It is one of the most misleading ideas ever created! Neither is my will free, in that it can will whatever it wants when it wants. Nor is it free to will, in that it costs nothing to will, as will always takes exertion no matter how insignificant or easy the will is.
“Free will” is a rediculous term in itself, it astounds me that intelligent people still use it.
Free will is simply the responsibility you have over your own thoughts and actions. No one can make you think in a particular way. No one can take responsibility for your actions commited without coersion. “Free will” is a description of this concept.
It depends on what degree of free will we speak about. There is no 100% determinism, this gives way to the idea that no one is responsible for their actions because it was all written down in advance by some ‘thing’.
It is true that a large percentage of what we do is determined by our biology, psyche, and social institutions. But we make decisions, however small and petty they may be, that gives us maybe 2-3% free will. Schopenhauer examined this and claimed when we come to making a decision we have the choice between (at least) two paths in the given moment. The path we choose is not determined in advance but made in the here and now.
You speak of your will as if it is a separate part of you. 
Free will is what allows me to believe in free will. 
Without free will, I wouldn’t believe in free will. 
I know – you probably think I’m mistaken. 
That’s your prerogative, I suppose. 
Free will is what allows you to believe in free will, ha? Really good argument huh? I could just as easily say that God made you believe in free will, but I do not believe in determinism at all, so I won’t.
My problem with “free will” is not that it ultimately boils down to the individual to decisions in their lives, but the misleading nature of the term in and of itself. The term seems like such a strong tool to cast blame and cause guilt. For example, it would be quite easy for a rich, snobbish man to claim it was a bum’s “free will” to smash him over the head with a bottle and run away with his wallet. In the same respect, the bum could say it was the rich lawyer’s “free will” to vote republican every year and keep welfare and jobs out of his hands because the bum was once convicted of them.
“Free will” states that either of these men could somehow have changed themselves in ways that would have avoided this situation, but this would take a “strong will” that would require a complete overhaul of their lives. The bum would have to swear off his sole pasttime and friend, drinking, and the lawyer would possibly alienate his friends, associates etc., if he treated the poor more respectibly. My problem with ‘free will’ is not that I do not believe that people can choose their own fates, but that I believe that the word “free will” gives the illusion that people always choose to be exactly the way that they are and nothing else goes into the process of molding them into man. Ultimately, will is a very hard, not free.
Indeed, because there is no free will, there is no responsibility. How you think and act is completely determined.
It is determined in the here and now, by factors. There is never a “choice” between two “possible” paths.
The weak-willed must believe in freedom of the will; they are not free to do so.
I’m curious – how do you know there is no free will?
I think here, Sauwelios, you are preaching outright lies for some alterior motive, or you are contemptously saying that only they have no freedom of will, but only men like you have it. I think everyone has the ability to will, but obviously it is not free, and most prefer not to. I think just by coming here, most people have affirmed that they have the passion to will, as from my experience, the will-less have no ambition for knowledge, and only do what others tell them. To say that the way you act is completely determined is too limited a perspective, and goes against everything that the true Nietzschean, who you seem to aspire to be, believes. Look at Goethe, who Nietzsche so much admired, believed that he could completely build his own life in a way that made it his own creation. He thought that any one trait, whether your shy, or rude, melancholy, or silly, could be changed, in others, man has no “traits” or “qualities,” only habits.[/i]
Sometimes “free will” is associated with “conscious choice”.
They appear functionally equivalent.
“Why’d I do that???” is, however, not necessarily answered by “fate”.
“Unconscious choice” is the correct answer.
Arguably, both conscious choice and unconscious choice are part of one’s free will, even though unconscious choice is composed of compulse and impulse that might give some the illusion that a “fate” or “predistination” is at work.
I am contemptuously saying there is no freedom of will.
The “ability” to will? Is willing a faculty? Or is it rather, as Nietzsche says, a pathos…
They prefer not to? Do they choose not to will? And is this choice an act of freedom? Do they have the free will to will or not to will?
The “will-less”? Is there such a thing as absolute absence of will? If everything is will to power, as Nietzsche postulates, then the absolute absence of will is tantamount to “nothingness” (i.e., that which encloses the will to power as a boundary).
But Nietzsche knew that there is no will at all. So we are all absolutely will-less. Thus he writes:
“Weakness of the will: that is a metaphor that can prove misleading. For there is no will, and consequently neither a strong nor a weak will. The multitude and disgregation of impulses and the lack of systematic order among them result in a “weak will”; their coordination under a single predominant impulse results in a “strong will”: in the first case it is the oscillation and the lack of gravity; in the latter, the precision and clarity of the direction.”
[The Will to Power, section 46.]
The strong man, the “strong-willed” man, does not believe in free will. From his Dionysian experience, he knows that the supreme feeling of freedom comes over him with the supreme feeling of Necessity, Fatality, Destiny.
What nonsense. Why?
The true Nietzschean believes in the absolute determination of everything. This is the Eternal Recurrence.
