash. His mother Johanna persuaded him: as a merchant, he could earn a lot of money, live in a big city, and be respected, but "the life of a scholar will be quiet and far from glamour."

Today, Schopenhauer is well known for his reflections on the "will to live" - the bottle-necked yearning, hunger, and desire that drives human beings. Human beings always pursue more, want more. So too, although the young Schopenhauer was born to a wealthy Dutch-German family and had traveled extensively, fluent in German, English, and French, his "will" likewise did not know how to subside. That tormented him deeply. His mother Johanna wrote to her son: "All this time you've been seen, you have not been satisfied with your existence. How much you failed to enjoy your childhood, which should have been spent cheerfully. How much of a melancholic temperament you inherited - I know it all too well."

Yet Johanna hoped that her son Schopenhauer would have the courage to draw up and carry out a new life plan. To do so, Schopenhauer first had to summon courage and the will to freedom on his own. Courage, unlike recklessness, is exercised in being drawn along by the force of innate instinct. In the end, as soon as Schopenhauer received his mother's letter, he gave up the merchant's apprenticeship and began life as a scholar.

Life is, after all, a 'salto mortale'

Philosophers found a perfect symbol in the Italian "salto mortale" - which simply means "somersault" but, taken literally, means "a leap risking one's life" - representing a kind of fundamental courage, an utterly whole and absolute commitment in the face of moral peril. In fact, it is hard to think of a better metaphor for complete resoluteness. You cannot, after all, stand on a cliff and toss only half of your body into the river or sea.

Two philosophers may be picked out as having thought especially deeply about this image. Although the two teach about courage in very different ways, in the end both seem to be paying tribute to courage.

In 1895, the American philosopher and psychologist William James (older brother of the novelist Henry James) gave a lecture at the YMCA Harvard chapter under the blunt title 'Is Life Worth Living?' The central theme was suicide, but James also dealt that day with the issue of belief and courage. Earlier, James had opposed the view - for example, that of the British philosopher and mathematician William Kingdon Clifford - that 'it is always wrong to believe anything on insufficient evidence.' For James, even when the evidence is on neither side and not at all conclusive, since human beings always have to decide what to believe, this view is problematic. Some decisions cannot wait for the evidence. As the 17th-century French writer Blaise Pascal said, choice is "not something you can choose..... you are already on the boat."

In his speech 'Is Life Worth Living?', James argued that such a leap of faith is essential to all success in life. "Victory cannot be won, faithful or courageous action cannot be accomplished, except by way of uncertainty. ......We can only fully live by entrusting ourselves to risk hour by hour." Sometimes, even when objectively uncertain, the very belief that I myself can succeed becomes a precondition for doing the thing. That is why James finds the image of the leap so attractive.

Suppose I am now standing somewhere on a mountain, having to leap from a dizzying height in order to escape. At such a moment, one must believe that they can succeed, that one's two feet will leap with confidence. But in reality, one cannot trust oneself, and instead recalls all the sweet things scientists have said about uncertainty. Hesitating like that for too long, one will eventually lose composure, leap into the despairing moment trembling, and finally tumble into the abyss.

This dizzying scene is bound up with a paradox. The very idea of voluntary belief, of choosing to believe something (not to mention the idea that one believes because believing is to one's advantage), seems to violate the basic assumption about the relationship between belief and will. Choosing what to believe seems to be the same as choosing what is true - if we wish to cling to the concept of "truth," perhaps we cannot choose truth at all. The mountain climber's courage that James speaks of is not only the will to do something dangerous; it is also the will that embodies the belief that one will safely land on the ground - belief that goes beyond the obvious, visible evidence.

Here, courage above all resembles trust. All courage, like all trust, contains something groundless. Courage always goes a little further than where one can rationally expect. If it did not go further like this, it would not be courage but mere prediction. To attempt a leap one might not otherwise have attempted, all one needs is courage. To attempt a leap that not just anyone can easily attempt requires only that much more courage.

http://aladin.kr/p/1zZ7q