Free Will In Rene Descartes Meditations

Everyday we make choices. From the morning we wake up to the time we choose to rest at night, everything in between is a series of choices that turn into physical action. The actions, as a result of thoughtful choices, in turn largely contribute to the person we become. Hence, it is crucial to know how we, as human beings are able to make wise judgments and to know that our choice is the best choice. The will allows human beings to make a sound and best choice among infinite or finite alternatives. Two early modern philosophers propose their contrasting ideas on the will which is a product of a substance called mind after a process of deliberate thinking. Rene Descartes (1596-1650), a French philosopher argues the theory of judgment based on …show more content…
Man’s will is understood as the existence of unlimited free choices, which is an aspect that is most like God. Descartes states that “we can easily get ourselves into a tangle if we try to bring this divine preordination together with the freedom of our will, holding both things in our mind at once.” The substance in Descartes produces thought which can be divided into two: the intellect or the faculties where clear and distinct ideas reside, and the will which acts by making God intervene our judgment about the clear and distinct ideas. God is not essentially any more free than we are. The source of error of man is the simultaneous application of his unlimited choice or will to his very limited knowledge or intellect. Man, using will, can choose: the false instead of the true, where it can affirm or deny what is not clear and distinct, or the evil instead of good. This shows that God did not have to give man more knowledge than he in fact did. God’s role as a perfect thinking thing is to guarantee man’s clear and distinct ideas. Man can avoid error by confining his will to the limits of his intellect by not passing judgment on anything that is not clear and distinct. Thus, he only errs by misapplication of his own free will so it is not God’s fault. Descartes’ concept of will is entangled on his concept of freedom. From the …show more content…
It is a thought or choice, and to have such is an intellect. The Will is an illusion that our thinking is doing caused by other thoughts. He thinks it’s an illusion because thoughts and bodies are part of causal change. Thus, to be part of causal change, it is God’s view of what will happen. In Proposition 48, he states that “The mind is a definite and determinate mode of thinking, and thus it cannot be the free cause of its actions: that is, it cannot possess an absolute faculty of willing and non-willing. It must be determined to will this or that by a cause, which likewise is determined by another cause, and this again by another, etc” (RMP 198). The Will is an active volition. A volition is an act of choice, an instance of that faculty. With that said, any act of volition cannot cause itself because it is finite, and to be finite, it cannot be caused by something else. For Spinoza, there is only one substance, God, who has all infinite attribute both in thought and extension. Unlike God, man are finite modes of those attributes. In turn, man are susceptible to wrong actions and errors due to this limitation. These actions are merely products of the mental acts called choices, which are also an effect of causal sequence rooted in the nature of God. Spinoza, unlike Descartes, believes that there is no such free will of the mind because men are oblivious to the root cause of their actions and choices.