stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

writes: “will is generally and usually understood as an active attitude of human beings towards
the surrounding world or towards the ends of their desires or aspirations. That active attitude is
interpreted as an attitude - and indeed we say ‘willingness,’ implying already the presence of
will…” (Rotenstreich 37). But that is not all writes Rotenstreich. He argues that such a will is
autonomous in the sense that it also acts freely. “Once the aspect of an end is implied in the
attitude of will, we bring in an additional component, that is to say that of a conscious intentional
action brought about by will. In this sense will is not only a power or an active intention;
inherent in it is the aspect of decision or resolving decision - and the component of decision is
already imbued with a certain direction” (Rotenstreich 37). I have argued that we need not talk
about some mysterious entity that inhabits the human body in order to talk about freedom.
Instead, we can talk about freedom simply in terms of our ability to reason, specifically, in terms
of the autonomous will. But what is this autonomous will? Is it not itself mysterious? The
strength of this theory either rises or falls here.
The autonomous will is nothing other than the autonomous attitude which is nothing
other than one’s character. “It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out
of it, which can be taken as food without qualification, except a good will. Intelligence, wit,
judgment, and any other talents of the mind we may care to name, or courage, resolution, and
constancy of purpose, as qualities of temperament, are without doubt good and desirable in many
respects; but they can also be extremely bad and hurtful when the will is not good which has to
make use of these gifts of nature, and which for this reason has the term ‘character’ applied to its
peculiar quality” (Gr 393). Therefore, when we talk about free acts, we need not be talking about
anything mysterious such as subject, reason or even the will, or we can talk about all those things
as long as we understand them in terms of one’s character. It is one’s character that acts freely.
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