The Will to Power (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 301 against Bulkeley's and Collins' determinism, Leibniz' notion of freedom as moral necessity, Reid's conception of moral agency, and finally Kant's transcendental freedom. This section is regretfully shorter than the preceding but far superior. Capizzi has been able to keep the debate between liberterians and determinists at the level of a conceptual dialogue without losing sight of the historical perspective. Some of these chapters (e.g., Ch. V, Part 2) read just like the contemporary controversy between Campbell and Iqowell Smith. In his defense against Hobbes, Bramhall is represented as oscillating between a form of extreme voluntarism (the will determines the motivation) and a form of "intellectual" determinism (the motivation determines the will). These are the dangers of Bramhall's "vicious circle" and none of the attempts succeeded in finding a solution between chance and fate. The first position, Capizzi argues, leads in fact to Clarke's freedom of indifference which issues in chance and the second position to Leibniz' which issues in fatalism. It is a pity that Capizzi has not dedicated more space to Jonathan Edwards. Unlike many determinists Edwards escapes the ghost of fatalism in a more satisfactory fashion than Leibniz with whom, according to Ramsey, he has so much in common (see P. Ramsey, The Works o] Jonathan Edwards, I, 117). Whereas Clarke's position reduces moral freedom to caprice and hence annihilates the notion of responsibility, it is debatable that Reid's "compromise between Leibniz and Clarke is not a satisfactory way out of Bramhall's vicious circle" (p. 220). Reid's free choice, Capizzi claims, is as arbitrary, capricious, and fortuitous as Clarke's and thus bereft of moral value. But the gist of Reid's theory is to prove that our choices can be free in the indeterministic fashion and yet substantially predictable. Reid repeats over and over again that to have free will does not imply that any choice we might make is as probable as any other. To have free will is to have a power over the determinations of the will. And we have this moral power in various degrees: "In different men the power of self government is different, and in the same man at different times" (see S. A. Grave, The Scottish Philosophy o] Common Sense, p. 218, and T. Reid, Works, II, 534, 619-620). The notion of moral agency and of power determining one's choices is metaphysically loaded. But the fact remains that for Reid it offers a solution for the dilemma of chance and necessity which in this section Capizzi was concerned to demonstrate insoluble. In the final chapter, Capizzi confesses his incapacity to appreciate Kant's solution of the conflict between causal necessity and moral freedom. "For Kant the two notions (noumenon and phenomenon) constitute the terms of a choice proposed to man by his immutable structure, and for Kant the first is better than the second. We do not believe in immutable structure and the problem of which of the two is better has meaning to us if and only if reducible to the problem which of the two corresponds to the spirit of our time" (p. 248249 ). Just as Socinus has solved the theological problem by rejecting Christianity, our contemporaries have solved the problem of reconciling science and morality by ignoring morality . L. M. PAL~R University o] Delaware Newark The Will to Power. By Friedrich W. Nietzsche. Trans. and eds. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. (New York: Random House, 1967. Pp. xxiii + 576. $10) Walter Kaufmann prudently suggests a middle course between regarding The Will to Power as Nietzsehe's magnum opus and discounting it as worthless (pp. xiii-xvi, 551-552, 557). He notes that much of its fragmentary material was later incorporated into Neitzsche's more systematic works. Even aphorisms not utilized in this way reveal insight of a high order. For a thoughtful man, a good book is one providing the occasion for deeper understanding of the most important problems. Surely The Will to Power is among the few works 302 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY of this nature, although it may seem unworthy of serious attention to those refusing to consider anything...