Conscious Human Action 15It is easy to explain why it appears to us as if the
movement of the stone is necessary while the don-
key’s will is not. The causes that move the stone
are, after all, external and visible. But the causes by
which the donkey desires are internal and invisible:
between us and the site of their activity there lies
the donkey’s skull.... One does not see the causal
determination and therefore imagines that it is not
present. The will, we say, while it is the cause of
the donkey’s turning around, is itself undeter-
mined; it is an absolute beginning.^6
Here, too, is an utter disregard for human actions in
which the human being has an awareness of the reasons
for the action, for Rée explains, “between us and the site
of their activity there lies the donkey’s skull.” We can see
from these words alone that Rée has no inkling that there
exist actions (not a donkey’s, but a human’s) for which
there lies, between us and the action, the motive that has
become conscious. He proves this again a few pages later
when he says: “We are not aware of thecauses by which
our will is determined, and so we imagine that it is not
causally determined at all.” But enough of examples
proving that many fight against freedom without at all
knowing what freedom is.
Obviously, my action cannot befree if I, as the actor,
do not know why I carry it out. But what about an action
- Paul Rée (1849–1901),Die Illusion der Willensfreiheit.Rée was a
friend of Friedrich Nietzsche and Lou Andréas Salome and an influ-
ential “alternative” thinker of the time.