Arthur Schopenhauer said, “A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills.”
I take this to mean that we, as people, have free will in as much as that we can do whatever we want to do. But, free will is limited by what it is that we want, which we have no control over. We have no control over what we want. We may inhibit our actions in response to our wants– and maybe we can repress these wants for years– but we will always have those desires.
And, no, I’m not gay.
I haven’t had a discussion on my site in forever, so please, discuss.
First of all, “will” is an auxiliary verb of am. It can be used so many ways; expected, determined, inclined to, going to, etc. So, free will, as best I can tell, is the freeness to expect things to happen or the freeness to just do. Furthermore, I think it is the freeness with thought or contemplation or consideration for anything; ramifications, justifications, ethics, etc.
We have no control over anything if you want to be extremely esoteric about it. I mean, if I say “I will live without even breathing.” Well, geez, I can’t do that. I understand that one needs to breathe to live. I cannot separate myself from the knowledge I have of the human body. So, the only way I could possibly do as I will (using the above statement) would be to strip myself of ALL knowledge of anything. But that raises another question. How then would I even know what I “will do”?
What I think you are referring to is desire though and not will. Will denotes some sort of real action. It is, afterall, a verb — auxiliary or not. Desire is, well, a noun in that it means to want or crave something.
So, in short, “A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills…that would be dressed up desire.”
How is “to desire” a noun?
What dictionary is they be using at Regent?
I am certain Arthur S. was using “will” as an adjective of “to choose.” To paraphrase (and I know this is what he meant because I have researched it): We may choose what we please, but we can’t choose our pleasures.
Still, it wasn’t really the point I was hoping to discuss. Stop being ornery and talk about meaning of the statement, Drew.
Welcome back.
Hey, at least I commented. Okay…so it was total crap. I tried though. I actually meant “desire” was a noun. Anyway…not the point.
He is right. We can choose whatever we want but our pleasures, well, I think they are controlled by something we have no control over. I love boobs. I don’t know why. It is my anatomical and sexual nature. I could go through all sorts of therapy but I think the desire would still be there. I have no control over that basic will. I guess what I can will is whether or not I act on that pleasure. The guy is right.
I tried to really comprehend his thoughts on Wille zum Leben but couldn’t really wrap my mind around it. The best I could come up with was the above example.
Can someone else please comment now?
I think as human beings, we desire for things that make us happy in the short term. I don’t think we can change this, but as we get older and more mature we decide to strive for things that take perseverance and will make us happier in the long term, i.e. health, well-being. I think this is the will to overcome those immediate desires and try to grab something more meaningful. I think too many people give into the thought that we can’t control our short term desires, so why try. If this was true, then all fat people would stay fat. All lazy people would stay lazy, and if you were unlucky enough to have a knack for killing prostitutes, well you know the rest.
I agree with you to a point, but anyone who has a, as Richard Simmons puts it, “strong relationship with food,” knows that getting in shape and becoming healthier doesn’t totally eliminate those cravings. The vigilance and the self-control may strengthen but, like any addiction the cravings are always there. My good friend Tripp has being leading one of the healthiest lifestyles of anyone I know, but did not always. Even though he has been in great shape longer than when he was not, he avoids eating sweets like the plague, not because of his healthy lifestyle, but, because he knows he won’t be able to stop eating them once he starts.
I think its interesting that when we hear the word “desire” we always seems to initially associate the word with selfish, materialistic, or dysfunctional concepts. Surely we have desires that are unselfish and pure? Yes? No? I don’t know. That’s another conversation unto itself.
I guess my reason for bringing this up is that I find myself and others around me in situations where their wants and their realities are vastly different. While practicality and necessity may require you to do otherwise, it doesn’t seem that the yearning for something more (or just for something else) goes away.
Sometimes our wants are dictated by what we can’t have. Obviously, we stand a greater chance of being controlled by those things (those wants) that are out of our control. Especially if they were once in our control. The best example I can come up with is what happens when we are jilted in a relationship (even if we weren’t really happy in the relationship), that we will always want someone who no longer wants us. Not always, but it happens. Letting go can be tough and we really can’t just will detachment into being.
There’s no right or wrong answers. Thanks for participating Presto.
Strictly speaking for myself, I can say that whole reverse psychology of wanting someone who doesn’t want you has never been the case for me. A person who has no desire to be with me is not worth the time or effort it takes to try and convince them otherwise.
Hostess fruit pies are a different story…I’m convinced they want me just as much as I want them.
I would love to contribute more but I’m at work and shouldn’t be responding to this right now. I’ll try to contribute something of more quality later.
I basically agree with Schopenhauer, but only to a point. I think we do have a measure of control over what it is that we desire. I don’t think I would phrase it in quite the way that Preston does up above–I don’t think it is really about aging per se, and it’s not necessarily a positive teleology where we desire what is healthier in the long run as we get older–however, I do think, over a span of time, we do have more control over our desires than we tend to recognize, for both better and worse.
