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Freedom of Choice or Free Will?

11/05/2011 By Kelly Cooper

"…freedom of choice [Willkürfreiheit] enables one to adopt rules of prudence or skill depending on one's inclinations and subjectively selected ends, whereas 'free will' [freie Wille] obeys universally valid laws it has imposed on itself from a moral point of view. Freedom of choice precedes free will, but the former remains subordinate to the latter when it comes to the moral evaluation of ends. Kant thus confines himself to technical-practical and moral-practical reasons. Communicative action draws on a broader spectrum of reasons: epistemic reasons for the truth of statements, ethical orientations for the authenticity of life choices, indicators for the sincerity of confessions, and depending on the issue, aesthetic experiences, narrative explanations, cultural standards of value, legal claims, conventions, and so forth. Accountability is not measured simply by the standards of morality and purposive rationality—indeed, it involves more than just practical reason. Accountability consists, rather in an agent’s general ability to orient her action by validity claims.

According to Kant, freedom is the only one among the practical ideas of reason where possible realization we can conceive [einsehen] a priori. Hence this idea acquires legislative force for every rational being. It receives concrete expression in the ideal of a 'kingdom of ends' in which all rational beings join together under common laws so that they never treat one another merely as means but as ends in themselves. Every member of this kingdom 'gives universal saws in it but is also himself subject to these laws.' We have an a priori understanding of this model of self-legislation, which signifies two things: on the one hand, it has the categorical meaning of an obligation (namely of realizing the kingdom of ends by one’s own actions and omissions); on the other hand, it has the transcendental meaning of a certainty (that this kingdom can be advanced by our moral actions and omissions). We can know a priori that it is possible to actualize this practical idea.

Considered under the first aspect, comparing the idea of freedom with the supposition of rationality in communicative action is not very fruitful. Rationality is not an obligation. Even with regard to moral or legal behavior, the supposition of rationality does not mean that the other feels obligated to obey norms; knowledge of what it means to act autonomously is merely imputed to her. The second aspect is more promising: the idea of freedom provides the certainty that autonomous action (and the realization of the kingdom of ends) is possible—and not merely counterfactually demanded of us. According to Kant, rational beings think of themselves as agents who act on the basis of good reasons. With regard to moral action, they have an a priori knowledge of the possibility of actualizing the idea of freedom. In communicative action we also tacitly begin by assuming that all participants are accountable agents. It is simply part of the self-understanding of subjects acting communicatively that they take rationally motivated positions on claims to validity; agents mutually presuppose that they do indeed act on the basis of rationally warrantable reasons" (Habermas 2009:38-39).

Habermas, Jürgen
2009[2005] Between Naturalism and Religion. Ciaran Cronin, trans. Cambridge, Polity Press.

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Between Naturalism and Religion: Philosophical Essays at Amazon.com

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Philosophic Freedom and Political Community

02/02/2011 By Kelly Cooper

“Philosophic freedom, the freedom of the will, is relevant only to people who live outside political communities, as solitary individuals. Political communities, in which men become citizens, are produced and preserved by laws, and these laws, made by men, can be very different and can shape various forms of government, all of which in one way or another constrain the free will of their citizens. Still, with the exception of tyranny, where one arbitrary will rules the lives of all, they nevertheless open up some space of freedom for action that actually sets the constituted body of citizens in motion. The principles inspiring the actions of the citizens vary in accordance with the different forms of government, but they are all, as Jefferson rightly called them, ‘energetic principles’; and political freedom…’can consist only in the power of doing what we ought to will and in not being strained to do what we ought not to will.’

The emphasis here is clearly on Power in the sense of the I-can; for Montesquieu, as for the ancients, it was obvious that an agent could no longer be called free when he lacked the capacity to do what he wanted to do, whether this was due to exterior or interior circumstances. Moreover, the Laws which, according to Montesquieu, transform free and lawless individuals into citizens are not God’s Ten Commandments or the voice of conscience or reason’s lumen rationale enlightening all men alike, but man-made rapports, ‘relations,’ which, since they concern the changeable affairs of mortal men-as distinguished from God’s eternity or the immortality of the cosmos-must be ‘subject to all the accidents that can happen and vary in proportion as the will of man changes.’ For Montesquieu, as for pre-Christian antiquity and for the men who at the end of the century founded the American Republic, the words ‘power’ and ‘liberty’ were almost synonymous. Freedom of movement, the power of moving about unchecked by disease or master, was originally the most elementary of all liberties, their very prerequisite.

Thus political freedom is distinct from philosophic freedom in being clearly a quality of the I-can and not of the I-will. Since it is possessed by the citizen rather than by man in general, it can manifest itself only in communities, where the many who live together have their intercourse both in word and in deed regulated by a great number of rapports-laws, customs, habits, and the like. In other words, political freedom is possible only in the sphere of human plurality, and on the premise that this sphere is not simply an extension of the dual I-and-myself to a plural We. Action, in which a We is always engaged in changing our common world, stands in the sharpest possible opposition to the solitary business of thought, which operates in a dialogue between me and myself. Under exceptionally propitious circumstances that dialogue, we have seen, can be extended to another insofar as a friend is, as Aristotle said, ‘another self.’ But it can never reach the We, the true plural of action” (Arendt 1978:199-200).

Arendt, Hannah
1978[1971] The Life of the Mind. San Diego,CA: Harcourt Brace & Company.

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