Apokatastasis: Four Meditationsany specific religious or metaphysical commitments. You need
only examine your own motivations and deeds at any given
moment of decision. The will, when freely moved, does noth-
ing except toward an end: conceived, perceived, imagined,
hoped for, resolved upon ... Desire and knowledge, in a single
impulse, direct any expression of free agency according to
some purpose present to the mind, even if only vaguely. Other-
wise, there is no act at all. And, if you consult your own experi-
ences of personal agency, you will find that there are only two
possible ways in which you can pursue any purpose that your
mind might conceive: either as an end in itself or for the sake
of an end beyond itself. But then, if you reflect a little longer
on the matter, you will find that no finite object or purpose can
wholly attract the rational will in the latter way. A finite good
can summon desire in a limited degree, in the way, say, that
one's longing for a new violin might prompt one to "want" to
work the extra hours that will allow one to pay for it. But, even
then, no finite thing, not even a violin - not even an authentic
Guarneri-is desirable simply in itself. It may constitute the
more compelling end that makes the less compelling end of
working those extra hours "desirable," but in itself it can evoke
desire only on account of some yet more primordial and more
general disposition of the appetites and the will. One desires
the violin, that is to say, out of a more constant and general
desire for the pleasure one takes in music; but then that desire
is itself provoked by an even more general desire for happi-
ness as such; but one desires happiness because, in a very gen-
eral sense indeed, one wants what is "good" for oneself rather
than what is "bad"; and even this perhaps is so because, in
a still more general sense, one knows rationally-even per-
haps drily and purely abstractly- that the good is to be sought
and the bad fled, and one wants to participate in the good-