Voluntarism

Voluntarism (from Latin: voluntas "will"), also named thelism, the philosophy of the will, is a philosophical direction that emphasises the primacy of the will over mere intellectual activity for all social and psychological processes. It becomes metaphysical voluntarism when the will is also regarded as a fundamental factor in the existence of all world events, including those outside the human sphere. Arthur Schopenhauer in particular advocated this point of view in his main philosophical work "The World as Will and Representation". The poet-philosopher Robert Hamerling elaborated a somewhat different variant of the philosophy of the will in his "Atomistics of the Will".

According to Rudolf Steiner, voluntarism is one of the seven possible fundamental worldview moods, which he assigns to the seven planetary spheres. Volutarism he assigns to the Mars sphere:

„We can study a third mood of the soul that makes worldviews, for example, in Schopenhauer. While Hegel's soul, when it looks at the world, is so tuned that first of all in this Hegel soul everything that is concept in the world arises as logism, Schopenhauer, through the special mood of his soul, grasps everything in the soul that is volitional. For him, the forces of nature are will, the hardness of the stone is will, everything that is reality is will. This comes from the particular mood of his soul. Now such a worldview of the will, such a worldview mood of the will, can in turn be regarded like a planet that passes through all twelve spiritual zodiacal images. I will call this world-view mood voluntarism. It is the third world-view mood. Schopenhauer was a voluntarist, and in his soul he was preferably constituted in such a way that he exposed himself to the spiritual zodiac of psychism. Thus arose Schopenhauer's peculiar metaphysics of the will: voluntarism in the spiritual constellation of psychism.

Suppose someone were a voluntarist and particularly inclined to the mental constellation of monadism. Then he would not, like Schopenhauer, base the world on a unitary soul which is actually will, but he would base the world on many monads which, however, are will beings. This world of monadological voluntarism was developed in the most beautiful, perceptive and, I would say, intimate way by the Austrian poet-philosopher Hamerling. How did the peculiar doctrine that you have of Hamerling in the "Atomistics of the Will" come about? Through the fact that his soul was voluntaristically attuned and that he preferably exposed himself to the spiritual constellation of monadism. If we had time, we could cite examples of every mood of the soul in every constellation. They can be found in the world.“ (Lit.:GA 151, p. 53f)

Literature

• Rudolf Steiner: Der menschliche und der kosmische Gedanke, GA 151 (1990), ISBN 3-7274-1510-X English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

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