This page lists some of the all-time best Nietzsche quotes on free will. Enjoy!
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10+ Nietzsche Quotes on Free Will, False Causality, & More
Nietzsche Quotes on Thinking
“‘There is thinking; consequently there is that which thinks’—that is what Descartes’ argument comes to. Yet this means positing our faith in the concept of substance as ‘a priori true.’ When there is thinking, something must be there which thinks—that is merely a formulation of our grammatical habit, which posits a doer for what is done. . . .”
“A thought comes when ‘it’ wishes, and not when ‘I’ wish, so that it is a falsification of the facts of the case to say that the subject ‘I’ is the condition of the predicate ‘think.’ It thinks; but that this ‘it’ is precisely the famous old ‘ego’ is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not an ‘immediate certainty.’ After all, one has even gone too far with this ‘it thinks’—even the ‘it’ contains an interpretation of the process, and does not belong to the process itself. One infers here according to the grammatical habit: ‘Thinking is an activity; every activity requires an agent; consequently—'”
“Formerly, one believed in ‘the soul’ as one believed in grammar and the grammatical subject: one said, ‘I’ is the condition, ‘think’ is the predicate and conditioned—thinking is an activity to which thought must supply a subject as cause. Then one tried with admirable perseverance and cunning to get out of this net—and asked whether the opposite might not be the case: ‘think’ the condition, ‘I’ the conditioned; ‘I’ in that case only a synthesis which is made by thinking. At bottom, Kant wanted to prove that, starting from the subject, the subject could not be proved—nor could the object: the possibility of a merely apparent existence of the subject, ‘the soul’ in other words, may not always have remained strange to him—that thought which as Vedanta philosophy existed once before on this earth and exercised tremendous power.”
“When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, ‘I think,’ I find a whole series of daring assertions that would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove; for example, that it is I who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an ‘ego,’ and, finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking—that I know what thinking is.”
“In its origin language belongs in the age of the most rudimentary form of psychology. We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language, in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere it sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things—only thereby does it first create the concept of ‘thing.’ Everywhere ‘being’ is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego. In the beginning there is that great calamity of an error that the will is something which is effective, that will is a capacity. Today we know that it is only a word.”
“If there is anything in which I am ahead of all psychologists, it is that my eye is sharper for that most difficult and captious kind of backward inference in which the most mistakes are made: the backward inference from the work to the maker, from the deed to the doer, from the ideal to him who needs it, from every way of thinking and valuing to the want behind it that prompts it.”
Nietzsche Quotes on causa sui
“The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has yet been conceived, it is a sort of logical violation and unnaturalness; but the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with this very folly. The desire for ‘freedom of will’ in the superlative, metaphysical sense, such as still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated, the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society therefrom, involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui, and, with more than Munchausen daring, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the slough of nothingness.”
“The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far, it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic; but the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for ‘freedom of the will’ in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated; the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and, with more than Münchhausen’s audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness.”
Nietzsche Quotes on Responsibility
“No one is responsible for man’s being there at all, for his being such-and-such, or for his being in these circumstances or in this environment. The fatality of his essence is not to be disentangled from the fatality of all that has been and will be … One is necessary, one is a piece of fatefulness, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole; there is nothing which could judge, measure, compare, or sentence our being, for that would mean judging, measuring, comparing, or sentencing the whole. But there is nothing besides the whole. That nobody is held responsible any longer, that the mode of being may not be traced back to a causa prima, that the world does not form a unity either as a sensorium or as ‘spirit’—that alone is the great liberation…”
“No one is responsible for the fact that he exists at all, that he is constituted as he is, and that he happens to be in certain circumstances and in a particular environment. The fatality of his being cannot be divorced from the fatality of all that which has been and will be … One is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole,—there is nothing that could judge, measure, compare, and condemn our existence, for that would mean judging, measuring, comparing and condemning the whole. But there is nothing outside the whole! The fact that no one shall any longer be made responsible, that the nature of existence may not be traced to a causa prima, that the world is an entity neither as a sensorium nor as a spirit—this alone is the great deliverance…”
“No one is responsible for existing at all, for being formed so and so, for being placed under those circumstances and in this environment. His own destiny cannot be disentangled from the destiny of all else in past and future … We are necessary, we are part of destiny, we belong to the whole, we exist in the whole—there is nothing which could judge, measure, compare, or condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, and condemn the whole … But there is nothing outside of the whole! This only is the grand emancipation: that no one be made responsible any longer…”
Nietzsche Quotes on Free Will
“Today we no longer have any pity for the concept of ‘free will’: we know only too well what it really is—the foulest of all theologians’ artifices, aimed at making mankind ‘responsible’ in their sense, that is, dependent upon them … Wherever responsibilities are sought, it is usually the instinct of wanting to judge and punish which is at work … The doctrine of the will has been invented essentially for the purpose of punishment, that is, because one wanted to impute guilt … Men were considered ‘free’ so that they might be judged and punished—so that they might become guilty: consequently, every act had to be considered as willed, and the origin of every act had to be considered as lying within the consciousness (and thus the most fundamental counterfeit in psychologicis was made the principle of psychology itself).”
