Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will: Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy Book

This work was more interesting than On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. He is way more concise and methodical in the way he handles the subject matter here. Schopenhauer's typical bloviating isn't entirely absent, but it doesn't take up quite so much space in this work. This could be down to it being a work of his mature years.


Schopenhauer attempts to balance an empirical determinism with a more idealistic defense of freewill. He sees all actions as causal, thus entirely deterministic. But he sees motivations (i.e. values) as being determined individualistically. This individualistic determinism could be seen as being a defense of freewill'sort of. Schopenhauer's motivations are causal as well (Pg. 49) though. Given that Schopenhauer spends a good portion of the work defending absolute determinism, his motivational freewill is on incredibly shaky ground. As was the case with On the Fourfold Root, Schopenhauer wants to hold on to the abstract metaphysical philosophy of Germany while not relinquishing the empirical philosophy of Enlightenment England. It's a most dysfunctional marriage though. That being said, I admit that the subject cannot be easily explicated satisfactorily in all points. I agree with Schopenhauer that choice cannot be completely arbitrary. No one who takes this subject seriously could hold that practical freewill amounts to disinterested ambivalence. Schopenhauer rightly says that motivations battle each other within the human mind. One motivation will ultimately hold sway and will determine the action. I don't think things are as cut and dry as Schopenhauer would like them to be however; human nature is not as predictable as mundane physical processes. Human behavior is often full of contradictions.


All in all a good book. I give it around 3-and-a-half stars. I don't subscribe to Schopenhauer's methods, but I at least see the merit in his conclusions as problematic as they are.