What is the difference between the mechanical causality assumed by today's scientists and technicians and the denials of free will as they have been expressed in the religious dogmas of predestination and in the philosophical doctrines of predetermination?
Free will exists in neither case. Neither is it possible. For he who assumes that man possesses free will is forced to assert indeterminate determination. But this presupposes the existence of an indifference or equality of intention, which leaves unexplained how any decision is ever reached. Such complete equality must lead to a paralysis of the will, by which all decision ceases, because the two sides of the scale on which decision is weighed are in perfect equilibrium. This would be the equilibrium achieved by Buridan's donkey, who starved to death between two stacks of hay. This donkey, however, is a phantasm.
Leibniz observes that the two halves of the world that would result if we drew a vertical line through the center of this donkey are just as little equal to each other as the two halves of the donkey itself. He makes it clear that there cannot be a perfect equality of balance because equilibrium does not exist. But even though the will is not free, the determination to which it is subject is not the same as blind necessity. For where blind necessity rules, there is no need at all for will, free or unfree; in that case, mechanical compulsion would suffice.
The will is not free, but the necessity under which it acts is conditional; it presupposes and needs the will; it cannot act without it. The doctrine of pre‐ determination is not identical with a doctrine that subjects all things to mechanical functions and makes the causal function the solution of all problems, the deus ex machina. If one tried to imagine such a god, one would visualize him as a mere functionary and technician, a builder and an operator of machines. His creation would be an automatic factory which aims to transform man also into an automaton. For this is the ultimate goal if the doctrine of predetermination is transformed into a doctrine of mechanical functions including even man's will. Subordination of the human
will is thus perverted to empty functioning.
Quidquid fit necessario fit ("What is done, is done of necessity"). We do
not act from free will, but neither do we act under compulsion; otherwise, man could not have, as the saying goes, his own sweet will . We are not forced to act against our will like a convict who is forced by constraint and pressure to act against his will, whose will is bent and broken and who is subjected to an alien will, against his own. The choice of will is forever also a choice of conscience, in the true meaning of the word; we act consciously and not from blind necessity. Although our will is not free, our actions are willed, performed in the consciousness of freedom and of free choice. And this consciousness is justified; it prevails because the choice presupposes our will, because without our will it would not be made. The consciousness of free choice might be weaker in an inactive man, or a man weak in will power. It might be stronger in an active, forceful personality. But it is always there. It is so pronounced that the naive mind is deceived by it into the belief in free will.
Since our will is determined, our freedom is determined also. Thus when we speak of freedom we must understand what kind of freedom we are talking about. We can choose neither the time nor the place of our birth, we can select neither our parents nor our relatives. And just as neither our body nor any of our organs is of our making, but issues from a preformation and pre-ordination that are beyond our influence, so also are our relations to the world predetermined, and every one of our thoughts. Since everything is prearranged, our freedom can lie nowhere else than in the arrangement itself. Freedom is given to man together with his disposition, a disposition which is different in every single individual. As there are eagles and larks, lions and hares, just so man carries within him the marks of greatness, or of loneliness. He has an indelible character, and this character determines the kind of freedom he has. Whether his thought is noble and daring, or diffident, timid, and cowardly; whether he lives a spirited and resolute life, or simply vegetates – these traits determine the degree of his freedom.
If all things were governed by mechanical necessity, there would be no need for free will; in fact, the problem of free will could not arise at all. All
would be impact, pressure, driving force. But since there is a necessitas
consequentiae, a necessity that presupposes and requires the will, our will,
although not free, constantly enters our actions and acts by virtue of the freedom accorded us. This freedom is what sets man apart from the automaton, what separates the free and reasonable creature from the machine. The machine has neither free nor unfree will; it has no will at all.
Therefore, it is a false and misleading comparison which likens the preformation and preordination of the world and all that happens in it to a mechanism, where everything happens mechanically. For a mechanism which repeats the same motions rigidly and uniformly can in no way be compared to the universe, where no two things could be found that are alike, no two causes that could produce the same effect. Since there are no two things that are completely alike, there are no two causes that are completely alike. Hence, the world is not a mill inhabited only by millers; to grind corn is not its only purpose. But mills there have always been in it, among them treadmills of the worst sort. There is no doubt that the advance of technology has constantly increased the number of these treadmills, especially by its insistence on the division of labor, for this increases the functionalism of labor while achieving greater mechanical efficiency. Inescapably, such mechanization impairs human freedom. For mechanization brings to the fore the doctrine of mechanical functions and with that a growing conviction that man, too, is subjected to mechanical necessities.
Marx has likened the Hindu weaver to a spider, and this comparison expresses his scorn for manual labor, just as he attributed a certain dullness and stupidity to the life of the peasants whose work, at the time, was predominantly done by hand. But is the factory weaver any less a spider? Judged by its basic assumptions, Marxism is a modified Spinozism, and it suffers from the errors of Spinoza's system.
The notion that manual labor is monotonous and that this so-called tedious monotony is eliminated by technical progress – this notion is false. The opposite is true. Nor does the heavy, dirty work that man has to do grow less, for there is no decrease in the number of rubbish piles and sewers in the
world. Manual labor does not at all decrease with the advance of the machine; rather it increases and, so far as it is in the service of the machine, it changes in its nature.4
From the human hand all things originate and into it they all return. All mechanisms have evolved from, and are controlled by, us. Even the most ingenious and accomplished automaton is far from allowing our hands to rest, much less replacing them, for it is not a separate mechanism working by itself, but a part of a vast technical apparatus whose constant development entails an increase in the amount of work. No one who postulates that all work that can be done mechanically must be done mechanically should support his claim with the assertion that mechanization gives relief to the worker. For mechanization not only increases the amount of mechanical motion and the wear produced by this motion; it also increases the amount of labor. The technician is forever intent upon extending the dominion of the machine, and this is the cause for the demand that all that can be mechanized must be mechanized. But, to take an extreme example, should pedestrians be abolished because we have mechanical conveyances that relieve us of walking?