12 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path
This leads immediately to the standpoint from which the
matter will be considered here.Can the question of the
freedom of our will be posed narrowly by itself? And, if
not, with what other questions must it necessarily be
linked?
If there is a difference between a conscious motive and
an unconscious drive, then the conscious motive will bring
with it an action that must be judged differently from an ac-
tion done out of blind impulse. Our first question will con-
cern this difference. The position we must take on freedom
itself will depend on the result of this inquiry.
What does it mean to haveknowledge of the motives of
one’s actions? This question has been given too little atten-
tion, because we always tear in two the inseparable whole
that is the human being. We distinguish between the doer
and the knower, but we have nothing to say about the one
who matters most: the one who acts out of knowledge.
People say that human beings are free when they obey
reason alone and not animal desires. Or they say that free-
dom means being able to determine one’s life and actions
according to purposes and decisions.
Nothing is gained by such claims. For the question is
precisely whether reason, purposes, and decisions exer-
cise control over human beings in the same way as animal
desires. If a reasonable decision arises in me of itself, with
the same necessity as hunger and thirst, then I can but
obey its compulsion, and my freedom is an illusion.
Another turn of phrase puts it thus: to be free does not
mean being able to will whatever one wills, but being able
to do what one wills. In hisAtomistics of the Will, the
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