ee Yu sre Sonny mend smecte / cibher Rabelais or Velie. ues, ahs cle a alee well -indel gent Seg ME Wome ob sehelaste cammeniny/ yee Pees oe thing exes & 6s aber af ae Res? pra et Hak Etiveie tment tere Tee enght get te hove Palen EE, op eer aThe concept of freedom has been narrowed to the pioture of lative people shocking their ceneration...» This is a thorough massive habits of physical nature, its iron laws, determine the scendfor the sufferinzs of nen. Sirth and death, cold and hunger, separation, disease, lmpracticability of purpose, all brine theif quota to imprison the souls of women and men. our exper- jences do not keep step with our hopes... The essence of freedom practicability of purpose. Nenkind has ohlefly suffered from provalent purposes, oven such 3s belong to co mistake, yhitenesd, Adventures of Ideas. York: veonliTan Co. 1933, f. 3). Italics added.the following short essay necds must be received from the wkeful rience and 9. o} 2 of Opinion . Tt is informed by sciolistic acausintence with what the Doctors tel? ne to be the domain of logic. We meke no pronounceme: apodeleity but require that ze = be visited in its proper and confortable domicile. We apologize for’ the seem’ olonize, ly unnecessary tendency to but ‘nature abhors s vacuum, and so where nesefence chal] dwekl so shall science in whatever guise she shall assume for the occasion of the visit prance for the nonce until Solence she11 fi11 that eevernous pocket. The topic we dwell upon 1s Morality, and the question we enter- tain is: what evidence can one garner to recoum i an ethic? To vegin ab ovo, we are acquainted with the notion that the Learn! Doctors of the Acade y posit s Will to Good; that is,we hear the word Freedom, and realize that it fumetions es the protasis in the myriad pronouncements we hear of those spesking of the Good. ve establish the modest goal in this short esssy of inoutring into the Ground of Good, to wit, Freedom; to inquire, therefore, whether or no, one cen posit the protasis and in what menner of Truth. what is freedom? Ye apologize at the outset that conclusions pertaining to this ponderous Given that shall be deduced herein mey seen rather startling, but we implore indulzence, for to iterate, ye are at this time no further along in our dianoetic pericrinstion requested to commit our tho! to peper. Moreover, it will be recalled at that time thet we were able only to ring the bell at the Opinion level. At this time we shall the mallet upon the anvil with 2s much vigor and vitality as we are to summon forth, but are cognizant of the possibility that we may send the marker no further to the eenme of” Truth then waset Randeey our first consideration in Sragdues require informed Hegel s of the antelechy of Freedom in History os though there was naught but cold de min the Rest, cfore there What of our enthropoid, speechless brothers and sisters? dan they inform us of Freedom? No? I tell the following story. If I err re-+ markably, T forthw peel to the ghost of ¢.8. Peirce, for he more then most others hos instilled e belief in the birth of Synechism from the Around the time of oming of the time relevent to us for this essed 2 tremendous and undeniably iscussion, Ape lustful capacity for Life. In this Desire for Survival, It ws in- pelled to feel a concern to beat the beast over the head for the purpose of procuring a bit to eat in order to feed the voracious Desire. On and on and again.... At onee! The "concept," inductively understood, that wood breaks skull was discovered. Tyche was shaken. Meny were sacrificed in this serendipitous discovery, and we shall never Imow the whole story, but from that Episode which perhaps had to be rehearsed over and over again util it became Fact, we are now able to near an end in our understanding of the Rise of Preedom. Our cave man is now in possession of one of the most awe inspiring discoveries ever made. Assuming several other tychistic conquests....we observe our cave man quite content (although vigilant for the gnemy) sitting around the fire with his woman end children eating meat. The following day he and per-comin to lonve..es have to hunt again. . mint cand they de 4 ip played 4s wil termined Def ii Di. The argument: Freedom is not 2 Given nally such es the heart or other organs. Nor is it to as a cognitive resides in the mind or body called be seid to be Freedom. the case of enything. Freedom is an effect, ney effect which necessa aly of non-cognitive a priori structure or lor to an act that, must follows from that cause ehensible but nonethe- less innate destre for survival Rest is best An effect follows a cause} v.v- Freedom: