My Challenge to Two Atheists Who Deny Free Will | Mind Matters – 1848+: The End(s) of History

The question of free will is addressed best in a Kantian context, and the direction of physics and/or religion never seems to provide answers, for good Kantian reasons. And yet Kant’s answer …

Source: My Challenge to Two Atheists Who Deny Free Will | Mind Matters – 1848+: The End(s) of History

The question of free will negated by scientists has left the question in limbo (although monotheistic religions have always upheld free will) to be taken over by psychopaths, shady gurus, and so-called magicians of the will in the legacy of underground occultism and witchcraft. The will of man may be free but it can be captured and mechanized. And in that context a whole pseudo-religion of ‘magic’ has arisen with a figure like Aleister Crowley et al. indulging in connections of spiritual psychology based on the will: Do what thou will shall be the whole of the law. That’s dangerous nonsense but it is convincing to many in a regurgitation of witchcraft in our late age of the modern. And we had best believe that the covert agencies are aware and practitioners here, to the extent total idiots in those orgs can figure it all out.

The ‘do what thou wilt’ meme is convincing to some in the world of new age make-believe but it has the obvious problem of trying to bypass ethical reasoning with a simple gimmick, especially tempting in a field where various self-styled spiritual experts have found ‘karma’ be an illusion. It used to be that people who did bad things suffered karma, but now it seems they can make off like bandits, scot free.

The problem with Crowley is that his ridiculous ritual of Abramelin the Mage to invoke the ‘true will’ doesn’t work because the ‘will’ of man is locked and sealed behind a kind of mysterious veil not unlike the question of the unconscious, or as here the ‘superconscious’, a term easier to use than to explicate. But the point missed by the bad guys like Crowley  the will is a mystery that stands beyond realization in any easy form.

Let’s cut to the chase: although the path to enlightenment is not the path to the will, it could be taken so, and a Buddhist-style path to the will might work, although I don’t think buddhists were strong on free will.

The work of bennett gives a vast and possibly useful survey of the vast cascade of the ‘will’ in man and nature, inherited from Samkhya, in the seven term progression of the will in 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96 triads of the will, an ancient now modern legacy, and a caution to those will would consider the realization of the will is a matter of ‘free will’. Perhaps it is better that no one can figure out what man is.