I don’t think that I can make easy, conscious decisions about my most basic desires and then immediately implement them. I can’t decide today that I will love lima beans. I hate lima beans and I can will myself to like them all I want in the next two hours, but if I cook them for dinner I still will not like them. However, if I remind myself to be open to lima beans and I try them and will myself to like them and then try them again and again and again, prepared in different ways maybe and in different settings, I can eventually get to a place where not only am I capable of forcing myself to eat lima beans but where I can actually enjoy eating them. I know that this is true, even though I have failed to carry out this project with lima beans, because I have done exactly this with lots of other foods–I used to hate, and I mean hate hate like it turned my stomach–ketchup. I still don’t quite love ketchup, and I always ask for it to be on the side so I can control how much is on food because too much ketchup I still find gross. However, over time, I taught myself to like ketchup. I changed my attitude by trying it a bunch of times, and when I started to reject the flavor, I’d stop myself and ask why I was choosing to hate this taste–after all, lots of other people love it, and I really liked tomatoes and tomato sauces of pretty much every other sort, so why shouldn’t I choose to define the experience as pleasurable. I didn’t change my mind in a day, but over a span of a couple of years I did.
And I think that applies to far more than foods. I think we have far, far more control over what we desire than we give ourselves credit for. I used to desire my ex-wife, because she tapped into my own self-hatred lingering from my abusive childhood. Well, as I have worked to understand myself more and to accept myself for who I am, I am coming to realize that I do not have to continue to desire her or someone like her. I can choose to become a different person and to have healthier relationships in the future. I can choose to change my definitions of what makes a happy life and then live according to those new principles. It’s not easy to do, and it doesn’t happen simply by making up my mind intellectually to do so, but that does not mean that I am helpless to make those sorts of changes.
I’ve been going to a codependency 12-step program, like AA, and the entire system is predicated on the notion that we can choose to take control over our fundamental desires. People who go to AA and gets sober might never get rid of the urge to drink, but it’s also not accurate to say that they spend the rest of their lives miserable because they are denying themselves this substance that they crave with an overpowering desire. They can choose not just to live a better life, but to learn to find satisfaction and pleasure in making better choices for themselves. The can change their wills. Again, not all of them are successful at it and it damn well doesn’t come easily, but it is not at all an impossibility. There are millions of people who prove otherwise.
I think that disjunction you describe in your comment above between peoples’ wants and what they should want is not so much borne out of some objective truth that human beings are incapable of deciding for themselves what they desire and more borne out of fundamental contradictions built into the culture that we live within. In particular, a consumer culture, almost by definition and certainly as we have currently structured ours here in the Western world in the 20th & 21st centuries, is predicated on our desires being out of whack with our needs. Absolutely our consumer culture is founded on the idea that we should always be desiring more than we have or can ever have. But a consumer culture is not a biological necessity. It does not say something about what human beings in some objective sense are capable of doing, but a statement about the way we have chosen to organize our lives.
I think that situation you describe of always wanting the lover who jilts us is not as simple as you make it sound, either. I mean, certainly people do follow that pattern. However, I think that’s just because there are a helluva lot of us who are deeply wounded people with overly-developed self-destructive tendencies. Certainly, people can choose to no longer yearn for lovers who spurn and wound them–it might take some time and it wouldn’t be without pain, but we can make that choice. I would say that people who cannot make that choice can’t do it because they are dysfunctional, not because it is fundamental human nature. In fact, I believe that basic human nature would tend toward allowing ourselves to get over wounds like that and move on to a better relationship–when we can’t do it, it’s because we have been taught not to be able to do so, maybe not taught purposely and consciously, but taught nonetheless.
Also, your question whether there is such a thing as unselfish desire–of course there is. We are taught that desire is selfish, materialistic, or dysfunctional because that’s how to keep the structure of our society in place most effectively. We are taught to desire, and then to beat ourselves up for desiring, and then that the only way to soothe ourselves is to desire more, which leads to us beating ourselves up further and desiring more stuff and so on. And in the meantime, we sure buy a lot of stuff. But there are all kinds of other desires. There are also ways to desire things for ourselves that are perfectly reasonable and good. The problem isn’t in the desiring, but in the doing so completely unchecked and without any self-awareness.
Oh, I meant to have more qualifiers in that last comment, especially on the topic of choosing to be in healthier relationships in the future. I suspect that if I go on for the rest of my life without much self-awareness and just go after whoever I find attractive in my gut, I’ll end up in another dysfunctional relationship exactly like the last one. On some fundamental level, I will always desire women who are incapable of healthy relationships because in all sorts of ways, my childhood taught me those desires and I will never sweep those away. And probably, though I’m not sure about this, there will always be a certain degree of feeling not quite right about being with a woman who is actually good for me–she will never quite match up with what my childish primal self is desiring (a return of my mother–as fucked up as that desire is to my conscious mind). However, and for now I’m taking this on faith and the word of other people who have been through this–that does not mean that I will go on to have relationships that are healthier but always unsatisfying because I have zero power over my will.
