Chapter III - Willing as a Reaction to External Conditions
4. External Factors and Their Relationship to the Will
4.5. Time Dimension
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立 政 治 大 學
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“Geist.” This is evident, for example, from her conception of “autonomous mental faculties,” which pertain to the life of the mind.
It should be noted that this Chapter’s discussion on “external” factors includes phenomena, which belong both to the realm of “Geist” and to the realm of “bodies,”
since both of these realms may exist outside the perceiving subject.
Husserl’s distinction between “Geist” and “body” enables us to begin considering various aspects of external reality, which will be discussed in the following sections. In the next Chapter we will also discuss some internal factors, and after that we will be able to consider Husserl’s intuition that human Ego may be attracted more towards “Geist” or more towards “Body.” This will be important in our discussion on freedom of human will and action, which will take place in the next two Chapters.
It is now possible to consider various types of external factors in a more detail, especially in their relationship to the willing, to volitions and to the object of willing, which are constructed by the mind.
4.5. Time Dimension
Earlier in this Chapter we already mentioned that for the purposes of this research “time” is not something that exists by itself. “Time” is only a concept, which helps us in considering some events or states as either past, present or future, depending on when they happen. If they have already happened, they belong to the past, if they take place now, they are present, and if they are expected or planned to happen in future, they may be considered “future events or states.”
The time dimension is possibly the most significant dimension when considering external factors, which are related to willing, since willing is first of all willing something to happen. Since this something has not happened yet, it is willed to happen in future.
Thus, will is sometimes believed to be related only to the future. Arendt explicitly holds that the will is “our organ for the future.” This position is very attractive,
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due to its straight forward logic and our common sense tends to support this idea.
However, this is not necessarily so. For example, we may undergo some experience or be in some state in present and be willing to remain in this state. We want to be in this state now, not only in some future. When we will something, and this goal is reached, we do not necessarily cease willing this something. Sometimes we even start doing something without any willingness to do it, but then discover that we began willing it, and now we do this willingly. We can recall the Greek word “ακὠν,” which indicates that something is done willingly, i.e. our will is active and supportive, when we do this.
For example, when we are asked by someone to catch some fish, we may start fishing without willing it, we do this only because of willing to help someone else and not because we want to fish. However, after a while we may discover that we like fishing and that this activity is attractive and interesting to us, we now do this willingly and with mental drive towards this activity, which we do now. We may also be willing to do fishing in future, but we also want to keep doing it in present. Thus, it may be concluded that the will may also be related directly to the present.
We may also be differentiating our willing objects with respect to time. For example, some event or state of things may be willed at a particular time point, rather than at some other time point. Or it may be willed at various time points, but some particular time point is more preferable to us than other ones. For example, we may be willing to become champions, but we are willing to become champions this year, and for some reason have no interest in becoming champions on the next Olympiad, which will be held four years from now. Or we may be more willing to become champions this year and less willing to become champions four years later.
One last question which we need to try to answer is: whether willing may be concerned with something, which has already happened and has become a “past event,”
no matter whether it had or had not created any consequences for the present and for future?
This question is not easy to answer. On the one hand the will seems to be directed towards future, and it is contrary to the common sense to say that one is willing
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something, which already happened five years ago. On the other hand, something, which has happened in the past, may become a mental object. It may be “objectified” in our mind as a mental construct, it is constructed with the aid of our memory and sometimes also with the aid of our imagination. Since this past experience may be objectified and may have consequences for the present as well as for the future, we claim that some past events may become objects of the will.
In order to justify this claim let us consider some mental experiences. For example, when we regret that we have done something in the past, and wish that we had not done it, we have a past experience as an object of our will (or, in this case, an object of our “nill”). No matter whether we can or cannot change the consequences of this past event, we may still regret it and therefore we are willing this event not happening in the past.
Another example is when our ministry of education introduces a policy to revise and rewrite our history textbooks. This means that the government wants to erase some past events from the history or it wants these events to look differently, or it may even want to introduce some “new” events into the history. The reason is that our government may want to change some ideological influence, which history may have upon the people. In this case the past events are objects of the willing intent of some policymaker, the present and future ideological influence are secondary goals of the policy, the primary goal is to change the past, to try to “prevent” some events from happening, and to make other events happen (even if they did not happen in the past). Inventing myths, which explain origins of some ethnic group or some cultural entity, is also an attempt to create something in the past, the object of the willing subject is “located” in the past, even though the corresponding myth may be written in present.
It should be noted that past events more often than not may become objects of the willing, when they have direct consequences for the present or for the future (even if they do not directly influence the willing subject, as in the case of the policymaker trying to change the history).
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From the above discussion it is evident that the time dimension is something closely related to the willing. Objects of the will may be located anywhere on the “time-continuum,” however, it is more natural for them to be located in future, since individual is mainly directed towards future, when he is willing interfere with the world of appearances to produce some change, which is expected to be achieved at some point in future.