56. J.G. Vogt - The Lack of Feedom of the Will

(Determinism) and the question of responsibility for our actions. Leipzig 1892

What we have here is a work that rehashes the trivialities of the heroes of force and substance. The underlying error here is simply that Vogt, like all determinists, fails to recognize the nature of causality. It is based on a certain paucity of thought to regard the category of causality as the only one by which world phenomena are governed. Admittedly, this paucity is a widespread shortcoming today. We have to hear again and again that it is the task of science to seek the causes of the phenomena that are given to us through observation. This is nothing more than a completely one-sided claim based on prejudice. The phenomena are connected in a completely different way than according to the law of cause and effect. We have by no means understood a process when we know its cause. Rather, we must delve into its own essence. The physicist today no longer studies the nature of colors, but the wave processes that cause them; the psychologist no longer studies the actions of the personality, but their impersonal causes. This is supposed to be empirical research! Anyone who truly delves into the nature of the human personality will simply have to present freedom as a fact that is just as empirically given as the processes of heat and light.