16 Freiheit (Einführung): Handlungs- und Willensfreiheit

Welcome to the overview of philosophy, my name is Florian Kremer and I introduce you to this podcast in the fast passage through the "Lehrplan der Oberstufe" in NRW. If you are prepared for a closure or abbey exam in philosophy, you are exactly right here. And if you are just so interested in what this should all be like on this planet, you are in this podcast, so to speak, even more true. In today's episode we will get into a new topic. In the "Lehrplan" the topic is "The human being as a free and self-determined being." Sounds totally good, doesn't it? Free and self-determined, we all like that. You too, don't you? Let's take a picture of yourself, how free and self-determined you are. So right now, in this moment. At least you just switched on this podcast and you probably have decided to do that yourself. There is also the little chance that I forced you to do so, because you have the luck or misfortune to visit one of my philosophy courses. But statistically, that is unlikely. Probably it is that it was your own decision to set up the headphones and press play on the mobile phone. You are in your own danger, so to speak. In this respect, you are what you normally call "free and self-determined". But you probably also do something next to it. You are currently on your way to school, to work or are running through the supermarket. Maybe you are doing the laundry or the household, so one of the many things that you actually do while listening to podcasts. Quite a lot of these things don't make you as free as listening to podcasts. You do it because it has to be done. Somewhere the money has to come here or the food. The apartment must not be completely trashed and so on. All of this is in the farthest sense a threat. We can also call this part of the everyday foreign definition in contrast to self-determination. You may not even be principle to do everything against it, but you have never felt the very free decision whether it has to be done or not. You just have to do something and do the best out of it. That's what our life looks like now. There are quite a lot of these "sachts" waves, as we sometimes call them. And we always design our lives within these "sachts" waves. Learning, earning money, shopping, cleaning up, somehow it has to be everything. To lead a self-determined life, maybe within these "sachts" waves there are still as many free spaces as possible. So, for example, to live in as few "sachts" as possible, to live with as many "sachts" as possible, to be able to live flexibly, to make free spaces out of "sachts" and so on. That has something to do with the art of life. In a later unit on ethics, our question will be what is a good life? Maybe we will tackle these thoughts of self-determination again. Of course there are already two things now. First of all, freedom seems to be the opposite of force. Second, freedom sounds good, force sounds bad. An example of this are the holidays. Everyone is really looking forward to the holidays, everyone. Why actually? Because you really hang out and do nothing there? No, there are also very packed action-heavy holidays. And on the other hand, there are also times in school where you hang out and don't really do anything. Times where something fails or nothing works. But those are not the times that really make a lot of fun. You just hang around like that. The beauty of the holidays, my thesis, is that I can decide for myself what and how much I do. If I spend weeks on the same beach, on the same sunbed, I haven't done anything. But it could still be a totally nice holiday, because I have decided to do that myself. Or rather, not to do anything. So you are not necessarily free, just because you do more or only have more options. On the contrary, if I have to choose between 30 different activities every day, it can even be really stressful. Arnold Gehlen says hello, I see episode 4. The beauty of holidays is definitely that you don't care about anyone, nobody wants something from you. That's freedom, right? Let's switch to the holiday program, namely to Willy. Willy spends his holidays in his basement room. He plays some online game for which he always misses the time. Now it's different. For weeks he sits in his office in front of the computer and simply doesn't leave. Willy is playful. Sorry for the cliché, dear online gamer, if you're listening right now. Willy also does all the holidays about what he wants, which he has been looking forward to for a long time. But somehow we tend to call these holidays beautiful. That's exactly why he doesn't seem to do 100% freely what he does. He has decided to play, but if he is greedy, what else could he do? If we were really free, we would normally not call his choice. We are facing two different terms of freedom here that we have to discuss at the beginning. In