Abstract

Concerning the reflection on human will there shall be shown fundamental agreements in the positions of Luther, Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer. In spite of being no Christian thinker, Schopenhauer is referring to Luther as chief witness on behalf of the fundamental unfreedom of human will: it cannot escape from willing itself. Because there is no basic orientation of the will to one thing only (the good and right), the will is - according to Kierkegaard (1847/49) - twofold and discordant in itself, desperately either willing to be oneself (as selfmade project) or rejecting to be oneself (as the creator's project). Unfreedom results from willing without being transparently founded in God; this is always (i. e. inescapably) desperation. The Concept of Anxiety (1844) is Kierkegaard's first and final step to quit the bourgeois optimistic concept of Judge Wilhelm (FJO II, 1843), who is imperturbably believing in the power of freedom in spite of being confrontated with the limits of the ethical mode of becoming a self (by choosing it). Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer therefore are representing the fundamental aversion from the traditional concept of the reason-guided will (liberum arbitrium). As Luther already in 1525 affirmed, human will is not free in a deep and true sense, as all willing is distorted by its entanglement in its own unchangeable (immutabilis) and self-centred structure.

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