Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills meaning

"Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills (desires)" Shoepenhauer

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"Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills (desires)" Shoepenhauer
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What does Schopenhauer mean by a man can do what he wants but not want what he wants '?
Why does Schopenhauer think there is no free will?

Thread starter Modeeb
Start date Jan 5, 2016

Modeeb

Bohemian Intelligentsia

Oct 2, 2005 98,026 11,297

Do you agree? Here is an interesting little explanation I cut and paste from this source. https://www.quora.com/This-is-a-quo...e-wills-What-is-the-meaning-of-this-quotation

Schopenhauer is commenting on the illusory nature of free will.

As human beings capable of rational thought and self-reflection, we imagine ourselves to have "free will," which makes us distinct from inanimate objects and animals. We believe we are masters of our own destinies, because we can choose to conform our actions to our desires (we can "do what we want").

However, if our choices are determined by our desires, then the freedom of our choices really depends on whether our desires are "free" in the first place, doesn't it? If we follow the origin of our desires to its base level, we inevitably end up at a source of action that is external to our conscious self, i.e. something we do not choose. For example, I choose to eat this sandwich because I'm hungry. But why am I hungry? Because a lack of nutrients in my body has sent a chemical signal to my brain, triggering it to want to eat. Is my choice to eat this sandwich a free one, if it is ultimately caused by biochemical events outside of my control?

A similar analysis could be applied to any chain of action and desire a person could have. Man is not truly free because he is slave to desires he has no control over; he cannot will what he wills, and thus is no more special or different from any other object in the universe.

Free will is an illusion. For every action we take we have a set of reasons. At any slice of time, those reasons are static and as such there was only one possible action.

™

IMHO

Worst Mod Ever!

Most people have free will although they rarely put it into action, because their desires are overwhelming and their desires give them comfort and the illusion that they are using free will.

Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will.
Einstein paraphrasing Schopenhauer. Reportedly from On The Freedom Of The Will (1839), as translated in The Philosophy of American History: The Historical Field Theory (1945) by Morris Zucker, p. 531
Variant translations:
Man can do what he wants but he cannot want what he wants.
As quoted in The Motivated Brain: A Neurophysiological Analysis of Human Behavior (1991) by Pavel Vasilʹevich Simonov, p. 198
We can do what we wish, but we can only wish what we must.
As quoted by Einstein in "What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck" The Saturday Evening Post (26 October 1929) p. 17. A scan of the article is available online here http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/what_life_means_to_einstein.pdf (see p. 114).
Attributed
Source: Essays and Aphorisms

Original

Der Mensch kann wohl tun was er will, aber er kann nicht wollen was er will.

Variant: Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will.
Source: Essays and Aphorisms

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021.

„The man who abides in the will of God wills nothing else than what God is, and what He wills.“

— Meister Eckhart German theologian 1260 - 1328

Meister Eckhart’s Sermons (1909)
Context: The man who abides in the will of God wills nothing else than what God is, and what He wills. If he were ill he would not wish to be well. If he really abides in God's will, all pain is to him a joy, all complication, simple: yea, even the pains of hell would be a joy to him. He is free and gone out from himself, and from all that he receives, he must be free. If my eye is to discern colour, it must itself be free from all colour. The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.

Sermon IV : True Hearing

„As a general rule, all that has been hitherto advanced respecting the nature of this deity, must be understood to refer to his properties: for the nature of the god is not one thing, and his influence another: and truly, besides these two, his energy a third thing: seeing that all things which he wills, these he is, he can, and he works. For neither doth he will that which he is not; nor is he without strength to do that which he wills; nor doth he will that which he cannot effect.“

— Julian (emperor) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer 331 - 363

Now this is very different in the case of men, for theirs is a double nature mixed up in one, that of soul and body; the former divine, the latter full of darkness and obscurity: hence naturally arise warfare and discord between the two.
Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)

„Mind is the Master power that moulds and makes,
And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes
The tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills,
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills: —
He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass:
Environment is but his looking-glass.“

— James Allen British philosophical writer 1864 - 1912

As A Man Thinketh (1902)
Variant: Mind is the Master Power that molds and makes, And we are mind. And ever more we take the tool of thought, and shaping what we will, bring forth a thousand joys, or a thousand ills. We think in secret, and it comes to pass, environment, is but our looking glass.

Doing
Man

What does Schopenhauer mean by a man can do what he wants but not want what he wants '?

Schopenhauer tries to explain that we can actually do what we want, but we cannot choose (or want) what we want, and in this sense we are not free - what we want is determined by our nature or programmed into us.

Why does Schopenhauer think there is no free will?

Essentially, Schopenhauer claimed that as phenomenal objects appearing to a viewer, humans have absolutely no free will. They are completely determined by the way that their bodies react to stimuli and causes, and their characters react to motives.