Narrative Ontology. Axel Hutter
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one arrives at the paradoxical formula: I am free insofar as I can want what I want. What results is evidently an idle circular movement that everyday consciousness does not ordinarily make clear, for this movement indicates the blind spot of its understanding of freedom.
The blind spot of the alleged freedom of action is thus the freedom of the will, for the freedom of action presupposes a freedom of wanting, which cannot, however, for fundamental reasons, be understood within the paradigm of the freedom of action. Here, the bridge is formed in a systematic sense to the distinction between object knowledge and self-knowledge. Just as humans cannot recognize themselves as subjects so long as they alienate themselves as objects of knowledge in accordance with that paradigm of knowledge, neither can they understand themselves in their freedom so long as they misunderstand freedom as a property of objectifiable single actions in accordance with the paradigm of the operari.
But if one misunderstands one’s freedom, one is not free. Freedom does not concern an objectifiable property of human being, which one may have without understanding it – indeed, without knowing anything about it. Rather, freedom concerns the selfhood of human being as subject or I, which is what it is only insofar as one performs it with (self) understanding. For this reason, human beings are free only insofar as they understand their freedom. As equal as they are in being inherently free, they differ in terms of how they each understand concretely their freedom for themselves. Their respective being is their respective self-understanding. Precisely for this reason, they are free not in operari, but rather in esse.
Selfhood as Character
In contrast to their actions, the selfhood of human beings is designated as their character, which, as we say, ‘shows’ itself in one’s actions. We can recognize our character only on the basis of our concrete actions, yet we act the way we act because we have this character and not another character – that is, because we are this human and not some other human. A human being’s character thus shows itself not in the changing ‘what’ of the diverse actions but, rather, in the ‘how’ of acting, which remains the same so long as one’s understanding of oneself and of freedom remains the same.
In light of a human being’s character, the blind spot in the conception of freedom of action becomes particularly clear. Anyone who believes to understand freedom on the basis of freedom of action will concede that one’s character cannot be conceived as though one chose it or brought it forth ‘freely’. In fact, it is immediately clear that a human being’s character recedes from the operational access of that person’s actions, for the character always precedes each single action. At the same time, the actions through which the character finds expression are ascribed not simply as free actions; rather, they are ascribed to the individual in a more distinctive way, precisely because the individual’s character shows itself in them.
Yet accountability implies liability. The idea of freedom of action justifies human liability in the fact that the guilty individual could have also acted differently. Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s critical philosophy of the freedom of the will, which shows clearly the illusory and thus unfree nature of a mere freedom of action, understands liability, by contrast, as the possibility for the guilty party of also having been different. That is, the guilty party could have changed his or her character – which would show itself, in turn, in changed actions in which the character necessarily expresses itself. Regret and ‘the pangs of conscience’, according to Thomas Mann, following Schopenhauer, aim for this reason ‘at being, not at action’.
Here, the enigma of human being comes to a head in the enigma of the freedom of the will and the freedom of character. It is just as clear that one can speak seriously of freedom only where it bears not merely on action but, firstly and above all, on character, on the actual willing and selfhood of the actor, as it is unclear at first glance how a ‘free’ change of character should be possible, since the character that always precedes every single action eludes being objectified for precisely this reason. How can one change freely one’s being, the selfhood that one designates with the word ‘I’?
The question in which the being of human being becomes a question reveals clearly that a critical understanding of freedom requires an equally critical ontology. Yet it is precisely this insight – as should now be clear – that underlies Kant’s doctrine of the double aspect of being. This can be known in its double form, as empirical literalness and as intelligible meaning, such that both aspects belong strictly together, thus allowing us to understand the being of concrete reality in the first place.
A consequence of the double aspect of existence as being and meaning for the selfhood of human being is that here, too, one must distinguish between the empirical character and the intelligible character, as letter and as spirit of the one, inherently differentiated reality of human being. Since the empirical character always stands under the ‘influence of certain motives’, any freedom attributed to it in its literalness that has not been understood would be a mere fiction. Instead, human freedom manifests itself in the capacity of humans to understand their empirical character, and thus to develop an intelligible character.
The free selfhood of human beings is rooted in their concrete self-understanding in such a way that it is called ‘character’. Human lived existence is never mere literal being; rather, it is selfhood that is interpreted and understood always anew. For this reason, one’s being changes when one’s understanding of oneself changes, for one realizes one’s freedom concretely in understanding. Human freedom is a dependent, finite autonomy. It is dependent on being in a literal sense, which lies before this freedom and underlies it. But this being does not exhaust the essence of human existence, for human beings are able, in understanding mere literalness, to emancipate themselves from being blindly caught up in what is given and prescribed. The empirical–intelligible double aspect of human personality must, then, more specifically be understood as the double aspect of being and meaning, of empirical literalness and intelligible interpretation.
For this reason, Kant states that ‘The human being who is conscious of having character in his way of thinking does not have it by nature; he must always have acquired it’ (2006, 194). It therefore ‘does not depend on what nature makes of the human being, but on what the human being makes of himself, for the former belongs to temperament (where the subject is for the most part passive), and only the latter enables one to recognize that he has a character’ (192). Yet the ‘acquisition’ of a character cannot ensue in steps since the character designates the whole of human selfhood that always lies before all the single actions and operations. ‘Wanting to become a better human being in a fragmentary way is a futile endeavour, since one impression dies out while one works on another; the grounding of character, however, is absolute unity of the inner principle of conduct as such’ (194).
Forming a character, which implies at the same time changing the inner principle of the past way of life, can take place only in human beings waking up with a jolt out of the dream of their previous existence. They wake up by becoming aware that their settled, as it were, ‘natural’, understanding of their selves and the world – which makes them understand this or that but not the whole of their existence – is akin to the instinct of an animal, rather than the character of a free human being. The acquisition of a character, that is, the beginning of a true self-understanding can for this reason, according to Kant, not be achieved ‘gradually, but only, as it were, by an explosion which happens one time as a result of weariness at the unstable condition of instinct. Perhaps there are only a few who have attempted this revolution before the age of thirty, and fewer still who have firmly established it before they are forty’ (194).
Kant’s last remark is especially insightful for the line of thought pursued here, for it draws attention to the extent to which human beings, in their self-understanding, are dependent on having a past that serves as a basis, as it were, as a ‘text’ of understanding. Right here, a new definition of human freedom as narrative can begin – namely, by opposing the erroneous idea that human beings are free, at most, despite their past, which they can no longer change through action; on the contrary, human beings are free purely on the basis of