I think I can never have total power over my will, but I can have more power over it than I tend to think I do.
I am glad you chose to chime in, Scrivener. This is me falling flat on my face in response:
I just think that dysfunction is a term relative to your culture and societal norms. I think thats why its so damn easy to fall back into dysfunctional relationships than it is to overcome them.
I think its more human nature to continue to do the same old comfortable things than it is to make such an invested effort to overcome them. I don’t believe that addicts lead unhappy lives once they are sober, but I know my share addicts and that struggle doesn’t just disappear after they’ve been clean for one, five, or ten years. They may know they are better for their efforts and they might be living healthier, happier lives, but there is always that fear that their vigilance could fail.
I seriously, don’t think I know anyone besides you who would make such an effort to enjoy ketchup if they hated it by nature. Kim hates ketchup, and tomatoes in general. She will occasionally make herself eat tomatoes on hamburgers because she figures they are good for her, but she draws the line at ketchup. Nevertheless, humans are the only animals that do this. We’re the only animals who eat chili peppers for the very reason every other animal avoids them. We have the ability to overcome out programming, but I don’t think its something we’re all good at.
Nevertheless, I don’t think we’re at the mercy of our wills completely. I stumbled across the quote and it made me consider that sometimes the things that motivate me to “do what I want” originate in forces that are beyond my control. For me, personally, being told that I must or cannot do something almost ALWAYS makes me want to do or not do it (whichever is contrary of course). This behavior has, as I’ve gotten older, started to seem infantile and counterproductive. But, still, my first gut reaction to someone telling me that I have to do something is “fuck you,” and then I have to force myself to be reasonable. I don’t know where it comes from in the first place, but I have my theories.
Schopenhauer probably didn’t have any idea about the sources dysfunction, or incorporate anything resembling modern psychoanalysis since Freud hadn’t come along yet. I think his statement probably seemed like the bee’s knees in his time. I think know it’s more of a “food for thought” item.
What qualifies as dysfunction is definitely determined by culture, though I would bet that with a little thought we could come up with some kind of generalized principle that can cut across cultural lines fairly well & describe a fairly decent swath of what qualifies as dysfunction: maybe something like, allowing fear and self-loathing to be the predominant factors in determining the life you lead is dysfunctional. That’s totally off the cuff and I’m not even trying to make it foolproof. But I would guess no matter what culture you live within, everyone would agree that living such a life is a bad thing–though what evidence one would look to in order to make such a judgment would vary widely–and I think that definition includes in some sense a pretty big chunk of what I think of as dysfunction. (I’m sort of thinking along the lines of how when I was in high school I was taught that an incest taboo is a unversal factor in every culture, with the clear implication that everyone in the world, throughout time agreed that sleeping with your close relatives as defined by our culture is disgusting. Then I read Clifford Geertz and came to realize that what is universal is that every culture has some kind of rules about who one can and cannot be with, even though how cultures define incest varies enormously. I’m wanting to say that there is some set of behaviors that are dysfunctional across cultures, even though what those behaviors are will vary. I am totally talking out of my ass at this point, just to be clear, and I think I have contradicted myself.)
The reason it’s so easy to fall back into dysfunctional patterns is that it is fundamental human nature to resist change and to stick to comfortable patterns–it might even be fundamental to animal life. All animals have fear reactions, and I think I can argue that all animals’ fear reactions are triggered by change. Wade into a tidal pool and poke a sea anemone and it will close up within itself because that change can be dangerous.
Another major problem is that dysfunction is not just a matter of culture but of your own stage in life: the behaviors and attitudes that I am working to overcome now, my dysfunctions, all started out as effective survival strategies. I try to avoid conflict, to smooth over every situation, to cover for people around me who are acting badly, which is a dysfunctional behavior of mine. However, the reason I have this behavior is because that behavior allowed me to avoid being beaten when I was a kid. So it’s a behavior that worked for a long time but whose usefulness has worn out in my present circumstances, and it’s really difficult to let go of behaviors that on some fundamental level we know are responsible for our own survival.
Hey, maybe that’s my more universal definition of dysfunction: continuing to repeat behaviors and attitudes that were once effective even when they prove themselves to no longer be suitable because of an inability to change.
Which, now that I think about is, is kind of exactly what Schopenhauer proposes as defining the human condition: human beings, he claims, are not capable of adjusting their attitudes in ways that will allow them to actually take advantage of their opportunity for free will. We are stuck with what we are taught forever because we have no power to change our minds about our desires.
