[p. 223]
|223| what lies in the cause must necessarily follow. As reflection, however, I can go beyond every determination that is posited by the circumstances. In so far as the human being appeals to having been seduced by circumstances, stimulations and so on, he wants thereby to push the action away from himself, as it were, but only lowers himself thereby to an unfree or natural being, whereas his action is in truth always his own, not that of another or not the effect of something outside him. The circumstances or motives have only as much dominion over the human being as he himself concedes to them.
The determinations of the lower faculty of desire are natural determinations. To this extent it seems to be neither necessary nor possible for the human being to make them his own. Yet precisely as natural determinations they do not yet belong to his will or to his freedom, for the essence of his will is that there be nothing in it which he has not himself made his own. He is thus able to regard what belongs to his nature as something foreign, so that it is therefore only in him, belongs to him only in so far as he makes it his own or follows his natural drives with resolution.
§ 16
To ascribe the guilt of an action to a human being means to impute it to him or to reckon it to him. To children who are still in the state of nature one cannot yet impute any action; they are not yet capable of imputation; likewise also the insane or the imbecile.
§ 17
In the difference between deed and action lies the difference between the concepts of guilt as they occur in the tragic representations of the ancients and in our concepts. In the former, the deed is ascribed to the human being in its whole extent. He has to atone for the whole, and no distinction is made that he knew only one
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.