“Just as the popular mind separates the lightning from its flash and takes the latter for an action, for the operation of a subject called lightning, so popular morality also separates strength from expressions of strength, as if there were a neutral substratum behind the strong man, which was free to express strength or not to do so. But there is no such substratum; there is no ‘being’ behind doing, effecting, becoming; ‘the doer’ is merely a fiction added to the deed—the deed is everything.”
“Just as the common people separate lightning from its flash and take the latter to be a deed, something performed by a subject, which is called lightning, popular morality separates strength from the manifestations of strength, as though there were an indifferent substratum behind the strong person which had the freedom to manifest strength or not. But there is no such substratum; there is no ‘being’ behind the deed, its effect and what becomes of it; ‘the doer’ is invented as an afterthought—the doing is everything.”
“In just the same way as people separate lightning from its flash and take the latter as an action, as the effect of a subject which is called lightning, so popular morality separates strength from the manifestations of strength, as if behind the strong person there were an indifferent substrate, which is free to express strength or not. But there is no such substrate; there is no ‘being’ behind the doing, acting, becoming. ‘The doer’ is merely made up and added into the action – the act is everything.”
“‘I don’t know at all what I am doing. I don’t know in the least what I ought to do!’—You are right, but be sure of this: you are being done at every moment! Mankind has at all times mistaken the active for the passive: it is its eternal grammatical blunder.”
Nietzsche Quotes on Error of False Causality
“People have believed at all times that they knew what a cause is; but whence did we take our knowledge—or more precisely, our faith that we had such knowledge? From the realm of the famous ‘inner facts,’ of which not a single one has so far proved to be factual. We believed ourselves to be causal in the act of willing: we thought that here at least we caught causality in the act. Nor did one doubt that all the antecedents of an act, its causes, were to be sought in consciousness and would be found there once sought—as ‘motives’: else one would not have been free and responsible for it. Finally, who would have denied that a thought is caused? that the ego causes the thought? Of these three ‘inward facts’ which seem to guarantee causality, the first and most persuasive is that of the will as cause. The conception of a consciousness (‘spirit’) as a cause, and later also that of the ego as cause (the ‘subject’), are only afterbirths: first the causality of the will was firmly accepted as given, as empirical. Meanwhile we have thought better of it. Today we no longer believe a word of all this. The ‘inner world’ is full of phantoms and will-o’-the-wisps: the will is one of them. The will no longer moves anything, hence does not explain anything either—it merely accompanies events; it can also be absent. The so-called motive: another error. Merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness, something alongside the deed that is more likely to cover up the antecedents of the deeds than to represent them. And as for the ego! That has become a fable, a fiction, a play on words: it has altogether ceased to think, feel, or will! What follows from this? There are no mental causes at all. The whole of the allegedly empirical evidence for that has gone to the devil. That is what follows! And what a fine abuse we had perpetrated with this ’empirical evidence’; we created the world on this basis as a world of causes, a world of will, a world of spirits. The most ancient and enduring psychology was at work here and did not do anything else: all that happened was considered a doing, all doing the effect of a will; the world became to it a multiplicity of doers; a doer (a ‘subject’) was slipped under all that happened. It was out of himself that man projected his three ‘inner facts’—that in which he believed most firmly, the will, the spirit, the ego. He even took the concept of being from the concept of the ego; he posited ‘things’ as ‘being,’ in his image, in accordance with his concept of the ego as a cause. Small wonder that later he always found in things only that which he had put into them. The thing itself, to say it once more, the concept of thing is a mere reflex of the faith in the ego as cause. And even your atom, my dear mechanists and physicists—how much error, how much rudimentary psychology is still residual in your atom! Not to mention the ‘thing-in-itself,’ the horrendum pudendum of the metaphysicians! The error of the spirit as cause mistaken for reality! And made the very measure of reality! And called God!”
“In every age we have believed that we know what a cause is: but where did we get our knowledge, or more precisely, our belief that we have knowledge about this? From the realm of the famous ‘internal facts,’ none of which has up to now proved to be factual. We believed that we ourselves were causal in the act of willing; there, at least, we thought that we were catching causality in the act. Likewise, we never doubted that all the antecedents of an action, its causes, were to be sought in consciousness, and could be discovered there if we looked for them—discovered as ‘motives’: otherwise, the actor would not have been free for the action, responsible for it. Finally, who would have disputed the claim that a thought is caused? That the ‘I’ causes the thought? . . . Of these three ‘internal facts’ which seemed to vouch for causality, the first and most convincing is the ‘fact’ of will as cause; the conception of a consciousness (‘mind’ / ‘Geist’) as cause, and still later of the ‘I’ (the ‘subject’) as cause were merely born later, after causality had been firmly established by the will as given, as an empirical fact . . . In the meantime, we have thought better of this. Today we don’t believe a word of all that anymore. The ‘internal world’ is full of optical illusions and mirages: the will is one of them. The will no longer moves anything, so it no longer explains anything either—it just accompanies events, and it can even be absent. The so-called ‘motive’: another error. Just a surface phenomenon of consciousness, an accessory to the act, which conceals the antecedents of an act rather than representing them. And as for the ‘I’! That has become a fable, a fiction, a play on words: it has completely and utterly ceased to think, to feel, and to will! . . . What’s the consequence of this? There aren’t any mental causes at all! All the supposed empirical evidence for them has gone to hell!”
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