Goethe was unfree to think that. But indeed, this example does point out that to believe in freedom of the will may be the expression of a relatively “strong will”. So there is still hope for Sabrina!
A greater spirit than Goethe, however, a spirit like Nietzsche, understands that there is no such thing as freedom.
The force of habit may be stronger than one’s “strength of will” to change it. But whether one is strong enough or not to change one’s (bad) habits depends on whether one has it “in” one. Ultimately, it all depends on what you are - on the quantum of power you are, and indeed, to speak in the language of the old psychology, the quantum of power to will.
“In the beginning, the noble caste was always the barbarian caste: their predominance did not lie mainly in physical strength but in strength of the soul—they were more whole human beings (which also means, at every level, “more whole beastsâ€).”
[Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, section 257.]
Because there are always conditions determining it.
Does God have free will?
“Unconscious choice”? You mean there are forces at work in your subconscious, and the outcome of their struggle is what “you do”.
“Free will” presupposes someone or something who “does” something - a Prime Mover, one who is not himself moved and yet moves…
With the death of God, free will died, too. For God was the cosmic equivalent of the subject or “soul” - the World Soul.
“Willing” died because the “I” died; there is no “I will” anymore.
The death of God is really the death of the soul superstition.
There is no transcendent God; that was the idea of the World Soul I spoke of. But the immanent God, the God that is everything, is mad.
Sauwelios, the one key thing you said that makes me question everything you speak of, is that you seem to take seriously, and even think Nietzshce actually believed in “Eternal Recurrence.” Correct me if I’m wrong, because I am assuming because you said “The True Nietzschean believes in Eternal Recurrence”, that you think that Nietzsche actually believed in it. Nietzsche neither actually believed in Eternal Recurrence, nor did he believe in things such as the “Ubermensch.” They were all simply his “noble lies” that he believed were surely better than the lies that Christianity or other belief systems used to achieve its ends.
Of course, I realize that the idea of a “will” or a “soul” is a lie or metaphor if you prefer to call it that. I don’t like science, simply put, so I don’t like to call it a system of blah blah or whatever you called it before, but people can genuinely change themselves. Look at the bodybuilder, for instance. He could grow up short and fat, but by constant training, knowledge gaining, and refining, he can change his body to resemble perfection. Obviously, this “perfection” is mere illusion and reflection as it is not “natural”, but that great body still exists physically. In the same way, man can change his personality, for better or worse, and while I agree there is no “free will” in some sense, it is possible that a man can change his personality through his own conciousness that would allow him to make a future action differently than he would have if he had not thought about changing.
The same thing goes for all those rape victims; their personalities drastically change afterwards; so all that I am saying is, if a man can have his personality changed from things outside of him, he can change his own personality through things inside of him as well.
You cannot be a true Nietzschean if you do not take the Eternal Recurrence seriously. Indeed, this is the test that separates the wheat from the chaff:
“The idea of recurrence as a selective principle, in the service of strength (and barbarism!!).
Ripeness of man for this idea.”
[The Will to Power, section 1058.]
Man is not yet ripe for this fruit, which is the central idea of Nietzsche’s philosophy. But;
“You must have lived through every degree of scepticism… else you have no right to this idea”.
[Nietzsche, Nachlass, as quoted and translated by George Morgan.]
“An inevitable hypothesis, which humanity must hit upon again and again, is more powerful in the long run than the best believed belief in something untrue (like the Christian faith).”
[ibid.]
And this hypothesis is inevitable, as “infinity” is unthinkable and “God” is just a deference of the idea that everything has always existed.
As there is change, this must always have been and always continue; for if the All once were static, it could never have begun to change. And as it is finite, it must repeat the same pattern of change over and over again. This inevitable hypothesis will weed out humanity:
“Suppose there is no “other world” to flee to; suppose there is only this world, condemned by Christian ideals [among others] as cruel, false, purposeless, meaningless [just consider who would all dread this idea!]; suppose then that it does not happen just once, releasing men forever to a dreamless sleep, but must repeat itself senselessly always, grinding in the horror of existence like a cosmic dentist’s drill - would that not produce a truly “ecstatic nihilism”? Such is Nietzsche’s “philosophy of the hammer,” intended to smash what is rotten in humanity and hew out what is sound”.
[George Morgan, What Nietzsche Means, page 356-57.]
Then this “perfection” (this strength) was already inherent in him, as potential (but the chancest happenings may have been necessary to awaken it).
None of this presupposes freedom.
Indeed. And there is no absolute difference between the inside and the outside.
Ha, so maybe my definition for “will” was the same as yours for “habit.” I am not as well read in Nietzsche as you, so I am still unclear on many ideas. You didn’t touch on what I said about Eternal Reccurrence or the Ubermensch though. Nietzsche did not actually ‘believe’ in those ideas as a Christian ‘believes’ in God though. He simply considered them the highest, life-affirming aspirations men could look to, which were in direct opposition to the life-denying, otherworldly ideas of the Christians.
Sabrina, how could you!? 