Free Will.

I. As Simone Weil pointed out: I suffer. Therefore I exist.

II. Because I worry about what to believe, I know that I have a CHOICE in what TO believe.

III. From that choice follow all deductions. The determinists fall off at this threshold. They want things to be easy.

IV. One cannot derive an Ethic from a Fact.

V. This proposition, like all propositions, is true until proven false.

VI. The man of facts is profoundly tempted to surrender his soul. This was the message in Faust.

VII. The determinist has surrendered his soul. He has surrendered self-control and will in favour of scientific "facts".

VIII. There are no scientific facts.

IX. One must use one's freedom to arrive at this threshold of understanding.

X. The threshold is of course a stepping stone. Further thresholds may in fact [no pun intended] contra-
dict this fact. But contradictions suggest paradoxes.

XI. The American Buddhist* is a style of determinist that surrenders suffering for happiness.

XII. Happiness is afforded only to a few by virtue of chance.

XIII. Chance is conceived of my the determinist as a play of mechanistic "non-chance" forces.

XIV. This is because the determinist has used his will to deny his will. [Bad Faith, a la Sartre.] The determinist's world appears to be a matter of fact rather than chance because it is a microcosm (frame of reference) devised by his will and imposed UPON chance.

XV. Yet it denies chance, patriarchally.

XVI. Because Happiness is only available to a few people by virtue of chance, the enjoyment of it by the determinist is not merely amoral but immoral.

XVII. This is because not all others COULD follow his example. He fails to meet the Deontological criterion: Act as though the world would benefit if all others might act as you do and follow your example. He only dimly and theoretically realises the Pragmatic end of Greatest Good for the Greatest (Possible) Number, and only in so far as he under-estimates the Possibility of Great Good out of sheer sloth.

XVIII. It is impossible to criticise the buddhist without violating his notions of propriety.

XIX. The notions of propriety are the template for the surrender of the individual will. They are proto-Fascist and require an Internal Corollary (Value) in order to be genuinely (and not merely conventionally) moral.

XX. The determinist is incapable of creating happiness for the greatest possible number because that requires the exercise of will, to supplement the inadequacies of chance.

XXI. We call what is easy involuntary and what is difficult voluntary.

XXII. In this way, the man living an easy life afforded to him by chance forgets chance and dreams of a deterministic design, fashioned after his own entitled intellect, that had brought him here.

XXIII. The demand for such thinking is so wide in a proto-Fascist state that he seems to have the full force of society behind him.

XXIV. Detachment means to evade moral responsibility and to choose apathy. Buddhism affords this.

XXV. Attachment means that free will must be acknowledged as a brute fact. THIS is Responsibility, in the upper-case sense of the word.

XXVI. Simone de Beauvoir was right. She had never felt a greater peace than in reading Hegel. Every thing was systematically described. Contemporary Positivism is Hegelian, drawing on the prejudices of the March of Progress and the capacity for Reason and Intersubjectivity (or Dialectical opposition, both of whom occur as one in scientific "debate") to lay "illusions" such as Free Will to waste.

XXVII. Hegel was a proto-Fascist simply because he believed that Truth was Absolute. Scientific Positivism still operates under the assumption, shared by Kant, that Truth must be true and Universal (Absolute) for All Rational Beings.

XXVIII. Most men seek A philosophy as a means to an end, but do not arrive at the point that Philosophy is an end in and of its self.

XXIX. Freedom consists of not being pigeon-holed by one's own consent. Ethical sanctity thus rests as much in contradiction as in consistency. Tough decisions are ones where in a contradiction must be entertained in order to affirm the most critical underlying consistency. Hence Kierkegaard conceived of the highest form of ethical reasoning as relation to a paradox.

XXX. Not all contradiction is hypocrisy. This is only so in people of weak character.

XXXI. Not all deductions are based in what one has read, or even in what one has experienced. One can intuit responses instinctively to situations that cannot be explained through any scientific frame of reference because the experiences are solitary and rest outside the streetlight of intersubjectivity.

XXXII. The socialite believes all others to be socialites. Gender is not a social construct; that proposition (that it IS a social construct) is a social construct.

XXXIII. Some intellectuals acquire knowledge only to ultimately (whether or not this was the initial intent) shoot down old trends. They offer nothing new, for new thinking might require building upon existing trends.

XXXIV. Genuine novelty requires not only an existing frame of reference but experience. It all so goes beyond experience to encompass Mysteries such as Intuition, Premonition, and Grace.

XXXV. Because the pretentious intellectual has his dogma to satiate his desires, he sees no need to acknowledge a realm beyond the socially conditioned. The proto-Fascist argues that all that the Truth Seeker has was conditioned that the Truth Seeker would surrender one's freedom (volitionally) to the illusion of Determinism.

XXXVI. Were the pretentious intellectual a Determinist he would see no reason to hold his self responsible for this as a crime. He would not be motivated to confront the fact of his own WILL and to use it. He would systematically reject all that does not accord with his dogmatic, mechanistic microcosm. He would have no motive not to marginalise, and he remains inhuman, able to reduce most input to the sub-human, because the birth of the human being as a compassionate animal is in the use of free will to cultivate compassion.

XXXVII. Again: The Angst that one encounters when confronted with such a menace is evidence of the existence of Free Will. To quote Jung: They all ways seek their own existence. Against nothingness. Against meaninglessness. Man cannot tolerate a meaningless life.

*This does not account for all buddhism.

Dm.A.A.