Any state of human being that best follows from a best cause. something an inditiduel possesses inter- be understood event that properly so Freedom, that 1s, is not a cause, nor more, it 1s that such that thatate enucs arts ‘on and only from the Desits for su of a1 causes in human.conduct flows fro: RYAN rein he is at least fr. Yolens says in any situation v conscious of his actions, that of the comtebly infinite scte ne might possibly engece in, the ONE he chooses is chosen"freely" volens) umless he means that Al +A? +43 = DI ur. Yolens Desires 74 where X is sny class of "things," real Vol or wrest, with elements x4, Xo, eees possesses the potentiality for tappiness (Aristotelien--to be considered anon). sec and engeges Freedom 1s effected when and only when Hr. Vol in that subset of Xe.. in such a way thet in that subset of X brings about the Reduction to Actuality of the potentiality of Happiness. little We have reached the point now where we must descend further into the Temple of Being if we sre to cnmprehend the fore- going which, of course, 1s only propacdeutic to that which follows. We have untd: this juncture maintained thet Freedom 1s not a cause but an effect. The temporal component of the meaning of Freedom has been deseribed. Wo now inquire into the spetiel component of Freedom and desire to comprehend the consequendes of speaking of Freedom as vo have, and perhaps to clarify certain oddities of ex- pression. In our example of Mr. Volens we have endeavored to depict = well Imown figure end man of awe inspiring eminence ve encounter in ma W meolocical Centers of Truth, and who perhapsverselty thet Philsophy is precious i ttle more aristocratic vestime ged in for the sole purpose 0: diverting insidiovs Emnul s one misht shoo amy s fly from ones vic Ne have broached the connection between Freedom ond # Stagirion son of a sician. Freedom snd Happiness are quite difr- Aeult to disentancle from one enother, much os it is difficult to 5 s n ibe perate ‘the Form of sn object from the Matter contained 1: Freedom is the Form of Being and Happiness is the Matter of Bet! Freedom is the forzl process (the teleological: dialectical method) whereby and throuch Happiness reduces being to Being. Sut, is not Forn the cause of Matter’ a yet we have maintained that is an effect! We must once again consult the Oracle of Tyche for we can feel the Damocle: im Sword of the Law of Contradiction passine The \abyrats erilously olvse to the heart of our “argument Ariadne hes been good to ws and she has promised to lead us outa) 2 nto the Light. The Schopenhauer Threnody will serve as our threa Sartre tells us, ‘bs with tongue-in-cheek, that man is "condemned to be free," tacitly implying that freedom 1s the "cause" of conativity. Little that opinion has granted to us, we do not desire to dispute thet great Gallic philosopher but only to focus hin in order that the laser beam of inquiry may be directed at the pro- per target and revesl to us with cotpscating pellucidity that Kantian Gem of Noumenality which Kant refused to share with us. Schopenhauer 1¢ scems to us in maintaining that metaphysics begins in the key of C-minor was actually appealing to a radical principle of the condition of Imowing that.... Is not ‘mowledge of A dependent upon Imovledge of not A?The abstroct presupposes the concrete, Freedom presupposes determi © obsence of. Yandent presence of presunanses and the Pedagoeio Paradox. Pirsig and insanity; Pirsig and Quality. The Meany ond the One. Heterochthony and eutochthony. caleuletion and meditation. The apparent and the real. The diecrete and the continuous. The Leibnitzian monads and x he inorgenic and the prgenic. The sufficient and the necessary. Induction and de- duction. Then now. Me end you. Is not knowledge of actually imowine that this is the ternt: md this is the £ nus ad quem? All imowledge is of or guo dependent unon relations. The definiendum announces the definiens. The protesis intends and radicates the amdasis. ce, to return to Schopenhauer, Freedom and Happiness, it seems plausible to announce thet since knowing of is directly re- lated to (or secured by) not knowing of, then Freedom ig such an entity that needs must be of Experience, not Nature. But an effect once effected can in its proper turn be an effect of that which causes the effect. Hence, Freedom, which is en effect of Experience, can in turn be that which causes an effect of that which can be losionlly related in time to the cwase. Thus, Freedom as Volens understands it (a cause) is possible bub it is not the ung causa of that imputed to be the primum mobile of conetivity. Tt must follow