XII. Moral Imagination Darwinism and Morality

From this point of view, how do matters stand with regard to the distinction, mentioned earlier (p. 22 f.) between the two statements: “To be free means to be able to do what one wants,” and the other: “To be able, to desire or not to desire, as one pleases, is the real meaning of the dogma of free will”? Hamerling bases his view of free will on just this distinction and declares the first statement to be correct, the second to be an absurd tautology. He says: “I can do what I want. But to say, I can will what I want, is an empty tautology.” Now whether I can do, that is, transform into reality what I want, what I have set before me as the idea of my doing, depends on external circumstances and on my technical skill (cp. p. 43). To be free means to be able to determine for oneself by moral imagination the representations (impulses) on which the action is based. Freedom is impossible if something external to me (mechanical processes or a merely inferred God whose existence cannot be experienced) determines my moral representations. In other words, I am free only if I produce these representations myself, not when I am only able to carry out the impulse which someone else has induced in me. A free being is someone who is able to will what he considers right. One who does something other than what he wills, must be driven to it by motives which do not lie within himself. Such a man is unfree in his action. Therefore, to be able to will what one considers right or not right, as one pleases, means to be free or unfree, as one pleases. This, of course, is just as absurd as it is to see freedom in the ability to be able to do what one is forced to will. But the latter is what Hamerling maintains when he says: