Engels turns, now, to the question of freedom and necessity. I have discussed this relation, elsewhere. At one extreme, absolute freedom would require the ability to act without any constraint, but that is only possible for a God. Everything else is constrained, at the very least, by natural laws. At the other extreme, an absolute absence of freedom implies no power to act, and only to be acted upon, such as with a rock, eroded by the elements etc. In between there is a gradation. Plants are constrained by the laws of nature, but they evolve, not as an act of conscious will, but purposively, they have a freedom of movement within narrow limits – to adapt to their environment. Animals are constrained by laws of nature, but can operate within them to their advantage. They have much greater freedom of movement and action than plants. Man is also constrained by natural laws, but represents a break from the animals by acting to consciously utilise those laws, and change the material conditions of his existence.
Duhring proposed two solutions to the problem. He writes,
“All false theories of freedom must be replaced by, what we know from experience is the nature of the relation between rational judgment on the one hand and instinctive impulses on the other, a relation which so to speak unites them into a single mean force. The fundamental facts of this form of dynamics must be drawn from observation, and must in general also be estimated, as closely as possible according to their nature and magnitude with regard to the calculation in advance of events which have not yet occurred. In this manner the silly delusions of inner freedom, which people have chewed and fed on for thousands of years, are not only thoroughly cleared away, but are replaced by something positive, which can be made use of for the practical regulation of life”. (p 143)
Duhring, therefore, posits absolute freedom as the expression of rational behaviour, and lack of freedom arising from instinctive behaviour. He doesn't ask what might lead to one or the other of these predominating over the other. For example, suppose I am playing tennis. Will I tend to act instinctively or deliberately over which stroke to play? If I live in a primitive society, where survival is tenuous, will I spend long periods rationalising how best to survive, or act instinctively to find food and shelter, as quickly as possible?
Instead, Duhring simply sees these two impulses always acting within the mind pulling in opposite directions, although recent research, in relation to things like sport, shows that instinctive reactions tend, more often than not, to, also, result in correct decisions.
Engels notes,
“On this basis freedom consists in rational judgment pulling a man to the right while irrational impulses pull him to the left, and in this parallelogram of forces the actual movement follows the direction of the diagonal. Freedom would therefore be the mean between judgment and impulse, between reason and unreason, and its degree in each individual case could be determined on the basis of experience by a “personal equation”, to use an astronomical expression.” (p 143)
How does this relate to morality? Engels quotes Duhring's later comment, which destroys his earlier argument.
“We base moral responsibility on freedom, which however means nothing more to us than susceptibility to conscious motives in accordance with our natural and acquired intelligence. All such motives operate with the inevitability of natural law, notwithstanding an awareness of the possible contradictions in the actions; but it is precisely on this unavoidable compulsion that we rely when we apply the moral levers”. (p 143)
In other words, moral behaviour depends upon freedom, and the ability to make rational decisions. As I have set out, elsewhere, circumstances might prevent rational judgement, and require an instinctive response. Durhing's second definition of freedom is, Engels says, just a vulgarisation of the Hegelian conception in which freedom is the recognition of necessity.
“Freedom does not consist in an imaginary independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility which is thus given of systematically making them work towards definite ends. This holds good in relation both to the laws of external nature and to those which govern the bodily and mental existence of men themselves — two classes of laws which we can separate from each other at most only in thought but not in reality.” (p 144)
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