Moral freedom

“ A necessary condition at once of the growth of a free morality, i.e. a certain behaviour of men determined by an understanding of moral relations and by the value which they set on them as understood, and of the conception of those relations as relations between all men, is that free play should be given to every man's powers of appropriation. Moral freedom is not the same thing as a control over the outward circumstances and appliances of life. ”

“ We must not allow the doctrine that such freedom consists in a determination of the will by reason, and the recognition of the truth that the requirements of conventional morality are a product of reason as operating in individuals of the past, to mislead us into supposing that there is any moral freedom, or anything of intrinsic value, in the life of conventional morality as governed by 'interested motives,' by the desire, directly or indirectly, to obtain pleasure. There can be no real determination of the will by reason unless both reason and will are operating in one and the same person. ”

“ And the freedom which is greater than morality consists in the liberty to learn, interpret, live and teach facts, without which liberty a man may be a non-moral child, or an immoral hypocrite, but he cannot be the possessor of the pearl of great price—morality, without which human life is not worth the living or even possible. ”

“ By the mere force of moral revulsion in England, by the throes of a great civil war engendered by slavery in America, at last the true nature of a moral personality got itself recognized,—the inviolability of personal responsibility, the sanctity of the individual, the sacredness of freedom,—those great principles on which the whole of our public and political life are founded. ”

“ Rather, it is the other way: we can love, be merciful, tender, compassionate, therefore we ought. Liberty itself is a law to the free, the source of moral obligation, the gift of Him "whose service is perfect freedom." ”

“ The variation in the meaning of 'freedom' having been thus recognised and accounted for, we come back to the more essential question as to the truth of the view which underlies all theories implying that freedom is in some sense the goal of moral endeavour; the view, namely, that there is some will in a man with which many or most of his voluntary actions do not accord, a higher self that is not satisfied by the objects which yet he deliberately pursues. ”

“ Conversely, everyone capable of being determined by the conception of a common good as his own ideal good, as that which unconditionally should be (of being in that sense an end to himself) , in other words, every moral person, is capable of rights; i.e. of bearing his part in a society in which the free exercise of his powers is secured to each member through the recognition by each of the others as entitled to the same freedom with himself. ”

“ This accountability, recognized in conscience and exacted by the constitution of the108 world, is an omnipresent and inerasable reality. So must free-will also be. Freedom is part of the moral idea, and the idea falls apart and lapses into contradiction and confusion without it. The same necessity that obliges us to accept the truth of morality itself, obliges us to assert free-will as an attribute of a moral nature and a condition of moral agency. ”

“ No view of the subject should indeed debar us from acknowledging 'changes in heart and life,' but a misunderstanding of the doctrine of freedom may tend to paralyse moral initiative. The attempt to sunder the will and the understanding and discover the source of freedom in the realm of the emotions, as the voluntarists seek to do, cannot be regarded as satisfactory or sound philosophy. ”

“ But before we enter upon our task, it is necessary to begin with a statement as to the real meaning of ethical freedom itself. Until we know what we mean by the kind of freedom we, as moral beings, desire and think we ought to have, it will be useless to ask whether we are or are not free. ”

“ But, all correct moral reasoning ranges on the side of freedom. In opposition to the subtle or forcible reasonings of the metaphysician, every individual can plead his inward consciousness of voluntary agency. He feels, he knows, that he is free. The exercise of the moral sense, the judgment which the mind pronounces on its own good or evil movements, the conviction of having done or neglected a duty, the calm satisfaction of the virtuous mind, and the fierce or sullen remorse of the criminal, are associated with the insuppressible persuasion of liberty. ”

“ In his own nature, therefore, there is a law, the law of freedom, which calls upon him to restrain his lower impulses, his greed and his injustice, when these threaten to be-come inordinate; and this law of freedom is no other than the law of moral obligation, and it has its ground in the true nature of man. ”

“ For instance, when we speak of the rights of man in a moral sense, we mean to mark the limits of interference with individual freedom which we think are prescribed by conscience, or by our ideal, however reached. ”

“ Now no act is truly “human” unless it be freely performed. Consequently, freedom of choice is an indispensable condition of moral goodness and therefore also of merit.
What kind of liberty is necessary to enable the will to acquire merit? Theologians answer by saying that it is libertas contradictionis sive exercitii. If I do a good deed which I am free to do or not to do, I perform a morally good and therefore meritorious work. ”

“ For, though the new element of freedom and an individual has been admitted, yet the primordial atoms are prefigured and predetermined to moral issues, are in search of justice, and ultimate right is done. ”

“ Utterly beyond belief is it that while the inexorable necessities of daily behavior bind us to the principle of freedom and responsibility, there should be in the real constitution of the world no actual freedom in deciding on choices or determining our conduct.31 Moral agency must be115 free agency, in open alternatives of choice. It involves both the subjective capacity to choose and a realm for its exercise in diverse possibilities. ”

“ On the place and meaning of freedom in Christian Ethics we have already touched. Our formal freedom is the ground of moral responsibility—that element in us to which Law makes its authoritative appeal. From the thought of freedom in relation to a moral universe we pass naturally to that of Law. ”

“ This, then, is the appropriate region of human liberty. It comprises, first, the inward domain of consciousness; demanding liberty of conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological. The liberty of expressing and publishing opinions may seem to fall under a different principle, since it belongs to that part of the conduct of an individual which concerns other people; ”

“ But mankind, after yielding a general obedience to the moral law, will reserve for themselves a certain freedom in its application to particular things. Even in so imperative a matter as the salvation of their own souls they will not be content with weights and measures. ”

