but at the time of action “the worse” must appear to him as a good, at any rate then and in his own judgment. Further, beyond these psychological considerations there are grave moral objections, Renouvier points out, to admitting “an indifferent will,” for the acts of such a will being purely arbitrary and haphazard, the man will be no moral agent, no responsible person. A man who wills apart from the consideration of any motive whatever can never perform any meritorious action. Under the conception of an indifferent will the term “merit” ceases to have a meaning. The theologians who have asserted the doctrine (indeed, it seems to have originated, Renouvier thinks, with them) have readily admitted this point, for it opens up the way for their theory of divine grace or the good will of God acting directly upon or within the agent. Will and merit are for them quite separate, the latter being due to the mystical operations of divine favour or grace, in honour of which the indifference of the will has been postulated. Philosophers not given to appeals to divine grace, who have upheld the doctrine of the indifferent will, have really been less consistent than the theoloians and have fallen into grave error.
Renouvier appeals to the testimony of the penal laws of all nations in favour of his criticism of an indifferent will. Motive is deemed a real factor, for men are not deemed to have acted indifferently. Some deliberation, indeed, is implied in all action which is conscious and human, some comparison of motives and a conscious, decision. The values of truth, as well as those of morality are equally fatal to the indifferentist; for, asks Renouvier, is a man to be regarded as not determined to affirm as true what he judges to be true?
The doctrine of freedom as represented by that of an indifferent will is no less vicious, Renouvier affirms, than the opposing doctrine of universal necessity. The truth is that they both rest on fictions. “Indifferentism” imagines a will divorced from judgment, separated from the rational man himself, an unseizable power, a mysterious absolute cause unconnected with reflection or deliberation, a mere chimera. For determinism the will is equally a fiction.
A way out of this difficulty is to be found, according to Renouvier, in viewing the will in a manner different from that of the “indifferentists.” Let us suppose the will bound up with motive, a motive drawn from the intellectual and moral equipment of the man. This, however, gives rise to psychological determinism. The will, it is argued, follows always the last determination of the understanding. Greater subtilty attends on this argument against freedom than those put forward on behalf of physical determinism. Renouvier sees that there is no escape from such a doctrine as psychological determinism unless we take a view of the will as bound up with the nature of man as a whole, with his powers of intellect and feeling. Such a will cannot be characterised as indifferent or as the mere resultant of motives.
The Kantian element in Renouvier’s thought is noticeable in the strong moral standpoint from which he discusses all problems, and this is particularly true of his discussion of this very vital one of freedom. He is by no means, however, a disciple of Kant, and he joins battle strongly with the Kantian doctrine of freedom. This is natural in view of his entire rejection of Kant’s “thing-in-itself,” or noumena, and it follows therefrom, for Kant attached freedom only to the noumenal world, denying its operation in the world of phenomena. The rejection of noumena leaves Renouvier free to discuss freedom in a less remote or less artificial manner than that of Kant.
If it be true, argues Renouvier, that necessity rules supreme, then the human spirit can find peace in absolute resignation; and in looking back over the past history of humanity one need not have different feelings from those entertained by the geologist or paleontologist. Ethics, politics and history thus become purely “natural” sciences (if indeed ethics could here have meaning, would it not be identical with anthropology? At any rate, it would be purely positive. A normative view of ethics would be quite untenable in the face of universal necessity). Any inconvenience, pain or injustice would have to be accepted and not even named “evil,” much less could any effort be truly made to expel it from the scheme of things. To these accusations the defenders of necessity object. The practical man, they say, need not feel this, in so far as he is under the illusion of freedom and unaware of the rigorous necessity of all things. He need not refrain from action.
But this defence of necessity leads those who wish to maintain the case against it to continue the argument. Suppose that the agent does not forget that all is necessitated, what then? Under no illusion of the idea of freedom, he then acts at every moment of his existence in the knowledge that he cannot but do what he is doing, he cannot but will what he wills, he cannot but desire what he desires. In time this must produce, says Renouvier, insanity either of an idle type or a furious kind, he will become an indifferent imbecile or a raving fanatic, in either case a character quite abnormal and dangerous. These are extreme results, but between the two extremes all degrees of character are to be, found. The most common type of practical reason presents an antinomy in the system of universal necessity. The case for necessity must reckon with this fact—namely, that the operation of necessity has itself given rise to ethics which exists, and, according to the case, its existence is a necessary one; yet ethics constitutes itself in opposition to necessity, and under the sway of necessity is quite meaningless. Here is a paradox which is not lessened if we suppose the ethical position to be an absurd and false one. Whether false or not, morality in some form is practically as universal as human nature. That nature, Renouvier insists, can hardly with sincerity believe an hypothesis or a dogma which its own moral instincts belie continually.
If, on the other hand, truth lies with the upholders of freedom, then man’s action is seen to have great value and significance, for man then appears as creating a new order of things in the world. His new acts, Renouvier admits, will not be without preceding ones, without roots or reasons, but they will be without necessary connection with the whole scheme of things. He is thus creating a new order; he is creating himself and making his own history. Conscious pride or bitter remorse can both alike be present to him. The great revolutions of history will be regarded by him not as mystical sweepings of some unknown force external to himself, but as results of the thought and work of humanity itself. A philosophy which so regards freedom will thus be a truly “human” philosophy. Renouvier rightly recognises that the whole philosophy of history turns upon the attitude which we adopt to freedom.
In view of the many difficulties connected with the problem of freedom many thinkers would urge us to a compromise. Renouvier is aware of the dangers of this attitude, and he brings into play against it his logical method of dealing with problems. This does not contradict his statement about the indemonstrability of freedom, nor does it minimise the weight and significance of the moral case for freedom: it complements it. Between contradictories or incompatible propositions no middle course can be followed. Freedom and necessity cannot be both at the same time true, or both at the same time false, for of the two things one must be true—namely, either human actions are all of them totally predetermined by their conditions or antecedents, or they are not all of them totally predetermined. It is to this pass that we are brought in the logical statement of the case. Now sceptics would here assert that doubt was the only solution. This would not realh be a solution, and however legitimate doubt is in front of conflicting theories, it involves the death of the soul if it operates in practical affairs and in any circumstances where some belief is absolutely necessary to the conduct of life and to action.
The freedom in question, as Renouvier is careful to remind us, does not involve our maintaining the total indetermination of things or denial of the operations of necessity within limits. Room is left for freedom when it is shown that this necessity is not universal. Many consequences of free acts may be necessitated. For example, says Renouvier, I have a stone in my hand. I can freely will to hurl it north or south, high or low, but once thrown from my hand its path is strictly determined by the law of gravity. The voluntary movement of a man on the earth may, however slightly, alter the course of a distant planet. Freedom, we might say, operates in a sphere to which necessity supplies the matter. Ultimately any free act is a choice between two alternatives, equally possible, but both necessitated as possibilities. The points of free action may seem to take up a small amount of room in the world, so to speak, but we must realise how vital they are to any judgment regarding its character, and how tremendously important they are from a moral point of view. So far, claims Renouvier, from the admittance of freedom being a destruction of the laws of the universe, it really shows us a special law of that universe, not otherwise to be explained—namely, the moral law. Freedom is thus regarded by Renouvier as a positive fact, a moral certainty.