[9] _Psychologie rationnelle_, vol. 2, p. 96.
[10] _Psychologie rationnelle_, vol. 2, p 78.
The position is tersely put in the Dilemma presented by Jules Lequier, the friend of Renouvier, quoted in the _Psychologie rationnelle_. There are four possibilities:
To affirm necessity, necessarily. To affirm necessity, freely. To affirm freedom, necessarily. To affirm freedom, freely.
On examining these possibilities we find that to affirm necessity, necessarily, is valueless, for its contradictory, freedom, is equally necessary. To affirm necessity, freely, does not offer us a better position, for here again it is necessity which is affirmed. If we affirm freedom necessarily, we are in little better case, for necessity operates again (although Renouvier notes that this gives a certain basis for morality). In the free affirmation of freedom, however, is to be found not only a basis for morals, but also for knowledge and the search for truth. Indeed, as we are thus forced “to admit the truth of either necessity or freedom, and to choose between the one and the other with the one or with the other,”[11] we find that the affirmation of necessity involves contradiction, for there are many persons who affirm freedom, and this they do, if the determinist be right, necessarily. The affirmation of freedom, on the other hand, is free from such an absurdity.
Such is the conclusion to which Renouvier brings us after his wealth of logical and moral considerations. He combines both types of discussion and argument in order to undermine the belief in determinism and to uphold freedom, which is, in his view, the essential attribute of personality and of the universe itself. He thus succeeded in altering substantially the balance of thought in favour of freedom, and further weight was added to the same side of the scales by the new spiritualist group who placed freedom in the forefront of their thought.
The development of the treatment of this problem within the thought of the new spiritualists or idealists is extremely interesting, and it proceeded finally to a definite doctrine of contingency as the century drew to its close. The considerations set forth are usually psychological in tone, and not so largely ethical as in the neo-critical philosophy.