terms of transition, we can perhaps call it freedom of external and freedom of internal forces. The philosophical terms that we are talking about today are "handlungsfreiheit" and "willensfreiheit". Handlungsfreiheit means that I can do what I want. I am free to go to the beach if the beach is not closed, if there is no pandemic order that prohibits me from doing it, if I am not too sick or too motionless to leave the house and so on. Willensfreiheit is still a step forward. I am free in the sense of willensfreiheit, if I can also decide for myself what my will is at all. If I, for example, am not manipulated or oppressed by someone else to go to the beach. Even then I would somehow want it, but someone would have forced me to do it. I do not do it voluntarily. This term "willensfreiheit" is, as we will still see, in fact very Turkish and unclear. But there is also the term "handlungsfreiheit" in some cases. An interesting philosophical question about "handlungsfreiheit" is then "unfree" in the sense of "handlungsfreiheit" when you are locked up in a prison cell, but at the same time just wanted to do a ten-day beard meditation anyway. So if you can't get out of it, but you don't even want to get out of it anyway, is that then "unfree" in the sense of "unfree" in the sense of "unfree"? As we answer this question, it seems that it depends on how we can do the two parts of "ich kann tun, was ich will gewichten". If it is about the "können geht", the meditating prisoner would not be free. There are things he can't do now. If it is about "wollen geht" against me, against "schon", because he can do what he wants to do now. You could say "Er ist frei", but if I were in the same situation as him, then I would not be free. Then there was "handlungsfreiheit" from "eigenen Willen ab". But you could also explain it to him in another way for "unfrei". He doesn't want to get out now, but he could develop these wills and then he would be "unfree" against these wills again. And first of all it is likely that at some point he will develop another will than just sit around. Second, it is statistically very likely that he will do something that he can't do anymore. Because in prison he can do very little. Then he is "unfrei". So we have to say that he suddenly becomes "unfrei", although nothing has changed in his situation. And then it sounds a bit strange. If we don't have to say much more, he will probably feel "unfrei" and that's why he is "unfree" now to a certain level. Or are you automatically free when you feel free and because you feel free. At first glance it looks like this for me, as if you can get lost about your own freedom. Then "unfree" would feel something different than "unfree". Footnote, a similar question will later be in relation to the term "righteousness". Is everything "right" when everyone treats themselves "righteous"? The question under which circumstances one is actually "unfree" is only one aspect that makes the freedom of action philosophically interesting. Another aspect is the question how much freedom of action should each individual have. Politically, this question is always about opinion and speech freedom. Should everyone be allowed to say everything? Or should there be any limits? This question itself is an application of the larger question how much freedom the state or the society should give to the members and when the freedom of one for the other or for everyone will be a danger or a threat. Later, in the "Unity over State" theory, we will talk about such questions extensively. In short, there is a very large part of the state theory mainly from this one question. In the following episodes, however, it should be about a different topic, namely the freedom of wills. For the freedom of action, it was about whether I can implement my will, so that I have a certain will. But where does it actually come from and who gives me the one? Can I decide with myself, perhaps very alone, how this will that I have or is it already in me and almost given to me? There seems to be clear cases in which the will of a person from another person is determined, for example the hopeless belonging to a religious sect or to a dictatorship, in which the state propaganda influences me so much, that I automatically take over the will of the leading figure, perhaps without noticing it myself. In other words, it is rather her leading but very impressive expression, brainwashed. But also addiction diseases are an example for people who have a very strong and very clear will, while the same own will means a maximum of foreign determination at the same time. They no longer live their own life. But with you and with me that is different, right? It is at least difficult, very difficult, extremely difficult. It is already starting with the question whether the word will and freedom is so logical at all. From