from the Example on pace 4 above that Freedom is not something that dwells within the person (the ghost in the machine) end is ready for a cell to active duty when the Battle of Choice threatens. Rather, we speak of Freedom in (or for) X, Freedom in (or for) ¥, ete., where X,¥,... need not be totally independent. X,¥,+2. re the potentialities of B: 2, and we speak of the processond atteinmant of Freedom in raduetay to actuality the votentislities Vandenburs is quite rinht in syeakine of ster sof Beine, but the Caminor tonal color must be present in each sto for this is akes the transition possible frou substace to substace and from stege to etase dhood, the Preedom in manple, ad edom (the best is best). The Pree child Slars the ball saninst the wall in the perticular manner he does bee: + potentiel to sctuslity. This is sey Freedom ts no longer Musefull!t and remins 2 Pact evernere--nevemore come-to-be. This "non-co, tive of playing well is what we think Marcel calls Mystery (* = "to shut the s"), think Pirsig calls Quality, and what we say to be Happiness. (the Matter entelechized by the Form of Freedom). Ts ¥ eidisserian "meditative" thinking perhaps the reduction to sctuslity the potentiality of "calculative" thinking? T satisfy the thirst for eractitude of the contemporary epistenplogists we relste the conclusion of our inguiry hitherto: +} Free is the ‘eirotic moment when the freeable is reduced to freed in such o wey thet the true state of affairs of Freedom (best is best) appears to one free-ingly. seobtbangeaeataeseteseseseaeaaiae os seetaneaeseatatenamazsesean aeof the learned ond right honor: shell commit to paper salient thouthts hich appear not Anse ecovery of the nature of Freedom. wen], science 1s one of the most significant endesvors of our e because vositions of sn ethic (implicit or lucidly articuleted) quite directly influence the ways and means of con- ducting sncte + American society appears to be like Jenus in‘its moral outlook. Two examples will suffice. Most Americans main- tain a meritoo: tle position with respect to "cetting ahead"--those who make it got 1t because they had the inherited vherewithsl to get it. Counterzoint: ov judiciel system incarcerates lower-class criminals because 2 heinous erime 1s commited "freely" --they hea the option of doing otherwise. Is there a commonality which links these two seemingly inconsietent positions? We speak from pristine ‘opinion. Me desire to inquire into the "moral act." It 4s often of dubious velue to speak of the "obvious" yet the obvious is important. Thero is no need for the physician when one experiences Gemtitlichkeit. Simijarly, if all individuals were "good# end "just," there would be no need for the ethicist (or the casuist as the case may be). Given Evil, we need to know the Good. The Evil do not do evil becamse they are evil, but vecumse they abe not the Good. The Good, like Freedom, is of Form, and like Freedom, does not spring fully developed from the head of Minerva. In a logical senee, only the Evil possess the greatest potential for Good. We witness his- torically the opulent benefectors of our society, and learn“of their evil deeds prior to their becoutne "pod" fomilt a ectable® citizens. Yence, no Good comes from Gond, but 211 Good comes from Evil.Svil is Good end Gond te Evil. oI lo similor to JePs Sartre's logic: ¢ mee precedes essence, and There is one and only one Absolute Good: Life Realized ("bio- entelechy," or "autotelic 4, emis”), Life at all opsts is the price one pays for adventitious contingency. Now, we ask, what 1s moral? ve know Being as 2 chanzing flow of potentialities thet ery out for entelechizetion. Matter ortes out for Form. Being curses and blindly writhes and slashes out for autotelic instantiation, for 2 place in the sm. And yet we observe the Heraclitean Tension that defines Existence. one man is sad precisely becuse another man is happy. Another is rich only because another is correspondinsly poor. Nature has blessed one maiden with excessive pulchritude and enother with impossible wnprepossessingness. All moneds, as the great Leibnitz was moved to remark, are indistinguishable from all others. Yet, the organic combination of them produces such commiserable disproportionality! which 1s Take note of nature and relish th that which er 15°dHa con not be! The Desire foy survival, the Schopenhaver Will, the Freudian Id-- call it what thou wilst--a11 point to a need for nature to serve up dixe, the harmony pf parte. A11 point to an organic flow. We are exhausted now. We decire to close the shutters on the Realm of Opinion. Tomorrow we will go in search of tomorrow.