“ The Fable of Discretionary Freedom.—The history of the feelings, on the basis of which we make everyone responsible, hence, the so-called moral feelings, is traceable in the following leading phases. At first single actions are termed good or bad without any reference to their motive, but solely because of the utilitarian or prejudicial consequences they have for the community. ”

“ In such cases, ‘we overcome our moral feeling if necessary,’ freedom, peace, conscience even, all, all are brought into the market. ”

“ And the first of these, as already shown, is the preservation of man’s moral liberty, the power of moral choice, the liberty of turning to the right or to the left, of looking to God or from 'God, of taking the upward or the downward path. ”

“ It is choice which makes the dignity of human nature. It is habitual choosing after examination, consideration, reflection, and advice, which makes the man of power. It is through the internal motive power of the will that men imagine, invent, and thrust thoughts out into the obscure beyond, into the future. The will is the prime motive power; and you can only train your wills, in freedom. That is what freedom is for, in school and college, in society, industries, and governments. Fine human character is the ultimate object, and freedom is the indispensable condition of its development. ”

“ Who can deny the moral “liberty” of his fellow creature, as an abstract proposition? Is not the moral equality, or independence of man one of his essential rights? Neither one, nor any number of persons, is warranted in saying to another of mature years, what the latter shall, or shall not do with his life for his own benefit. “He is most deeply interested in his own well-being; the interest which another person can have in it is trifling, compared with that which he himself has.” It is time for society to distinguish, sharply, between the province of morality and that of legislation. ”

“ He sees instincts are better and stronger than so-called ‘principles.’ He sees in the hour of need what are called ‘rights’ laughed at, ‘freedom,’ the liberty to do what one pleases, trampled on, the claims of the individual trodden under foot, and theories burst like cobwebs. ”

“ He affirms that necessity is perfectly consistent with human liberty; that is, that the most strict and inviolable connexion of cause and effect does not prevent the full, free, and unrestrained development of certain powers in the agent, or take away the distinction between the nature of virtue and vice, praise and blame, reward and punishment, but is the foundation of all moral reasoning. ”

“ Individual belief—this is the foundation. The more we reflect, the more we discover that the essential thing is not the forms of government, or even the relations of the different classes, but the moral state of the community. Are men there? Have souls become masters of themselves? Are characters formed? Has the force of resistance appeared? Whoever shall have replied to these questions will have decided, knowingly or unknowingly, whether liberty be possible. ”

“ Can men govern themselves? The affirmative is civilization—the negative is barbarism. The whole trend of modern life—the sweep of modern progress—is towards individual freedom and individual responsibility. ”

“ How far, and in what sense, can action which is determined by motives be said to be free? For a long time the advocates of free-will, in their eagerness to preserve moral responsibility, went so far as to deny all motives as influencing moral action. ”

“ With this we may claim an increase in individual freedom, and a perceptible tendency to a logical and ever broadening conception, not only of the rights, but of the duties of citizenship; to a more honest recognition of the place assigned by expediency to evil in the social and business intercourse of a practical life; to a growing scorn of casuistry, and to a stronger faith in the reality of right and of abstract truth as they are revealed in every thinking man’s heart, and the uniformity of which is reflected in the public conscience. ”

“ I propose therefore to begin our inquiry into the detail of goodness—into the particular kinds of conduct which the man wishing to do good for the sake of its goodness is entitled to count good—by considering what is of permanent moral value in the institutions of civil life, as established in Europe; in what way they have contributed and contribute to the possibility of morality in the higher sense of the term, and are justified, or have a moral claim upon our loyal conformity, in consequence. ”

“ I was about to say that the overruling will of Providence and the free agency of man were the two great motive powers of the moral universe—the human free will, being the great inward and impulsive force, is the centrifugal or flying-off power, and the government of God the centripetal or constraining power ”

“ Rash indeed, would be the man, who, if required to dispense, not only with law and usage, but with all religious faith, all distinctions as to the moral worth of types of conduct, all sense of duty, all pride and self-reverence, should undertake to build an orderly and stable society on the spontaneous sympathies and social instincts of men. ”

“ But if we judge conduct, as I think we ought, by its power of promoting what we consider a good life or a good society, we cannot expect such simplicity in our moral precepts, and we must expect all of them to be subject to exceptions. ”

“ With all these, the greatest possible latitude in regard to morals, and all the liberty we desire. Now, if society gives us all these, and you must admit that it does, has it not done its entire duty? ”

“ With this negative rather than positive account of the theory of liberty, which, after all, only amounts to a statement of the reason why no conclusive solution can be given to the problem raised by the fact of moral agency, we leave the adjustment of the other questions connected with it to those who are ready to bestow additional thought on the ideas of causation and responsibility which are those that are most peculiarly involved in the subject. ”

“ Of course it is possible to undertake to regard the moral law, or such objects as justice, in the same light in which we have just been viewing the facts that result from social law and from convention. ”

“ What application, then, has it to the subjects we are engaged in discussing; and, in particular, what assistance does it afford us in clearing up the great fact of Human Liberty—that key-stone in the arch of humanity, without which all our peculiar attributes, morality, responsibility, law, and justice, loosened from their mighty span, would fall from their places, and disappear for ever in the blind abysses of Necessity? ”

“ You will see men who, so far as theory is concerned, will discourse eloquently concerning human justice and morality, yet they utterly disregard and ignore all moral restraints in their private character and practices. ”