Arthur Schopenhauer
(1872-1970)
Schopenhauer' essay "On the Freedom of the Will" won the prize of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences in 1839. He defined the liberum arbitrium indifferentiae as not being determined by prior grounds. "Under given external conditions, two diametrically opposed actions are possible." On the freedom of the Will, p.8)
"All really deep thinkers of all times,
no matter how different their other views may have been,
agreed in maintaining the necessity of volitions upon the occurrence of motives, and in rejecting the liberum arbitrium.
(On the Freedom of the Will, p.60)
"If we do not accept the strict necessity of all that happens by means of a causal chain which connects all events without exception, but allow this chain to be broken in countless places by an absolute freedom, then all foreseeing of the future, in dreams, in clairvoyant somnambulism, second sight, becomes objective and hence absolutely impossible, and so inconceivable. (On the Freedom of the Will, p.64)
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