c. The third form of opposition is that of the freedom of man and necessity.
α. The individual is clearly not determined in any other way than from himself, he is the absolute beginning of determination; in the ‘I,’ in the self, a power of decision is clearly to be found. This freedom is in opposition to the theory that God alone is really absolutely determining. Further, when that which happens is in futurity, the determining of it through God is regarded as Providence and the fore-knowledge of God. In this, however, a new contradiction is involved, inasmuch as because God’s knowledge is not merely subjective, that which God knows likewise is.
β. Further still, human freedom is in opposition to necessity as the determinateness of nature; man is dependent on nature, and the external as well as the inward nature of man is his necessity as against his freedom.
γ. Considered objectively, this opposition is that between final causes and efficient causes, i.e. between the acts of freedom and the acts of necessity.
δ. This opposition between the freedom of man and natural necessity has finally likewise the further form of community of soul and body, of commercium animi cum corpore, as it has been called, wherein the soul appears as the simple, ideal, and free, and the body as the manifold, material and necessary.
These matters occupy the attention of science, and they are of a completely different nature from the interests of ancient philosophy. The difference is this, that here there is a consciousness of an opposition, which is certainly likewise contained in the subjects with which the learning of the ancients was occupied, but which had not come to consciousness. This consciousness of the opposition, this ‘Fall,’ is the main point of interest in the conception of the Christian religion. The bringing about in thought of the reconciliation which is accepted in belief, now constitutes the whole interest of knowledge. Implicitly it has come to pass; for knowledge considers itself qualified to bring about in itself this recognition of the reconciliation. The philosophic systems are therefore no more than modes of this absolute unity, and only the concrete unity of those opposites is the truth.
3. As regards the stages which were reached in the progress of this knowledge we have to mention three of the principal.
a. First of all we find the union of those opposites stated; and to prove it genuine attempts are made, though not yet determined in purity.
b. The second stage is the metaphysical union; and here, with Descartes, the philosophy of modern times as abstract thought properly speaking begins.
α. Thinking understanding seeks to bring to pass the union, inasmuch as it investigates with its pure thought-determinations; this is in the first place the standpoint of metaphysics as such.