In other words, your response to Schopenhauer probably comes down more or less to how pessimistic you are. Do you believe that human beings are fundamentally dysfunctional, ineffective creatures who are incapable of living lives as full and satisfying as would be possible if they were just not so deeply fucked up? Or do you believe that human beings are capable of learning, change, one might even use the term enlightenment?
Schopenhauer might be right. I admit that it is easy to point to lots of examples of people who seem to support his position, and much harder to come up with counterexamples. But you know what, if he is right then what’s the point anyway, right? Believing he is wrong provides me a basis for feeling hopeful and a means of at least attempting to live a life that will be happy and satisfying. It has far more use-value. I also happen to believe that he is wrong–not fundamentally wrong, but wrong in the degree to which he pushes his argument. I’ve seen people heal. I know of people who have pulled themselves out of some pretty terrible shit and then become people whom I love and respect.
Hell, I have exerted my will in order to overcome some pretty terrible shit and I’m a pretty damn good, cool guy now. Will there always be a certain extent to which something fundamental in me will remain unchanged–i.e., has my growth been pretty much superficial and I will find that I cannot really change my will? Maybe. But I can see so much growth in myself already that I don’t see any reason at this point in my life to be at all to be fatalistic about my ability to change.
Oh, and as far as ketchup goes, that was just one of a whole bunch of foods I worked on. I used to be a really picky eater. Not only was it a huge pain in the ass (I remember waiting at McDonald’s for my plain hamburger for so long that the rest of my family had finished eating before my food was ready, for example) but at some point I realized that I was impoverishing my life by not getting more pleasure from food. I would look around and see that all of these other people really liked eating and liked lots of things that I hated and I decided that it would be far more pleasant to like stuff. Taste is entirely subjective–even people who believe in Objective Truth believe that–so I figured that there was no reason the me of today should necessarily be bound by the subjective sensibilities of the me of the past. Me yesterday hated lima beans, but all these other people like lima beans, so why couldn’t the me of tomorrow like them too?
Honestly, for most foods it didn’t take much work. Surprisingly, food that I thought I had hated and had avoided, it turned out it tasted just fine if I began with an attitude of wanting to like it instead of wanting not to. Ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and a few other foods I continued to hate though. Then I started cooking with mustard and decided I liked it in sauces and from there it was easy to like mustard. I did the same thing with ketchup–I make a port wine sauce for pork chops that takes a couple of tablespoons of ketchup and knowing it’s there you can just taste the sweetness and tomato flavor and I really like that in the sauce, which indicated to me that I should be able to like ketchup. It took more work before I was able to get to eat it on something like a hot dog, but I got there.
I tend to have the same gut reaction to being told I cannot do something. In high school an English teacher told me that water is always symbolic of baptism and rebirth and I remember thinking that I wanted to go write a short story where water very clearly did not mean that, just to prove her wrong. I remember, too, an English professor saying that it’s impossible to come up with any hard and fast definition of poetry because the second you tell a bunch of poets that something cannot be poetry, one of them is going to rush out to prove you wrong. It’s one of the things I find appealing about poets.
I think I am basically pessimistic. I think that is a learned behavior of my own that probably came about in the same way as your own self-defense mechanisms. I don’t deny that it affects the way I view Schopenhauer’s statement.
I am also a sloppy blogger so some things I said might have come off the wrong way. I don’t deny that there’s a universal, culture-spanning, sense of what dysfunction is, but I also think that the idea of treating those dysfunctions is probably pretty recent. I mean, think of the Middle Ages where everyone had kind of a dysfunctional relationship with God and anyone who wasn’t a noble was essentially a slave.
Still, though it might imply that I am totally pessimistic that I think Schopenhauer is right, I also find something hopeful in believing that not being able to choose my will helps me to do things I might not otherwise do. I am only speaking from my personal point of view, and, as far as the gamut of human desires can run, mine are pretty pedestrian.
I think a lot of humanities greatest accomplishments and darkest moments come from trying to fill the hole that our desires can create. Dysfunctional or otherwise.
By the way.
Ketchup on hotdogs is for the Plebians.
Ketchup shouldn’t even be discussed. It’s not worth the time.
That really depends, I think. There is much controversy between ketchup and catsup. I really think that we should look further into the issue.
But I am a plebian. Or, at least, I’m certainly not a patrician. Plus, isn’t the hot dog already plebian, no matter what you put on it?
I like ketchup sometimes. I don’t treat it like a beverage like some people do. Catsup is out of the question. Ketchup on hotdogs is just gross. Hotdogs exist solely as a method for consuming spicy brown mustard.
I want plebian to come back into style with the web elite. I was to start calling people “pleebs” or “pl33bs” or something.
The difference between ketchup and catsup is like the difference between sucks and sux.
I want you. I am gay.
I know. I know,