Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-8mjnm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-19T06:11:52.292Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Part I - The First Modern Metaparadigm, c.1648– c.1750

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2021

Get access

Summary

Ever since man has been able to reason, philosophers have obscured the question of free will; but the theologians rendered it unintelligible by absurd subtleties about grace. Locke was perhaps the first man to find a thread in the labyrinth, for he was the first, who, instead of arrogantly setting out from a general principle, examined human nature by analysis. For three thousand years people have disputed whether or not the will is free. In the Essay on Human Understanding, Locke shows that the question is fundamentally absurd, and that liberty can no more belong to the will than can color and movement.

What is the meaning of this phrase “to be free?” It means “to be able,” or else it has no meaning. To say that the will “can” is as ridiculous at bottom as to say that the will is yellow or blue, round or square. Will is wish, and liberty is power. Let us examine step by step, the chain of our inner processes without befuddling our minds with scholastic terms or antecedent principles.

Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary c.1750

Voltaire formulates the most significant characteristics of the first Modern metaparadigm in his reflections on Locke and “free will.” The four phases of this metaparadigm will introduce heightened methods of self-analysis, methods for the analysis of human nature and the natural world, and separate this gain of human understanding and doing from the intervention of the Divine. This is a new epoch in human self-development. From its onset, we will see the view of a sovereign human being, whose very being is to be autonomous in his or her choices, indeed finding, as Hobbes will, that this “free will” is the major purpose of the age, an age that will reconstruct society's vision of authority, law, learning and moral action. As Martin Heidegger was to say in a later Modern metaparadigm, referring to great epochs such as that of ancient Greek thought and its ways of conceiving the human person and his community “But what is great can only begin great. Its beginning is in fact the greatest beginning of all.” He also saw such greatness as a potential within the beginnings of this epoch that begins in the mid-seventeenth century.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Metahistory of Western Knowledge in the Modern Era
Four Evolving Metaparadigms, 1648 to Present
, pp. 21 - 22
Publisher: Anthem Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×