X. Philosophy of Freedom and Monism

When this happens, the level of naive consciousness has been abandoned and we enter the region where moral laws become independent rules. They no longer have a bearer, but have become metaphysical entities, existing by themselves. They are similar to the invisible-visible forces of the metaphysical realist who does not look for the reality of things in the human soul's participation in this reality through thinking, but who hypothetically imagines reality as an addition to actual experience. Extra-human moral rules, therefore, always accompany metaphysical realism. Metaphysical realism cannot do otherwise than seek the origin of morality too in a sphere beyond human reach. And here there are several possibilities. If the presupposed Being is thought of as in itself unthinking, acting according to purely mechanical laws, as materialism thinks of it, then out of itself it must also produce, by purely mechanical necessity, the human individual and all that belongs to him. The consciousness of freedom can then be only an illusion. For while I believe myself to be the creator of my deeds, it is the material substances of which I am composed, together with their processes, that are at work within me. I believe myself to be free, whereas in reality all my actions are but results of the material processes which are the foundation of my bodily and spiritual organism. According to this point of view, it is simply because we do not know the motives compelling us, that we have the feeling of freedom. “We must emphasize that the feeling of freedom is due to the absence of external compelling motives.” “Our actions as well as our thinking are subject to necessity.”[^1]