From a strictly demonstrative point of view Renouvier thinks it is impossible to prove freedom as a fact. However, he lays before us with intense seriousness various. considerations of a psychological and a moral character which have an important bearing upon the problem. This problem, he asserts, not only concerns our actions but also our knowledge. To bring out this point clearly, Renouvier develops some of the ideas of his friend, Jules Lequier, on the notion of the autonomy of the reason, or rather of the reasonable will. In this way he shows doubt and criticism to be themselves signs of freedom, and asserts that we form our notions of truth freely, or that at least they are creations of our free thought, not laid upon us by an external authority.
More light is thrown on the problem by considering what Renouvier calls vertige mental, a psychopathological condition due to a disturbance of the rational harmony or self-possession which constitutes the essence of the personal consciousness. This state is characterised by hallucination and error. It is the extreme opposite of the self-conscious, reflective personality in full possession of itself and exercising its will rationally. Renouvier shows that between these two extremes there are numerous planes of vertige mental in which the part played by our will is small or negligible, and we are thus victims of habit or tendency. Is there, then, any place for freedom? There most certainly is, says Renouvier, for our freedom manifests itself whenever we inhibit an action to which we are excited by habit, passion or imagination. Our freedom is the product of reflection. We are at liberty to be free, to determine ourselves in accordance with higher motives. This power is just our personality asserting itself, and it does not contradict our being, more often than not, victims of habit. We have it in our power to make fresh beginnings. Renouvier’s disbelief in strict continuity is here again apparent. We must admit freedom of creation in the personality itself, and not seek to explain our actions by trying to ascend some scale of causes to infinity. There is no such thing as a sum to infinity of a series; there is no such thing as the influence of an infinite series of causes upon the performance of a consciously willed act in which the personality asserts its initiative— that is, its power of initiation of a new series, in short, its freedom.
Passing from these psychological considerations, Renouvier calls our attention to some of a moral nature, no less important, in his opinion, for shedding light upon the nature of freedom. If, he argues, all is necessary, if all human actions are predetermined, then popular language is guilty of a grave extravagance and appears ridiculous, insinuating, as it does, that many acts might have been left undone and many events might have occurred differently, and that a man might have done other than he did. In the light of the hypothesis of rigorous necessity, the mention of ambiguous futures and the notion of “being otherwise” (le pouvoir être autrement) seem foolish. Science may assert the docrine of necessity and preach it valiantly, but the human conscience feels it to be untrue and will not be gainsaid. The scientist himself is forced to admit that man does not accept his gospel of universal predestination or fatalism. This Renouvier recognises as an important point in the debate. Strange, is it not, he remarks, that the mind of the philosopher himself, a sanctuary or shrine for truth, should appear as a rebellious citadel refusing to surrender to the truth of this universal necessity. We believe ourselves to be free agents or, at least beings who are capable of some free action. However slight such action, it would invalidate the hypothesis of universal necessity.
If all things are necessitated, then moral judgments, the notions of right and of duty, have no foundation in the nature of things. Virtue and crime lose their character; the sentiments and feelings, such as regret, hope, fear, desire, change their meaning or become meaningless. Renouvier lays great stress upon these moral considerations.
Again, if everything be necessitated, error is as necessary as truth. The false is indeed true, being necessary, and the true may become false. Disputes rage over what is false or true, but these disputes cannot be condemned, for they themselves are, by virtue of the hypothesis, necessary, and the disputes are necessarily absurd and ridiculous from this point of view. Where then is truth? Where is morality? We have here no basis for either. Looking thus at history, all its crimes and infamies are equally lawful, for they are inevitable; such is the result, Renouvier shows, of viewing all human action as universally predetermined.
The objections thus put forward by Renouvier against the doctrine of universal necessity are powerful ones. They possess great weight and result in the admission, even by its upholders, that “the judgment of freedom is a natural datum of consciousness and is bound up with our reflective judgments upon which we act, being itself the foundation of these.”
Yet, we have, Renouvier reminds us, no logical proof of the reality of freedom. We feel ourselves moved, spontaneously and unconstrained. The future, in so far as it depends upon ourselves, appears not as prearranged but ambiguous, open.[[7]] Whether our judgment be true or false, we in practical life act invariably on the belief in freedom. That, of course, as Renouvier admits at this stage of his discussion, does not prove that our belief is not an illusion. It is a feeling, natural and spontaneous.
[7] Cf., later, Bergson’s remark: “The portals of the future stand wide open, the future is being made.”
One of the most current forms of the doctrine of freedom has been that known as the “liberty of indifference.” The upholders of this theory regard the will as separated from motives and ends. The operation of the will is regarded by them as indifferent to the claims or influence of reason or feeling. Will is superadded externally to motives, where such exist, or may be superimposed on intellectual views even to the extent of annulling these. Judgment and will are separated in this view, and the will is a purely arbitrary or indifferent factor. It can operate without reason against reason. The opponents of freedom find little difficulty in assailing this view, in which the will appears to operate like a dice or a roulette game, absolutely at hazard, reducing man to a non-rational creature. Such a type of will, however, Renouvier declares to be non-existent, for every man who has full consciousness of an act of his has at the same time a consciousness of an end or purpose for this act, and he proposes to realise by this means a good which he regards as preferable to any other. In so far as he has doubts of this preference the act and the judgment will be suspended. He must, however, if he be an intelligent being, pursue what he deems to be his good—that is to say, what he deems to be good at the time of acting. Renouvier here agrees with Socrates and Plato in the view that no man deliberately and knowingly wills what he considers to be evil or to be bad for him. Virtue involves knowledge, and although there is the almost proverbial phrase of Ovid and of Paul, about seeing and approving the better, yet nevertheless doing the worse, it is a general statement which does not express an antithesis as present to consciousness at the time of action. The agent may afterwards say
. . . “Video meliora proboque
deteriora sequor.”