the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer the sentence is over. You can maybe do what you want, but you can't want what you want. Schopenhauer himself has expressed this in a slightly different way. I will now give a prominent formulation again with which I believe Albert Einstein once mentioned Schopenhauer. Again. You can maybe do what you want, but you can't want what you want. The sentence is the following. "Ich bin handlungsfrei, wenn ich selbst entscheiden kann, was ich tue. Willensfrei wär ich scheinbar dann, wenn ich selbst entscheiden kann, was ich entscheide. Aber ist das überhaupt logisch möglich? Angenommen ich will das linke von zwei Kuchenstücken. Diesen Willen nenne ich W1. Ist dieser Wille W1 jetzt frei? Wenn Willensfreiheit bedeutet selbst entscheiden, was ich will, dann müsste ich mich vorher für diesen Willen W1 selbst entschieden haben. Dazu müsste ich einen Willen W2 gehabt haben, der aus allen Willen, die ich jetzt haben könnte, ausgerechnet W1 auswählt. Ich will das Kuchenstück W1, und dazu will ich auch das Kuchenstück wollen, W2." Dann stellt sich jedoch dieselbe Frage. Ist denn dieser Wille W2 das Kuchenstück zu wollen, ist der jetzt frei? Gemäß unserer Definition ist W2 nur dann frei, wenn wir uns selbst zu W2 entschieden haben, also gleiches Spiel wie eben, es müsste einen Willen W3 geben, mit dem ich mich selber vorher für W2 entschieden habe. "Ich will das linke Kuchenstück und ich will den Willen haben, das linke Stück zu wählen, und ich will den Willen haben, den Willen zu haben, das linke Stück zu wählen." An dieser Stelle kürzen wir die Podcast-Episode etwas ab. Du siehst sicher schon das Problem. Wenn ich dieses Spiel weiterspiele, komme ich nie dazu, endlich diesen verdammten Kuchen zu essen. Man nennt so etwas in der Philosophie einen unendlichen Regress. Einen solchen Willen, der erst unendlich viele andere Willen braucht, bevor er überhaupt gilt, den kann es rein logisch betrachtet gar nicht geben, denn er kann ja effektiv nirgendwo herkommen. Zweitens wissen wir doch aus der Praxis, dass Entscheidungen genauso nicht ablaufen. Ich entscheide mich normalerweise nicht, wofür ich mich entscheiden will, sondern ich entscheide mich einfach irgendwie. Aber heißt das nicht doch, ich finde meinen Willen fertig in mir vor und überlege bloß noch, wie ich ihn umsetzen kann. Dann aber kann es Willensfreiheit im Sinne von wollen, was man will, gar nicht geben. Damit haben wir einen allerersten Blick in die Komplexität und Tiefe des Themas gewagt. Die Frage nach der Freiheit des Willens ist einer der ältesten und beliebtesten Dauerbrenner in der Philosophie. Hier kommen Anthropologie, Metaphysik und Ethik zusammen. Oben drauf kämen dann auch noch die Ergebnisse der Gehirnforschung bzw. der Neurowissenschaften, die auch alle etwas über unsere Entscheidungen erzählen können. Siehe Tum aus Metzinger aus Episode 14. Ich werde mich aber bemühen in dieses endlose Thema so kurz wie möglich einzuführen, gerade weil man sich darin auch schnell verliert. In der nächsten Episode werde ich zunächst nochmal die Frage selbst betrachten. Was ist eigentlich so wichtig am Thema Willensfreiheit und was hängt davon ab? In der übernächsten Episode werde ich das klassische Argument gegen die Willensfreiheit skizzieren. Es ist ziemlich stringent. Wenn wir aber gesehen haben, was alles von der Frage abhängt, dann werden wir diesem Argument vielleicht irgendwie ausweichen wollen. In der darauffolgenden Episode werde ich zeigen, wie diese Ausweichstrategien aussehen und wie erfolgsversprechend sie sind. Dabei stütze ich mich schwerpunktmäßig auf das Buch "Das Handwerk der Freiheit" des Schweizer Philosophen Peter Biri. Dieses Buch möchte ich Dir übrigens jetzt schon wärstens zum Lesen empfehlen. Peter Biri hat nämlich eine sehr interessante Art zu philosophieren. Nebenberuflich ist er Schriftsteller. Seine Beispiele sind deswegen sehr viel schöner erzählt als alle meine hier im Podcast. Sie entwickeln sogar eine Art Eigenleben und man könnte sagen, dass Biri aus dem Schreiben und Beschreiben von Fiktion heraus wieder eigene philosophische Argumentationen entwickelt. Außerdem geht es in diesem Buch irgendwo auch um praktische Lebenshilfe. Wie finde ich eigentlich selber heraus, was ich will und was ich soll? Vor dieser Frage steht ja jeder Mensch sein ganzes Leben lang immer wieder. Und die Philosophie hat ursprünglich sehr viel mit dieser Frage zu tun. "Das Handwerk der Freiheit" ist eines der Bücher, die es schaffen, eine philosophische Fachdiskussion auf hohem Niveau zu behandeln und sie gleichzeitig fürs eigene Leben nutzbar zu machen. An dieser Stelle beende ich aber diesen Werbelblock. Biri macht schließlich auch keine Werbung für meinen Podcast. Das kannst aber sehr gerne du übernehmen. Wenn Dir meinen Podcast gefällt, dann empfiehl ihn doch weiter oder hinterlass mir ein paar Sterne bei iTunes. Bis bald! , Bye!